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16 | lifestyle & arts sunday breakfast

Injecting new life into a museum magazine

■ by david sweet Just back from Boston after the Sandbox Summit, Michael Caruso is excited to talk about the future. “Part of the premise is we’ll be able to teach kids in a whole different way,” says Caruso, a graduate of Lake Forest Country Day School and Lake Forest High School. “Instead of rote memorization and the dusty textbooks we waded through, you can open up an app on an iPad and see how a tornado forms and be able to manipulate it. It is so much fun.” One might wonder why the editor of Smithsonian Magazine — which for decades, served as an unflashy organ of its namesake institution — attended a conference focused on children hundreds of miles from his Washington, D.C. office. It’s part of the extreme makeover Caruso is engaged in at the monthly — the Sandbox Summit presented ideas to him for apps, online games, and a magazine component to attract kids, a significant share of the museum’s 30 million annual visitors. Since taking over the venerable publication about 18 months ago, Caruso — who oversees a staff of nearly 30 — has shaken the dust off of it. He’s unveiled food-themed issues for the first time. Though the magazine has often focused on American history, he came up with a new twist: Secrets of American History, which was a newsy look at previously little-known information. An upcoming issue is called The Future Is Here, which will be complemented by an all-day conference in Washington with speakers like Justin Kasper, who is developing a solar probe designed to reach closer to the sun than any before. “It’s so amazing to talk to an astrophysicist about how to make a heat shield strong enough to get to the sun,” Caruso says. “He said he could replicate the heat of the sun here on earth by using two IMAX bulbs. “That’s why I love my job. I have amazing conversations with these smart people.” And they’re flocking to smithsonianmag.com, which registers 2.5 million unique visitors a month (up from 500,000 when Caruso took over), thanks in part to Smart News. “We essentially created a wire service for smart people,” he said. “You’re overwhelmed with news on the Internet, but we offer what literary people should know.” Caruso’s itinerant career has included stops at Los Angeles magazine, Vanity Fair, Details and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Serving as sports editor of The Village Voice in New York City remains a big highlight. “For starters, most people didn’t think the Voice had a

Michael Caruso

illustration by barry blitt

sports section. You could really redefine what sports were,” he recalled. “I did stories on dog fights in Florida, camel racing in Australia.” Well before he entered the publishing world, Caruso caddied at the Knollwood Club for his first job. He says he learned a life lesson there. “The very best golfers to caddy for are the very best players. They can laugh and enjoy it,” he noted. “The worst are the next level, the 5-to-10 handicap players. They take themselves way too seriously, spending 15 minutes lining up their putt. “I’ve found that true in other parts of life. When I deal with writers like Walter Isaacson and Joyce Carol Oates, they’re terrific. The next level down has too much ego involved.” Caruso, in fact, cites working with Oates at The Village Voice as one of the most memorable experiences of his career. “We worked on what would become the first piece for her book On Boxing,” Caruso said. “I was a young kid. I wanted to make a lot of changes. We did a serious amount of surgery for hours on the phone, and she was fantastic.” Tina Brown, Caruso’s former boss at Vanity Fair, cited his work with writers as one of his key talents. “He’s a great rainmaker, Michael,” she told the Washington Post. “He’s full of ideas and energy, and he’s a terrific editor of copy. He can take a big pile of very unpromising material and vacuum it up in some wonderful way that produces an excellent piece at the end.” Given the image of an East Coast magazine editor as a bon vivant who enjoys hosting parties and hanging with celebrities, Caruso was asked if it was really all that glamorous. “I don’t think anything is glamorous. I’ve been around movie stars — it’s so unglamorous. I’ve been on a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz — it’s so unglamorous. On a day-to-day basis, I have so many meetings, even though I have a no-meeting policy.” Since he started the job, Caruso — who likes to stop at Egg Harbor Café in Lake Forest (“they make the best eggs I’ve ever had anywhere”) when he’s in town — has commuted at the beginning of each week from his home in New York, where his wife, Andrea Sheehan, and his children Asia, Jazz, Dash and Jett reside. But he is now looking for a place in D.C., which might mean he’ll be ensconced with the magazine for quite some time. For Caruso — who as a toddler in Belgium was fascinated by the look of magazines and leafed through them — his dedication to the profession is no surprise. “I think I was destined to be in publishing in some way,” he says. “I love writing. I love reading.” ■

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