Mr. Magazine

“My focus is really the print magazine first and then I think about the ways that I will get the content from the print magazine out into the world in other ways. So, we start with the print magazine and we start with the timing of when that’s going to arrive in mailboxes, and what content will be the most useful at that time. And then we sort of repackage it for the web and then we use the web content to push it out to the social media platforms.” Tara Welty

In the case of Scholastic Teacher magazine, a milestone anniversary might be somewhat of an understatement. This year marks the 125th year that the publication, devoted to American teachers and their students and classrooms, has been in publishing existence. And what a wonderful anniversary issue the magazine has put together to earmark this auspicious occasion.

Scholastic Teacher is America’s longest-running magazine for teachers, and since its first print issue in 1891 to its impressive presence today online and in print with 525,000 monthly readers, the magazine has remained an innovative source of ideas and inspiration for teachers. The anniversary issue of Scholastic Teacher gives readers an opportunity to witness the history of education and the evolution of the teacher in America as seen through its pages. This special issue explores facts found in the magazine’s archives, and according to Editor in Chief, Tara Welty, gathering and researching those facts was no small feat for her and her team. But it was a labor of love and an experience that they will never forget.

I spoke with Tara recently and we talked about how proud she was of all of the hard work and creativity her team had put into this anniversary issue. And about the teachers across the country who they did this for; servicing and supporting those teachers, according to Tara, is the most important job the magazine has and does with its very existence.

So, welcome to the celebration of an informational and inspirational magazine for teachers that has been around for 125 years. Here’s to the next 125 – the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Tara Welty, editor in chief, Scholastic Teacher magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On the fact that in this digital age Scholastic Teacher is still going strong in print after 125 years: It’s quite a remarkable thing and we certainly look around at the industry and see what a challenging time it is for magazines. I think that what we’ve really tried to do is to make sure that if we’re going to be in print we have a reason to be. So, let’s make it very visual and very fun to read and let’s make it something that you really can’t accomplish digitally. Hopefully, when you hold this issue in your hands it feels like it couldn’t exist in any other format to have this rich experience.

On whether she discovered a common thread that connects the issues from yesteryear to those of today as she researched for the 125th anniversary issue: Absolutely. The magazine was founded in 1891 by a man named Frederick A. Owen and he was a former school administrator in South Dansville, New York and he really noticed that across the country not all teachers had the opportunity to go to teaching colleges, which were called “normal” schools at the time. And what the magazine really became was an area where teachers would share their best ideas with one another. One might be the only teacher in their community and it might be a very rural community with no other teacher to really confer with. And so teachers would send letters to the magazine with their best ideas, things that really worked for them, and I think that’s the heart of what Scholastic Teacher is today. It’s teachers sharing their best ideas with one another.

On any major stumbling blocks that she and her team had to overcome during the making of the 125th anniversary issue: The process was very time-consuming and it was extremely dusty. (Laughs) You’re buying old magazines on eBay; you’re getting a lot of dust. Digging into that research, going through 125 years of issues of frequencies that have been at different points; it was a lot of research. It was really all-hands-on-deck for our team.

On the most pleasant moment throughout the process: Just uncovering little gems of information. I’ll read you one that was published in the magazine: “You are a lady before you are a teacher. In your pocket should be a pure Irish-linen, handstitched handkerchief.” That’s from 1903. And one of us would find one of these little gems in the magazine and in order to keep it organized we had kept a Google doc that we were putting in bits and pieces that we were all contributing to, broken down by decade. Once somebody found one they’d just go running around to different offices to share what they had found.

On whether it makes a difference that her audience is teachers when it comes to the thinking behind the creativity of the magazine: When I became the editor four years ago, the most important thing to me was that we celebrate and support teachers. It feels as though teachers are under attack a lot of the time from every which way and this magazine is for them and about them and to help them with their teaching practices. So, one of the things that I really focused on was making sure that, one: the articles are very scanable, because teachers do not have a ton of time to try and figure out what the main point of an article is, so I wanted them to get a key takeaway and decide if they wanted to read it right away by putting in subheads and making the images very clear. Then I wanted to make sure that every article came away with a practical application. How can the teachers use this article in their classrooms?

On whether she feels the need for a publication like Scholastic Teacher is needed more today than ever before with the bombardment of information out there: A teacher always needs a creative idea for how to come at a topic that they teach on all of the time and they’re looking for a new twist on it, something that’s going to really engage their students, especially right now with the technology boom happening. Classrooms and teachers want to use that technology in a way that’s thoughtful and not just tech for the sake of tech.

On as an editor how she decides what content goes into print and what goes online or another platform: Scholastic as a company publishes a lot of things that are online only, but my focus is really the print magazine first and then I think about the ways that I will get the content from the print magazine out into the world in other ways. So, we start with the print magazine and we start with the timing of when that’s going to arrive in mailboxes, and what content will be the most useful at that time. And then we sort of repackage it for the web and then we use the web content to push it out to the social media platforms.

On how she felt when she first saw the 125th anniversary issue: Up until just recently, I only had the unbound copy. And when the mail delivered the box of magazines, my entire staff began jumping up and down and shouting, “It’s here; it’s here.” (Laughs) Everybody grabbed a copy to see which facts they had pulled out and who had written what and it was great. I’m just so proud of this issue. It really took a lot of collaboration and teamwork from not just our internal team here, but from our freelancers and contributors. I just couldn’t be more proud of the way it turned out.

On the secret to longevity with a magazine like Scholastic Teacher: That’s a great question. I think it comes back to just always servicing your reader and always thinking about whether or not you’re providing something that your reader really needs and is useful to them. For us, Scholastic has a real focus company-wide on education and on celebrating teachers and on getting students to develop a lifelong love of reading and learning. We just always circle back to that mission and we try to make sure that every article that we publish is supporting the mission of our company and supporting the teachers that we service.

On the future of print in a digital age and the impact it will have on next generations: That’s a great question and it’s something that I think anybody who is working in print media right now is really grappling with. We don’t know what the future is going to bring in terms of where our readers are going to go and if they will still want print in five years. But what I do know for certain is that great content is always needed and the way that we deliver it is not necessarily the most important thing. I happen to love holding a magazine in my hands and I have far too many magazines stacked up on my dresser at home, but if people decide that they don’t need print anymore, I still think that they’re going to need information; our readers, teachers, will need information about how to support the kids that are right in front of them.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up one evening unexpectedly at her home: The first thing that I do when I get home is walk the dog. I have a fabulous rescue dog named Phoebe and she brings a lot of joy to the house. Then I usually cook dinner; I love to cook. And sitting down with my husband and enjoying dinner with him. After dinner, I’m looking at that stack of magazines that I was telling you about, and thinking about how I should tackle some of those before they really get out of control.

On what keeps her up at night: Usually all of the deadlines and all of the things that I have to do. Also, just thinking about what’s going on in teachers’ minds and how can I help alleviate some of their stress, because teachers really do feel under the gun all of the time. And as stressful and challenging as my job can get, theirs is ten times more stressful than that. So, I’m constantly thinking about what I can do to help them to make their jobs a bit easier in my own small way.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Tara Welty, editor in chief, Scholastic Teacher magazine.

Scholastic Teacher through the years…

Samir Husni: Congratulations on 125 years strong in print.

Tara Welty: Thank you very much. It’s a pretty exciting time for us. We started planning this issue about a year ago, so it’s been very thrilling to have it out in the world now.

Samir Husni: I have seen a lot of anniversary issues, but what you’ve done through that historical perspective from “back then” in 1891 is amazing. I was so fascinated reading all of the information. For example, where teachers started the day with prayer and all of the other trivia items that you included in the anniversary issue; as you were developing this edition, and you said that you had been planning this for almost a year, did you ever stop and think: wow, in this digital age, we’re still doing print? And doing it for 125 years, which is amazing.

Tara Welty: It hits me constantly. It’s quite a remarkable thing and we certainly look around at the industry and see what a challenging time it is for magazines. I think that what we’ve really tried to do is to make sure that if we’re going to be in print we have a reason to be. So, let’s make it very visual and very fun to read and let’s make it something that you really can’t accomplish digitally. Hopefully, when you hold this issue in your hands it feels like it couldn’t exist in any other format to have this rich experience.

We have a full archive in our library at Scholastic of our magazines; some are on microfilm and some are in print. But then we really wanted to dig into the issues and some of the older issues are quite delicate so we started buying the old issues on eBay and we were delighted to find that they really are out there and available. So, we got in hundreds and hundreds of magazines from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. They’re just sort of lining our offices here. (Laughs) Once we started digging into those old magazines and uncovering these fun facts, we just knew that our readers would love learning them to. And that’s when we really started to focus on all of the history and some of the really outlandish things that we published in the magazine and they’re really fun to read. I think anybody who is a teacher or interested in education would love to see how their profession has evolved.

Samir Husni: As you were digging into these old issues and researching; did you find a common thread that weaved through and connected the soul of Scholastic Teacher from those historic issues to the ones of today?

Tara Welty: Absolutely. The magazine was founded in 1891 by a man named Frederick A. Owen and he was a former school administrator in South Dansville, New York and he really noticed that across the country not all teachers had the opportunity to go to teaching colleges, which were called “normal” schools at the time. And so he wanted to establish the magazine to spread teaching “norms.” As I said, there were teachers across America who may not have had the opportunity to attend a teaching college.

And what the magazine really became was an area where teachers would share their best ideas with one another. One might be the only teacher in their community and it might be a very rural community with no other teacher to really confer with. And so teachers would send letters to the magazine with their best ideas, things that really worked for them, and I think that’s the heart of what Scholastic Teacher is today. It’s teachers sharing their best ideas with one another.

