Mr. Magazine

“A lot of our readers are planning renovations and so for them it goes back to the old-school, tear sheeting as they flip through and see spaces with ideas or colors or patterns that resonate. Something that they may want to consider for their upcoming decorating project or renovation project in the case of a kitchen or bath; it really enables them to either tear sheet or dog-ear the page and bring it to their kitchen designer or interior designer to share what they really love and may want to consider for their own home. And I think print allows them to do that.” Beth McDonough…

“From a team perspective, I’m looking from a marketing side and hiring members of the team who have an understanding of how all of the pieces work together and can really bolster one another, because we would never advocate that somebody shouldn’t be doing digital or shouldn’t be doing social. But what we look to do is figure out how we can come up with a program where the print and the digital and the video and the experiential can all combine together to be successful and to support the various aspects of the overall program.” Beth McDonough…

Traditional Home magazine has been connecting home décor and affluent consumers for almost three decades. The brand today reinterprets classic elegance, but in contemporary and cutting-edge style. So, what began as a special interest title for Meredith has grown into a legacy of beautiful design and a shoppable resource for its readers.

Publisher Beth McDonough comes from the marketing side of the business, so transitioning into the role of publisher seemed like a natural next step for her. I spoke with Beth recently and we talked about the ink on paper magazine and how important that facet was to the brand, while also combining those integrated solutions, digital, video and experiential, to be successful and support the various aspects of the overall program. It was a Print Proud Digital Smart conversation that uplifted all parts of marketing and sales, to not only benefit the brand, but the advertising and consumer customer as well.

So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with a publisher who believes in keeping the “Traditional” side-by-side with the “Digital,” enabling her brand to move confidently forward into the next 30 years, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Beth McDonough, publisher, Traditional Home magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On how she would define the word “traditional” in this day and age: That’s a great question. In the research that we’ve done, when we ask 10 readers or 10 designers what traditional design is, we kind of get 10 different answers, but we do see certain adjectives come to the top all of the time. And we hear things like authenticity, craftsmanship and high quality. Those are all things that editorially have always been incredibly important, but I think to define traditional for us is really looking at design that’s rooted in great classic design, but reinvented or reimagined for the way that consumers live today.

On what she attributes the longevity of Traditional Home to and why the print magazine and the brand keeps clicking with readers: We are a millennial; we’re about 28-years-old, as I like to joke. (Laughs) I think the longevity of Traditional Home can be attributed to our editorial point of view in that our readership, when we look at the geographic diversity, we really touch the home enthusiast from coast-to-coast. So, we see a very strong following for our readers in affluent suburbs, places like Grosse Pointe, Michigan and Lake Forest, Illinois. And I think our editors do a very good job and this is a conscious effort on their part to ensure that the homes and the design talent that they’re featuring in the magazine also represents that geographic diversity. They understand that there’s amazing design in Oklahoma and Colorado, and that it’s not just New York and L.A. that are the epicenters of great design.

On whether her job today selling the magazine to advertisers is easier, the same, or harder: Good question. Well, I guess it depends upon who I’m talking to in the advertising community, obviously. (Laughs) If it’s somebody in New York who thinks that the sun rises and sets on the Big Apple, it’s harder to get them to understand a Midwest or a Southern mindset potentially, but I think the numbers help us paint the picture of how popular Traditional Home is and continues to be. We recently met with our circ team to look at the latest AAM (Alliance for Audited Media) publisher’s statement; we’ve seen a six percent growth year over year, looking at December 2017 versus 2016.

On why she thinks people still want a Traditional Home in print: It’s twofold. One I think is the category. We hear from our readers that they love to sit and look at the full bleed images of these gorgeous interiors. A little bit of it is escapism, like any magazine reader, it’s a moment of relaxation for them. It’s a little bit of a luxury for some to have that quiet time for themselves to really enjoy the journey of going through these other people’s homes and understanding the story behind each one of them.

On whether Meredith’s many “Home” titles have helped to nourish Traditional Home or created competition within the company: Honestly, within Meredith I think Traditional Home really does have a unique position. Certainly, there is healthy competition for certain accounts with our brands like Better Homes & Gardens, but if you use the comparison between those two brands, Better Homes & Gardens is just so much bigger, and I think so much more of a reach vehicle, that an advertiser looking to go into Better Homes & Gardens, even in the home category, may have different goals and objectives than somebody coming into Traditional Home, where among the upscale shelter category we are still the largest circulation.

On whether she thinks the acquisition of Time Inc. by Meredith will open new doors for the Traditional Home brand: That’s a great question, but I think it’s too soon to tell. We’re hopeful from a Traditional Home brand perspective that joining our brethren in what I would call the affluent group of Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure could potentially introduce us to some new brands in the affluent category that would be non-endemic to us. Those affiliated products like wine or wonderful travel destinations, because we know entertaining is such a core passion point and we know travel is a passion point.

On how her job as publisher has changed over the last few years: I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is my first role as publisher. I have been in the industry for over 20 years, but I have always come up through the marketing side of things, so I am an imposter in the sales role. It will be three years in April that I have served as publisher of Traditional Home. I think that in this role I have seen more of an evolution, in that myself and my team aren’t selling just print, we’re really selling integrated solutions to our advertising partners. For me, it’s not just getting somebody in the magazine so we can hit our numbers on the next issue. It’s really about working with them as a partner to hopefully develop a long-term relationship that can evolve and grow as their business challenges and needs change. And that we can be a trusted and dedicated partner with integrated solutions that help them achieve their goals.

On whether she’s hiring different types of people to help with those “integrated solutions” when it comes to marketing and sales: From a team perspective, I’m looking from a marketing side and hiring members of the team who have an understanding of how all of the pieces work together and can really bolster one another, because we would never advocate that somebody shouldn’t be doing digital or shouldn’t be doing social. But what we look to do is figure out how we can come up with a program where the print and the digital and the video and the experiential can all combine together to be successful and to support the various aspects of the overall program.

On what she would hope to tell someone that she’d accomplished one year from now: That’s a great question. I would like to still see us as something that’s valued in print, but that we’d been able to embrace new technologies. First, to always continue to experiment, I think that’s what’s really fun about this ever-evolving marketplace. All of these new digital technologies give us the opportunity to see how we can take our amazing content from the print product and push it out to attract new audiences.

On any stumbling blocks she’s had to face in her role as publisher: I’d have to say that it’s been a pretty smooth transition. And again, I think because before I made the transition into my new role, marketing and sales are so intertwined, and prior to me sitting in this specific seat I was always involved in conversations with clients in understanding what they were looking for in a partner before we put ideas and proposals and presentations together for them. So overall, it’s been a pretty seamless transition.

On anything she’d like to add: The only thing I might add is that our new editor in chief, Jill Waage, is doing an amazing job. She’s been in her role close to 10 months now and she has accomplished so much with her team. She’s a great collaborator, she’s not somebody to come in and tell everybody how it’s to be done. She has done a good job listening to not only her team, but to the challenges of sales and marketing, meeting designers and clients; it’s just been an absolute pleasure working with her.

On what she would have tattooed upon her brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about her: I think being calm, because this is always an industry where challenges will come up along the way. And individuals who know me, know that I’m a thoughtful person who is always looking to find a solution that works for all parties involved. So, I think if I were to leave something, that would be it; to stay calm and to find a positive solution.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at her home: Honestly, it would be cooking. My husband and I finally just redid our kitchen. We bought the “money pit” 11 years ago, and we have slowly been lovingly restoring an old Victorian; it’s about 110-years-old. So, last year we tackled the kitchen and I have to say it’s the one room that we spend the most time in when we’re not sleeping and we kind of treated ourselves to a really lovely space. So, ever since we finished our kitchen, I would say we cook in it non-stop.

On what keeps her up at night: Other than my children? (Laughs) I would say how to keep my team energized and curious, because everybody is so busy with the daily demands of life and the job. What keeps me up at night is how do I give them the motivation and the time to read about new things, to get out of the daily grind so they can be inspired? And to learn about new things that potentially we could incorporate into our business model and continue to keep the brand healthy and growing.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Beth McDonough, publisher, Traditional Home magazine.

Samir Husni: Being the publisher of Traditional Home in this new day and age, how would you define the word “traditional” in the 21st century?

Beth McDonough: That’s a great question. In the research that we’ve done, when we ask 10 readers or 10 designers what traditional design is, we kind of get 10 different answers, but we do see certain adjectives come to the top all of the time. And we hear things like authenticity, craftsmanship and high quality. Those are all things that editorially have always been incredibly important, but I think to define traditional for us is really looking at design that’s rooted in great classic design, but reinvented or reimagined for the way that consumers live today.

And I think you see that with so many heritage brands, not only in the home design space, but also in fashion, where they’re legacy brands, they’ve been around for decades; a lot of them have been founded as family businesses and many of them are still family-run.

We’ve talked to different textile companies where some of their bestsellers today were literally introduced 50 years ago. Their designers have gone back in and either recolored those patterns or maybe played with the scale of the patterns just to give them a little more of a modern-day edge or feel. And again, it’s looking to the past and reimagining for today.

Samir Husni: Mentioning the past, what do you attribute the longevity of Traditional Home to and the reason it keeps on ticking and clicking after all of these years as a print magazine and as a brand?

Beth McDonough: We are a millennial; we’re about 28-years-old, as I like to joke. (Laughs) I think the longevity of Traditional Home can be attributed to our editorial point of view in that our readership, when we look at the geographic diversity, we really touch the home enthusiast from coast-to-coast. So, we see a very strong following for our readers in affluent suburbs, places like Grosse Pointe, Michigan and Lake Forest, Illinois. And I think our editors do a very good job and this is a conscious effort on their part to ensure that the homes and the design talent that they’re featuring in the magazine also represents that geographic diversity. They understand that there’s amazing design in Oklahoma and Colorado, and that it’s not just New York and L.A. that are the epicenters of great design.

Our readership resonates when they see projects in their regions because while there are always design trends every year that make the headlines, I think there are always geographic variations from a design perspective. And so, I think our longevity can be attributed to the fact that what the editors are putting out, either in print or on our social and digital channels, really resonates with our readers across the country.

