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 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.