Periodical Ramblings (18) (And Much More)

    This is one in a series about serials and I have likely written a similar sentence in one of the other seventeen posts related to magazines. The periodicals covered range from Arizona Highways to the Village Voice, and include lesser known literary publications like The Sewanee Review and Prairie Schooner. The last one was about The Farmers' Almanac, which ceased publication and The Old Farmer's Almanac which is still going strong.

WIRED
    If you are vaguely aware of Wired and are thinking that, a magazine covering technology started over 30 years ago, back in the last century, is one you are not much interested in, you might want to have another look. Like The Old Farmer's Almanac, it is doing well and lately it has been doing much better.
    One reason it is doing much better is that it now covers much more than technology and it appears that Wired has gone off-topic largely because of a new energetic editor. She  is a Canadian, who travelled from Calgary to a bigger stage and has nimbly moved through some rather tough publications as a writer and executive. Along the way, she probably had to fetch a few coffees for the guys, but she was well prepared. She credits her stint at Tim Hortons when she was in high school: "It taught 16-year-old me that I like chaos, I like a fast pace, and I like to do something demanding." She has tattoos.
   

   I will not write much about Wired. Go to Wired.com and have a look for yourself. I just did, which is unfortunate since I really can't subscribe to another magazine, even though you will know that I just cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post. The illustration next to this, is one iteration of the cover of Wired, which was also pasted on various billboards in some major cities in the U.S..

Katie Drummond: A Real Golden Gael
   The newish editor at Wired is Katie Drummond, who continued her education after Tim Hortons and went to Queen's. (As someone who went to and worked at a rival institution, I will say only that Queen's is ranked higher than Tims. Those associated with Queen's are known as the "Golden Gaels".) I know much of this because I still have a subscription to the New York Times. In it, there was recently a good article about Ms. Drummond and Wired and I will supply for free, some of the information it contains, since you are likely to trust more, the information for which I have paid. 

   As the title implies, Ms. Drummond can be direct. When asked if Wired "has strayed too far from its techno-optimism roots with its hard-hitting coverage of the Trump administration and skeptical eye on billionaire tech bros?," her reply: “If you still don’t understand why Wired covers politics,” she said in an interview, “you are either willfully ignorant or a complete idiot.”
   Ms. Drummond was hired as editorial director in August 2023 and "she immediately focused on getting scoops and speeding up the pace of publishing. On her second day, she decided she needed a politics team. She rehired a former executive editor, Brian Barrett, to run day-to-day operations and built up a social video team to increase the number of vertical videos shared on social media. She shook up the staff and made hires; revamped newsletters, launching five new ones for paying subscribers; and started podcasts that placed a greater spotlight on Wired’s journalists and their work...."
   “She’s gone after stories the publication has normally avoided and avoided ones the publication has normally gone for. Wired is never boring to read.”

    "But Ms. Drummond’s approach appears to be working. Condé Nast does not disclose profits or losses for its publications, but Ms. Drummond said Wired had added more than 200,000 new paying subscribers in the past year, and subscription revenue increased 24 percent last year in the United States. Wired currently has more than 500,000 paid subscribers. It has a newsroom of around 80 people with plans to hire up to a dozen more this year, and was recently named a finalist for general excellence in the National Magazine Awards."

   At a time when many periodicals are struggling, it is good to see that Wired is doing well. Ms. Drummond is also apparently doing well and can be spotted running in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and daughter. If she needs advice, she should run over to Greenwich Village and chat with another Canadian expat who had great success at Condé Nast - Graydon Carter. 

Sources:
  The New York Times article is by Katie Robertson and appears in the March 17, 2026 issue. 
   That Ms. Drummond valued her time at Tim Hortons is reported by Jeff Pappone, in Queen's Alumni Review, Feb. 2, 2025.
   "After Exiting Vice, Katie Drummond Joins Wired as Top Editor,"Todd Spangler, Variety, Aug. 10, 2023.