Samir Husni: Do you think your job today selling the magazine to advertisers is easier, the same, or harder?

Beth McDonough: Good question. Well, I guess it depends upon who I’m talking to in the advertising community, obviously. (Laughs) If it’s somebody in New York who thinks that the sun rises and sets on the Big Apple, it’s harder to get them to understand a Midwest or a Southern mindset potentially, but I think the numbers help us paint the picture of how popular Traditional Home is and continues to be. We recently met with our circ team to look at the latest AAM (Alliance for Audited Media) publisher’s statement; we’ve seen a six percent growth year over year, looking at December 2017 versus 2016. We have a six percent growth in our paid subscriber base and I think that speaks volumes in this day and age as to the popularity and the wanted-ness of our brand among affluent design lovers.

Samir Husni: You’ve had a six percent increase in paid circulation, so why do you think people still want a print magazine today?

Beth McDonough: It’s twofold. One I think is the category. We hear from our readers that they love to sit and look at the full bleed images of these gorgeous interiors. A little bit of it is escapism, like any magazine reader, it’s a moment of relaxation for them. It’s a little bit of a luxury for some to have that quiet time for themselves to really enjoy the journey of going through these other people’s homes and understanding the story behind each one of them.

The other piece of that is a lot of our readers are planning renovations and so for them it goes back to the old-school, tear sheeting as they flip through and see spaces with ideas or colors or patterns that resonate. Something that they may want to consider for their upcoming decorating project or renovation project in the case of a kitchen or bath; it really enables them to either tear sheet or dog-ear the page and bring it to their kitchen designer or interior designer to share what they really love and may want to consider for their own home. And I think print allows them to do that.

Samir Husni: Traditional Home is one of the titles that Meredith started as a special interest publication, as a bookazine before the term was ever used. Then it became a frequency magazine, in line with what Meredith has done over the years. Today, Meredith is one the largest magazine publishing companies around. Do you think that environment of Better Homes & Gardens and all of the other “Home” magazines have helped nourish Traditional Home or created a set of competitors within the company?

Beth McDonough: Honestly, within Meredith I think Traditional Home really does have a unique position. Certainly, there is healthy competition for certain accounts with our brands like Better Homes & Gardens, but if you use the comparison between those two brands, Better Homes & Gardens is just so much bigger, and I think so much more of a reach vehicle, that an advertiser looking to go into Better Homes & Gardens, even in the home category, may have different goals and objectives than somebody coming into Traditional Home, where among the upscale shelter category we are still the largest circulation. We have the largest rate base at 850,000 when you look at us against the Hearst Design Group titles and Architectural Digest.

So, within our upscale shelter category we’re still the largest, but I think that an advertiser coming to us is maybe looking for a slightly more affluent consumer who most likely is working with a professional designer. We carry a lot of the “To The Trade” accounts where you can only access those products through a design professional.

Samir Husni: Do you feel that the acquisition of Time Inc. by Meredith is going to open new doors for you?

Beth McDonough: That’s a great question, but I think it’s too soon to tell. We’re hopeful from a Traditional Home brand perspective that joining our brethren in what I would call the affluent group of Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure could potentially introduce us to some new brands in the affluent category that would be non-endemic to us. Those affiliated products like wine or wonderful travel destinations, because we know entertaining is such a core passion point and we know travel is a passion point.

We hear stories about how our readers go to Europe or Asia and come back with beautiful pieces from their travels that they then present in their home and it gives them the opportunity to tell the story of where they found them or the artists they met. And then having that storytelling aspect incorporated into their home.

So, back to your question, it would be great if we could potentially put some programs together that would help us in those categories, but I think time will tell as to whether that will be possible.

Samir Husni: How has your job as publisher in the last few years changed? Are you still doing the same thing you did three years ago or has the whole job of publisher changed dramatically like the role of an editor has?

Beth McDonough: I was thinking about this question and I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is my first role as publisher. I have been in the industry for over 20 years, but I have always come up through the marketing side of things, so I am an imposter in the sales role. It will be three years in April that I have served as publisher of Traditional Home. Prior to that I have always been in a dedicated marketing role, obviously working closely with the sales team and the publisher.

So, to answer your question, I think that in this role I have seen more of an evolution, in that myself and my team aren’t selling just print, we’re really selling integrated solutions to our advertising partners. For me, it’s not just getting somebody in the magazine so we can hit our numbers on the next issue. It’s really about working with them as a partner to hopefully develop a long-term relationship that can evolve and grow as their business challenges and needs change. And that we can be a trusted and dedicated partner with integrated solutions that help them achieve their goals.

Samir Husni: Well, as a very good imposter who has done a great job…

Beth McDonough: Thank you.

Samir Husni: …are you hiring different types of people to help you with the marketing and sales? You said that you are no longer just selling print, you’re selling integrated solutions. Does that need a different type of people than just salespeople?

Beth McDonough: From a team perspective, I’m looking from a marketing side and hiring members of the team who have an understanding of how all of the pieces work together and can really bolster one another, because we would never advocate that somebody shouldn’t be doing digital or shouldn’t be doing social. But what we look to do is figure out how we can come up with a program where the print and the digital and the video and the experiential can all combine together to be successful and to support the various aspects of the overall program.

So, from a marketing perspective I do look to individuals who may have come up through print, but who have had experience on the digital and social side and still have that holistic view and understanding of how each serves its own particular role within an integrated program.

And it’s the same for the sales side. I love working with seasoned professionals and I would say the majority of them have spent most of their years in print, but some of them have done stints on a more digital-centric property. So again, I think I really look to individuals who still have a passion for print, because that’s where our brand is rooted first and foremost, but understand how all of the pieces can work together to create a successful integrated approach.

Samir Husni: If you and I are talking one year from now, what would you hope to tell me that you’d accomplished in 2018?

Beth McDonough: That my home looks a lot nicer. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Beth McDonough: That’s a great question. I would like to still see us as something that’s valued in print, but that we’d been able to embrace new technologies. First, to always continue to experiment, I think that’s what’s really fun about this ever-evolving marketplace. All of these new digital technologies give us the opportunity to see how we can take our amazing content from the print product and push it out to attract new audiences.

So, I think if we were to look to the future I would like to say that we’d grown our audience even more and that we’d demonstrated to these new generations that beautiful design is still something that is attainable. But also at the end of the day is something that’s very personal and meant to create a wonderful environment for your family where hopefully you can make memories and have wonderful moments.

Samir Husni: Having come from the marketing side of things, has your role as publisher been like a walk in a rose garden for you, where you said to yourself, wow, I love this, or have there been a few stumbling blocks here and there?

Beth McDonough: I’d have to say that it’s been a pretty smooth transition. And again, I think because before I made the transition into my new role, marketing and sales are so intertwined, and prior to me sitting in this specific seat I was always involved in conversations with clients in understanding what they were looking for in a partner before we put ideas and proposals and presentations together for them. So overall, it’s been a pretty seamless transition.

I will say with some of the Excel grids on the financial side; I have gotten glasses (Laughs), so we’re spending more time with Excel grids. But overall, knock on wood, it’s been pretty smooth sailing overall. And I love the challenge. I think it’s been a really nice next step for me professionally to move into this new role and to continually challenge myself, personally and professionally.

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

Beth McDonough: The only thing I might add is that our new editor in chief, Jill Waage, is doing an amazing job. She’s been in her role close to 10 months now and she has accomplished so much with her team. She’s a great collaborator, she’s not somebody to come in and tell everybody how it’s to be done. She has done a good job listening to not only her team, but to the challenges of sales and marketing, meeting designers and clients; it’s just been an absolute pleasure working with her.

So, she too, should be credited with putting a lot of wind into the sails of the brand. I love having her as a partner in crime and I really look forward to what the future holds for the brand under her leadership.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Beth McDonough: I think being calm, because this is always an industry where challenges will come up along the way. And individuals who know me, know that I’m a thoughtful person who is always looking to find a solution that works for all parties involved. So, I think if I were to leave something, that would be it; to stay calm and to find a positive solution.

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

Beth McDonough: Honestly, it would be cooking. My husband and I finally just redid our kitchen. We bought the “money pit” 11 years ago, and we have slowly been lovingly restoring an old Victorian; it’s about 110-years-old. So, last year we tackled the kitchen and I have to say it’s the one room that we spend the most time in when we’re not sleeping and we kind of treated ourselves to a really lovely space. So, ever since we finished our kitchen, I would say we cook in it non-stop.

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

Beth McDonough: Other than my children? (Laughs) I would say how to keep my team energized and curious, because everybody is so busy with the daily demands of life and the job. What keeps me up at night is how do I give them the motivation and the time to read about new things, to get out of the daily grind so they can be inspired? And to learn about new things that potentially we could incorporate into our business model and continue to keep the brand healthy and growing.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“In GQ, the one thing I go back to print for is not only are you speaking to a particular type of person, who might actually be different than someone who’s looking at us online, but also it’s a space where people still find glory in. People want their cover. It’s a moment. And when you have something like that, that still has cultural weight and is something that people gravitate to, both as a reader and as somebody in it, you’re not going to give that up ever, if you don’t have to.” Jon Wilde…

“Each individual brand’s task is to take a look at what is that business model; what is that business plan; and how do you create ancillary revenue streams around what the core is. And if it’s Vogue, what do you build around that to help some of the challenges that you’re seeing in print. But it’s not to go away from print, it’s to fortify it.” Rob Dechiaro…

GQ has been the go-to source for men’s style and fashion for over 60 years. The brand’s voice has been clear and strong throughout that time span, from its print roots to today’s multiplatform existence. While its print format remains robust and a vital part of the equation, the digital aspect of the brand has never been more innovative and creative. And it has never been in better hands.

Jon Wilde is the executive digital director and Rob Dechiaro is the general manager. The two together are determined to make GQ’s footprint in the world of digital engagement Sasquatch-sized as they move toward discovering new revenue streams and new ways to delight and surprise their audience.

