Jennifer Campbell won my heart when she named me as one of her favourite blogs on Masthead Online.  I had a soft spot for her way before that though, because as the online editor for FASHION Magazine she had been in touch with Canadian fashion bloggers in a genuine and inclusive way, sharing opportunities for bloggers to contribute and inviting us to events.

After I did this little email interview, I asked Jennifer if I could come over and “take her picture” – though it was really just an excuse to check out my neighbors, St Joseph Media and their offices.  It was a delight to find cubicles full of friendly faces, it made me consider applying for an internship.  Seriously, if FASHION were a girl she would be the sweetest girlfriend you could ever want.

How did you become the online editor at FASHION Magazine?

The short answer is that I had been working here at FASHION as the assistant editor/fact-checker on the print magazine for a little over a year and when the online opportunity came up, I went for it.

What is the best thing about your career?

What I love is that I have the opportunity here to dig in to lots of new things, which is really fun. I’m doing everything from going to management meetings to producing videos to sitting on the floor of the beauty closet with the beauty editor, learning how to pick products for a story. I also have to say that I work with fantastic, smart, dedicated people on FASHION and FM.com, which is the other best thing about my job.

What are your favourite magazines, websites and blogs?

Magazine wise, I love Monocle and Dwell right now. I also read any fashion title that comes my way–Lula is sitting on our photo editor’s desk and I’m itching to get my hands on it. As of today, I have 59 sites in my daily bookmarks, but my favourites (other than you and Auntie Fashion) are The Cut, Jezebel, Refinery29 Pipeline and Style Bubble. For a daily bit of Zen, I hit up Cakewrecks and Lovely Listing, for disastrous cakes and disastrous real estate listings, respectively. Oh, and Twitter.

I hear it is not an easy time to be in the magazine business, and that the internet has something to do with that. Is this true? As the editor of a website for a magazine, what is your role in determining the future of the publication?

The web is certainly not hurting our title—we just learned that FASHION cracked the 2 million mark for readership, the highest ever for a Canadian fashion publication. To the second half of your question: Because we’ve done things like launch our new blog, upped our video and held a cross-Canada blogger search, I think the site is becoming more and more its own thing. But I also think that this has actually helped integrate it into our brand. We each have our strengths, the mag and the website, and when I’m working with the editors, we try to create content that makes the best use of what we can do online, like video or our new Ask FASHION column. And to me, that’s my role—to understand what FASHION is all about and bring it to the web.

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