   "Drummond’s background in online media spans hard news, technology and lifestyle coverage. At Vice, as SVP of global news and entertainment, she led the expansion of Vice News across Latin America, Europe and Asia, and oversaw all Vice digital brands including Noisey, Munchies, Rec Room, Motherboard and Waypoint. She also led efforts to create opportunities for the editorial brands across Vice TV and Vice Studios.

   Prior to Vice, Drummond was deputy editor at Medium, where she oversaw editorial content across politics, wellness, science and technology, and ran the audience development team for Medium’s subscription program. Drummond began her career as a reporter, writing for outlets including the New Republic, New York Magazine, Popular Science, Marie Claire and Wired, where she covered military research and medicine for Wired’s Danger Room blog. She then served in a managing editor role at the Verge and as a deputy editor for Bloomberg News, before taking on executive editor appointments at The Outline and Gizmodo Media Group, where she was editor in chief of Gizmodo."

   "Katie Drummond: ‘Democracy in the US is Under Threat. And That Threat is Facilitated by Technology and the Makers of that Technology’," Ana Vidal Egea, El Pais, July 5, 2025.

    "Since 2023, this Canadian philosophy graduate has directed the most influential publication in the field of tech. She was a pioneer in understanding what is now obvious: the inseparable connection between technology and power. Since Donald Trump won the elections, ‘Wired’ has also been covering US political news, and subscriptions have skyrocketed." 

The Bonus:
  For an enjoyable read about the career of the other Canadian at Condé Nast who went to Carleton see: When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, by Graydon Carter. 

 

Canadian Cartoonists

     Once again, you should know that I have been preoccupied and am attempting to quickly increase my posts for December and avoid shopping. So, given quick consideration are a few Canadian cartoonists and illustrators who would otherwise deserve more of our attention.

Barry Blitt


   
     If you have your own shopping to do, you might consider buying the book Blitt by Barry Blitt. In it you will find “caricatures of the public figures, mainly entertainers and politicians, who've occupied the limelight from the late 1980s on. It's got Michael Jackson holding an infant over an apartment-building railing, Vladimir Putin depicted as a figure-skater prancing around the ice, Pope Francis doing snow angels and, of course, Donald Trump, mid-air, coming down for a big, fat belly flop in the American pool.”
     Perhaps you have wondered, “How did a Jewish kid [Blitt] from the insular Montreal suburb of Côte Saint-Luc end up in the thick of New York's cosmopolitan media scene, published by everyone, the unlikely owner of playwright Arthur Miller's old house?”, and if so, you will find the answer in this review: “Catcher of the Wry: A New Collection of Satirical Sketches Highlights Cartoonist Barry Blitt's Singular Take on the Past Few Decades,” by Alec Scott, G&M, Nov. 10, 2017.

Bruce McCall


(Sorry about the quality of the image.
The billboard says "Bay of Pigs Now Called Porky's Cove)

     Much of Blitt’s work appears in The New Yorker where the covers are also often done by another Canadian, Bruce McCall. His (McCall’s) first appeared in 1995 and he has now done over 70 of them. He also provides the odd cartoon and articles such as “Not So Fast, Canada”, a funny one found in the July 31st, 2017  issue. He has published a number of books, including Thin Ice which describes growing up in Simcoe and elsewhere here in Ontario.

Doug Sneyd

   
     I only know of Mr. Sneyd because of the stories I have heard about him. He was a friend of my father-in-law who just passed away on Dec. 2nd. [this was the major preoccupation]. During the late summer and early fall, he tried to get to Orillia to see Doug, but was unable to do so.

    Mr. Sneyd has been a cartoonist for Playboy since the 1960s. Given the new prudishness and puritanism, I chose to supply his image rather than one of his cartoons. You can find them in the book,The Art of Doug Sneyd or you can see and buy them from his web site: Sneyd: The Art of Playboy Cartoonist Doug Sneyd.