I spoke to both Jon and Rob on a recent trip to New York and we discussed the new innovations and new ways they’re trying, to monetize the brand’s digital platforms. From the success of their editorially-driven “Best Stuff Box,” to their latest endeavor to utilize the brand’s expertise when it comes to helping guys dress, a product recommendation site they’ve added to their e-commerce called “GQ Recommends,” the brand is moving forward confidently in its plans to monetize its digital platforms in more ways than just a paywall. In an effort to get closer with its readers and grow revenue, the new commerce site promises a positive way to cultivate that deep bond with the audience that GQ has always been about and bolster revenues in the process. And it proves that being Print Proud Digital Smart, very digital smart, I might add, is the way a legacy brand commands its spot in the 21st century.

So, button up your shirt and straighten your tie, you’re about to enter the classiness that is GQ and meet two of its digital best, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jon Wilde, executive digital director, and Rob Dechiaro, general manager.

But first the sound-bites:

Jon Wilde, GQ’s Executive Digital Director.

On how they differentiate between the print content and the digital content (Jon Wilde): I worked on the magazine for five years before I came over and took over the site editorially. And one thing I can say is we don’t think of something as being one place or the other. What we think of is what’s the execution across a variety of platforms. So, it isn’t that one thing exists here and one thing exists there, it’s how does something that we’re really excited about exist everywhere, but in a time and space and way that is particular to that platform.

On whether coordinating the content between the many platforms makes his job as executive digital director easier or harder (Jon Wilde): It’s more complex, for sure. There are more people in those rooms. When you settle on doing something; when you think about doing something; you’re not thinking just will it make a good cover and a good story, you’re thinking will it resonate online? Will it hit the audience? How do we get it to the audience that we know we want to get it to? Is it going to say the right thing that we want to say, because a magazine can be a closed space, but the Internet, as we all know, has its’ own conversations and fluctuates in moments. You’ve got to really be aware of how something is going to land, and whether you’re moving it in that space or not.

Rob DeChiaro, GQ’s General Manager.

On whether coordinating the content between the many platforms makes his job as executive digital director easier or harder (Rob Dechiaro): I think the reality is a testament to Jim (Jim Nelson, editor in chief) and to Jon and the entire editorial staff. The content is strong enough to resonate across all platforms. I think it’s our job to make sure that it connects with that audience in the most natural way, based on that platform, because the content is just that good and it should be able to span all of those audiences to anybody who cares about GQ.

On whether each Condé Nast brand has its own business formula, some going digital-only like Self and some launching new print like GQ Style, or whether one day all of the brands will adopt the same business plan (Jon Wilde): Anybody who can prognosticate the future of print in media, please come on over and tell us what that looks like. (Laughs) We’d love to see into your crystal ball. You can’t treat brands as if they’re all one in the same. The New Yorker; the print version of that defines the thing. It’s carrying it around with you; it’s getting the tote bag; it’s sitting it on your coffee table. That’s a reading experience that I don’t think anyone plans on giving up anytime soon. When you talk about Self, what they do maybe is a more digital native thing. The crowd that they’re talking to; the audience that they have; where they live and what they’re looking for in that information, they made a decision which made a lot of sense for them. It’s intriguing watching them really push into Snapchat.

On whether each Condé Nast brand has its own business formula, some going digital-only like Self and some launching new print like GQ Style, or whether one day all of the brands will adopt the same business plan (Rob Dechiaro): I think what you’re hearing from Jon is clear as to what we’re seeing at Condé Nast as a whole. Each individual brand’s task is to take a look at what is that business model; what is that business plan; and how do you create ancillary revenue streams around what the core is. And if it’s Vogue, what do you build around that to help some of the challenges that you’re seeing in print. But it’s not to go away from print, it’s to fortify it.

On whether any celebrity would ask to be featured on just the website (Jon Wilde): It depends on who you’re talking about. Yes, JAY-Z is probably not going to come and just do a quick Q & A, but just this past month we did a major digital-only photo shoot with Taylor Kitsch, pretty big deal. There are definitely a group of people who exist largely on our website. They come through in moments where we do our own photo shoots with them. We’re doing a lot of that kind of thing now. We’re doing our own videos with them. The cast of “The Good Place” is a really good example; people are loving it. We shot four of the main cast members, not including Ted Danson, and we’ve done our own photo shoots with them; we’ve done these large Q & A’s. And they’ve resonated hugely, traffic and time spent, in terms of those things; they’ve all shared them happily. It’s a different moment.

On how they can monetize these digital-only content moments (Rob Dechiaro): At the end of the day, monetization across all digital platforms; there’s not going to be a silver bullet. There’s going to be a lot of things that we have to build in different ways based off all of the platforms that we have to go to. That’s when we talk about footprint; that’s when we talk about engagement. Those are two things that we’re continuously talking about. If you look at our audience, where are they consuming content and how do we find them and engage them, then we can talk about monetization. We have to make sure that we’re delivering that content, and that experience of GQ, in all of those places, on all of those platforms. Then we can determine the best way to monetize.

On why they believe Snapchat’s Discover platform has succeeded where other platforms have failed (Rob Dechiaro): I think part of it is the fact that they caught wildfire with the younger audience. And that’s a big aspect of it. They took the idea of messaging, which a lot of that younger audience uses Snapchat for. If you watch the young audience use Snapchat, they’re using it to message their friends, they’re not text messaging. And that becomes a platform where all of that audience is there on Snapchat. So, they had “Discover” play into that.

On why they believe Snapchat’s Discover platform has succeeded where other platforms have failed (Jon Wilde): From an editorial side, Snapchat’s “Discover” is really fascinating for us. It’s this really interesting way to reach a crowd that we might not normally reach. We’re a magazine; I don’t know how many 13-18 year-olds are spending $20 of their hard-earned cash on a magazine being sent to them. But I can tell you that demographic is a much larger percentage of our audience on Snapchat Discover. So suddenly we’re reaching them; we’re seeing what they’re responding to.

On whether they think there will come a day where, like Wired, GQ will start putting digital content behind a paywall (Rob Dechiaro): I think there’s going to be an analysis and conversations around any sort of paying experience across all Condé brands and I think across all magazine brands. I believe that’s the next iteration of the web as we see it, especially with the amount of information and what’s going on around us in culture. For GQ in particular, I think it’s going to come down to really looking and analyzing what truly engages our audience at an in depth level.

On whether they think there will come a day where, like Wired, GQ will start putting digital content behind a paywall (Jon Wilde): The interesting thing about the paywall is that it’s often talked about as if it exists in only one way, and I think what Rob really wisely alluded to is that there are a wide variety of ways you can put in a paywall. It could be just to get to the content or just to get to our expertise, which I know Golf Digest does. It could be to get to a variety of newsletters that brings something to you and deliver it daily to your inbox.

On how they define content in this day and age (Jon Wilde): What is content? (Laughs) We’re contenting right now. That’s a tough thing, especially with a brand like GQ. As Rob mentioned, we can cover anything. We’re not in one space. We do entertainment and we do style; we do some tech and we do dating and relationships; we do grooming, but we also do politics, travel and food. If there’s a thing that a guy is interested in, and at this point that should be just about everything, we’re probably going to have a moment with it. So, what isn’t content for us? Probably nothing.

On how they differentiate, as they plan to monetize their digital audiences, between the engaged audience and those that are considered out of range, that “trash audience” that exists online in places that cannot possibly affect their revenue streams one way or another (Rob Dechiaro): I think Jon alluded to it just a moment ago with the idea of engagement. And the idea of the one-and-done traffic; you need to take that with a grain of salt. And I think that’s what we’re going to start doing. We want to find the audience that’s coming back two, three, four times a month and really focus on what they’re doing onsite.

On how they differentiate, as they plan to monetize their digital audiences, between the engaged audience and those that are considered out of range, that “trash audience” that exists online in places that cannot possibly affect their revenue streams one way or another (Jon Wilde): As we track people as they move through our spaces, there are two things we look for. There’s engagement, which is the time they spend with us. We don’t want somebody who just kind of pops in for 10 seconds. I mean, it would be nice for them to pop in for 10 seconds, we’d love to get them in the door, and hopefully we can show them some other things that will keep them around. But we’ve also starting talking, obviously, about footprint, which is really interesting for us because coming into 2017 our social footprint was right around 7.4 million. By the end of the year we moved that up to 9.2 million. And it’s still steadily growing. So, that’s Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.

On why they think print hasn’t been able to reach those large-scale circulation numbers like 9 or 10 million the way digital can (Jon Wilde): To me, the really basic thing is the Internet is now with you at all times and you’re going to it. And you’re going to go there for a million reasons, but it’s always there. It’s a lot more, in some ways, passive. You’re there and if something flows through your timeline, you’re going to spend some time with it hopefully, if it’s good. Whereas, with magazines, you had to actively reach out. You had to send a card in and hope that in a month and a half they sent you the issue, and hope you didn’t have to follow up on it. Maybe you had to send a check because nobody was doing credit card payments that well. Or they sent you a bill and you missed it. It was tough. You had to really want a magazine then.

On what they’ve done to keep their digital audience “sticking” around (Jon Wilde): What did we do to make people stick? We make good stuff. The tough thing is, obviously there’s a lot of stuff you can do on the product side, particularly with a website, to help people move around more. You can have better recirculation; you can have a nicer design; you can have moments that are really sticky, like video and deeper stories. When it comes down to it, what GQ does amazingly well; what every Condé Nast brand does really well; what every brand that is worth a damn does in this word really well is, deliver good, enticing, intriguing, unexpected stuff. It is paramount.

On anything either of them would like to add (Jon Wilde): One thing that we haven’t talked about, which is interesting to us, is the e-commerce movement. It’s amazing for us to step into there, because we’ve been doing a version of it for 60 years. It will be 61 this year. We’ve been helping guys figure out what to wear, whether it’s to buy their first good-fitting pair of khakis or their 17th amazing Gucci jacket. We’ve been there to help say we have our eye on you and we know what’s going to work and maybe what won’t. And now we’re in a space where we can feed that beast we’ve created. We did a survey last year that told us somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of our readers wanted more product recommendations. So, we’ve gone really hard at that with everything from “Best Stuff,” which I talked about and is editorially-driven to find the best stuff in the category. And on up to this new thing we’ve launched, this new product called “Recommends.”

