Mr. Magazine

A pilot, an accomplished photographer, a philanthropist who started his own charity, Circle of Generosity, a publishing director, an author of several books, a marathon runner, a traveler to more than 120 countries, an executive, a magazine rabbi and a high priest in the eyes of those who know him and work with him… In fact, there is no shortage of adjectives to describe Michael Clinton, who is also the chairman of the MPA — The Association of Magazine Media.

He and David Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines, seem to be among the few magazine executives who are not closing any magazines, downsizing, or just reducing the weight of the paper. No, actually they’re doing just the opposite. Hearst magazines has been acquiring magazines, launching very successful print products, without forgetting digital which as of today only represents 3% of the total circulation of Hearst Magazines.

So when I had the opportunity to engage in a conversation with the multi-talented Michael Clinton, my brain was racing with a million questions I was ready to fire at Michael and my eyes were roaming his office observing the pictures on the walls and the model Air-Force One on the round table among many other memorabilia scattered around his office.

I asked Michael about his favorite picture from all the photos he has taken over the years. He was quick to point to a picture on the wall facing his desk of a plane off the coast of Namibia. The same picture is also adorning the cover of his book The Globetrotter Diaries.

I chose that spot in Mr. Clinton’s office on the 43rd floor of the Hearst Tower in NYC as the backdrop for The Mr. Magazine™ Minute with Michael Clinton. I asked Michael Clinton why more publishers aren’t following in the footsteps of Hearst Magazines? Click the video below to listen to his answer:

And now for the sound-bites…

On whether he thinks about magazines when he wears his other, innumerable hats: And so I think about magazines and magazine media all the time. And actually some people around here laugh at me when I say, “I was out for a long run the other day.” And they know that that means that I concocted some idea in my head while I was running that I was about to lay on them.

On the most challenging moment in his career: For many people, a dark moment was in the depths of the recession because as businesses really cut back in their spending, and it was across all media, part of my job is to keep the troops motivated.

On what he believes the other magazine professionals are doing when it comes to why Hearst seems to be one of the few publishers promoting and launching new magazines: That’s a great question, but I don’t know. We’d love more of our peer companies to step out and put out a new magazine and a new concept. But we’re happy to continue to innovate on that front.

On whether he’s a believer in print: Big time.

On what he believes is the most problematic issue we have today in the magazine marketplace: I think that we’re in a state of confusion and disruption in the media landscape in general.

On a solution for the newsstand problems: I think to do innovative things at newsstands such as working with retailers. We’re doing some really innovative things on the shopper marketing front where we’re creating customized units that are combinations of gift-with-purchase.

On what keeps him up at night: I think that what probably keeps me up at night is the dynamic relevance of printed magazines and what they mean to the consumer and making sure that a generation of advertising and media professionals appreciates the value of the medium.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Michael Clinton, President, Marketing and Publishing Director of Hearst…

Samir Husni: I’ve been doing some homework, checking around the building and talking to people; three things I learned about you, some I knew before, some I did not. One is your philanthropy, which hasn’t been covered much, but people do know about it. Two is your marathons, which you cover yourself on your tweets. And third is that you’re the rabbi to most of the magazine publishers and editors in the building, they refer to you as Rabbi Michael. So as the high priest of magazines, especially the ones that you’ve been really involved with – the three most successful launches of the last five years, from the Food Network to Dr. Oz; how do you combine those three entities and juggle between them? Is it always magazines on your mind whether you are teaching, running or giving away your money?

Michael Clinton: That’s a great, great question. I think that fortunately for me I still love the magazine industry; I’ve been in it a long time. So I’m one of the lucky people who wake up every day and am excited to go to work. And I think regardless of what industry you’re in it’s great to be able to have that sense of drive, commitment and interest in your chosen profession.

And so I think about magazines and magazine media all the time. And actually some people around here laugh at me when I say, “I was out for a long run the other day.” And they know that that means that I concocted some idea in my head while I was running that I was about to lay on them.

I often find that my down time of going and running a marathon or training in the park is actually great for clearing my head to come up with new ideas or solutions, solving problems or thinking about new ways to go at what we do.

To answer your question, a lot of what I think about with regards to magazines, a lot of it solves problems, not necessarily in the Hearst Tower, but outside doing a lot of the other things that I do.

Samir Husni: And what has been a most challenging moment in your career? Maybe a time you had to run extremely far to get it out of your system and come up with a solution.

Michael Clinton: For many people, a dark moment was in the depths of the recession because as businesses really cut back in their spending, and it was across all media, part of my job is to keep the troops motivated.

