I’ve been thinking about this tweet today. Props to whoever steps up to do this because I’d definitely watch (look, while I’d love to take up the sword and devote my career to roasting evil tech bros, I’ve already got my hands full over here).

Today’s free newsletter features a special edition of Maxed Out. Plus, in Seen and Heard: a scoop on NYT’s local news expansion, a Vogue editor is decamping from Condé Nast to launch a new lifestyle outlet, Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo are now multimillionaires, Tyra Banks’ rather interesting Substack debut, and more media intel. And we’ve got a bunch of new media jobs posted in the last 24 hours in our Thursday roundup.

xoxo,

Stephanie

Maxed Out was the very first column La Fronde debuted when we launched four months (and some change) ago, and since then we’ve interviewed so many amazing women who’ve given us a peek behind the curtain into their media diets.

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a lot of similarities between these women that I eventually wanted to capture in a story. Think of this as a “here are the interesting habits influential women in media share” anthropological trend piece, if you will.

There’s no real magic to this report — I just went through all the Maxed Out transcripts and tracked the media titles, rituals and career advice that came up most often in a spreadsheet. Here are some of the most interesting trends I found from the 20-ish interviews we’ve done so far:

A lot of them swear by Brick. At this point Brick should be sponsoring us for all the times it’s mentioned in this column. About a quarter of the people we’ve talked to swear by it as a way to not go overboard with their phone use. I actually hadn’t heard of it until people were raving about it in these interviews, so I eventually picked one up myself and I will say, it’s kind of a game changer. For the uninitiated: Brick is a little device that allows you to set whatever limits you want for your screen and app usage, and you have to tap the physical device against your phone to lock in your settings. The only way to go over the limit is by untapping your phone. The Brick kind of forced me to be bored and spend time actually doing things that aren’t melting my brain. I’m actually finishing the books I say I’m going to read now! The only thing is that I do work from home a lot, so it’s a little easier for me to “cheat” in that sense. I ended up putting my Brick in my car so I wouldn’t give in to the urge to untap, and it’s just become routine since then.

Their favorite — and most unexpected — reads. The most-cited outlets mentioned in all my interviews were Rachel Karten’s Link in Bio, with Casey Lewis’ After School coming in as a close second.

Those are both excellent newsletters, and it’s not surprising to see them get their flowers here. But with Maxed Out I was hoping to get some off-the-beaten-path recommendations, too. There are a few honorable mentions worth calling out:

Many people didn’t start their careers in media. I always ask everyone at the start of each chat about their career journeys before getting to the actual Maxed Out of it all. About a quarter of the people I’ve talked with didn’t actually start their careers working in traditional media jobs. Amy Farley, executive editor of Fast Company, was working in the book publishing space before moving over to magazines. Erin Parker, global head of audience development for Condé Nast Traveler, was in the world of tech startups. They’ve said that not having a traditional media background was helpful because they were able to bring a different perspective and set of skills to their media jobs. I can personally relate to that as someone who also made a career pivot from looking at spreadsheets all day as a data analyst to eventually becoming a reporter. The part of my old job that involved spotting trends and digging through performance numbers definitely came in handy.

What we’re seeing and hearing around the industry.

Scoop: The New York Times expands its local newsletter initiative. This is a Hot Jobs callout wrapped up in a little mini scoop here, but the New York Times is stepping on the gas on its commitment to local news by launching newsletters in Nashville and Phoenix. They posted two new roles yesterday looking for reporters in each city, on top of a new role for a lead editor to oversee the entire local newsletter operation. The paper just launched a pilot newsletter in Minneapolis that was successful enough for NYT to take this next leap. After the horrible McClatchy cuts last week, it’s reassuring to see NYT wanting to invest more in the local news beat.

One larger trend I’ve noticed is more companies in general wanting to stake a claim in Nashville as of late. Outside of this NYT news, Paramount is looking to expand its offices there and potentially leave LA, while non-media companies like JPMorgan and Starbucks are also building a bigger presence there.

A Vogue editor is leaving her post to start a new lifestyle publication in the States. Karla Martínez de Salas is a fashion media veteran who, up until this point, has spent the last decade as the head of editorial content for Vogue Mexico and Latin America (in layman’s terms, its editor in chief, when you take the Condé-isms out of the picture). She’s planning to step down next month to join San Diego Latino business and media company Avance Global, where she’ll be editor in chief of an as-yet-unnamed lifestyle outlet covering the worlds of fashion, design, travel, food, culture and entertainment — kind of like Vogue! From what I’ve been told by Avance, more big names are expected to join her in the next few weeks.

Have a tip for me? Send it to stephanie@la-fronde.com or my Signal if you want to keep things confidential (itsstephwill.94).

Jezebel’s founder returns with a new book. I realized that I forgot to mention this in my last letter to y’all, but Anna Holmes released a new book this week about something I really need to get better at: saying no. I started reading The Power of No last night, and besides the whole setting-boundaries-of-it-all, I thought Anna’s callouts on how women have been conditioned early in their lives to be seen as “not difficult” were very relatable. Anyway, just based on the whole 12 pages I’ve read, it’s been a good read so far.

Texas Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian apologizes to Holly Rowe. I truly feel for Holly Rowe. After being disrespected by Texas Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian on live TV last Saturday, she had to endure an onslaught of shitty, misogynist comments from internet trolls who began making AI-generated videos of the postgame interview fiasco that depicted, among many disturbing things, her getting punched and launched into the air by Sarkisian. And it turns out that while all of this was playing out on social media, she was grieving the death of her mother. Unreal.

Almost a week after the incident, Sarkisian issued a long-overdue apology to Rowe on Thursday while also acknowledging Arch Manning’s earlier comments laughing about an AI video that showed Sarkisian punching Rowe in the face.

“If hindsight’s 20/20, if I could do it all over again, I would have exuded more patience in that moment and sat through and waited for the interview with Holly,” he said in a statement. It sucks that it took so long for him to say something, knowing how out of hand things got in the news cycle.

And some small Seen and Heard desserts for the road…

Tyra Banks launches a Substack. And it’s … a lot. Let me know your thoughts because … there’s just a lot to unpack here! I’ll just say, for the record, it certainly lives up to the name. Can’t accuse the woman of false advertising.

Hannah Berner and Paige DeSorbo are now in podcasting’s elite $100M club. The Ankler has the scoop on the wild bidding process to acquire the pair’s show, ‘Giggly Squad,’ which ended with SiriusXM offering a cool $140M for it. Honestly, good for them. I do wonder what the value is for companies that fork over that kind of money — the show (and Hannah and Paige) has a huge reach and loyal audience, of course, but is it really $140M loyal, though? No hate! I’m just genuinely curious.

And finally, The Drift has released the 18th issue of its magazine, which is worth a read. The mag will host a launch party in NYC on Oct. 8.