On anything either of them would like to add (Rob Dechiaro): I think the way Jon describes it summarizes a lot of the questions that you were asking. Just going through that process where Jim talks about really understanding what your audience is doing. We got those results back from the survey, about 30-40 percent, and then we dug in and asked what is the experience that we can build for them, to simply give them more to do with the site? From an engagement perspective that meant changing the product, changing the design.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home (Jon Wilde): I’m not impervious to the same things everybody is in this business, in this world. I’m probably on some combination of my phone and my laptop. I’ve probably got something on Netflix going and a half-eaten something on a plate in front of me, because I received a text or an email that I need to get to. The wide world of me just never stops. It just doesn’t. We’ve got weekend editors that are running full-time; we have things that we have to get prepped for. But none of us would be here if we didn’t really enjoy this process.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home (Rob Dechiaro): I completely agree with Jon. It’s going to be somehow tied to work. And I think that’s why we got into this media business. It is definitely addictive. When you get home, when I get home, it’s about surveying everything that’s happening around us, maybe not that’s directly tied to GQ, so that we can find those instances where we need to extend again to connect our audience, where we know technology is giving us the opportunity to have all of those platforms.

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him (Jon Wilde): He did the best with baldness as he could. (Laughs)

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him (Rob Dechiaro): I think we all just kind of hit it on the head when we were talking about the idea of getting into the media business and I think we all did that for a particular set of reasons that are to ourselves, but for me it’s that we enjoy the ride. I enjoy the ride of experiencing all of the things that are happening in tech and media and the world around us, because media plays in all of it. And if I want to be remembered for anything, it’s that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously and we enjoyed the ride.

On what keeps them up at night (Jon Wilde): Trying to make people want more. And figuring out what exactly that is in a world that is flooded with “more.” It used to be pretty easy when you made a magazine. You went up against some other magazines, but now everybody makes content. You’re trying to horn in.

On what keeps them up at night (Rob Dechiaro): Echoing what I said earlier about enjoying what we do, but it’s also being able to enjoy what you do and make a difference. Given everything that’s happening in the world around us; how do we do what we do, but make a difference to people in a positive way? And I think that should be the goal of all of us. We have to impact people in a positive way.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jon Wilde, executive digital director, and Rob Dechiaro, general manager, GQ.

Samir Husni: No one is talking about print versus digital anymore. You have to be in it all. H

ow do you differentiate in your thinking when it comes to what content belongs to print and what content belongs to digital?

Jon Wilde: I worked on the magazine for five years before I came over and took over the site editorially. And one thing I can say is we don’t think of something as being one place or the other. What we think of is what’s the execution across a variety of platforms.

So, let’s take an easy example; a cover story, right? We’ve got Colin Kaepernick sitting right in front of us on the table here, so we’ll go with that one. A big, huge moment for us last year, naming him our Citizen of the Year in the December issue. We knew that needed to be a big visual moment for print; that it needed to be something that stood out on the newsstand and said something loud and clear. And we got that obviously with the cover.

Our rollout online was interesting because the story we did inside was a compilation of 10 people who were close to him that were speaking about what he was trying to do on the activism front, how he made that movement from player to social activist. We took those, where in-book they were a compilation, online they all got broken up. All of those voices became individual voices that spoke to Colin, but also had their own. So, Ava DuVernay could speak to what Colin was doing, but also a little about what she was hoping to achieve. It became bigger in scope online.

We knew on Twitter that those photos were going to be a driver, we’ve seen our covers like this, especially in the social activism space, just really resonate. So, we had a different plan for seeding those out there, and for using Instagram, our biggest social platform, as a place to gather those. It became our most-liked Instagram photo ever.

In those ways, as we’re pulling these things together, we’re thinking that we know what the story is going to be; we know what the images might be; let’s figure out what the video is; what’s the plan for Instagram where we have four million people; what’s that Instagram story. Maybe we’re taking some of those extended-cut quotes and matching them up with beautiful behind-the-scenes video that we shot up in Harlem, such as we did when we recreated that iconic Muhammad Ali photo session.

So, it isn’t that one thing exists here and one thing exists there, it’s how does something that we’re really excited about exist everywhere, but in a time and space and way that is particular to that platform.

Samir Husni: And does coordinating that content between the many platforms make your job easier or harder? You’ve been there before, pre-digital.

Jon Wilde: It’s more complex, for sure. There are more people in those rooms. When you settle on doing something; when you think about doing something; you’re not thinking just will it make a good cover and a good story, you’re thinking will it resonate online? Will it hit the audience? How do we get it to the audience that we know we want to get it to? Is it going to say the right thing that we want to say, because a magazine can be a closed space, but the Internet, as we all know, has its’ own conversations and fluctuates in moments. You’ve got to really be aware of how something is going to land, and whether you’re moving it in that space or not.

We’re constantly having those conversations. When we’re just talking about covers, maybe before it would have been five or six print editors, now it’s myself and our editorial director, and Carly (Carly Holden, executive director of Communications) is in that room, and our head of Social is going to be in that room; our video guys are going to factor into that too. All of us come together to create these moments; you have to have everybody in there. It’s a little bit more complex, but also it leads to a bigger, richer story all of the time.

Rob Dechiaro: I think the reality is a testament to Jim (Jim Nelson, editor in chief) and to Jon and the entire editorial staff. The content is strong enough to resonate across all platforms. I think it’s our job to make sure that it connects with that audience in the most natural way, based on that platform, because the content is just that good and it should be able to span all of those audiences to anybody who cares about GQ.

Samir Husni: Last year you published GQ Style, so you’re not leaving print by the wayside. Yet, there are some other Condé Nast brands like Teen Vogue and Self that you decided to stop the print versions. Does each brand at Condé Nast have its own business plan or business formula? Or will we eventually see a trickle-down formula that will apply to all brands?

Jon Wilde: Anybody who can prognosticate the future of print in media, please come on over and tell us what that looks like. (Laughs) We’d love to see into your crystal ball. But yes, you can’t treat brands as if they’re all one in the same. The New Yorker; the print version of that defines the thing. It’s carrying it around with you; it’s getting the tote bag; it’s sitting it on your coffee table. That’s a reading experience that I don’t think anyone plans on giving up anytime soon.

When you talk about Self, what they do maybe is a more digital native thing. The crowd that they’re talking to; the audience that they have; where they live and what they’re looking for in that information, they made a decision which made a lot of sense for them. It’s intriguing watching them really push into Snapchat. And I think their Snapchat audience is bigger now than their website audience, which is amazing. They’ve managed to find the place where their people are. And at all times, that’s what we’re looking at. The New Yorker’s people are print folks, that will never go away. You see W becoming fewer issues, but more of a coffee table moment, almost a coffee table book. GQ Style is like that.

In GQ, the one thing I go back to print for is not only are you speaking to a particular type of person, who might actually be different than someone who’s looking at us online, but also it’s a space where people still find glory in. People want their cover. It’s a moment. And when you have something like that, that still has cultural weight and is something that people gravitate to, both as a reader and as somebody in it, you’re not going to give that up ever, if you don’t have to.

Rob Dechiaro: I think what you’re hearing from Jon is clear as to what we’re seeing at Condé Nast as a whole. Each individual brand’s task is to take a look at what is that business model; what is that business plan; and how do you create ancillary revenue streams around what the core is. And if it’s Vogue, what do you build around that to help some of the challenges that you’re seeing in print. But it’s not to go away from print, it’s to fortify it.

It’s to make sure that you have a lot of things going on to hit the multiple touchpoints that we were just talking about, when you think about digital and print working together. That’s how we look at it. It’s just about how do you build around that and around the audiences that we have in print to do different things within digital.

Jon Wilde: And the talk of engagement and how that’s become a bigger metric, certainly digitally. But I don’t know if you have any bigger engagement than somebody picking up a magazine actively and deciding to flip through it. And we still largely see some of our biggest stories in those moments where people gravitate to GQ, moments that have resonance, that cause ripple effects on through the Internet, they originated there. And it’s because it comes with a weight and a care and something that’s tangible, even if it’s on your screen.

Samir Husni: Correct me if I’m wrong, but no celebrity will ever ask to be featured on your website; they want to be on the cover of the magazine, if they can.

Jon Wilde: I’m going to disagree with that. It depends on who you’re talking about. Yes, JAY-Z is probably not going to come and just do a quick Q & A, but just this past month we did a major digital-only photo shoot with Taylor Kitsch, pretty big deal. There are definitely a group of people who exist largely on our website. They come through in moments where we do our own photo shoots with them. We’re doing a lot of that kind of thing now. We’re doing our own videos with them.

The cast of “The Good Place” is a really good example; people are loving it. We shot four of the main cast members, not including Ted Danson, and we’ve done our own photo shoots with them; we’ve done these large Q & A’s. And they’ve resonated hugely, traffic and time spent, in terms of those things; they’ve all shared them happily. It’s a different moment.

And in some ways, especially when you get into a younger actor, who’s at an ascendant moment in their career; what they can get out of a digital-only piece is not just eyes. When we put your great photo on our timeline, people don’t say that’s a digital-only piece. A great cover looks as good as a great shoot that we did just for the website. You’re still getting part of that GQ elevation.

Samir Husni: And how are you going to monetize that?

Rob Dechiaro: At the end of the day, monetization across all digital platforms; there’s not going to be a silver bullet. There’s going to be a lot of things that we have to build in different ways based off all of the platforms that we have to go to. That’s when we talk about footprint; that’s when we talk about engagement. Those are two things that we’re continuously talking about. If you look at our audience, where are they consuming content and how do we find them and engage them, then we can talk about monetization. We have to make sure that we’re delivering that content, and that experience of GQ, in all of those places, on all of those platforms. Then we can determine the best way to monetize.

We can’t sit here and think that we’re just going to monetize on site anymore. We’re going to have to monetize through partnerships with Twitter; with Instagram; with Snapchat. If you look at what we’ve done with Snapchat, there was a conversation at a Condé Nast level about whether we should be on the Snapchat platform. We were identified as a brand. Now we’re creating franchises in content that matches what we do in book, matches what we do on GQ.com, but now we can monetize it on Snapchat through a partnership with Snapchat.