The very first tagline in the very first issue from 1891 was, “Devoted to the interests of the American schoolteacher.” And that is really so true today. And it’s been true throughout the history of our 125 years. I really think of the magazine as being a conduit for teachers to share their ideas with one another and there are a lot of other ways that teachers do that today, but seeing it in print in a collection with other teachers is really the heart of our magazine.

Samir Husni: Was there any major stumbling blocks that you and your team had to overcome during the making of this 125th anniversary issue?

Tara Welty: The process was very time-consuming and it was extremely dusty. (Laughs) You’re buying old magazines on eBay; you’re getting a lot of dust. Digging into that research, going through 125 years of issues of frequencies that have been at different points; it was a lot of research. It was really all-hands-on-deck for our team.

What we tried to do was go decade by decade and identify trends that were happening in education at that time. So, we were comparing certain things that we knew had happened in the history of education, like the progressive movement in education in the 1920s, education reform in the 2000s, and then we were sort of going back to our pages of the magazine to see how we had covered it and what kind of advice we had given. So, it was a really in depth research project. The stumbling blocks were just the enormity of it, but our team worked so seamlessly together I could not be more proud of the work that they did.

Samir Husni: And what was the most pleasant moment throughout this process?

Tara Welty: Just uncovering little gems of information. I’ll read you one that was published in the magazine: “You are a lady before you are a teacher. In your pocket should be a pure Irish-linen, handstitched handkerchief.” That’s from 1903. And one of us would find one of these little gems in the magazine and in order to keep it organized we had kept a Google doc that we were putting in bits and pieces that we were all contributing to, broken down by decade. Once somebody found one they’d just go running around to different offices to share what they had found. It was really fun.

Samir Husni: As someone who is in charge of editing a magazine aimed at teachers; what goes through your mind? Do you feel that you’re dealing with a group of colleagues, or people who are watching everything you write to see where they can criticize you? Does it make a difference that your audience is teachers when it comes to the thinking behind the creativity of the magazine?

Tara Welty: When I became the editor four years ago, the most important thing to me was that we celebrate and support teachers. It feels as though teachers are under attack a lot of the time from every which way and this magazine is for them and about them and to help them with their teaching practices. So, one of the things that I really focused on was making sure that, one: the articles are very scan able, because teachers do not have a ton of time to try and figure out what the main point of an article is, so I wanted them to get a key takeaway and decide if they wanted to read it right away by putting in subheads and making the images very clear. Then I wanted to make sure that every article came away with a practical application. How can the teachers use this article in their classrooms?

And I wanted it to be filled with great ideas that didn’t come from our offices in New York City, because we’re not in the classroom everyday; I wanted the advice and the ideas to come from real teachers. We do a lot of really reaching out to teachers, getting their advice, seeking their counsel and asking them what’s really working in their classrooms right now and would they share that with our readers?

And I also wanted to make sure that there was no jargon; it’s just a very straightforward and practical magazine. The feedback that we get in every issue is that the magazine is something that the teacher can take away and use in his or her classroom. I feel like the purpose of the magazine is not to wade into some of the controversial aspects of teaching, because there are other places where they can get that information. It’s kind of coming at teachers all of the time. The magazine should really be a place where they can get great ideas for their classrooms. And I think that we do that very well.

Samir Husni: Do you feel there is a greater need today for Scholastic Teacher and other publications like it than ever before with the bombardment of information out there?

Tara Welty: A teacher always needs a creative idea for how to come at a topic that they teach on all of the time and they’re looking for a new twist on it, something that’s going to really engage their students, especially right now with the technology boom happening. Classrooms and teachers want to use that technology in a way that’s thoughtful and not just tech for the sake of tech.

And there are a lot of different places teachers can go for great ideas, so when the magazine comes in their mailboxes and they pull it out and it’s just the lesson that they need for that time; that’s a very valuable thing.

And we also know that teachers are engaging with our content not just through the print magazine, but through our social media and our online. And so we want to make content that’s accessible, no matter which platform they’re consuming from. If they’re finding it on Pinterest or our Facebook page or on our website; the print magazine or from a colleague who has it from one of those platforms and they’re telling them about it because they used it in their classroom and found it amazing. Great ideas and creative ideas are always needed, but we have to think about the different ways that teachers are finding them.

Samir Husni: And as you’re thinking about that as an editor; how do you make the decision about what content should be in print and what should go online? Do you anguish when you’re making those decisions or it just comes easily and naturally to you now?

Tara Welty: Scholastic as a company publishes a lot of things that are online only, but my focus is really the print magazine first and then I think about the ways that I will get the content from the print magazine out into the world in other ways. So, we start with the print magazine and we start with the timing of when that’s going to arrive in mailboxes, and what content will be the most useful at that time. And then we sort of repackage it for the web and then we use the web content to push it out to the social media platforms.

Our Facebook pages are particularly lively places; it’s where we have a lot of teachers engaging with our content and I think that’s been such a wonderful addition to our publishing, because it allows us to have a conversation with our readers right away and get feedback on our articles.

Samir Husni: When you received that first copy of the 125th anniversary issue of the magazine; can you describe the feeling you had when you saw it?

Tara Welty: Up until just recently, I only had the unbound copy. And when the mail delivered the box of magazines, my entire staff began jumping up and down and shouting, “It’s here; it’s here.” (Laughs) Everybody grabbed a copy to see which facts they had pulled out and who had written what and it was great. I’m just so proud of this issue. It really took a lot of collaboration and teamwork from not just our internal team here, but from our freelancers and contributors. I just couldn’t be more proud of the way it turned out.

Samir Husni: Over the last year there have been a lot of milestone anniversaries celebrated in the magazine industry; something that is unheard of these days in radio, television and certainly when it comes to the ever-changing web. How many other mediums can boast of a 125-year-old product? What do you think is the secret to longevity with magazines like Scholastic Teacher?

Tara Welty: That’s a great question. I think it comes back to just always servicing your reader and always thinking about whether or not you’re providing something that your reader really needs and is useful to them. For us, Scholastic has a real focus company-wide on education and on celebrating teachers and on getting students to develop a lifelong love of reading and learning. We just always circle back to that mission and we try to make sure that every article that we publish is supporting the mission of our company and supporting the teachers that we service. And I think that’s the secret to longevity; just making sure that your publication is really working to support the people that it services.

Samir Husni: For the teachers, how do you balance ink on paper with pixels on a screen; what tips are you getting about the future of print in a digital age and how it will impact future generations?

Tara Welty: That’s a great question and it’s something that I think anybody who is working in print media right now is really grappling with. We don’t know what the future is going to bring in terms of where our readers are going to go and if they will still want print in five years.

But what I do know for certain is that great content is always needed and the way that we deliver it is not necessarily the most important thing. I happen to love holding a magazine in my hands and I have far too many magazines stacked up on my dresser at home, but if people decide that they don’t need print anymore, I still think that they’re going to need information; our readers, teachers, will need information about how to support the kids that are right in front of them. And those kids are always changing and their needs are always changing. And hopefully, we will always be there to help them with the challenges that they face in the classroom.

Samir Husni: If I showed up at your home one evening unexpectedly what would I find you doing; reading a magazine; reading your iPad; watching television; having a glass of wine; cooking; or something else?

Tara Welty: The first thing that I do when I get home is walk the dog. I have a fabulous rescue dog named Phoebe and she brings a lot of joy to the house. Then I usually cook dinner; I love to cook. And sitting down with my husband and enjoying dinner with him. After dinner, I’m looking at that stack of magazines that I was telling you about, and thinking about how I should tackle some of those before they really get out of control.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Tara Welty: Usually all of the deadlines and all of the things that I have to do. Also, just thinking about what’s going on in teachers’ minds and how can I help alleviate some of their stress, because teachers really do feel under the gun all of the time. And as stressful and challenging as my job can get, theirs is ten times more stressful than that. So, I’m constantly thinking about what I can do to help them to make their jobs a bit easier in my own small way.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“And I do think that there is a lot more disruption coming, 2017 is going to be just as disruptive as the past two years have been, especially for television, in particular. I don’t think the disruption will ever stop, but once things start to normalize, quality journalism is going to be a key differentiator. We’ve seen that in the election, with all of the fake news and some of the other controversies around how news stories are elevated on social media, like Facebook. And maybe I’m idealistic, but I really do think that people will demand and choose high quality information, entertainment, storytelling and journalism. And that’s going to be the key to our success going forward.” David Willey…

“I feel like Runner’s World.com serves a much more utilitarian purpose. A lot of times people come to search and they’re looking for very specific information, such as on an injury or training or they’re coming through social because they’ve seen a very specific piece that they’re interested in. There is still joy in magazines where it’s very purposefully put together by an edit team and that magazine may serve you a piece of content that you weren’t expecting. So, even though print publishing is challenged, we still believe in the value of the medium; we just may be using it in different ways so it balances with all of our other digital channels.” Jessica Murphy…

Recently, I have been celebrating the milestone anniversaries that many, many magazines are seeing these days. Print has a way of outlasting most any other medium of information that I know of. And Runner’s World magazine is no exception to that rule as the magazine is observing and extolling its 50th year of publishing nationally and globally its highly runner-engaging journalism. And I use the word “journalism” instead of content because I happen to agree with Runner’s World’s Editor in Chief, David Willey, when he said, “I’m optimistic actually that the business models will emerge and that quality journalism, and I’m using that word instead of the buzzword “content,” which I’m so sick of; it’s so commoditized and I think it doesn’t actually do us any favors to talk about what we do in a commoditized way. What we do is make great journalism and that takes many forms. That can be service journalism; it can be storytelling; it can be investigative reporting; and I think that’s what we as an industry do and do very, very well.”

