Ms. Amos strode in a half an hour late but made up for the lost time by speaking for almost an hour about the challenges specific to bringing humanitarian relief to Haiti, Libya, and Sudan, barely pausing to nibble at her Good Housekeeping-recipe popover. 

Hearst editorial director Ellen Levine asked about the challenges of negotiating with male leaders whose customs dictate they shouldn't shake her hand. 

"They don't expect you to be tough," said Ms. Amos. 

Longtime magazine fixture Christy Turlington was there to be, as Marie Claire's slogan goes, "more than just a pretty face." Ms. Turlington is taking a break from getting her master's in public health degree at Columbia in order to promote her first documentary, No Woman No Cry, about maternal health. It debuted on Oprah Winfrey's OWN network last month. 

That Marie Claire aims to incorporate more international news and longform journalism than their lady mag competitors speaks to Ms. Coles's background.  She was a career reporter before becoming the New York bureau chief of the Guardian and the Times of London. Plus, she's married to foreign correspondent Peter Godwin. Copies of his latest book, The Fear, were available for guests. 

After Ms. Amos cited a particularly grim figure about the frequency of lethal natural disasters increasing with global climate change, Ms. Coles cleared the air. 

"I don't know how you don't drink more alcohol," she joked.

Both she and Ms. Amos abstained from the white wine served. 

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel 

"I like to be around smart people," she said without missing a beat. Ms. Levine's first magazine job was at Hearst's Cosmopolitan, so it's no surprise she knows what a "real" woman wants.

"I'm an IQ snob. I'm turned on by people who know something that I don't know."

Cosmo is not first known for its brainy quotient, but it does spell industry cunning. The "fun, fearless, female" brand is internationally beloved and distributed in over a hundred countries.

Like a Gucci handbag, Ms. Levine said, "You need to create an I-need-to-have-it factor, an emotional connection to the product."

It's a strategy that has made Hearst resilient. Ms. Levine thought the shaky economy would doom the brand new Food Network Magazine to be ignored by advertisers and readers alike. "I just thought, 'There's no way--I'm just going to kill myself right now,' she said of the day in May when the market took an unexpected 1000 point plunge. "The windows were sealed, so that didn't happen."

"But what I didn't realize was that a need had been created. People weren't going out to eat anymore. They were staying home."

Food Network Magazine was a recession life raft for Hearst, turning a healthy profit within 6 months.  "It didn't make people feel bad. It made them feel good," Ms. Levine said. "They would stay home and cook like a star, and entertain their neighbors. We had hit the right emotional chord." Hearst is now launching an HGTV magazine modeled on Food Network's success.

Now the publisher is healthy enough to spend a reported $900 million to take over Elle, Woman's Day and Car and Driver to the family, to be purchased from Paris-based Lagardere. Under Ms. Levine, it's safe to say the magazines will be aimed to appeal to a wider audience than, say, a class of snarky J-school students.

"In New York City the journalistic critics vomit all over Cosmo," she said, "They miss the fact that there's a very different demographic across the country. Reading Cosmo doesn't mean that you have a low IQ, or that you're not a serious person. Serious people like to laugh too."