And so when you see the kind of business downturns everyone faced during the recession, especially younger professionals who never experienced a recession, for some of us we’ve been through different business cycles, but for younger people it’s harder for them to see the other side and younger publishers who were coming off of those phenomenal go-go years and 2007 being kind of the penultimate one and keeping people motivated and focused, making them try and appreciate that it wasn’t the end of the world, that business cycles happen and there would be a leveling out and a rebuild, that proved challenging.

So there were a lot of long runs during that time.

Samir Husni: With the Food Network it was smooth sailing from day one. Dr. Oz was a bit rocky in terms of staffing, correct?

Michael Clinton: Yes, we had an editor change and she left on her own to go back to California. I think the thing that was very interesting in 2008 when we decided to launch a magazine, obviously it was a very bold and daring statement, and I think what happened was we were counter-contrary to the marketplace and we went out and launched Food Network Magazine in a very strange way, talking about my earlier comment. It kind of lifted the whole organization because when you do bold things in tough times, what happens is often it not only lifts the entire organization, but when you have the success, it really shows there is clear view out there for other businesses to grow. So you’re right Food Network was an instant takeoff.

Samir Husni: And why is it that you and David Carey are among the very few who have been promoting new magazines, talking about new launches; what’s the rest of the industry doing?

Michael Clinton: That’s a great question, but I don’t know. I think that as the chairman of the MPA, we always talk with encouragement when it comes to new product launches and bringing new magazines to the marketplace, because we now have new proof points that if you put out a great product, the consumer will come and the consumer will pay. We now have three proof points on that.

We’d love more of our peer companies to step out and put out a new magazine and a new concept. But we’re happy to continue to innovate on that front. We now have the perception in the marketplace that we are the innovators in regards to new magazines in this time period. That we’re the ones that will innovate and put out new products and feel strong about new print products as well as all the other things that we’re doing digitally.

Samir Husni: You are one of very few companies that never lost its focus on print, just to swim in the digital ocean. That you actually kept both print and digital.

Michael Clinton: And don’t forget we acquired Hachette. So at the same time, aside from launching new products, we made a very big print acquisition also coming right off the heels of the recession.

Samir Husni: So are you a believer in print?

Michael Clinton: Big time. I think what we see, and once again I’ll go back to today, Dr. Oz, we have 300,000 subscriptions in hand. It has been one of the fastest ramp ups, one of the highest pay rates, where the consumer actually wrote the check; and as you know we sold out on the newsstand and went back to press.

So I think even if it was 2008 when it was Food Network, people might say, well OK, that was then and then we did HGTV in 2011 and people might say, that was then, but it’s 2014 and it’s happening again people. I think the trick is in finding a fresh voice in a cluttered marketplace and I think those three examples really had a fresh voice in their market.

Samir Husni: What do you think is the most problematic issue we have today in the magazine marketplace?

Michael Clinton: I think that we’re in a state of confusion and disruption in the media landscape in general. And I think that if you’re a CMO today of a brand and you think about everything that is coming at you, the big headline in Adweek: is TV dead? Video is taking over. What’s happening in the digital marketplace with programmatic and view ability.

Every media platform seems to have big issues as part of the overall media ecosystem that marketers are challenged with. So the print medium has a long history of tried and true audience and audience measurement, but in a world of disruption everything is sort of up for grabs.

So I think what a lot of marketers are finding and what I’m seeing is that it’s all about the media mix and magazines play a part in that mix. That when you have the correct media mix in your media spends it can actually lift all boats.

There’s a lot of noise and disruption and I think the overall noise and disruption affects all media, not just magazines.

Samir Husni: Putting the rabbi hat on and talking to the future generations, people interested in our business, in journalism, in magazines; if you’re teaching a class, what do you tell the students?

Michael Clinton: You know I think that the good news is that magazine brands used to be just print. And if I use an analogy in the retail world, I call that our bricks & mortar business. Even though E-commerce is ubiquitous, bricks & mortar is not going to go away. It’s a different experience. So when someone is in the pages of Esquire, Oprah or Cosmo, they’re having a very unique and different experience.

It’s part of the bricks & mortar story. The beauty we’ve had and I think that what gets lost in the conversation and I talk to publishers about this all the time, is that the brand footprint now for Cosmo can live in many different places. So the core is always going to be magazines and print and I think that’s as far as the eye can see. Cosmo.com, Cosmo – social media, Cosmo events, Cosmo won-off-TV-things; we now have the ability to take our brands out to other brand and media platforms that before we didn’t really have the opportunity to do.

So I think that for young people I like to say, think about it as a horizontal experience, not just a vertical experience. Because whether you’re on the publishing side or the editorial side, and this has already happened in the news marketplace, if you speak to a young reporter now, they’re producing their story, filming their story, and posting on the dot com, doing their social media; so they’re multitasking with different content and we’re doing the same thing, so it’s a big opportunity.

I think magazine media’s core is still going to be the printed page.