Mr. Magazine™ couldn’t have said it better himself. And while David said that in no way was he saying that people who use the word content are in opposition to journalism, he does feel as though it’s a catch-all term. But in a world of newsfeeds, notifications and any number of other disruptive distractions; Mr. Magazine™ would agree that at the end of the day magazine makers are journalists and they produce journalism. And the journalism that Runner’s World creates is unparalleled in the world of running.

I spoke recently with David and the newest member of the staff, Managing Director, Jessica Murphy, and we talked about this milestone 50th anniversary the magazine is celebrating. In addition to the quality journalism the magazine produces, the Runner’s World brand also has many tracks that lead to its compelling information and storytelling, including great events, one being the very recent International Shoe Summit which was held in the magazine’s New York office. The event hosts teams from all 20 global editions and industry executives from companies such as Nike, Brooks Running and New Balance. Following this event, the brand celebrated its 50th Anniversary at the Robert at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC and announced this year’s International Shoe Awards.

The Runner’s World brand has evolved many times over the 50 years it has been publishing, but as David and Jessica both agree, while in today’s world, evolvement is necessary, the root quality and mission of this brand’s journalism needs no evolution. Storytelling, reporting and great design and photography bring the magazine’s readers the addictiveness they require to keep coming back for another 50 years.

So, I hope that you enjoy this very “sole-ful” (sorry, but Mr. Magazine’s™ sense of humor, you’ll have to admit, does have “traction”) interview with two people who know a thing or two about running and the world of marathons, David Willey, editor in chief, & Jessica Murphy, managing director, Runner’s World magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On the magazine turning 50 years old (David Willey): It’s never been lost on me that Runner’s World has been around for five decades and has been such an important part of our readers’ lives. It’s done certain things very well and it’s really reflected the times that we’ve lived in. And running has changed so much. It’s been really interesting with this anniversary to look back and see how the magazine over the years has reflected the eras in which it was living.

On Jessica Murphy’s (the new managing director) plans for the next 50 years (Jessica Murphy): I’m extremely honored and excited to be a part of the brand. I’ve been a fan of the magazine for as long as I’ve been a runner myself. My first training program, I obsessed over the magazines’ and the websites’ content as I trained for my first marathon. I think what gets me excited is the strength of the brand and knowing that as we evolve into new channels that also stay true to who we’ve been for the past 50 years, and even though there are a lot of new plans in the space as the running industry has grown and also as the number of runners that are running around the world has increased, no one can duplicate the authenticity and the heritage of the brand.

On her prime focus for the future (Jessica Murphy): There are a couple of pieces; one is taking a look at our print and digital business and seeing how we can innovate there. And then there’s also a big focus for us to really understand what Runner’s World means when it comes to events. We obviously have our own Runner’s World Half & Festival, which we launched five years ago, but the number of events has increased across the country and across the globe, as running participation has increased. And we’ve really not has as solid or robust of a strategy when it comes to thinking about what Runner’s World means at these events.

On why he thinks it took the magazine industry as a whole many years to realize that magazine media can exist on all platforms and it’s not print versus digital or this versus that (David Willey): That’s a good question that probably has a complicated answer, but I’m sure part of it has to do with the fact that for decades we had this perfect business model of distributing this product, a print magazine, and people loved print and the primacy of print was certainly much higher over those decades and there were these two beautiful revenue streams; you had advertisers that wanted to reach the audience, and the audience was actually also paying to have this very high quality product delivered to them every week or every month, or they were buying it on the newsstand. I think as an industry we got very comfortable and maybe even a little bit spoiled by that amazing business model.

David Willey

On whether he thinks his job as editor in chief is easier or harder today than it was before he had infinite space (David Willey): I think it’s become harder. I think all editors in chief have harder jobs than they had a decade ago. It’s been so interesting to be in this field and to have this career for the past 20 years or so, because it really has coincided with the digital revolution and the evolution of the Smartphone and the tablet; all of these things. I’ve been fortunate enough to live through, and actually work through these things.

On whether she feels she could do her job if the print component did not exist (Jessica Murphy): I don’t see a time for Runner’s World where the magazine does not exist, because it is such a vital storytelling channel. We are spending time making sure the magazine does what it does best, which is bring to life stories in immersive ways that make the reading experience fundamentally different if you were to read the content online. We’re probably spending even more time thinking that through because yes, you can read a lot of the magazine pieces online, but how do we create this feeling with our readers where they cannot wait to get the magazine every month? And when they read it the magazine feels like it’s a reflection of them and David’s thing is that he wants people to read Runner’s World and feel inspired to go for a run immediately after.

On the concrete difference between being in the journalism business and the content business (David Willey): I would say that we’re in both. I think a lot of people just use content as an umbrella term and I don’t necessarily mean to suggest that people who use the word content are in opposition to journalism. I think it’s just sort of a catch-all term. But I do think there are differences, at least in my mind. And I think content includes things like training plans and it includes different mediums like video and audio. And it includes tips about topics that we know our audience comes to us for, such as training and nutrition; injury prevention and running shoe reviews. All of that stuff is content for sure. And we used to make the best stuff and put it out there and wait for people to go get it. And that model is gone, or nearly gone. So, what that means is today as journalists we still need to think every day about making the best stuff, but we need to be just as good at getting that stuff directly under people’s noses or the first part doesn’t matter nearly as much, the first part being making it in the first place.

On the recently named “Best Shoe in the World” by Runner’s World and whether they’re the only qualified brand in the world to name that honor (David Willey): The answer is yes, no question that Runner’s World really is the only brand, media property, magazine; whatever word you want to use; no one else can do that. And that’s for a few reasons. Number one: and Jessica just touched on this, one of the first things I did when I started this job was set up what we call the “Shoe Lab.” And it’s a big investment every year, and we conduct mechanical tests on hundreds of shoes every year that, to be honest, most shoe companies don’t even do. It’s very rigorous; we’re tearing shoes apart; we’re pounding and prodding them; we’re getting amazing amounts of objective, scientific data. And then we’re combining that with the human runner feedback; the subjective data that we get from the 300 or 400 wear-testers that we have around the country.

On anything either of them would like to add (Jessica Murphy): I think overall I’ve been here just under three months and I’ve had a really great experience learning the team and getting an understanding of how we operate, and I feel like everyone is inspired and excited to do some new and exciting things, and so my job will be identifying where it makes sense for Runner’s World to play and finding the right place for us to intersect our brand with helping runners get better and better, whether that’s losing weight or staying fit; running to destress; just whatever their needs are.

Jessica Murphy

On anything either of them would like to add (David Willey): I’ll add a couple of thoughts. Back to your question about what goes on in my brain; one thing that’s interesting about this brand and something that I want everyone to be aware of is we are a dual gender audience. We’re pretty much straight up, 50/50, male/female and that shifts a little bit with every MRI study; maybe we’re a little bit more female in one reporting period, a little less, but basically we’re 50/50. That’s pretty rare these days.

On what someone would find them doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at either of their homes (Jessica Murphy): In my downtime I do a lot of running, no surprise there, but that normally happens in the mornings. So, at night I’m relaxing pretty well, because I wake up early to run. I love to cook, so when I have time I’ll be at home cooking and I do spend time binge-watching something on Netflix. I’m a big fan of House of Cards, but I actually have recently read a book about trying to get better sleep to improve your health, which involves turning off the screens before bedtime, so I am trying to get more into listening to Podcasts at night and also reading books.

On what someone would find them doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at either of their homes (David Willey): My wife and I have three kids and our life is quite an adventure. We have a teenaged daughter and two boys, 12 and 7-years-old. So, I spend as much time as I possibly can with them in the evenings. And I’m very conscious about not having screens around when I’m with them. I put the phone away; I put the iPad away; and on a good night we eat dinner together. That happens a couple times per week. Often we’re outside, especially the boys. They’re still at the age where they want to throw the football in the backyard with their dad. And do stuff like that.

On what keeps them up at night (Jessica Murphy): I’m still fairly new at my job, so we’re obviously in our 2017 planning season, and I think I’m in information overload. I have had back-to-back meetings with so many people and I see the potential and the opportunities here and I just want everything to happen right away. So, what keeps me up at night is I want to develop the right plan to make sure that we can have the right process in place to implement change and making sure that we can move fast enough for the industry.

On what keeps them up at night (David Willey): One of the great things about being a runner and training for things like triathlons and marathons is that I’m pretty damned tired at night. Every now and then I’ll wake up in the middle of the night because of something stressful going on at work or just uncertainty about our business and our industry. This field that I got into a couple of decades ago because I loved it so much; there’s a small part of me that’s definitely sad. I don’t think it’s dying, but it’s certainly changing.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with David Willey, editor in chief, & Jessica Murphy, managing director, Runner’s World magazine.

Samir Husni: Congratulations on turning 50 years young in 2016. That’s quite a milestone.

David Willey: Thank you. I can accept those well wishes as the editor of Runner’s World and I can also accept them personally because I turn 50-years-old next year, so I’m roughly the same age as the magazine. (Laughs) I actually wrote something in my editor’s letter in the anniversary issue about this. I am simultaneously amused and humbled in a very cool way by the knowledge that this magazine was born a year or so before I was. And I’ve been here about 13½ years now and I’ve always thought of my job as being a sort of caretaker of this institution that’s been around for a long time and really one that hasn’t had that many editors in chief. Amby Burfoot preceded me here and he’s been associated with the magazine for almost 30 years.

So, it’s never been lost on me that Runner’s World has been around for five decades and has been such an important part of our readers’ lives. It’s done certain things very well and it’s really reflected the times that we’ve lived in. And running has changed so much. It’s been really interesting with this anniversary to look back and see how the magazine over the years has reflected the eras in which it was living.

