What does an editor do in 2026? This is something Ben Dietz and Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick have been wondering as the media landscape shifts, as spaces like Substack rise alongside everything becoming “the television.” Does that mean the work of an editor is different?
“It’s different every three months,” Willahbennett — editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen — shared with them. “Not only are the platforms different, but the market’s different, the context is different. That’s something I think a lot about with print because we ship off an issue and then the world is completely, drastically different at an unprecedented speed and the context in which it goes out is just like day and night.”
“But I really am excited by it because how cool is it that I have a job that like touches public discourse that’s moving so quickly?” she continued. “I’ve talked to some of my mentors and they’re like, ‘This is a different time that you’re leading through.”
But to the point of what she does, on a literal level? “Honestly, I drink a lot of coffee,” she joked. “I wake up really early. I have a lot of thoughts on the weekends. I think sometimes the best thing I can do for creativity is not think about it. The pace at which the platforms are changing, that they’re appearing, that they’re disappearing…Things are huge and then it’s not. It’s so volatile in that way. The best thing you can do as an editor? My job is really to keep the Cosmo mission so succinct that — again — a new platform appears tomorrow or something pops up and people are searching for it.”
“And it’s easy to translate that,” Ben said.
Willa agreed. “And they know they can trust us,” she added.
Dig into more with Willa, Ben, and Kyle as they dive deeper on this subject and explore Y2K’s enduring appeal, the buying back of Gourmet, family dramas, and the future of media, all in the latest HIP REPLACEMENT.