Samir Husni: Do you think we can ever succeed with a digital-only magazine? Even though I don’t call anything but print a magazine…

Michael Clinton: I think you have to clarify that question; are you talking about web-based or tablet-based?

Samir Husni: Can you name a tablet-based digital magazine that’s making money?

Michael Clinton: Well, that’s a great point. I think that the opportunity is there for a magazine that is a tablet-only magazine. I think the tablet world may have to mature a bit. But in our May issues we did a test; we took 10 of our women’s magazines and we embedded a 12-page beauty supplement that ran in 800,000 copies of those paid circulation magazines. Now that’s a bit of a scale play that never really existed before. You know, could that become its own magazine, who knows.

But I think that we’re in the very early days of testing whether something could have a circulation of a half million, but only live as a tablet distributed magazine. I think we’re too early in the product life cycle of magazines on tablets, but five or ten years from now it could be possible. But I think that we have a long way to go.

As you know we only have three percent in total magazine subscriptions on the tablet to begin with, so I think you almost need to have the consumer have a deeper learned experience in how they’re getting their content.

Samir Husni: Which leads me to say you are the only company that doesn’t bundle…

Michael Clinton: We do not bundle, no.

Samir Husni: If you want Cosmo on the tablet, you pay $19.95 or $14.95 and if you want the magazine, you buy the magazine…

Michael Clinton: Why do we do that? We have an expression: fee not free. Let me first talk about authentication. The analogy we would make is I went to go see Godzilla on Saturday night, but when you walked out of the theater they did not hand you a free CD because you just paid for your ticket or when you buy a book, say the new Hillary Clinton book, you don’t get a free download on your tablet. If you want it then you buy it two different times.

I think what’s been great about iTunes, in particular, is if you wanted the content you paid for it, hardcover book versus download book. So we took that position very early on and as a result we have about a million, almost a million-four, paid subs that are tablet-based subs and it creates a level, from our perspective, of wantedness from the consumer and also a story we can tell the advertiser. So it’s choosing your distribution.

Samir Husni: Talking about distribution; how’s Next Issue doing?

Michael Clinton: It’s coming along. It’s a fantastic consumer proposition. In their next round, where they need to go next as they continue to build their brand is a big marketing and promotional play. At a certain point they have to get the message out to the consumer marketplace at large, because while it’s growing, they need to get that lift-off. They’re going to have to get that funding to be able to promote it in a big, big way to the consumer.

Samir Husni: What can we do about the newsstands? With closings and rumors of closings…can we have a magazine industry in this country without newsstands?

Michael Clinton: It’s 10 percent of magazine circulation, so it’s small, but it’s an important piece; forget the economics because it’s an important economic contributor. But it’s an important piece for sampling, to get that magazine in front of the consumer’s eyeballs.

So the good news is as doors shrink, borders go out of business; on the flip side there are other doors and stores that are actually growing their magazine presence such as Costco and Dollar General; points that didn’t have magazines. So the answer is yes, it’s important to have newsstand.

And also I think to do innovative things at newsstands such as working with retailers. We’re doing some really innovative things on the shopper marketing front where we’re creating customized units that are combinations of gift-with-purchase. So if you buy a skincare product and if you buy a copy of Marie Clare, Elle or Cosmo and we align ourselves with the skincare product, there can be a dollar off somewhere.

Creating these customized incentive packages at floor level, which is what happens in general with retail anyway, aside from just being in the traditional slots that magazines occupy.

I think the next generation is going to be doing more inventive marketing programs at floor level, so you’re stimulating sales as opposed to magazines just sitting there stagnant. We’re doing a lot on that front here.

Samir Husni: Do you think that will solve the mobile blinders problem?

Michael Clinton: I heard a stat the other day about how many times someone checks their mobile phone, but you have to think at a certain point it’s going to be overload. So I guess the answer is probably not, but the mobile blinders affect any impulse purchase if you think about it. Unless you’re going to just buy something specifically, you’re going to have that.

But I think about something like Hudson News at the airports; when you go into that store, you’re basically going in because you are looking at the magazines versus a check-out. The mobile blinders are a big issue for every business category.

Samir Husni: This question is for you, the photographer; what’s the best picture you’ve ever taken?

Michael Clinton: There it is, on the far left. The story behind that picture is that I’m a pilot and I was on the famous Skeleton Coast of Namibia, which is in the country just north of South Africa, on the West Coast. It is a spectacularly beautiful landscape. You’re flying along the coast and the sand dunes hit the water and this is where you find these hulls of ships in the flat sand dunes because that’s why they call it the Skeleton Coast because of all these boats.