But it’s also not lost on me that we’re in a different place now. The media space is very different and we need to change; we need to evolve. And it’s been a secondary reminder when we were looking back at five decades of issues, that’s what Runner’s World has always done. It started with a completely different name; it started with the name Distance Running News, and then evolved into The Runner’s World. The word “the” was dropped and then the magazine was sold to Rodale and it was combined with another magazine called The Runner, so it has always evolved. It has never been the same thing for five decades.

And that’s been very encouraging because we know that we need to continually reach new audiences and make sure that the brand Runner’s World is expressing itself in the best possible way today. And the brand is a print magazine, and of course, it’s a website, but it’s lots of other things as well, including video, audio, social media, products and events. And I feel like we’re really well-positioned to continue to serve this amazing audience that we have in all of these new ways. We can be wherever they need us and want us to be.

It can be hard for a brand that’s 50-years-old to be in that position, but I think we’re pretty unique in that way. I’m actually more encouraged that we have this heritage than I am worried that we’re wedded to the past.

Samir Husni: Jessica, let me ask you as the new managing director, you have a major brand that’s been thrown into your lap, one that’s globally known; what’s the plan for the next 50 years?
Jessica Murphy: I’m extremely honored and excited to be a part of the brand. I’ve been a fan of the magazine for as long as I’ve been a runner myself. My first training program, I obsessed over the magazines’ and the websites’ content as I trained for my first marathon. I think what gets me excited is the strength of the brand and knowing that as we evolve into new channels that also stay true to who we’ve been for the past 50 years, and even though there are a lot of new plans in the space as the running industry has grown and also as the number of runners that are running around the world has increased, no one can duplicate the authenticity and the heritage of the brand. And we have to lean into that while also evolving where we stand.

Samir Husni: If we’re sitting down and having this interview again in one year; what would you hope to tell me? From your 50th anniversary, which we’re discussing now, what are your future expectations for the magazine now that you’re onboard?

Jessica Murphy: There are a couple of pieces; one is taking a look at our print and digital business and seeing how we can innovate there. And then there’s also a big focus for us to really understand what Runner’s World means when it comes to events. We obviously have our own Runner’s World Half & Festival, which we launched five years ago, but the number of events has increased across the country and across the globe, as running participation has increased. And we’ve really not has as solid or robust of a strategy when it comes to thinking about what Runner’s World means at these events.

And we know races are so important to runners; it’s where they see the culmination of all of their hard work and dedication, so it’s a very important interaction for us to understand. And then we need to think about how events can scale into those places.

And the other piece is training. As I mentioned, my first marathon training program was a Runner’s World training plan, but obviously there are a lot more players in the space, and the way people approach training is a lot different than they used to.

For us, I think it will be evolving training beyond just what it is right now, which is kind of like your basic training program telling you what miles to run and how fast to run them, without thinking through the whole approach. So, that’s my other big project. And again, all of these I think are at the core of what Runner’s World needs as a brand and will come to life in ways that go beyond what you see now, which is the magazine and the website.

Samir Husni: And David, the brand is on every platform that has so far been invented. You can find Runner’s World in print, digital, events; you name it. Why do you think it took the magazine industry as a whole five to six years before they recognized that we can exist on all platforms; it’s not print versus digital or this versus that?

David Willey: That’s a good question that probably has a complicated answer, but I’m sure part of it has to do with the fact that for decades we had this perfect business model of distributing this product, a print magazine, and people loved print and the primacy of print was certainly much higher over those decades and there were these two beautiful revenue streams; you had advertisers that wanted to reach the audience, and the audience was actually also paying to have this very high quality product delivered to them every week or every month, or they were buying it on the newsstand. I think as an industry we got very comfortable and maybe even a little bit spoiled by that amazing business model.

And I don’t mean that to sound overly critical; I think this industry is full of incredibly creative and innovative people. And a lot of it was just because that became kind of our core business; the creation and distribution of this certain kind of product in a certain kind of way that became very efficient and was really a very successful model for a long, long time.

It can be really hard to evolve away from something like that, especially in an environment where it’s not so clear that the audience is willing to pay for content in these new ways. And if they are willing to pay, they’re probably not willing to pay the kinds of prices that they’re used to paying for print. And it’s not entirely clear that advertisers necessarily want to pay the same kinds of CPMs (cost per thousand); they don’t have to in the digital realm, where it’s much more driven by programmatic buying and lower CPMs and all the rest. So, suddenly, these two unassailable revenue streams, at least they were unassailable for decades, have become quite vulnerable.

So, suddenly as an industry I don’t think we were operating from a position of strength from a business model standpoint. And we’re still probably reckoning with the decision we all made individually a decade or so ago, but sort of as an industry too, that we would give away a lot of content on the web for free, and it’s harder to move from that toward charging for quality content now digitally.

And of course, there has been the evolution of the Smartphone, which is really becoming THE number one way that people consume all kinds of content, whether it’s print, or video, and increasingly audio. It’s a small screen and it’s a platform that’s really dominated by the big tech companies like Apple, and it’s not entirely clear where the publisher’s place is in that ecosystem. So, I think it’s taken us a long time because it’s been very hard and there has been so much disruption, both in people’s habits and also in the new players that are kind of dominating the media sphere, some of whom didn’t even exist a decade ago.

Again, I think there are a lot of very innovative and creative people in our business and I’m optimistic actually that the business models will emerge and that quality journalism, and I’m using that word instead of the buzzword “content,” which I’m so sick of; it’s so commoditized and I think it doesn’t actually do us any favors to talk about what we do in a commoditized way. What we do is make great journalism and that takes many forms. That can be service journalism; it can be storytelling; it can be investigative reporting; and I think that’s what we as an industry do and do very, very well.

And I do think that there is a lot more disruption coming, 2017 is going to be just as disruptive as the past two years have been, especially for television, in particular. I don’t think the disruption will ever stop, but once things start to normalize, quality journalism is going to be a key differentiator. We’ve seen that in the election, with all of the fake news and some of the other controversies around how news stories are elevated on social media, like Facebook. And maybe I’m idealistic, but I really do think that people will demand and choose high quality information, entertainment, storytelling and journalism. And that’s going to be the key to our success going forward.

Samir Husni: This is the first time that I’ve heard someone differentiate between content and journalism. I was reading a lecture from one of my professors from Missouri recently that was written in 1970, and he was talking about the demise and decline of journalism. And in one of his quotes he said, “The minute a journalist starts commenting on the news, he or she is no longer a journalist.” So, I love that differentiation between content and journalism, and you being the ex-president of ASME (American Society of Magazine Editors) and very involved with the industry as a whole, besides just Runner’s World; if I go inside your mind, how do you decide what’s great for the magazine or mobile or the web? Has your job become harder or easier because of the infinite space now available?

David Willey: (Laughs) I think it’s become harder. I think all editors in chief have harder jobs than they had a decade ago. It’s been so interesting to be in this field and to have this career for the past 20 years or so, because it really has coincided with the digital revolution and the evolution of the Smartphone and the tablet; all of these things. I’ve been fortunate enough to live through, and actually work through these things.

When I started here, really my only job was to make the best magazine that we could make every 30 days. If we had a national partner we communicated with them a bit, and we had a website, but it was sort of managed by a couple of other people who sat – well, I’m not even sure where they sat. I had nothing to do with the early website; it really was just make a magazine, the best magazine you can; that is our business. And now that’s just a sliver of what my job is and what my team’s job is.

Let me give you an example that I hope will answer your question and it’s a very good question. Over the summer, and I’m sure you remember that there were those three murders of female runners within nine days of each other. They were unrelated, and the stories were national news. Of course, they brought a lot of commentary from the mainstream media about how running can be dangerous and what female runners in particular need to do or not do to stay safe. And we had an editorial meeting to talk about all of these things and to discuss what, if anything, we felt like we should publish about these murders and the commentary that surrounded them.

In that meeting I learned from some of my female staffers that being abducted or attacked or God forbid, murdered, was fortunately incredibly rare, something like that rarely, rarely happens to runners. But what is incredibly common for female runners is to be harassed while they’re running. And I was totally unaware of that and I even asked, “What do you mean harassed? What kind of harassment?”

And several members of my staff started talking about how pretty much every time they went out running by themselves or with other women, they would get catcalls and propositioned and even followed sometimes. And it was clear that this wasn’t just annoying to them, although it is annoying, I’m sure. It can also be really frightening. So, this was clearly a story that wasn’t being talked about and it hadn’t been reported anywhere before, so we immediately started a print story, but it was also immediately a web story because we put a survey up on our website to ask our own readers about this topic and we received over 4,500 responses. It was really overwhelming. And we produced a very strong print piece that because of timelines and lineups and all of the rest, we weren’t able to publish until our December issue.

But I pretty much knew going in that we were going to lead with this story online. And we were actually going to publish our work on our website before anyone saw it in print. And I also pretty much knew that we were going to create some audio content on this for one of our podcasts So, 10 years ago this story would have taken much longer to do because we wouldn’t have been able to get so much response from our readers as quickly as we did. It would have gone into a print issue that would have been shipped on a certain date and read by the audience two to three months later. And now we’re at a time where the print schedule still happens, but we have the opportunity to publish it in real time; we have the opportunity to publish multimedia around this and make it a much more immersive and impactful and emotional kind of story.

So, that’s harder on one hand, because there’s more work to do and it’s more complex; the planning is more complex. You need to have the talent on your staff that can do all of that, but it’s also great to feel that you have that kind of versatility as a journalist and a storyteller to be as relevant as quickly as you can and to be as impactful as you can possibly be using all of these different tools.

Samir Husni: Jessica, can you do what you’re doing, in terms of your role at the magazine, if you do not have that print component?

