Best of PID: Willa Bennett (Editor: Cosmopolitan, Highsnobiety, GQ, Seventeen, more)

About this episode

THE INDUSTRY'S LITTLE SISTER — In early April, what’s left of the magazine industry gathered at Terminal 5 to see who would win this year’s National Magazine Awards—the ASMEs. Throughout the evening, the usual suspects stepped up to accept their Alexander Calder brass elephants—the ‘Ellies’—on behalf of their teams at The Atlantic, New York, and The New York Times Magazine.  Then came the award for General Excellence, Service and Lifestyle—a category that covers every food, fashion, and fitness magazine in the business. And the Ellie went to… content juggernaut Highsnobiety—a sneaker blog-turned-cool kid media amalgam that encompasses a twice-annual $20-per-issue print magazine, plus a flood of social media, a website that is also an e-commerce platform, and a creative agency that does 360-degree marketing and storytelling for brands. Before the crowd could start scratching their graying heads, a Billie Eilish lookalike in a gray Thom Brown skirt-and-pant suit took to the dais. There were plenty of people in that room who had never given Highsnobiety much, if any, thought.  But in that moment, this woman, Willa Bennett, Highsnobiety’s 30-year-old editor-in-chief, had of