I think it’s just examples from that. We have to make sure that when we find those areas that we know we can engage our audience with, it’s going to feel as if it’s one-off revenue models, but that’s the reality of the digital experience right now. And I think that’s what we have to focus on.

Samir Husni: Why do you think Snapchat’s “Discover” has succeeded where so many other platforms have failed?

Rob Dechiaro: I think part of it is the fact that they caught wildfire with the younger audience. And that’s a big aspect of it. They took the idea of messaging, which a lot of that younger audience uses Snapchat for. If you watch the young audience use Snapchat, they’re using it to message their friends, they’re not text messaging. And that becomes a platform where all of that audience is there on Snapchat. So, they had “Discover” play into that.

And I think they’re still trying to figure exactly how that works out and where they do that in the Snapchat experience, but it’s taken the partnership that Snapchat has created with all of these brands to create content specific for that platform, which makes it feel to the audience as if you’re publishing specifically for that platform. Now, we know that we’re creating the content; we’re expanding our content that we’re already creating, and that somebody who maybe just goes onto Snapchat, for them it feels very native. And I think that’s of the utmost importance.

Jon Wilde: From an editorial side, Snapchat’s “Discover” is really fascinating for us. It’s this really interesting way to reach a crowd that we might not normally reach. We’re a magazine; I don’t know how many 13-18 year-olds are spending $20 of their hard-earned cash on a magazine being sent to them. But I can tell you that demographic is a much larger percentage of our audience on Snapchat Discover. So suddenly we’re reaching them; we’re seeing what they’re responding to.

A lot of times we’re taking content that we’ve already made, but we’re redesigning it, recrafting it, repurposing it and figuring out a different angle. We’ve also had some times where we’ve actually created wholesale new shoots, new videos, that are only living on Snapchat. And what that has let us do is reach out to maybe the next generation of GQ readers, maybe introduce ourselves to them. Let them know that we’re still the place to go to figure out how to grow up and be an adult man. How to maybe get a little bit more stylish after your mom has been buying your clothes for you at the mall for the last five years. (Laughs)

But we’ve also been able to take a little bit back from that and ask what are the new waves where people are moving; what are the things that people are grabbing? Everything from time spent on there to the number of times they actually screen-grab something, we find ourselves higher than benchmarks. And so, we’re really heartened to be able to kind of walk into that space and reach a new set of eyeballs. And take something away while giving them something they seem to be really enthusiastic about.

Samir Husni: Wired is experimenting with the paywall. Now, after putting the audiences on a Welfare Information Society, giving them everything for free, the industry is seeing the futility of that. Do you think there will be a time at GQ where you will start putting content behind a paywall?

Rob Dechiaro: I think there’s going to be an analysis and conversations around any sort of paying experience across all Condé brands and I think across all magazine brands. I believe that’s the next iteration of the web as we see it, especially with the amount of information and what’s going on around us in culture. For GQ in particular, I think it’s going to come down to really looking and analyzing what truly engages our audience at an in depth level.

If you look at the way The New Yorker or Wired are doing it, they’re doing a paywall based off a metered experience and based off an audience that’s coming back multiple times. For GQ, we cover a lot of categories. We cover a lot of things and that’s something that GQ does extremely well and we’ve done for a lot of years. And we’ve earned the right to do that.

I think the step for GQ on where we go to a paid experience, a paywall, a service; something that gives the audience a reason to have to pay, to want to pay, we’re going to have to look at what aspects of our coverage deserve to be behind that experience.

Jon Wilde: The interesting thing about the paywall is that it’s often talked about as if it exists in only one way, and I think what Rob really wisely alluded to is that there are a wide variety of ways you can put in a paywall. It could be just to get to the content or just to get to our expertise, which I know Golf Digest does. It could be to get to a variety of newsletters that brings something to you and deliver it daily to your inbox.

You might consider it a minor paywall in that we have a “Best Stuff Box” now that we’re selling, which the Best Stuff is our kind of branding for us going out and rigorously testing something and finding the things that we really love, particularly menswear, but also in things like tech, grooming, and products that we know guys are really eager to find the best in. We’ve bundled some of that in a box and we’ve started selling subscriptions to it. We’ve had a mind-blowing take rate in the fact that it was really only soft-launched up until a couple of weeks ago when it became super-available online.

And the interesting thing is people are looking at that and when they subscribe to it, it’s $150 to subscribe for a year, they’re also oftentimes taking a subscription to the magazine. And you’re seeing this kind of back and forth between wanting to pull from our expertise, which is we’ve found something cool and we’ll send it to you, and also the fact that they would like to get a little closer to the content and the things that we do. So, I think that we’re really in an amazing place to figure out a paywall or paywalls could be in other places.

Samir Husni: How do you define content in this day and age?

Jon Wilde: What is content? (Laughs) We’re contenting right now. That’s a tough thing, especially with a brand like GQ. As Rob mentioned, we can cover anything. We’re not in one space. We do entertainment and we do style; we do some tech and we do dating and relationships; we do grooming, but we also do politics, travel and food. If there’s a thing that a guy is interested in, and at this point that should be just about everything, we’re probably going to have a moment with it. So, what isn’t content for us? Probably nothing.

That said, you’re always aware of your resources and your bandwidth. We’re also always asking the question, what do we want to achieve? As we switch from the raw, impressionistic news views, we need to just get uniques, uniques, uniques in the door. And when you do that, we’ve all seen what that leads to. It leads to scale, certainly, but not a very fun scale. You kind of race to the bottom and you’re chasing whatever is trending. Whereas now, as we move into engagements and little bit more of the notion of having a footprint growth, which is bringing people in who really want to be around all of our stuff, you start to care a lot about what the thing is that you pull off and write about. And it has to be something that’s meaningful and that means something on the platform that you’re putting it on.

And when you go back to that idea of what’s digital and what’s print, it all goes back to whether it’s a good story for GQ. Do we have something valid to say and is it going to resonate in the place and with the people that we’re speaking to? And that math generally points you in the right direction on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes you try a thing out and it doesn’t work, and you say okay, lesson learned. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: I interviewed Bob Garfield, who’s supposedly considered the “Marketing Guru” media writer. And he said with all of this digital growth, there’s also a lot of “trash audience” in those numbers. People reading the website or watching the videos in China, Hong Kong, or Lebanon. How do you differentiate, as you plan to monetize these digital platforms, between the trash audience and the engaged audience?

Rob Dechiaro: I think Jon alluded to it just a moment ago with the idea of engagement. And the idea of the one-and-done traffic; you need to take that with a grain of salt. And I think that’s what we’re going to start doing. We want to find the audience that’s coming back two, three, four times a month and really focus on what they’re doing onsite.

Now, we’re going to have to have a serious conversation with our friends and marketers on the advertising side and our other partners to determine what does scale look like versus what does an engaged audience look like. And how do you change your models at which you’re measuring your advertising, which we all know that we need to have in a conversation.

But to me, from an audience perspective, you just have to determine who is coming back and who is in love with your brand. And who is coming back multiple times per month, I think it has to be on a monthly basis, and you have to make sure it’s the people who are reading and scrolling through the content that are the true and genuine eyeballs. It just has to be taken with a grain of salt from scale perspective until we have the technology and everything built out from a measurement perspective that we can easily filter that out. It’s all about engagement.

Jon Wilde: As we track people as they move through our spaces, there are two things we look for. There’s engagement, which is the time they spend with us. We don’t want somebody who just kind of pops in for 10 seconds. I mean, it would be nice for them to pop in for 10 seconds, we’d love to get them in the door, and hopefully we can show them some other things that will keep them around. But we’ve also starting talking, obviously, about footprint, which is really interesting for us because coming into 2017 our social footprint was right around 7.4 million. By the end of the year we moved that up to 9.2 million. And it’s still steadily growing. So, that’s Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.

The intriguing thing about that is while you’re not running at scale, because you’re not just trying to collect every eyeball that flows through the timeline on Facebook, what you are trying to get is people who want to stay with the brand. They want to click follow and they want to click subscribe, and they want to see the next thing that comes out even though they don’t know what it is. And so that’s what we’re really focused on right now.

You’ve got engagement, once they’ve been brought in and you see if they can move through your space really well; can you get them to like a photo and maybe drive them to see a video that maybe gets them intrigued enough to come to your website. They may see a few pieces and buy a Box from us. But also you want to keep growing those spaces where what you’re putting out there is special enough for them to say they want to subscribe. Not just to the magazine, but to Instagram and then everything kind of reaches them. And then we can make those cool things that make Colin Kaepernick, who looks great on the cover, look amazing on Instagram. And then that brings another great round of feedback.

Samir Husni: Why do you think in print no one has been able to reach that scale of nine million or 10 million? The largest magazine circulation will hit one million and then it stops. What is the difference between the engagement of your audience on digital and the engagement of the print audience?

Jon Wilde: Two things. To me, the really basic thing is the Internet is now with you at all times and you’re going to it. And you’re going to go there for a million reasons, but it’s always there. It’s a lot more, in some ways, passive. You’re there and if something flows through your timeline, you’re going to spend some time with it hopefully, if it’s good. Whereas with magazines, you had to actively reach out. You had to send a card in and hope that in a month and a half they sent you the issue, and hope you didn’t have to follow up on it. Maybe you had to send a check because nobody was doing credit card payments that well. Or they sent you a bill and you missed it. It was tough. You had to really want a magazine then.

And that’s a thing nowadays; it’s heartening when you still have people like that, because they’re the kind of diehard readers that you want to keep close and deliver the really cool stuff to.

But we’ve got a big distribution platform now, where everything kind of flows by their eyes. And that’s where you get into the scale, making good content engagement space, where you know it’s probably going to cross in front of them at some point, but what’s going to make a grab and stick, entice and intrigue, and want to stay with them? When we now talk about subscribing, it’s tapping a button really quickly.

And interestingly, I think the same thought processes are still there, that it was with the magazine. Am I willing to give over something of myself to it? In this case, a lot of time. It’s time nowadays, right? Am I willing to give over entre to my newsletter? Am I willing to give over my timeline that I curated really nicely? You’re still weighing something, but it’s a lot easier to get there.