Jessica Murphy: I don’t see a time for Runner’s World where the magazine does not exist, because it is such a vital storytelling channel. We are spending time making sure the magazine does what it does best, which is bring to life stories in immersive ways that make the reading experience fundamentally different if you were to read the content online. We’re probably spending even more time thinking that through because yes, you can read a lot of the magazine pieces online, but how do we create this feeling with our readers where they cannot wait to get the magazine every month? And when they read it the magazine feels like it’s a reflection of them and David’s thing is that he wants people to read Runner’s World and feel inspired to go for a run immediately after.

I feel like Runner’s World.com serves a much more utilitarian purpose. A lot of times people come to search and they’re looking for very specific information, such as on an injury or training or they’re coming through social because they’ve seen a very specific piece that they’re interested in. There is still joy in magazines where it’s very purposefully put together by an edit team and that magazine may serve you a piece of content that you weren’t expecting. So, even though print publishing is challenged, we still believe in the value of the medium; we just may be using it in different ways so it balances with all of our other digital channels.

And I actually think as we accelerate our innovation on our digital channels, the website and social; it will invite even more people to the magazine, because there are still millions of runners out there who aren’t subscribing to the magazine and I think as we increase our exposure to them on digital and social, that will invite them into the brand.

Samir Husni: David, I want to expand a little on that differentiation between doing journalism and doing content, because I’ve heard from a few folks in the industry, including some CEOs, who have said that we’re in the content business, but you’re telling me that you’re in the journalism business. Can you give me a little more concrete difference between the two?

David Willey: Yes, although I would say that we’re in both. I think a lot of people just use content as an umbrella term and I don’t necessarily mean to suggest that people who use the word content are in opposition to journalism. I think it’s just sort of a catch-all term.

But I do think there are differences, at least in my mind. And I think content includes things like training plans and it includes different mediums like video and audio. And it includes tips about topics that we know our audience comes to us for, such as training and nutrition; injury prevention and running shoe reviews. All of that stuff is content for sure. And we need to be great at producing it and we need to be just as good, and this is another key difference in my job and really any editor’s job; we still focus everyday on making the best stuff.

And we used to make the best stuff and put it out there and wait for people to go get it. And that model is gone, or nearly gone. So, what that means is today as journalists we still need to think every day about making the best stuff, but we need to be just as good at getting that stuff directly under people’s noses or the first part doesn’t matter nearly as much, the first part being making it in the first place. We have to make it and we need to get it under people’s noses. And that’s part of our job as journalists.

So, I’m not opposed to the term content, but when I think the difference between content and journalism really matters is when it comes to things like long form storytelling; and investigative reporting; and great graphic design; and memorable, high-impact photography; those elements that take time, skill and take investment in the form of money and talent, often get lost or go by the wayside when people are building and sort of thinking of themselves as content factories.

I guess what I’m talking about is quality and a commitment to quality and a commitment to not necessarily knowing that what it is you’re working on is already guaranteed to be clicked on by your audience.

Jessica Murphy: I would also add that our shoe guides are a great example of the quality journalism produced by Runner’s World, because there are a lot of newer outlets that will review shoes, but not in the same rigor or process that we do at Runner’s World. The number of different types of runners who will test the shoe, or own shoe lab; so to me that’s a perfect example of what we’re known for, one of our most important facets of the brand. And why we’re so different from other outlets that do it, that may be producing content and writing about the shoe, but the process in which they go about it is much different.

David Willey: I think one of the things that I object to with the term content, and again, I don’t mean to impugn people across the board, but sometimes in the digital sphere particularly, content just means words and pictures. And words and pictures are pretty much anywhere. We can get words and pictures from our audience. Entire companies have been founded and gone bankrupt on the model of user-generated content.

And as a journalist what I have been heartened to see is that I think there is a realization now that content is not easy. Content is actually hard. It’s not just words and pictures and an article template and a social media post. It’s actually judgement and reporting skill; the talent that goes into finding stories that aren’t right there on the surface; and it’s surprising and delighting people in ways that they don’t expect. And that doesn’t show up in their algorithms and the cookies that everybody has attached to them as they move around the Internet.

So, I think it’s important to do both; I really do. I don’t want to sound overly high-minded about this. It’s an important job at Runner’s World to deliver the quick hits of advice and training plans, and a lot of people would consider that content, but I think that if that’s all we do, then we’re going to be in trouble. It goes back to creating a feeling and hitting on our audience’s emotions and their practical needs, but also their heart and soul. I think Runner’s World as a brand needs to be tools and tips, but it also has to have heart and soul.

Samir Husni: Recently you announced the “Best Shoe in the World” and it involved all 20 of your editors in the global editions of Runner’s World. Do you see that as something only Runner’s World can do, not only the best shoe in the United States, but the best shoe in the world?

David Willey: (Laughs) The answer is yes, no question that Runner’s World really is the only brand, media property, magazine; whatever word you want to use; no one else can do that. And that’s for a few reasons. Number one: and Jessica just touched on this, one of the first things I did when I started this job was set up what we call the “Shoe Lab.” And it’s a big investment every year, and we conduct mechanical tests on hundreds of shoes every year that, to be honest, most shoe companies don’t even do. It’s very rigorous; we’re tearing shoes apart; we’re pounding and prodding them; we’re getting amazing amounts of objective, scientific data. And then we’re combining that with the human runner feedback; the subjective data that we get from the 300 or 400 wear-testers that we have around the country.

We put these shoes on their feet and they give us regular feedback and it’s those two channels that really inform our shoe reviews. And nobody else does that; there is no other magazine or brand that does that.

And then the second piece is as you said earlier in the conversation, we have editions in 20 countries now. So, for the “Best Shoe in the World” it’s sort of like the crème de la crème; it’s a subset of the best shoes we can test throughout the year here in the Shoe Lab and then we get together with the experts in our international editions, and they’re factoring in their opinions of the shoe and what they’re hearing from their audience, and sort of narrowing it down into one overall winner. It’s pretty good branding. The “Best Shoe in the World,” it’s pretty clear and unassailable and it’s cool to be able to do it that way.

And again, I just want to emphasize this isn’t opinion or we’re not going from press releases; we feel like we’re able to kind of stand up and say something so declarative because of what we put into our testing process.

Samir Husni: Is there anything either of you would like to add?

Jessica Murphy: I think overall I’ve been here just under three months and I’ve had a really great experience learning the team and getting an understanding of how we operate, and I feel like everyone is inspired and excited to do some new and exciting things, and so my job will be identifying where it makes sense for Runner’s World to play and finding the right place for us to intersect our brand with helping runners get better and better, whether that’s losing weight or staying fit; running to destress; just whatever their needs are.

I think on top of the publishing industry and the media industry becoming so complex, runners have also gotten more complex. Ten years ago most people running, there was a smaller universe of runners who were a lot more likeminded and tended to be a more competitive runner. And now the running industry has boomed so much, you have a lot of people who are running for fun or running for charity; it’s amazing. So, we’ve had to kind of think about how we serve all of these new people, which is great, but also challenging on top of the channel mix that we’ve already discussed.

Overall, for the future of Runner’s World, I think we have a lot of opportunity and hopefully in another year we’ll be talking about all of these exciting new things we’re doing.

David Willey: I’ll add a couple of thoughts. Back to your question about what goes on in my brain; one thing that’s interesting about this brand and something that I want everyone to be aware of is we are a dual gender audience. We’re pretty much straight up, 50/50, male/female and that shifts a little bit with every MRI study; maybe we’re a little bit more female in one reporting period, a little less, but basically we’re 50/50. That’s pretty rare these days.

And we think about that every time we’re making the magazine; we think about it in terms of the visual; we make sure that we feel like every issue of the magazine speaks to all runners. But of course, you can’t do that on every, single page. But whether you’re a man or a woman or a new runner who isn’t even sure how to get started or someone who has been running marathons for 20 years, Runner’s World is for all runners. And that can be complicated when you’re thinking about dual gender and different stages of running experience. But it’s also a lot of fun.

And the other thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is others. Again, going back to this model that we’ve had for so long; the newsstand appears to be kind of going the way of the telephone booth, quite literally. I was in New York for a week for the marathon recently and I lived in New York for 13 years; and just walking around the City, I literally, several times, would stop and think to myself that there used to be a newsstand where I had stopped. And it was gone.

Just in the way when I lived in New York City in the early ‘90s, I used to walk around and there were pay phones there. There are fewer newsstands than there has been, and there will probably be even fewer a year from now. And the newsstands that are still around are carrying fewer magazines. They’re carrying more iPhone chargers and neck pillows and other high-margin knickknacks.

As an editor I think the question is what is the job of a magazine cover in 2016 and going forward? I’m not saying that I don’t want to sell copies on newsstands, of course I do, but I think a magazine cover’s job is more diverse and complicated than it used to be. It’s equally about share-ability on social media; it’s equally about saying something about your brand and reaching new audiences, while trying to speak to your core audience as well.

We had a really, really fun month right around our November, 50th anniversary issue, with the covers that we did, with Kevin Hart and Alexi Pappas, and the throwback covers. It was certainly a departure for us to do them in that way, but appropriate for a 50th anniversary. And the way that we went about it was we wanted to produce something that delighted people, both new runners and also our current readers. And that flew around the Internet with energy and enthusiasm and maybe got Runner’s World noticed by people who weren’t really paying attention to it to begin with.

Is that going to be our bestseller on newsstand? No, I can tell you that with utter certainty. But was it a successful cover? I think yes, it was. Again, because of the way that we editors need to think in a more complex way about what our covers are supposed to do in this media age.

Samir Husni: If I showed up at your home unexpectedly one evening, what would I find you doing; reading a magazine; reading your iPad; cooking; having a glass of wine; or something else?