So I was literally flying up this coast for a couple of three hours, I wasn’t the pilot the entire time, there were six of us on board, but I happened to be then, and it was very difficult to see another plane in the air throughout the whole week that we were in Namibia and all of a sudden I saw that plane coming beneath us and I asked the other pilot could you please take the controls because I was flying at the time, grabbed the camera and I yelled, “Come on, we have to keep up with him.” So we tracked him and just the image of that airplane against that backdrop with the shadow is a very romantic shot. It’s actually a shot that, when I’ve had gallery exhibits, it’s one of my most popular.

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

Michael Clinton: I’m a good sleeper. I go to sleep with a clear head. No, I think that what probably keeps me up at night is the dynamic relevance of printed magazines and what they mean to the consumer and making sure that a generation of advertising and media professionals appreciates the value of the medium. And we do a lot of things to innovate to keep that message front and center, but it is a very dynamic and growing medium with new products. And from a circulation and audience standpoint, it’s been very consistent even during the recession. You’ve heard the famous line during the recession: we didn’t have a consumer problem, we had an advertising problem.

But remarkably, from circulation and an audience standpoint, it’s been a very consistent story and that sometimes gets lost in the whirlwind of the whole media ecosystem. So how do we get that embedded into the brains of younger professionals?

Samir Husni: Thank you.
© Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

In the life of any media company change is the only constant. But change doesn’t happen by itself; change is always searching for an innovative, passionate visionary who can ensure a successful present, based on a solid past with an eye for an even more successful future.

And change needs a leader who knows what he wants and how to execute a plan to get it, a leader who is involved in every detail of that method to the point that he is an actual foot soldier instead of the general that merely leads the way.

William (Billy) S. Morris III is such a leader. When I flew to the headquarters of Morris Communications in Augusta, GA. to interview Mr. Morris and his president of Morris Media Network, Donna Kessler, I knew there was a story here that needed to be told.

I have worked and consulted with Mr. Morris and Ms. Kessler for years and have witnessed the evolution of a newspaper company into a multimedia institution.

What follows is the Morris Media Network story, related succinctly and passionately by Billy Morris and Dona Kessler.

But first the sound-bites…

On the evolution of Morris Communications: My father was in the newspaper business and I came in the business after I got out of college in 1956 and we continued to add newspapers until we built up a very nice cluster of papers. But along the way we started to add some magazines.

On the common thread that runs through Morris Communications: The thread that runs through them all is the mandate to excellence. We want to be the best that we can possibly be and certainly better than our competitors.

On coping with the changes in type to computers over the years: We were in front of it or up on the upper edge of it. The technological changes that occurred first in the newspaper business by the use of computers to hyphenate and justify type, we were the second or the third newspaper company in the country to use the IBM 513 computer to do that.

On following your passion and your gut instinct when acquiring titles for the company: I have not found any negative aspects to it at all. As a matter of fact, I think you do better with things that you like and enjoy, that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about and that you do yourself. I think it’s a good thing.

On giving advice when it comes to print in our digital age: Print obviously is what pays the bills and I think print is a very important part of what we do, but if I had to give somebody advice I don’t think it would necessarily be dollar and cents advice. I think it would be stay true to your passions.

On what keeps them up at night: I don’t think we have enough time to go through what keeps me up at night. If I have to summarize it would be my commitment and my concern that we continue to serve our readers and our partners and our advertisers the best way that we can.

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ interview with Billy Morris and Donna Kessler – the powers-that-be at Morris Communications…

Samir Husni: Mr. Morris, for background purposes, can you briefly tell us the history of the Morris Media Network? Morris is known as a newspaper company but now you have more magazines than newspapers. Can you briefly take us through the evolution of Morris Communications from a newspaper company to a multimedia institution now?

Billy Morris: You’re right, Samir. My father was in the newspaper business and I came in the business after I got out of college in 1956 and we continued to add newspapers until we built up a very nice cluster of papers. But along the way we started to add some magazines.

We started a few city magazines, we bought some magazines of various kinds and today we have a very nice cluster of magazines that’s concentrated in visitor magazines, primarily the ‘Where’ brand. We have a cluster of equine magazines and we have a cluster of sporting magazines and we have a cluster of Alaska magazines and a cluster of city magazines.

We have four or five clusters of magazines, all of which are important, all of which serve a specific audience in a specific way. And we’re just privileged to have that opportunity. We are a free people in this country and we need lots of information. We make all of our own decisions and in order to do that we must have information — information on the small items like what movie to go to tonight and what to buy at the grocery store and infinite information on the bigger items like what house to buy or what car to buy or in the case of someone who’s reading an equine magazine, what horse to buy.

And then there’s the more important decisions which we make about our democracy, who to vote for and what to do with those important issues. So we have a real calling as journalists to provide information to a variety of different people on a variety of different subjects and for a variety of different reasons and purposes.

And what we do both in our newspapers as well as in our magazines is essentially important to the people who live in our communities or the people who have the interests that we serve. And we cherish the opportunity to serve them and we hope to be able to have the highest possible standard that we can accomplish to do that for them.