Also, like you said, we gave a lot of stuff away for free for a long time. Free gets a lot of people in the door, and now you have to figure out how you monetize what was free for so long.

Samir Husni: One of the things that I always tell the students is, on the web, same as in print, you have to learn how to make somebody click, tick and stick. The clicking and ticking is always there, it’s the sticking that is sometimes difficult. What did you do to make people stick?

Jon Wilde: What did we do to make people stick? We make good stuff. The tough thing is, obviously there’s a lot of stuff you can do on the product side, particularly with a website, to help people move around more. You can have better recirculation; you can have a nicer design; you can have moments that are really sticky, like video and deeper stories. When it comes down to it, what GQ does amazingly well; what every Condé Nast brand does really well; what every brand that is worth a damn does in this word really well is, deliver good, enticing, intriguing, unexpected stuff. It is paramount.

It is why you can blow up and grow to scale, and ultimately it would be kind of empty. Whereas, we may never reach those kind of BuzzFeed-ian, hundred-million-esque heights, but what we did have was great stuff. Amazing stuff. Stuff that you couldn’t deny was good. When you have that, you can always build something around it.

We’re also blessed because our reader could conceivably be anybody. We know we’re aimed at guys; we know demographically where that kind of sweet spot is, but our readership in a lot of places is 25 percent or more female. You put out a great story like Colin Kaepernick, that doesn’t just stay in one space. That’s always been the driving force from Jim Nelson on down.

Samir Husni: And that cover story made the rounds, from Fox News to CNBC, so you covered the entire gamut. Some folks loved you and some folks didn’t. (Laughs)

Jon Wilde: Right. (Laughs too) I don’t know that Fox News was in love with it, but when you can put something out there and people care enough to talk about it, you’ve done your job, I think. We have at least.

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

Jon Wilde: One thing that we haven’t talked about, which is interesting to us, is the e-commerce movement. It’s amazing for us to step into there, because we’ve been doing a version of it for 60 years. It will be 61 this year. We’ve been helping guys figure out what to wear, whether it’s to buy their first good-fitting pair of khakis or their 17th amazing Gucci jacket. We’ve been there to help say we have our eye on you and we know what’s going to work and maybe what won’t.

And now we’re in a space where we can feed that beast we’ve created. We did a survey last year that told us somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of our readers wanted more product recommendations. They wanted us to tell them more specifically what to buy. They wished that there was an easier process to find those things on our site.

So, we’ve gone really hard at that with everything from “Best Stuff,” which I talked about and is editorially-driven to find the best stuff in the category. And on up to this new thing we’ve launched, this new product called “Recommends.” It’s kind of a store within GQ, but it’s still editorially-driven and it turns over often throughout the week as we recommend more products, pull ones out that maybe have gotten old or have gone off sale.

And it’s this great warehouse where a guy can walk in and say that he needs a new shirt and then ask what GQ thinks he should get. He doesn’t have to search; he doesn’t have to go to Google and type in GQ shirts and hope that the first thing that pops up is the most recent one. He can walk in there and see the 40 shirts that GQ thinks he should buy that day.

And it’s been great. We’ve seen an amazing response to it. It’s already driving 11 percent of our affiliate revenue on GQ.com, and we’re really pushing hard on affiliate, in both GQ and across Condé. We’re seeing a huge click-thru rate on that as well, which is interesting because we pair it with editorial stories, kind of going back to the stickiness and engagement.

They come to us because they want to figure out what shirt or what suit they should buy, what pair of shoes, but then they also click on a piece because there’s a reason they came to GQ. It’s because our voice and our point of view is as much what they want as just the clothes themselves. So, that’s been really heartening to see our e-commerce click with our reader.

Rob Dechiaro: I think the way Jon describes it summarizes a lot of the questions that you were asking. Just going through that process where Jim talks about really understanding what your audience is doing. We got those results back from the survey, about 30-40 percent, and then we dug in and asked what is the experience that we can build for them, to simply give them more to do with the site? From an engagement perspective that meant changing the product, changing the design.

But then we figured out a different revenue stream to tie to that, so that it’s not something new and big to replace print, that’s not the plan of this. This is something we didn’t run at; this is something we’ve been doing for a very long time. We just used technology and the platforms that were engaging our audience to make it easier, and to better engage them on that platform. And I think that really summarizes what we do from a commerce perspective. But honestly, the way we started that, the way we used that process, should be the way we evolve GQ as a brand throughout the next several years.

To Jon’s point about the data that we’re gleaning, in that it’s both editorial and commerce, 40 percent of the people who are on that commerce experience, that we built specifically for making it easier to go buy those products, 40 percent of those people are then clicking on an article of content to go read. That’s how you build the stickiness. But that comes from an understanding of what our audience desires. And just tying all of that together.

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

Jon Wilde: I’m not impervious to the same things everybody is in this business, in this world. I’m probably on some combination of my phone and my laptop. I’ve probably got something on Netflix going and a half-eaten something on a plate in front of me, because I received a text or an email that I need to get to.

The wide world of me just never stops. It just doesn’t. We’ve got weekend editors that are running full-time; we have things that we have to get prepped for. But none of us would be here if we didn’t really enjoy this process. Some of us get a little tired of it; some of us walk out and take two-week vacations and think about not coming back. (Laughs) Ultimately, there’s a little bit of a drug in it, whether for good or for bad. But you’re probably going to find me doing some work.

Rob Dechiaro: I completely agree with Jon. It’s going to be somehow tied to work. And I think that’s why we got into this media business. It is definitely addictive. When you get home, when I get home, it’s about surveying everything that’s happening around us, maybe not that’s directly tied to GQ, so that we can find those instances where we need to extend again to connect our audience, where we know technology is giving us the opportunity to have all of those platforms.

So, to me, the downtime away from just GQ is really about understanding what are the new platforms? Netflix; what if something happens with Netflix where it would make sense for GQ to get involved? And just taking all of those things that are happening around us and really making sure that we’re constantly thinking about how our audience could possibly want to find GQ there. And that’s something that we can’t forget and should be our downtime.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Jon Wilde: He did the best with baldness as he could. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Rob Dechiaro: I think we all just kind of hit it on the head when we were talking about the idea of getting into the media business and I think we all did that for a particular set of reasons that are to ourselves, but for me it’s that we enjoy the ride. I enjoy the ride of experiencing all of the things that are happening in tech and media and the world around us, because media plays in all of it. And if I want to be remembered for anything, it’s that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously and we enjoyed the ride.

Jon Wilde; Yes, I think it’s that we made people want more. When we do our job well, we make people want more. It’s the thing that we’re always on the hunt for; it’s why we don’t mind being up until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. on our phones. If the things that I put out into the world make people want more, then I’ll feel pretty good about my time spent.

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

Jon Wilde: Trying to make people want more. And figuring out what exactly that is in a world that is flooded with “more.” It used to be pretty easy when you made a magazine. You went up against some other magazines, but now everybody makes content. You’re trying to horn in.

Literally on Instagram, we have four million followers, which is a lot, but also think about, we have to squeeze in between your best friend who just went on vacation, or your cousin who just had a baby. To that, everything is content, but the bar got higher. The bar shot up. Which is weird, because we talk about the bar lowering, but really for the bar to make it through the noise and to hit, it skyrocketed. And in some ways that’s tough. But in a lot of ways you step up your game. And stepping up your game is never easy, but it means you always feel like you’re working as damned hard as you possibly can to do something good.

Rob Dechiaro: Echoing what I said earlier about enjoying what we do, but it’s also being able to enjoy what you do and make a difference. Given everything that’s happening in the world around us; how do we do what we do, but make a difference to people in a positive way? And I think that should be the goal of all of us. We have to impact people in a positive way.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t walk in here and the team around me makes me better and I hope I make them better. And I think we need to do that for our audience, and our audience needs to do that for us. So, what would keep me up at night would be how do we continue to make that impact? How do we continue to make a positive difference in the world?

Samir Husni: Thank you both.

“Something that we think will have a long shelf life, that someone could pick up off their coffee table six months from the publication date; that’s probably going to find itself in print, more likely. And if our art department thinks it’s the kind of story that is really going to benefit from some really blowout photos, then it would also lend itself more toward print. You can do some great stuff with photos online, but I’m skeptical that you get the same kind of emotional resonance from readers who see that photo on the page.” Jason Mark…

Print brings people together. It’s the “campfire” of the particular community readers are interested in. At least, according to Sierra Magazine’s editor in chief, Jason Mark, it is. In the case of the Sierra Club and its accompanying print magazine, the “campfire” in mention is a publication that has, according to Jason, a circulation of around 695,000, which goes out to all members who are interested in receiving the magazine. And Jason added that the membership is growing, due in part to the current Washington administration and its views on conservation and preservation.

I spoke with Jason recently and we talked about the magazine that is an extension of the Sierra Club, an environmental organization that’s successes include protecting millions of acres of wilderness, helping pass the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. And that’s mission statement in part reads: to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources. The magazine upholds those values and ideals, while having its own voice on other issues that may become newsworthy or are important to the overall goals of the organization.

And Jason is a man who believes strongly in those same values, hoping to leave his daughter a much better world than she found, or at the very least, no worse. He’s also a man who believes in the powerful voice of print, whether in word or in image. He believes the print magazine is a strong tool that is used to spread the Sierra Club’s mission, and the online platforms are just as instrumental, and when used together can be an impactful combination that can make anyone stand up and take notice. Print Proud Digital Smart, and totally effective when it comes to environmental journalism.

So, I hope that you enjoy this glimpse into the world of advocacy journalism, covering topics that make a difference in all of our lives, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jason Mark, editor in chief, Sierra Magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On what he believes is the state of the environmental union one year after the presidential election: The state of our union is polluted, I think is the statement I saw from not just the Sierra Club, but a number of other groups. I say in talks that this is less about the state of the whole environmental union, but the state of environmental journalism. If I have the opportunity to talk to early career or inspiring environmental journalists, I say the bad news is that the environment is going to hell and the good news is that there is no shortage of stories to be told.