Jessica Murphy: In my downtime I do a lot of running, no surprise there, but that normally happens in the mornings. So, at night I’m relaxing pretty well, because I wake up early to run. I love to cook, so when I have time I’ll be at home cooking and I do spend time binge-watching something on Netflix. I’m a big fan of House of Cards, but I actually have recently read a book about trying to get better sleep to improve your health, which involves turning off the screens before bedtime, so I am trying to get more into listening to Podcasts at night and also reading books.

David Willey: My wife and I have three kids and our life is quite an adventure. We have a teenaged daughter and two boys, 12 and 7-years-old. So, I spend as much time as I possibly can with them in the evenings. And I’m very conscious about not having screens around when I’m with them. I put the phone away; I put the iPad away; and on a good night we eat dinner together. That happens a couple times per week. Often we’re outside, especially the boys. They’re still at the age where they want to throw the football in the backyard with their dad. And do stuff like that.

And then once everybody is fed and in bed and that usually doesn’t all get accomplished until 9:00 p.m. or so, you’ll see a lot of books in my house. I love to read and I try to read as much fiction as I can, because my days are so consumed with journalism. Fiction really is a great way to unwind and sort of get lost in stories. And I love print books; I don’t like reading books onscreen. In my house, you would see some overstuffed bookshelves. I think I must have over 1,000 books in my house.

And believe it or not, I try to get to bed at a decent hour. On a good night I’m actually asleep before 11:00 p.m. I’ve been known to binge-watch some shows, certainly. But the problem with binge-watching is, I’ve also been known to start watching one show at 9:30 p.m. and it’s so easy to just say, “OK, I’ll just watch that next episode.” And Netflix and Amazon have gotten so good at making it so seamless and frictionless to just keep going. I’ve been downstairs at 1:30 a.m. on a Tuesday night having just watched my third episode of House of Cards and I think how ridiculous that is. (Laughs) So, I actually binge-watch less now during the week than I used to and I’m up by 6:00 a.m. And I try to find the time to get a run or a bike ride or a workout in, either in the morning or during the day sometime. Kind of boring, but again, I’m a nearing-50-year-old dad who has a fun and crazy job. At the end of each day and at the end of each week, what I’m kind of going for is balance.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Jessica Murphy: I’m still fairly new at my job, so we’re obviously in our 2017 planning season, and I think I’m in information overload. I have had back-to-back meetings with so many people and I see the potential and the opportunities here and I just want everything to happen right away. So, what keeps me up at night is I want to develop the right plan to make sure that we can have the right process in place to implement change and making sure that we can move fast enough for the industry. That is something I have tried to push out of my brain for the last couple of weeks because I see the things that need to happen and I want them to happen right away, but I know these things take time. Really good quality takes time.

David Willey: One of the great things about being a runner and training for things like triathlons and marathons is that I’m pretty damned tired at night. Every now and then I’ll wake up in the middle of the night because of something stressful going on at work or just uncertainty about our business and our industry. This field that I got into a couple of decades ago because I loved it so much; there’s a small part of me that’s definitely sad. I don’t think it’s dying, but it’s certainly changing. And I think that there are some of the things that I value about t that aren’t as valued as they used to be by our readers. And stuff like that bothers me and occasionally it wakes me up at night, but a combination of being tired from running hard that day and grabbing one of those books off of the top of my stack next to my bed; in 10 or 15 minutes I’m good. I can sleep again.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“I think there’s that big emotional component that lends itself to some really dramatic photography, which just works better in print. And then there’s also a tremendous historical component. Anybody who is a cyclist can tell you who was winning the Tour de France in 1972 and they can talk about some of the famous climbs, so you can always talk about these historical stories and those just work better in print. You can sort of sit back and absorb the history and look at the old photos. So, the print component is still vital and if you look at any of our competitors, that’s what’s happened with their print products as well. There is always some sort of a historical story or a big photo issue and we’re starting to leverage print for that.” John Bradley…

“The doom and gloom that everyone talks about in print really ignores the emotional attachment that we know is there. We know because of the visceral reaction that people have when they hear a story is only going to be online instead of in print. So, we’re still trying to leverage that value as much as we can, while being realistic of the fact that we’re not a print entity; we’re not a digital entity; we’re not a video entity; we’re a storytelling platform and we tell those stories in the best way we can.” John Bradley…

Competitor Group is a company that celebrates the active lifestyle and serves its audience through events, print, digital, mobile and social media platforms. The company has four sports magazines that bring endurance sports fans the epitome of adventure and storytelling: Triathlete, Competitor, Women’s Running and the soon-to-be, 45-year-old VeloNews. The man in charge of those brands is longtime media veteran John Bradley.

John has good bloodlines, coming from Wired and Outside magazines, having been senior editor at both, and he not only brings experience to the table – 25 years of it – but he also brings a deep-seated passion for endurance sports, being an avid cyclist himself.

I spoke with John recently and we talked about VeloNews and the other brands under his watchful and keen eye. John is a firm believer in the art of print and that it still holds its own place in the marketplace, but he also has his finger on the pulse of the always-palpitating world of digital and knows that while they are both vital to magazine media, the two platforms are very different and offer different things to their readers, so they must be handled in different ways.

A good and spot-on perspective from a man who believes in giving his readers much more than just the winner’s name when they cover a race; he believes in weaving an experience. So, without further ado, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with John Bradley, Senior Vice President of Media, Competitive Group.

But first the sound-bites:

On whether he believes that the Competitor Group has been one of the hidden gems of the industry: One of the hidden gems? Yes, I would say that’s a fair statement. I think having this collection of titles, all built around endurance sports and that lifestyle, is a pretty great thing, because certainly, some people might define themselves as a football fan or a basketball fan, but if you’re a runner or a cyclist or a triathlete, participating in those sports; it takes over your life. You have to spend so much of your time training and you spend your available money on it, on equipment and traveling to races for it, that it really does become your identity in a way that I don’t think happens in other sports, especially spectator sports.

On a brief description of VeloNews, a magazine that’s been publishing for almost 45 years: For VeloNews, it’s interesting. The word “news” in the title is not by accident. It started as a news publication. In 1972 if you wanted to know who won a big bike race in Europe, quite often you had to wait two or three months and hopefully you could see a photo somewhere. Even for the editors of VeloNews, they would have correspondents over in Europe who would send in a batch of photos by mail, and they would open up the photos two weeks later to see who won the race. So, it started as a way to help American race fans find out what was going on in the sport. And also even locally, even races in America, there was no one really collecting the results and talking about this sport as a spectator sport; it was a very fringe thing of people riding bikes.

On whether he feels his role as editor in chief today is more of a curator than a creator: We still create; I curate the content that’s coming in from our staff and our freelancers, but our job is a little bit more challenging than it was 20 years ago in that the news happened. We didn’t have to go out and find stories; we just knew that if you showed up at this time and that place on a certain day, there would be a race and you would write up the story and that’s that. And it was the same if you covered NFL; you went to the game and you wrote a story, you maybe grabbed quotes from a couple of players and did a couple of smaller stories and that was it. And that’s not enough anymore; you really have to do a whole lot of context and explanation.

On whether he feels this is his dream job or another milestone in his journalistic journey: This is a pretty remarkable marriage of personal and professional. There has never been a time in my life where I wasn’t reading about what’s happening in cycling anyway. So to have that be my full-time job is pretty special. Sometimes I’m still at work, especially overseeing the whole media division, and navigating all of the challenges of the media space can still be a tricky thing, but the subject matter and the marriage of the personal and professional has been pretty fantastic.

On the stumbling blocks he’s had to face: Enthusiast media is uniquely challenging. The running titles have bigger audiences, they can play a little bit in the non-endemic space as far as advertising, but for cycling and triathlon; these are very narrow worlds. The audiences are not big, they’re engaged, but they’re not so big that we can easily go out and sell advertising to Budweiser or United Airlines. They want to advertise on NBC or The New York Times, so we’re completely reliant on our narrow verticals. If the bicycle industry is down one year, even if the economy is doing well, but the bike industry happens to be down because of whatever trends in consumer buying habits, then we will feel that.

On what role he thinks print will continue to play in this digital age: That’s an interesting question and we’re constantly grappling with that. I think for service journalism, which a lot of what we do in print right now ends up being more service oriented; how to train; how to travel for these sports; the buying guides, those sorts of things. I think print still works very well for that, and I think when you’re doing that service journalism it’s how to live that lifestyle. And it goes back to what I said earlier about the fact that we have these deeply engaged audiences built around these lifestyles, and print does really well showcasing how to live that lifestyle. It’s the content that you want to save.

On whether he feels that if there were no print component to the brand, sports enthusiast fans might feel as though they were missing something: In running, I don’t know as much, because of the three sports that we cover in endurance sports, cycling is the only one that’s really a big spectator sport. You are covering the news around races; there are a lot more ways to come at the content, because you have this huge spectator element. Running and triathlon, especially running, are largely participatory. People don’t read about other people running, they read about how to run. So, I think print is still important there; it’s engaging, but I don’t think it’s as vital as it is in the cycling space, where cycling has this very deep history and emotional connection.

On the most important thing he’s accomplished since coming to the Competitor Group: The first thing we’ve accomplished since I’ve been here is the shift in content focus. What I said earlier about where before, who won the race was the end of our coverage and now that’s just the beginning. That I think has been the biggest shift, going into this sort of 360 degree contextual approach to covering our sport has been the most important change.