We’re continuing to improve, continuing to change, continuing to recognize that there are new people coming along all along who need the information that we have. We are honored to be in the business — magazines are critically important to what we do and we are very honored to have these magazines and we are greatly privileged to have an opportunity to work with you in different ways such as your ACT conferences as well as the many other things that you do for other magazines.

SH: Thank you. What do you think is the common thread if we are going to take all of those clusters — the national magazines, the equine, the travel, the MVP — is there a common thread that goes through the entire Morris publications?

BM: The thread that runs through them all is the mandate to excellence. We want to be the best that we can possibly be and certainly better than our competitors. The standard that we hold is that we’ve got to be good at what we do. We treat people fairly, we admit our mistakes when we make one and we try to stay on top of the different segments and do a great job for the readers and for our audience. The demand for excellence is the standard.

SH: One of the things that the good Lord gave you and me is that we have been privileged to see journalism change from the hot type to the linotype to the computers…How did you cope with that change?

BM: We were in front of it or up on the upper edge of it. The technological changes that occurred first in the newspaper business by the use of computers to hyphenate and justify type, we were the second or the third newspaper company in the country to use the IMB 513 computer to do that, which greatly speeded up and made more efficient the process of setting type.

We were one of the first companies in the country to connect our three newspapers — Augustus, Savannah and Athens — to one computer located in Augusta over telephone lines, this was back in the 60’s, to use that one machine to hyphenate, justify type for three different newspapers in three different communities.

So we’ve been on the forefront of technological innovation. Efficient production and good technology has been one of the keys to our success. It has given us good profit margins, which has enabled us to reinvest in the product side — the product side, the content side and the editorial side of our business and to do a better job there.

And I’m delighted to have Donna Kessler, her background is production, and she likewise has picked up our standard and gone on to an even higher level with the good production work that she and her staff do.

So doing a good, efficient job of producing what you do is important and it allows you to a better job on the front end of the editorial and the content end. You can do a better job there if you’re efficient with how you produce it.

SH: One of the things that I’ve heard you say often is you bought this magazine out of passion, you bought this magazine because you always wanted to do this magazine like in the case of Western Horseman. Are there any dangers for a CEO of a media company to run with his passion, acquiring titles and building magazine companies or do you still believe that if you don’t follow your gut you’re not going anywhere?

BM: I have not found any negative aspects to it at all. I happen to like horses, and I like travel and I like outdoor sporting events so I haven’t found any negative to it all. As a matter of fact, I think you do better with things that you like and enjoy, that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about and that you do yourself. I think it’s a good thing. This is not to say we couldn’t efficiently run a magazine on a subject that we didn’t have any interest in. We could certainly do that but I just happen to enjoy the ones that we have because I like those activities.

SH: And through the years you’ve collected a lot of titles. You’ve collected competing companies like ‘Guest Informant’ and ‘Where’ titles. You’ve acquired national magazines; you’ve acquired city magazines. And then when you had all these magazines all over the place, then comes a lady from L.A. that you’ve put in charge of the Morris Media Network. So Donna how easy was it taking all these different titles and bringing them in one way or another to Augusta, Georgia?

DK: It wasn’t easy, it was a challenge but it was a lot of fun. We started first with the ‘Where’-branded titles and probably had in excess of 25 different acquisitions. As you mentioned, they were competing titles. We had multiple offices in multiple locations. We had in excess of five or six production centers. We probably had 200 different sales compensation plans. Really the first thing that we needed to do was the travel sector. We really needed to take the company from being a bunch of licensees into really being one solid division and functioning as such.

Part of that entire process was establishing or staying true to the philosophy of what needs to be local stays local because we have 35-plus markets outside of Augusta and we have a strong local presence.

So we wanted to make sure that the editor stayed local because as Mr. Morris said it’s very important to make sure we have our finger on the pulse and we are reporting timely, accurate curated content. We wanted the salespeople to stay local because it’s very important for them to touch their customers on a regular basis. And we wanted the circulation to stay local because they needed to be able to see where the product was going and have a relationship with our distribution partners.

Once we were able to stabilize the travel side of our business and have things that needed to be local and centralize the things on the back end that did not need to be in the markets that’s when Mr. Morris came to me and the team that I work with and said, “Could you do the same thing for the national magazines?” We of course were delighted and thrilled to do that and it’s a model that has worked quite well for us.

SH: We all know that we live in a digital era yet you have millions of print impressions. I mean you still produce millions of copies of different titles and magazines. If somebody comes to you for advice and said, “Donna you’ve established this formula, you were able to do this with the travel sector/cluster, you did this with the equine, you did this with the national magazines — what advice would you offer somebody who is so lost in this digital era to help with the print aspect of the business?”