On what role he thinks the magazine plays in the “Hope Trumps Nope” resistance campaign: As the national magazine of the Sierra Club, we’re practicing advocacy journalism. So, we have a very clear point of view, and we would certainly never shy from being open about that point of view and being transparent with our readers about where we’re coming from. But it’s still journalism; we’re using the best practices of journalism in our actual fairness, accuracy, attention to detail, and verve of storytelling and writing, to communicate our point of view. To sound an alarm when it’s necessary, and to share good news when we have good news to share. So, I definitely think of us as a very Sierra Club metaphor, but Sierra Magazine is the campfire around which Sierra Club members can gather. It’s the only single communication that all Sierra Club members get.

On whether his job as editor in chief has gotten easier or harder overtime: I think it’s harder. It’s harder because of the increase we’ve seen in Sierra Club membership, and therefore in Sierra Magazine readership, just really in the past 14 months. We have 30 percent new member readers since the election. We always tell writers to write for the audience, and you have to know who your audience is. And our audience is shifting. I have this chunk of folks now who are long-time Sierra Club members, some are what we call life-members; they’ve been getting this magazine in one form or another for 20 – 40 years. They’ve been with us a long time. Then I have this new crop of people who are just coming in the door. So, it’s a challenge to try and balance the interests and the awareness level of those different audiences.

On whether he feels President Trump’s election helped to increase the Sierra Club’s memberships: The election of President Trump certainly increased a lot of Americans’ concern and awareness about environmental issues. So, did President Trump help the Sierra Club, in terms of helping the issues that we and our members care about? No, I think that’s pretty obvious. But did he in some way give us a new jolt of political power, in so far as members and constituents equal political power? Yes.

On how he and his team begin the editorial and curation process of choosing content, including covers: We have a standing weekly editorial meeting, in which we’re, of course, also making editorial decisions, curatorial decisions, across two main channels. There’s the print magazine, coming out six times per year and then there’s our online edition, which we’re shooting to have 10 original stories every week. But to stay focused on the print edition, two main things; one is we want to make sure that we have a balance across the range of issues that we believe should be or are of interest to the general environmentalist public. We’re not just covering environmental issues that the Sierra Club works on.

On whether there is a litmus test or some criteria that decides which stories are for print and which are for online: The biggest difference between print and online is going to be, like it is for many, timeline, urgency and turnaround. I mean, we’re long-lead media; a lot of stuff in the print edition is assigned out six to eight months in advance. It would be tight for us to turn something around in four months. We try to get people out into the field. We want reporters and journalists on the ground telling stories and that obviously requires travel time, cost, and all of that. So, if it’s more in the news, we’re just going to do it for online.

On whether he feels there’s more or less environmental information out there today, only on different platforms: That’s a really hard question. I’m a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and this has been a big topic within that community. We’ve seen a lot of layoffs, as you know, at daily newspapers. And some of those were people whose beats were the environment. I believe today’s environmental journalists’ largest category of membership is freelancers. There’s a lot of people doing this work, but they’re not getting a steady paycheck for it.

On being an author as well as an editor in chief and which he enjoys more, writing or editing: That’s a great question. I’m home today, and I’ve actually been home all of this week, working on a big story, so I definitely think of myself as a writer/editor. It uses different parts of your brain. I love to write and I think of myself as a writer. I guess at the end of the day, I sort of enjoy writing a little bit more, but I also love working with other writers. I love being able to work with a writer in collaboration, and the give and take and push and pull between editor and writer. Then to come out with a final product that is better than the original first draft that the writer turned in. I think it’s a wonderful process and I love being able to do that.

On anything he’d like to add: The one thing that I would add is there’s not that many of us, in this space at least, left standing. There’s still Audubon, and they do really great work; the nature conservancy has a nice thing they put out, but it’s a bit more like a newsletter. Really, Audubon and Sierra are some of the only at scale, national environmental magazines. And in a way, that’s a shame, but it’s also something of an opportunity for us.

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him: I think it would be that I’m just trying to be an uncompromising, but still thoughtful voice for protecting and preserving the natural world. That’s really what I’m trying to do. To use writing, ideas, curation as we mentioned, to promote this idea that we have an obligation to leave the world at least as well as we found it. That’s why Sierra Magazine is a good fit for me; I really am motivated by the values that the Sierra Club has, and am also able to bring my particular skill set as a reporter/journalist/editor to advance those ideals.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home: Probably some combination that has to do with food. I’m standing in my garden talking to you, where I’ve got my winter garlic growing; chard, kale, lettuces, choy, fava beans. You would probably find me puttering around the garden and/or cooking from the garden, and/or hanging out with my daughter. Or hiking. Recently, we took our daughter, and a couple of other families with kids, right after work, and we headed up into the Oakland Hills and we hiked all of the kids a mile and a half and had a picnic out in the woods, where we could see to the west of us the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. And to the east of us the moon rising. So, if I can find a way to peel away from the office, you would probably find me hiking or birdwatching.

On what keeps him up at night: It really is worry and anxiety about the world I’m leaving my daughter. And thinking about what is this hot, crowded century going to look like for her. And how can I, again through this platform that I’m lucky enough to have, how can I do some bit of good to just make sure that it’s not as bad as the world I see.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jason Mark, editor in chief, Sierra Magazine.

Samir Husni: Can you describe for me the state of the environmental union one year after the presidential election?

Jason Mark: The state of our union is polluted, I think is the statement I saw from not just the Sierra Club, but a number of other groups. I say in talks that this is less about the state of the whole environmental union, but the state of environmental journalism. If I have the opportunity to talk to early career or inspiring environmental journalists, I say the bad news is that the environment is going to hell and the good news is that there is no shortage of stories to be told.

We’re obviously very busy. We’re trying to watchdog all of the things that are happening with the Trump administration. I wouldn’t want to shine anybody on, there’s no question that things are pretty grim right now in Washington.

When you look at the obvious attempt to physically dismantle the EPA, which I think is what EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is trying to do. When you look at the effort from the Interior Department to open up great swaths of public land to increase oil and gas drilling. When you look at the unprecedented rollback of national monuments we saw in December, with President Trump attempting to cut in half or more than half, to national monuments in Utah. And then just this month Secretary Zinke proposed to open up virtually all of the U.S. waters to offshore oil and gas drilling. You put all of this in the context of the fact that scientists tell us that time is increasingly limited to take action on reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions; the state of the environmental union is not good.

That being said, there are some encouraging trends outside of Washington. We’re seeing an increasing number of mayors stepping up to put in place plans to move their cities or their jurisdictions to 100 percent clean energy. We’re continuing to see, despite the antipathy from the Trump administration, a booming renewable energy sector; wind and solar efficiency, and even some gains around electric vehicles. So, there are conservation forces; there are other things that are pushing back against the Trump administration, but there’s no question that these are tough times.

Samir Husni: Yet, judging from the cover of your January/February issue, it seems that as an environmental journalist you’re still saying “Hope Trumps Nope.” What role do you think the magazine is playing to ensure that “Hope Trumps Nope?”

Jason Mark: As the national magazine of the Sierra Club, we’re practicing advocacy journalism. So, we have a very clear point of view, and we would certainly never shy from being open about that point of view and being transparent with our readers about where we’re coming from. But it’s still journalism; we’re using the best practices of journalism in our actual fairness, accuracy, attention to detail, and verve of storytelling and writing, to communicate our point of view. To sound an alarm when it’s necessary, and to share good news when we have good news to share.

Sierra Magazine does a number of things. Like any magazine, we want to entertain, delight and surprise our readers. And we’re also trying to inform them, and to activate and engage them. If we’re doing an “Ask Mr. Green” column, which is one of our most popular classic service journalism sections, where a former managing editor, Bob Schildgen, during the ‘90s era, wrote this little advice column for people who were concerned about the environment. The “Ask Mr. Green” is not going to have an urgent call to action; it’s more of a fun, kind of service journalism lifestyle section.

But if you look at a lot of our feature stories or some of the other more newsy dispatches in the magazine, we try as much as possible to align it with some ongoing campaign of the Sierra Club and push to action. So, you might ask where does the “hope” come from? We’re trying to share a story with our readers, grounded, of course, in the facts. And there’s a lot of reasons to be hopeful. Again, if you look at what’s going on outside of Washington.

The magazine really is trying to hit people at an inspirational level. And often that can happen with something as simple as photography. We put a pretty strong emphasis on having really strong, bold photographs in the magazine, kind of tapping into the Sierra Club’s Ansel Adams’ DNA. Ansel was on the board of the Sierra Club for many, many years; his photography became iconic representations of wild America.

Some of the inspiration happens through the writing, but often it can happen through the photography or other ways which say: “Listen, there is this wonderful, wild world out there, this wonderful planet that we’re hoping to protect. This is a world we’re saving.” The magazine has played a role, not just on the entertainment and information levels, but also definitely on an inspirational level. We’re trying to give our readers a sense of being part of a larger community; a larger community of shared values and shared ideals. So, I definitely think of us as a very Sierra Club metaphor, but Sierra Magazine is the campfire around which Sierra Club members can gather.

It’s the only single communication that all Sierra Club members get. Not everybody is on the email list. A lot of people who are on our 3.4 million member email list don’t actually get the magazine. Those people have kind of opted in to different channels according to their interests. But everybody who is a dues-paying member gets the magazine. So, it’s a really important way for us, within our audience and within our community, to gather people six times per year around a single space.

Samir Husni: Is your job as an editor in chief, as a creator in chief, as a curator in chief; is it getting easier or harder to produce a magazine like Sierra Magazine?

Jason Mark: I think it’s harder. It’s harder because of the increase we’ve seen in Sierra Club membership, and therefore in Sierra Magazine readership, just really in the past 14 months. I was hired as editor in chief in October, 2015. And at that time our print run, and our print run aligns pretty closely with our paid circulation because, though we do have a newsstand presence, it’s pretty modest, we have very few copies that get pulled, almost everything gets read; so, our print run in October, 2015 was 535,000. And I think our March/April 2018 edition will have a print run of 695,000. That’s 160,000 new readers.

