The Breakfast Meeting: How H.G.B. (Re)vamped Magazines, and Commiting Photography in Public

By NOAM COHEN

Helen Gurley Brown, who died on Monday at 90, was remembered for her transformation of Cosmopolitan magazine, and ultimately the field of women's magazines. She was hired to run the stodgy magazine in 1965 after her book “Sex and the Single Girl” sold millions copies and was turned into a movie starring Natalie Wood. As Margolit Fox writes in her obituary: “Her influence on Cosmopolitan was swift and certain: she did not so much revamp the magazine as vamp it.” As for her influence on society, Ms. Fox concludes:

Ms. Brown routinely described herself as a feminist, but whether her work helped or hindered the cause of women's liberation has been publicly debated for decades. It will doubtless be debated long after her death. What is safe to say is that she was a Janus-headed figure in women's history, simultaneously progressive and retrogressive in her approach to women's social roles.

• The Web site for Hearst, which publishes Cosmopolitan, includes a slide show of Ms. Brown over the years socializing with celebrities like Regis Philbin, Queen Elizabeth II and Walter Cronkite, among others.

The moderators for the presidential and vice-presidential debates were announced on Monday, and for the first time since 1992, a woman will be moderating one of the presidential debates, Brian Stelter writes. The roster is a familiar one: Bob Schieffer of CBS, Candy Crowley of CNN and Jim Lehrer of PBS will moderate the presidential debates; Martha Raddatz of ABC will run the vice-presidential debate. Mr. Lehrer, who has hosted 11 presidential debates, had sworn them off, but said he was convinced because of the unusual format for his debate: six topic areas, 15 minutes for each, with opportunities for President Obama and Mitt Romney to question each other directly.

Mickey H. Osterreicher, the general counsel for the National Press Photographers Associa tion, tells Jim Estrin of the Lens blog of the rough treatment photojournalists have been receiving lately from the authorities. His organization advocates for professional photojournalists, but notes that average citizens also have their rights infringed when stopped from photographing public scenes. He said that a “perfect storm” of events have given the police an excuse to crack down on photojournalism:

There's 9/11, and now photojournalists who traditionally worked for newspapers are losing their jobs and becoming freelancers who may not have the backing of their news organizations. You have Occupy Wall Street, where police didn't want some of their actions to be photographed. And now everybody with a cellphone is capable of recording very high-quality images. And everyone has the ability to upload and share them almost instantly. There is no news cycle - it's 24/7 with unlimited bandwidth.