Donna Kessler: Well, I think first and foremost given where we are right now you can’t only focus on print. Print obviously is what pays the bills and I think print is a very important part of what we do, but if I had to give somebody advice I don’t think it would necessarily be dollar and cents advice. I think it would be stay true to your passions.

Mr. Morris told you what he thought the common threads were that ran through our different publications. Be true to your readers, be true to your advertisers, be dedicated and committed to providing the best possible content, the most usable content to the people who have these passions. And also be prepared in any way, shape or form that they want to receive that content. So I think if you are true to that and know who you are serving then the rest kind of falls into place as long as you can offer that in a variety of different ways.

SH: You have a print background. You came from a print production background. How easy or hard was the adjustment from this print background to this digital era that we’re living in and how did you use that for your benefit in a digital era?

DK: It was a difficult adjustment for me and I think if you would have asked me two years ago or three years ago I probably would have said oh yeah I get it, I get the fact that we need to make the change. But it took me about another year to truly understand what that meant. And I think once I truly embraced it then I was able to communicate that to the team. People say it all the time: If you as a leader don’t believe that this in inevitable and this is happening and you need to touch on a number of different levels then no one in your organization is going to believe it. It was difficult for me to truly feel that I get it now and I truly feel that we are a content company-serving people with different passions. What was the second part of the question?

SH: The adjustment and how do you advise someone who came from a print background…

DK: I think it goes back to what I said to the answer that I gave the question before. Again, if you focus on the content, if you focus on the passion, if you focus on the needs of the person who is consuming your content and then take that — that’s where you start. And then take that and say how can I serve that person, that passionate person about horses for example in whatever way — print, digital, e-commerce or events. I think as long as you focus on that it leads you down the right path.

SH: Where is now, in the current Morris Media Network, the manifestation of the content. Can I find it on the web, can I find it on an app, and can I find it in print?

DK: Yes, and it depends upon which title that you’re talking about. The plan of course is to analyze each title and each passion — we’ve done some of this already — and see what adjacencies if you will make sense. If you look in the travel space, we just launched a new website. We are in the process of also getting ready to launch by the end of the first quarter a native app. If you take a look at some of the more traditional publications, some of them have Adobe DPS versions, some of them just have replica versions and some of them have apps. Some of them have really, really strong social media presences depending on the products type and the passion. Some of them are aggressively going into the events space. Again, it goes back to what is the best way to deliver content to those people.

SH: Do you think there will be a day that you will give up on print?

DK: No.

SH: Mr. Morris, do you think there will ever be a day that you give up on print?

BM: Absolutely not.

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

DK: You have to love your job. And in addition to being committed to the products that you serve, I think you have to feel good about getting up and going to work every day. If you don’t have that then nothing else comes from it.

SH: Mr. Morris, anything I’ve failed to ask you?

BM: No, I think we’ve got a great opportunity, and a great country and great people and a great company and I’m delighted to have this opportunity.

SH: Then my final question to you…what keeps you up at night?

BM: Nothing. I believe that we’re in a wonderful business of providing a free people with information that they need and that will change form time to time. Some people want it in print. Some people want it online, some people want it on the radio and some people want it in other ways such as magazines or books.

I just think we have a great opportunity to continue to do that. We’ll make some mistakes and we’ll have to do a few things over every now and then. But the fact of the matter is that we’re in a wonderful business, in a free society and it is not going to go away. We’ve got a great business. We’re just as important as anybody else in the structure — doctors, lawyers, accountants and professional people who do important things. We do important things too. We provide important information to a free people who need it — commercial information and non-commercial. So we’ve got a great, great business and a great country in which to live, great opportunities. So absolutely nothing keeps me up at night.

SH: So just for the record, you are the first CEO that I have interviewed in my entire history as a journalist who gave me that answer — that nothing keeps them up at night. Now we are going to put the challenge to Ms. Kessler here…what keeps you up at night?

DK: I don’t think we have enough time to go through what keeps me up at night. If I have to summarize it would be my commitment and my concern that we continue to serve our readers and our partners and our advertisers the best way that we can. That’s really what keeps me up at night. And trying to make sure that my team is going down the right path to figure out how we’re going to do that, anticipating how we can make their love horses better or whatever it may be. So take that and break it down into about 500 hundred different things and that’s what keeps me up at night.

SH: Thank you.

© Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, 2014. All Rights Reserved.

An article based on this interview was published in Press Check, Spring 2014 issue. Press Check is a quarterly newsletter published by Publishers Press, Inc.

Munich, Germany: In the midst of all the doom and gloom surrounding the future of printed newspapers, one can’t help but ask, what is the future of newspapers?

Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni asks Ole Munk, Managing Director, Ribergaard & Munk communication design, Denmark about the future of newspapers in print and why design of newspapers is important today. Mr. Munk was a speaker at the WAN/IFRA Printing Summit in Munich, Germany.

