From the Editor and Creative Director of Pittsburgh Magazine

PITTSBURGH MAGAZINE CREATIVE DIRECTOR HUCK BEARD AND EDITOR JESSICA SINICHAK. PHOTO BY BECKY THURNER BRADDOCK

Jessica: In a famous scene from “The Devil Wears Prada,” Emily, the long-suffering assistant to Runway editrix Miranda Priestly (played to icy perfection by Meryl Streep), says to naive newbie assistant Andy Sachs that “a million girls would kill for this job.”

Andy (played by Anne Hathaway) seemed less than impressed — which I thought was stupid.

From a young age, I wanted to work at a magazine. I loved the intersection of feature storytelling with restaurant, lifestyle and cultural news.

Imagine how thrilled I was then when I joined the staff of Pittsburgh Magazine more than a decade ago as the HOME Editor.

Then, imagine my excitement as I became the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief in December — just as we usher the magazine into a fresh new era.

We’re kicking off 2026 with a buzzy array of innovative sections, among them Know-It-All — a fun look at Pittsburgh institutions — and hot table topics in The Sizzle.

The magazine’s elevated designs are reflected in our guide to the region’s Best New Restaurants as well as our cover story on Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Jeremy Waldrup (page 20), our choice for Pittsburgher of the Year thanks to his tireless efforts to promote Pittsburgh.

Huck: Besides editorial enhancements, you’ll notice our new font choices with the goal of better readability.

If you’re a font nerd like me, you’ll recognize IvyPresto (serif) and Quasimodo (sans serif) used as our new body copy. Each features a wider, eye-friendly footprint on the page. Balanced white space and column separators make your reading experience easier, while pull-quotes and factoids are used to break up long gray columns. New sections (The Mix, Taste, Pop) open with simulated-rotation headers and bold images, signaling a change in flow.

I’ve tasked our photographers (myself included) to bump their skills up a notch or three for assignments this year and beyond. What’s new and exciting in the art of photography? You’ll be seeing it here within these pages. Becky Thurner Braddock’s dazzling images of guitarist Reb Beach (page 10) take studio work to a new level, and Elan Mizrahi’s cover and feature images of our Pittsburgher of the Year (page 20) put a new spin on environmental portraiture. Laura Petrilla’s food imagery has always been stellar; she steps on the gas in our Best New Restaurants (page 81) rundown.

Lastly, I hope you enjoy The Savvy Yinzer’s Guide, my new back-page look at the quirks that make our city such a blast to live in.