So, basically, we have 30 percent new member readers since the election. We always tell writers to write for the audience, and you have to know who your audience is. And our audience is shifting. I have this chunk of folks now who are long-time Sierra Club members, some are what we call life-members; they’ve been getting this magazine in one form or another for 20 – 40 years. They’ve been with us a long time.

Then I have this new crop of people who are just coming in the door. So, it’s a challenge to try and balance the interests and the awareness level of those different audiences. I should say that the Sierra Club has gotten more members than the magazine goes out to. We have had some who declined to get the magazine, and we pull out duplicates. So, if there are people who have gotten two memberships in one household, they only get one magazine. The Sierra Club’s total membership is close to 800,000. It’s around 700,000 who get the magazine. It’s challenging and I would say it’s harder, because we’ve got a lot of new people coming in the door and that’s exciting and it’s a huge opportunity, and yet, we’re trying to balance. We have a dark green readership and a light green readership. And I have to, as the curator in chief, appeal to all of them.

Samir Husni: Are you telling me that President Trump helped the Sierra Club by increasing membership?

Jason Mark: The election of President Trump certainly increased a lot of Americans’ concern and awareness about environmental issues. So, did President Trump help the Sierra Club, in terms of helping the issues that we and our members care about? No, I think that’s pretty obvious. But did he in some way give us a new jolt of political power, in so far as members and constituents equal political power? Yes.

Samir Husni: As we talk about the role of advocacy journalism and the role of environmental journalism; you mentioned in the beginning that there are a lot of stories, in fact, more than ever before. Describe that process for me. When you meet with your editorial team, how do you decide on cover stories, such as the “Hope Trumps Nope?” How do you begin that curation process?

Jason Mark: We have a standing weekly editorial meeting, in which we’re, of course, also making editorial decisions, curatorial decisions, across two main channels. There’s the print magazine, coming out six times per year and then there’s our online edition, which we’re shooting to have 10 original stories every week.

But to stay focused on the print edition, two main things; one is we want to make sure that we have a balance across the range of issues that we believe should be or are of interest to the general environmentalist public. We’re not just covering environmental issues that the Sierra Club works on.

This is a random example, I wasn’t actually at the magazine, but the lion that was shot in Africa by a dentist, that story became a very big deal. That’s the kind of thing that Sierra Club doesn’t really work on, wildlife conservation in Africa, but a story like that, that’s already in the news and it’s become of interest to the general environmentally-minded general public, we would cover it. We try to look across the range of environmental issues. There’s going to, of course, be climate and energy, public lands conservation, water, clean air, clean water, public health and environmental justice, wildlife; we’re looking across all those issues and making sure that, not necessarily every issue, but throughout the course of the year we’re touching on all of them. And we’re finding different stories, many from our network of freelancers, that are going to respond to those interests. So, that’s just kind of like topically. We’re trying to make sure that we hit all of the bases.

And then it’s about our tone. The environment can often be famously thought of as something of a depressing topic. And again, without trying to be Pollyannaish or kind of guild the facts, we do try to keep our eye out for stories that have an element of hope or optimism in them. And we try to balance out the three-alarm fire stories that are bad news with some good news stories. We try to balance heavy and light. Heavy, meaning it has politics, science; it’s going to be a deeper, meatier kind of story.

And we balance that with some things that are fun, some of our front of the book matter around the lifestyles stuff; our lifestyles guide. Some of the back of the book, personal essays, “Ask Mr. Green,” looking for our cultural coverage, books, films, TV, documentary speeches; just whatever it is that has some sort of environmental bent. It’s trying to make sure that we are delighting them, entertaining our readers as much as we’re kind of scaring the hell out of them.

Samir Husni: Do you have a litmus test or some criteria that decides between a great story for the print magazine and a great story for online?

Jason Mark: The biggest difference between print and online is going to be, like it is for many, timeline, urgency and turnaround. I mean, we’re long-lead media; a lot of stuff in the print edition is assigned out six to eight months in advance. It would be tight for us to turn something around in four months. We try to get people out into the field. We want reporters and journalists on the ground telling stories and that obviously requires travel time, cost, and all of that. So, if it’s more in the news, we’re just going to do it for online.

And I think it’s great to see some of the innovations that have happened in online, long-form storytelling. It’s hard to hold people’s attention online with a three or four thousand word story. You can do it sometimes and people will dive in, and obviously when we do the print-to-web migration, like when we post a story online, if it’s a 4,000 word cover story, we’ll still pull out all of the social media stops and put it out on our email list hard. But if we know it’s going to be a deeper, more complex story, that probably lends itself better to print versus web.

We’re trying to make sure that the stories in print have a longer shelf life. Something ideally longer than our two-month edition window; I think you can look at the Naomi Klein cover piece we ran as an example.

One thing that I was really proud of in this Jan./Feb. issue was this really talented freelance writer, Madeline Ostrander, who wrote a lovely piece from Minnesota, where she went to places that had voted for Trump, sharing the experience of Trump voters regarding climate change. That should have a six to eight month shelf life.

So, something that we think will have a long shelf life, that someone could pick up off their coffee table six months from the publication date; that’s probably going to find itself in print, more likely. And if our art department thinks it’s the kind of story that is really going to benefit from some really blowout photos, then it would also lend itself more toward print. You can do some great stuff with photos online, but I’m skeptical that you get the same kind of emotional resonance from readers who see that photo on the page.

Samir Husni: Do you feel the information regarding environmental journalism is less or more now, only with different platforms?

Jason Mark: That’s a really hard question. I’m a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and this has been a big topic within that community. We’ve seen a lot of layoffs, as you know, at daily newspapers. And some of those were people whose beats were the environment. I believe today’s environmental journalists’ largest category of membership is freelancers. There’s a lot of people doing this work, but they’re not getting a steady paycheck for it.

We’ve seen, at least online, and I’m trying to think about the whole media landscape; with some of the topnotch dailies, look at what The New York Times has done on their climate/environment team; they’ve really built it out. They’ve snapped up hot talent like Brad Plumer and Kendra Pierre-Louis. Look at what the Times is doing and the Washington Post is doing, and online magazines like Vox. You look at Mother Jones and their very strong environmental reporting; what I’m trying to say is that places that don’t have an environmental focus have very strong environmental reporting teams. And that’s great. So, I’m cautiously hopeful that the information is getting out there and that the issues are being covered.

Samir Husni: You’re also an author as well as an editor in chief, you wrote the book “Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man.” Which do you enjoy more, writing or editing?

Jason Mark: That’s a great question. I’m home today, and I’ve actually been home all of this week, working on a big story, so I definitely think of myself as a writer/editor. It uses different parts of your brain. I love to write and I think of myself as a writer. I guess at the end of the day, I sort of enjoy writing a little bit more, but I also love working with other writers. I love being able to work with a writer in collaboration, and the give and take and push and pull between editor and writer. Then to come out with a final product that is better than the original first draft that the writer turned in. I think it’s a wonderful process and I love being able to do that.

Having spent time with freelancers, it’s a wonderful privilege to be able to give talented freelance writers and photographers work. If a good reporter is judged by the depth of the sources he/she cultivates, then a good editor is judged by the talent he/she cultivates. That’s what I think a lot of editors should do; it’s finding those writers and photographers and illustrators who are really talented, and getting them into your stable. I zip off an email at least once a week to some writer whose work I love. And I tell them how much I’d love it if they would pitch us some stories, or let’s think of some ideas together. And sometimes that pays off and sometimes it doesn’t, but once a week I’ll just write an email and in the subject line I’ll put “Fan letter from an editor,” and send it to someone whose work I really like. I love that process of trying to search out and cultivate talent.

Samir Husni: And in your search for the “Wild in the Age of Man,” did you find the wild?

Jason Mark: I did. The short answer is yes. There’s still a lot of wild out there, even what some are calling the “Anthropocene,” there’s still a lot of wild out there.

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

Jason Mark: The one thing that I would add is there’s not that many of us, in this space at least, left standing. There’s still Audubon, and they do really great work; the nature conservancy has a nice thing they put out, but it’s a bit more like a newsletter. Really, Audubon and Sierra are some of the only at scale, national environmental magazines. And in a way, that’s a shame, but it’s also something of an opportunity for us.

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) closed a wonderful magazine, onEarth, and that was a real shame. Greenpeace no longer has a magazine. There’s a magazine called Orion, which I love, but it has a pretty small circulation. So, I think that’s kind of our challenge and opportunity; there’s not a lot of other specialized, general interest magazines that are covering the environment.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Jason Mark: I think it would be that I’m just trying to be an uncompromising, but still thoughtful voice for protecting and preserving the natural world. That’s really what I’m trying to do. To use writing, ideas, curation as we mentioned, to promote this idea that we have an obligation to leave the world at least as well as we found it. That’s why Sierra Magazine is a good fit for me; I really am motivated by the values that the Sierra Club has, and am also able to bring my particular skill set as a reporter/journalist/editor to advance those ideals.

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

Jason Mark: Probably some combination that has to do with food. I’m standing in my garden talking to you, where I’ve got my winter garlic growing; chard, kale, lettuces, choy, fava beans. You would probably find me puttering around the garden and/or cooking from the garden, and/or hanging out with my daughter. Or hiking. Recently, we took our daughter, and a couple of other families with kids, right after work, and we headed up into the Oakland Hills and we hiked all of the kids a mile and a half and had a picnic out in the woods, where we could see to the west of us the sun setting over the Golden Gate Bridge. And to the east of us the moon rising. So, if I can find a way to peel away from the office, you would probably find me hiking or birdwatching.

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

Jason Mark: It really is worry and anxiety about the world I’m leaving my daughter. And thinking about what is this hot, crowded century going to look like for her. And how can I, again through this platform that I’m lucky enough to have, how can I do some bit of good to just make sure that it’s not as bad as the world I see.

The occupational hazard of being an environmental journalist, and I think the same could be said for people who work in environmental sciences, is knowing too much. And knowing that, in fact, we are in a very tough predicament here. And the real thing that keeps me up at night is just seeing the real unresponsiveness that leads from the American political system. We see other countries wrapping their heads around these large, global environmental challenges, but the Trump administration is just sort of being willfully negligent, or willfully antagonistic.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

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