In this video interview (click below to hear) Mr. Munk talks about the ways to fight back the decline in newspaper circulation, the emphasis on the quality of print, the role of generational divide and the major stumbling blocks facing his work today.

An ongoing series of interviews with MagNet’s Luke Magerko.

Luke Magerko was a consistent contributor to my blog in 2013. Luke has partnered with MagNet to provide retail analytics for the publishing industry. Today, we pick up our conversation from two two weeks ago and, going forward, MagNet will provide me with an interview with Luke every other week highlighting retail analytics.

So Here is my first question of this segment of the Mr. Magazine™ Interview with MagNet’s Luke Magerko.

WHY ARE WE FOCUSING ON CELEBRITY COVERS AGAIN THIS WEEK?
MagNet is reporting on sales results from the weeks of 2/10/2014 (“week seven”) and 2/17/2014 (“week eight”) to analyze cultural topics on regional sales. In light of recent celebrity price increases, we want to provide an alternative marketing/editorial strategy to increase sale.

WHO WON THE WEEK: THE ISSUE CATEGORY STANDINGS (“ICS”)
In week seven, there were strong performances by both People Magazine (1.28 Seasonal Performance Index) and Life & Style (1.25 Seasonal Performance Index).
Titles generally underperformed in week eight with only two issues showing average results: In Touch and Life & Style both garnered 1.00 Seasonal Performance Indices while all other titles were below average.

SINCE THE PERFORMANCE INDEX IS STILL A NEW CONCEPT, LET’S LOOK AT ONE EXAMPLE AND WALK ME THROUGH THE RESULTS:
People Magazine, Issue 7, posted great results in sell-through efficiency (50.0%) and both performance indices. Looking at the performance index (1.15), People indexed 15% higher than one year of previous issues. The seasonal performance index (1.28) indicates the 2014 issue 7 outperformed previous issue sevens by an index of 28%. This is a spectacular result and an early candidate for 2014 celebrity magazine of the year.

DID ANY ISSUE STAND OUT FOR YOU THESE WEEKS?
Yes, we will focus on InTouch (issue 7) and briefly mention that OK! Magazine results (issue 8) are similar. Both issues were average nationally, however when we mined the data, the results were anything but average.
At MagNet, we have been tracking cultural topics and regional sales. To do so, we produced performance indices at the regional level. We found the two country celebrity titles had specific areas of strength (the American South* and states of the West North Central United States*) and areas of weakness (The Northeast* and Pacific United States*).
For example, in the West North Central United States*, InTouch seasonal performance index was an incredible 1.44. Similar results were found in the American South. Unfortunately, while some areas did extremely well, others regions tapered off almost as much. The Pacific region showed double-digit declines in the seasonal performance index and the northeast season performance index was 0.79.
Although the national performance suggests an average issue, a lot is going on at the regional level.

SO WHY IS THE SALES VARIANCE BY REGION SO IMPORTANT?
Editors need a more granular level of detail to make informed editorial decisions. We are proponents of the split cover, especially when we can prove certain content significantly increase sales in certain regions of the country.

WHAT IF EDITORS DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH CONTENT FOR A SECOND COVER?
We understand there are editorial constraints on cover production. However, our findings might incentivize editors to consider ensuring there is enough content to provide a cover worthy of nearly half the population.

AND WHAT DID YOU FIND WHEN YOU ANALYZED THE CELEBRITY TITLES?
Our goal was to monetize different cover results. To do so, we needed to create an index that identified a yearly average sales index per store. We created Sales above Replacement (“SAR”). SAR is a formula that asks: what would happen to sales if we replaced the existing cover with average result or replacement cover? For this week’s analysis we analyze all 2013 – 14 cover results highlighting Kim Kardashian or Blake Shelton (including Miranda Lambert where applicable) on the cover.

DID THE REGIONALITY ASSUMPTION HOLD?
Yes. Blake Shelton easily outperformed a replacement cover in most of the Midwest and the Deep South from Arkansas to Alabama. His covers performed very poorly in the Pacific and New England. Other regions were essentially flat. Kardashian was average in all regions but one, the Mid-Atlantic (essentially the I-95 corridor between Washington D.C. and New York) where results were significantly above average.

CAN YOU MONETIZE THIS SUCCESSES AND POOR PERFORMANCES?
In order to monetize our findings, we looked at one title specifically. In 2013-14, one of these five celebrity titles carried both Kardashian and Blake Shelton multiple times. We found the Shelton covers would have provided a 12 – 25% sales gain in the Southern regions and a 12-13% loss in the Northeast and Pacific Regions. Kim Kardashian’s garnered 15% increase in all the Northeast and flat in all other regions.