On anything else he’d like to add: It’s interesting thinking about the difference between print and digital from our advertiser’s perspective and the brand’s perspective; the PR agency’s perspective. Quite often if we have a story that’s print only, the writer will be really disappointed because they know that the story is going to reach more people if it goes online. But when we have PR companies that know we’re going to be reviewing a product, they always ask if it’s going to be in the magazine. While all the news is about how print is dying, and we know the struggles in print and that everyone’s circulation is down, there is still an inherent value in print that we all know is there.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home: Before 8:00 p.m., you’re going to catch me playing with my son; I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son, so before he goes to bed it’s all about him, although, he’s already been in his first bike race. (Laughs) So, quite often you’ll see me at the park teaching him how to ride his bike. After 8:00 p.m. I’m usually either reading, and now that’s it’s dark earlier, I’m usually riding a bike on a stationary trainer. When it’s still light outside I’m going for a ride. And then reading and writing; I’m working on a book right now. My evening free time is still generally either consuming content or creating content.

On what keeps him up at night: There has always been an attitude that because these spaces are small and that people will just read about cycling because it’s cycling; it hasn’t always been treated as a modern media entity. But I think that whether you’re reading about the 2016 Presidential Election or a small bike race that nobody has ever heard of, if those readers are coming to you they deserve a modern media experience. They deserve good writing and good video and some smart thinking about things. And they deserve evolving platforms; evolving ways to engage. So, what keeps me up at night is trying to do that across all of these titles, while working within the inherent limitations of being in a small vertical.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with John Bradley, Senior Vice President of Media, Competitive Group.

Samir Husni: Do you believe that the Competitor Group has been one of the hidden gems of the industry when it comes to your competitive field?

John Bradley: One of the hidden gems? Yes, I would say that’s a fair statement. I think having this collection of titles, all built around endurance sports and that lifestyle, is a pretty great thing, because certainly, some people might define themselves as a football fan or a basketball fan, but if you’re a runner or a cyclist or a triathlete, participating in those sports; it takes over your life. You have to spend so much of your time training and you spend your available money on it, on equipment and traveling to races for it, that it really does become your identity in a way that I don’t think happens in other sports, especially spectator sports.

So, as a result of that you get this incredibly engaged community, because the magazine becomes almost a newsletter for the club. I tell people that I’m a cyclist because it’s part of my identity. You have people engaging on a level that they don’t in a lot of other sports, and I know that having come from Wired and Outside magazines, and seeing the level of passion among the reader’s letters and comments on Facebook and on our stories. You see a level of passion that I haven’t seen other places.

So to have one company owning several different titles in all of these sports areas is pretty special. The audiences are huge by The New York Times numbers, but for our spaces the numbers are big. But then when you see the level of engagement, it’s pretty special.

Samir Husni: You’re editor in chief of VeloNews, which started the entire company in 1972, and now you’re the editorial director of all of the titles. As VeloNews prepares to celebrate 45 years of existence; how do you describe the different titles to someone who isn’t familiar with the company, from VeloNews to Women’s Running to Triathlete to Competitor? Can you give me a brief introduction to a magazine that’s been publishing for 44 years?

John Bradley: For VeloNews, it’s interesting. The word “news” in the title is not by accident. It started as a news publication. In 1972 if you wanted to know who won a big bike race in Europe, quite often you had to wait two or three months and hopefully you could see a photo somewhere. Even for the editors of VeloNews, they would have correspondents over in Europe who would send in a batch of photos by mail, and they would open up the photos two weeks later to see who won the race. So, it started as a way to help American race fans find out what was going on in the sport. And also even locally, even races in America, there was no one really collecting the results and talking about this sport as a spectator sport; it was a very fringe thing of people riding bikes.

It was the first platform in America for bike racing fans. There were other cycling publications about cycling as a hobby, but for cycling as a sport there was nobody in the United States doing that. So that was the start.

And the title has evolved as things have changed. Obviously now, the race news happens on Twitter, but there is a whole culture around being a fan and a participant of the sport, so the content has evolved with that. We still talk about the races, but 20 years ago talking about the race was the end of the coverage, and now that’s just the beginning of the coverage. There is so much that goes on afterwards, talking about the context, and not just who won the race, but why they won the race and why that race even happened and is the race going to happen next year, are the promoters losing money; so we’re going a lot deeper into the sport than we ever have before, which is just the reality of sports news coverage in general today, I think. ESPN is dealing with the same changes.

Samir Husni: Do you feel that your role as editor in chief today is more of a curator than a creator?

John Bradley: We still create; I curate the content that’s coming in from our staff and our freelancers, but our job is a little bit more challenging than it was 20 years ago in that the news happened. We didn’t have to go out and find stories; we just knew that if you showed up at this time and that place on a certain day, there would be a race and you would write up the story and that’s that. And it was the same if you covered NFL; you went to the game and you wrote a story, you maybe grabbed quotes from a couple of players and did a couple of smaller stories and that was it. And that’s not enough anymore; you really have to do a whole lot of context and explanation.

If you pick up a copy of Sport’s Illustrated, they’re not talking about who won the Super Bowl; they’re talking about the stadium planning and what the NFL Commission is planning for next year; and all of this context and backstory that gives you a much richer experience. They start talking about the tactics and all of the things around the sport that nobody ever talked about before. You have to find new ways in, because obviously, the readers know what happened, who won the game or who won the race on Twitter, so we have to provide a whole lot more.

So, no, I would say that I’m more of a creator than ever before because we’re not only creating the stories, we’re creating the opportunities to tell those stories. Instead of sending one person to a race to find out who won, we’re sending four people to a race and they’re finding different angles and context that we can provide that we never had to worry about before. I would say the creation job is even more important now than it was before.

Samir Husni: You’ve just returned from Japan, and you’ve worked in that country before. You’ve worked at Wired and Outside magazines; do you feel at home now? Is this your dream job or is this another milestone in your journalistic journey?

John Bradley: That’s an interesting question. All of those jobs; Outside and Wired and this one now, they’re all similar in that you look at the world through one lens. If you’re at Outside magazine, it all has to come back to that sort of adventure component and embracing nature and challenging yourself; and adventure sports, camping and mountain biking, just whatever the case may be.

At Wired, you had to look at the whole world through a lens of technology. You can’t just do a story; you had to do a story that came back to science and technology. How do we put the Wired spin on this?

So being at VeloNews or overseeing triathletes and running titles, the lens is narrower than it’s ever been before, but that’s the lens that I view my personal life through anyway. When I was at Wired and Outside, I was still always a cyclist. Quite often I would actually leave work from Wired and go up to the Golden Gate Bridge for a ride before I went home. So, that’s always what I’ve done in my free time.

And so this is a pretty remarkable marriage of personal and professional. There has never been a time in my life where I wasn’t reading about what’s happening in cycling anyway. So to have that be my full-time job is pretty special. Sometimes I’m still at work, especially overseeing the whole media division, and navigating all of the challenges of the media space can still be a tricky thing, but the subject matter and the marriage of the personal and professional has been pretty fantastic.

Samir Husni: What’s been some of the stumbling blocks that you’ve had to face and how did you overcome them?

John Bradley: Enthusiast media is uniquely challenging. The running titles have bigger audiences, they can play a little bit in the non-endemic space as far as advertising, but for cycling and triathlon; these are very narrow worlds. The audiences are not big, they’re engaged, but they’re not so big that we can easily go out and sell advertising to Budweiser or United Airlines. They want to advertise on NBC or The New York Times, so we’re completely reliant on our narrow verticals. If the bicycle industry is down one year, even if the economy is doing well, but the bike industry happens to be down because of whatever trends in consumer buying habits, then we will feel that.

So, when I was at Wired or Outside, maybe the watch industry is down one year, but that’s OK because we can still go sell ads to airlines and liquor and clothing, or whatever else the case may be. In enthusiast media you don’t have those release valves; you are very reliant on one, narrow slice of advertisers. And that can be challenging.

Also, in enthusiast media, we want to pay our salaries and be a profitable company, and with a lot of enthusiast media, you’ll be competing against people who have started a blog just because they love doing it. They’ll lose money or just break even on it, but they love having it there because, as I said, in these spaces people define themselves by loving these sports. So, you end up as a business competing against websites that aren’t really a business, they don’t have to worry about profit. And that’s also challenging.

It’s challenging when they can sell ads really, really inexpensively because they’re not worrying about actually making any money and we want to stay in business. The New York Times is not competing against news enthusiasts who are working for free. But in these spaces you do end up quite often competing against people who’re working for free. So, that’s another challenge for us. We overcome that, but those are things that you don’t find in broader media.

How we’re overcoming those; we do have more resources than some of the enthusiast publishers. We can get to the races that they can’t; we can get access to the riders in ways that perhaps they can’t, and so going back to what I said about the way that we provide context and became a whole lot smarter about how we cover the sport, that’s stuff that they can’t match. They can write about who won a race and perhaps sometimes they can get a rider on the phone and do an interview, but we can talk to the heads of the sport; we can get the riders on the phone all of the time; and we can come at the sport from a lot of different angles.

And then we have a very experienced staff. Most of our staff has graduate degrees of one kind or another; one is from Columbia Journalism School. So, we know how to think about storytelling; we’re starting to branch into video and podcasting and all of these other formats.

While it’s sometimes challenging to have the profit pressures of being a business, we are part of a bigger company. We have a bit of a corporate umbrella over us, and so maybe if one year the cycling industry is down, the running industry is up and so things kind of even out, whereas if you were out there just doing something about cycling, you don’t have the almost corporate socialism keeping things going. So, there are advantages and disadvantages to being part of a bigger company. But I think we’re getting a lot smarter about leveraging those advantages and getting smarter about how we differentiate ourselves by the coverage that we do.

Samir Husni: We can see the future heading into more niche titles; what role do you think print will continue to play in this digital age?

John Bradley: That’s an interesting question and we’re constantly grappling with that. I think for service journalism, which a lot of what we do in print right now ends up being more service oriented; how to train; how to travel for these sports; the buying guides, those sorts of things. I think print still works very well for that, and I think when you’re doing that service journalism it’s how to live that lifestyle. And it goes back to what I said earlier about the fact that we have these deeply engaged audiences built around these lifestyles, and print does really well showcasing how to live that lifestyle. It’s the content that you want to save.