Post Script
     The stories we heard about Mr. Sneyd generally had to do with fine parties and good times and were more about his conviviality than his career. After a little poking around, however, I have learned that his career was perhaps, shall we say, more illustrious than I indicated. The book mentioned above, for example, was nominated for an Eisner Award back in 2012 in the category “Best Humor Publication.” If you are dismissive of the Playboy cartoons as bordering on the ‘pornographic’, you should know that he created many political ones for newspapers such as The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. In the latter I found this article about him from forty years ago: “Mixing the Comic Strip and Editorial Cartoon,” (July 23, 1978)

    “As a high school student in Ontario, Canada, Doug Sneyd got no further than lesson 18 in the Famous Artists correspondence course. That one was titled “Earn While You Learn.” He decided to do just that.
     Steyd, now 46, has been earning his living as an illustrator and cartoonist ever since. After 12 years as a regular cartoonist for Playboy magazine and eight years doing an internationally-syndicated political panel, Sneyd has created SCOOPS, which begins today and will appear each Sunday on the Op Ed page of The Globe.
     SCOOPS now appears in 112 newspapers.” [c.1978]

     The article concludes with Sneyd noting that with the help of his family he runs a “real cottage industry” from his lakeside home in Ontario.
     Cartoons were an important feature at Playboy. Recently, when Mr Hefner died, it was noted in one piece that he “was as devoted to cartoonists as he was to the centerfold,” and that is why Sneyd had  such well-known cartoonist colleagues as, Al Jaffee, Jules Feiffer, Shel Silverstein and Arnold Roth. See: “Hugh Hefner Dreamed of Being a Cartoonist; Instead, He Changed the Market for Top Comic Artists,” Michael Cavna, The Washington Post, Sept. 28, 2017.
     A few years ago Sneyd was honoured at the ToonSeum, which is a museum in Pittsburgh that celebrates the comic and cartoon arts. See: “Bunny Tales: Legendary Playboy Cartoonist Doug Sneyd Will Give Fans a Glimpse Into His Life and Art,” Dan Majors, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 19, 2012:

     "Joe Wos, executive director of the ToonSeum on Liberty Avenue, Downtown, has as his guest tonight legendary cartoonist Doug Sneyd, whose art has adorned the pages of Playboy magazine for nearly 50 years.
"Like most men, I bought Playboy for the cartoons," said Mr. Wos, who opened the cartoon museum almost three years ago. "And I always loved his work.
"He is able to meld two worlds. The beauty of the human form, these beautiful, voluptuous women. And, at the same time, he caricatures human nature, poking gentle fun at our sexual hang-ups and foibles. He has tremendous insight."
Mr. Sneyd, 80, of Ontario, Canada, arrived in town this morning for the Pittsburgh Comic Con this weekend. While some artists are shy, even reclusive, Mr. Sneyd said he delights in traveling and meeting fans.
Mr. Wos, a cartoonist himself, said Mr. Sneyd is one of his heroes.
"There's no question that he is one of the greatest Playboy artists ever," he said. "His wit is still biting and satirical today. For example, he has some rough sketches for tonight's exhibit that Playboy declined to use. One shows a woman in bed between two men who are wearing dark glasses and earpieces and the caption is 'How long have you guys been in the Secret Service?' Well, this was done long before today's controversy. His work remains timely."


Graydon Carter

 
     The vulgarian is the guy on the right who is frequently attacked by the Canadian Carter who is the gent on the left. Although he is not a cartoonist, he is another Canadian who went south and found success. He is retiring this month after 25 years as the editor of Vanity Fair. This year he became a Member of the Order of Canada “For his contributions to popular culture and current affairs as a skilled editor and publisher.”

Post Script:
    I did not know that Carter was the editor of the short-lived periodical Canadian Review which was published between 1974-1977. I see that the university nearby has most of the run (although the issues are in storage). Perhaps I will have them pulled in the new year and include them among my “Periodical Ramblings”.