For the most part, when you’re doing news stories or news analysis or the context around the sport, those aren’t the sort of stories that people want to save. They’re fine online and people read those for 24 or 48 hours and they start disappearing into the ether. If we use print for those things that people want to save, and also of course, for the big, glossy engaging photos that remind people of the passion of the sport; print still works for that. So, I think if you approach print as the newsletter for the people who follow these sports, it works really well. And then you use digital as the news and context component for that.

But I’m not going to lie; print is very much a challenge. It goes back to having these very narrow verticals. Your audiences are smaller and so you don’t have the economies of scale around printing and distribution and newsstand. Newsstand is very challenging; there aren’t that many people who buy triathlon and cycling magazines in the United States, and so newsstand is not super-effective a lot of the time, because how many people passing through bookstore happen to be passionate cycling fans? There’s not a lot. And as you know, being on the newsstand gets more and more expensive every year.

So, that’s tricky for us. We’ve become very reliant on subscribers and on trying to reach those subscribers through digital promotions with ways to remind them that this magazine is here and to invite them to come and subscribe. We’re trying to enter some subscription partnerships with different organizations and doing some of that.

We tend to be more effective with our verticals selling into specialty retail stores, selling into running shops and bike shops, but brick and mortar retail has their own challenges and they don’t always like to operate as a newsstand, dealing with the monthly returns and all of that. So, getting print to the readers now is much more challenging than it was even two or three years ago. It’s tricky.

And then because we are smaller and we have smaller staffs and print takes a lot of time and sometimes we look at the traction that we can get with a story online versus getting it into print and the math becomes very difficult. At VeloNews we compete against print-only entities and we compete against digital-only entities, so we’re fighting this twofold war. And knowing sometimes that people are running with a story online that we can’t run with because we have to get a print issue out of the door, can be kind of a challenge, but our brand is tied up in that print product that has been around for 45 years and that’s still our identity and our point of pride. So we have to keep doing it.

But it’s a challenge; I’m not going to lie. Justifying the print gets trickier every year. We’ve really had to evolve it. When I came here a year and a half ago, the print was still largely talking about who won the race and we’ve really moved away from that rapidly and gone to more of that contextualization that I was talking about earlier. And we’re doing that across all of our titles and really doing more of the lifestyle and service component that makes the magazine feel like something you want to save and maybe rip a page out and put it up on your cubicle wall to remind you why you love this sport. We’re trying to find new ways to separate those.

At this point, none of our magazines are just a print version of the website. They’re something else entirely. They have the same name, but they are completely different in the sort of content they do and how they approach those stories. But that’s how we’re trying to play that game. But as soon as we sort of figure something out, ad rates go up or it’s something else. So, it’s a constant adjustment.

Samir Husni: For someone like you who is a cyclist, unlike me, who is an armchair sports person, do you feel that if there were no print titles for the enduring sports fan, people who are actually engaged in doing all of these sports; do you feel that just covering it virtually wouldn’t be enough for them? That they might feel they were missing something?

John Bradley: In running, I don’t know as much, because of the three sports that we cover in endurance sports, cycling is the only one that’s really a big spectator sport. You are covering the news around races; there are a lot more ways to come at the content, because you have this huge spectator element.

Running and triathlon, especially running, are largely participatory. People don’t read about other people running, they read about how to run. So, I think print is still important there; it’s engaging, but I don’t think it’s as vital as it is in the cycling space, where cycling has this very deep history and emotional connection. Going out for a six hour ride on the weekend is a big commitment. You’re missing time with friends and family and other hobbies. You’re going up this mountain for fun and it’s so hard and it takes such a commitment. It’s unlike any other sport that I’ve ever been a part of.

So, I think there’s that big emotional component that lends itself to some really dramatic photography, which just works better in print. And then there’s also a tremendous historical component. Anybody who is a cyclist can tell you who was winning the Tour de France in 1972 and they can talk about some of the famous climbs, so you can always talk about these historical stories and those just work better in print. You can sort of sit back and absorb the history and look at the old photos. So, the print component is still vital and if you look at any of our competitors, that’s what’s happened with their print products as well. There is always some sort of a historical story or a big photo issue and we’re starting to leverage print for that. I’m not sure it works quite the same way in the triathlon and running spaces, especially not if you’re covering baseball or soccer or any of the traditional ball sports.

Samir Husni: What do you feel is the most important thing you’ve accomplished since you’ve been here?

John Bradley: The first thing we’ve accomplished since I’ve been here is the shift in content focus. What I said earlier about where before, who won the race was the end of our coverage and now that’s just the beginning. That I think has been the biggest shift, going into this sort of 360 degree contextual approach to covering our sport has been the most important change.

We also, five or six years ago, changed the name of the magazine to Velo; the website stayed VeloNews and the magazine became Velo. But there was no shift in the actual content, there was just a change in the name and it really created this sort of disconnect. And it also disconnected with the history because we had been VeloNews since 1972 and everybody who runs the whole cycling industry in the United States grew up with VeloNews, so it created a sort of weird disconnect.

When I came into this job, one of my demands was that we were going to go back to the VeloNews name, and we’ve done that, and I think that was important to acknowledge our history, because again, as I was saying, history is so important for cycling fans. So, we’ve acknowledged our history and our place, and honestly VeloNews probably isn’t the best name if you were launching this publication today, but that’s always been our name and that’s our name now. And we’re embracing that.

But while we went back to the history with our name, we have completely modernized the content in print and online. We’re not only moving into a whole lot more of the contextual blog-type content, but also moving into video and podcasting, and all of the other ways we can come at these stories.

And while I’ve always worked in print, I’ve also always worked online. I started working in media in 1994 and we had print and web then. And in fact, VeloNews.com launched in 1993, so we’re coming up on our 25th anniversary of a website as well. I didn’t enter media because I loved print or I loved digital; I entered it because I love telling stories. So, I think the biggest change is that we have not really wedded ourselves to a platform or format; we’ve wedded ourselves to trying to find the best way to tell any given story and make it the most engaging for our readers whoever they might be.

So, that would be the biggest change; this publication was always run by cycling enthusiasts, which is wonderful, but they weren’t necessarily always legacy media veterans, and so now while we are still 100 percent created by passionate cyclists, we’re also approaching it as a modern media entity, which is that you have to get those stories out there in the best way you possibly can and sometimes that’s a 5,000 word print feature; sometimes it’s a 2-minute web video and everything in between.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

John Bradley: It’s interesting thinking about the difference between print and digital from our advertiser’s perspective and the brand’s perspective; the PR agency’s perspective. Quite often if we have a story that’s print only, the writer will be really disappointed because they know that the story is going to reach more people if it goes online.

But when we have PR companies that know we’re going to be reviewing a product, they always ask if it’s going to be in the magazine. While all the news is about how print is dying, and we know the struggles in print and that everyone’s circulation is down, there is still an inherent value in print that we all know is there. These brands that know we’re writing about their new bike or their new helmet, or whatever the case may be; new running shoes, they ask if it’s going to be in the magazine. So, we know the value is there and the disconnect in the circulation and the advertising front between the value that we know is in print and the value that we get out of print is frustrating. That’s something that we’re trying to navigate, but we love the print product. We love the digital as well; we love telling our stories.

The doom and gloom that everyone talks about in print really ignores the emotional attachment that we know is there. We know because of the visceral reaction that people have when they hear a story is only going to be online instead of in print. So, we’re still trying to leverage that value as much as we can, while being realistic of the fact that we’re not a print entity; we’re not a digital entity; we’re not a video entity; we’re a storytelling platform and we tell those stories in the best way we can.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing; reading a magazine; reading your iPad; riding your bike; or something else?

John Bradley: Before 8:00 p.m., you’re going to catch me playing with my son; I have a two-and-a-half-year-old son, so before he goes to bed it’s all about him, although, he’s already been in his first bike race. (Laughs) So, quite often you’ll see me at the park teaching him how to ride his bike. After 8:00 p.m. I’m usually either reading, and now that’s it’s dark earlier, I’m usually riding a bike on a stationary trainer. When it’s still light outside I’m going for a ride. And then reading and writing; I’m working on a book right now. My evening free time is still generally either consuming content or creating content.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

John Bradley: When I came into the role running this media division, the Competitive Group was created eight years ago and Competitor Group is largely an events company, and I think they saw media as something that was sort of self-supporting and that would just be there. And they’ve realized that isn’t the case, so there was maybe a few years of the division not getting the attention and direction that it needed to.

They were running along fine, but they weren’t changing; they weren’t responding to the changing media landscape. And so we’ve fallen a bit behind in some that, so what keeps me awake right now is trying to find ways to, not just follow, but start leading in media. This is a time where nobody’s budgets are growing, so finding a way to grow on our existing budgets is a goal.

There has always been an attitude that because these spaces are small and that people will just read about cycling because it’s cycling; it hasn’t always been treated as a modern media entity. But I think that whether you’re reading about the 2016 Presidential Election or a small bike race that nobody has ever heard of, if those readers are coming to you they deserve a modern media experience. They deserve good writing and good video and some smart thinking about things. And they deserve evolving platforms; evolving ways to engage.

So, what keeps me up at night is trying to do that across all of these titles, while working within the inherent limitations of being in a small vertical. It’s a big challenge and does often wake me up at 3:00 a.m., but it’s also a really interesting one. When I came in here I was just getting to leave my fingerprint on VeloNews and now I get to leave it across four brands that have all existed for a really long time. So, that’s a pretty unique experience.

Samir Husni: Thank you.