SO WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF THERE WERE TWO COVERS?
Knowing what we now know, MagNet would have recommended a split like this:
∗ NORTHEAST: Kardashian
∗ MIDWEST (West North Central): Shelton
∗ MIDWEST (East North Central): Kardashian
∗ SOUTH: Shelton
∗ WEST: Kardashian
The strength of Shelton in the Midwest and South plus the strength of Kardashian in the Northeast would compel shoppers to buy more copies. However, the weakness of Shelton in the Pacific would be masked by the consistently average results of Kardashian.
MagNet estimates that if the covers were split between the two celebrities, this publisher would have received an 11-16% sales gain.

YOU CAN’T JUST HAVE A CELEBRITY WAITING IN THE BACKGROUND, YOU NEED TO USE SOMETHING FROM THE MAGAZINE!
I couldn’t agree more! MagNet’s goal is to provide a regional sales above replacement number for any celebrity, topic or other attribute that has been on the cover of a magazine. This would allow an editor to cull their content and find the two best images for the week.

HOW WOULD THAT WORK?
Imagine the editor looking a simple index table that would show Miley Cyrus’s regional rating or Duck Dynasties’ regional rating (hint, these two celebrities are stronger in different parts of the country). Then the editor and newsstand team could create a galley reflecting the cover splits. MagNet would be happy to walk any publisher through this process.

OPERATIONALLY, CAN WHOLESALERS SHIP TWO DIFFERENT COVERS?
Yes, I worked for with a publisher which split covers more than 100 times over the years. Publishers cannot send two covers to one wholesaler location, but other than that restriction, there should be very little standing in the way of a cover split.

HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO THE PRICE TEST?
The publishing industry focuses on increasing revenue from the internet, mobile devices, and a myriad of other platforms such as print on demand. However, it seems as if the only strategy for newsstand is acceptance of newsstand declines and price increases. Samir, we will continue to mine the data, finding insights for publishers and editors but our editorial knowledge is limited. We ask editors to reach out to Josh Gary at MagNet jgary@magnetdata.net or me, lmagerko@market-analytics.com and we will confidentially consult with them. We understand that each title is unique; we will identify trends that are of specific interest to each individual editor. We look forward to those conversations.

∗ENDNOTE: CENSUS BUREAU REGIONS:
The United States Census Bureau provides a regional breakdown by state. There are four regions and nine sub-regions (sub-regions in parenthesis): Northeast (Mid-Atlantic and New England), South (South-Atlantic, East South Central and West South Central), Midwest (East North Central and West North Central) and finally the West (Pacific and Mountain).
You can visually see how each state is categorized here.

© Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni, 2014.

For over 70 years, Parade Magazine has lived between the pages of America’s Sunday newspapers and has always provided its readers with quality stories of substance and clarity. The content in the past was a very serious and news-driven type of editorial.

Maggie Murphy, Editor, and CEO, Jack Haire, talk about the more contemporary Parade and its focus on connecting with readers and surprising them with stories that both delight and inform, while at the same time entertain.

Today’s Parade is as bright, colorful and varied as its namesake. So join the excitement as you watch it float by within the words of the people who make it happen, Maggie Murphy, Editor and Jack Haire, the magazine’s CEO. The Mr. Magazine™ conversation with the leaders of Parade Magazine…

But first, the Mr. Magazine™ Minute with Maggie Murphy on the value and future of print:

And now for the sound-bites:
On some of the skills needed to publish a general interest mass magazine in today’s digital world: I think the skills you need are the ones you needed a century ago: curiosity about what’s going on in the world around you and that means every part of that world.

On how you hook people to pick up Parade from between the pages of a Sunday paper: Well, we pop out in Parade. I always think about what Jack Haire, our CEO says about Parade when he compares it to the prize in the box of Cracker Jacks.

On whether she feels the burden of delivering content each and every week: This is the best job ever, people just don’t realize it. I get to do my job 52 weeks a year and I still don’t do all of the covers that I would like to.

On checking the nation’s pulse, from one coast to the other, when it comes to what they want: I love the opportunity and I do think the staff that works here now also loves the opportunity, to write about a variety of things.

On whether or not she thinks newspapers are going to disappear: I don’t think there will ever be a day we won’t have newspapers. I don’t know if I want to live in a country that doesn’t have a newspaper.

On whether or not he (Jack Haire) can envision a day where Parade exists without newspapers or without print: I think individuals choose whether they’re going to read print or not. I think there’s a collective out there of people, who like to share in an experience.

On how Parade can reach those individual clusters of readers that the mass audience has become: They are narrators of their own story, but they also don’t just want their version of events. They need other voices. I think one of the great things that has happened is information has been democratized, and I think that people actually understand the responsibility of that.

On what newspapers can learn from magazines like Parade: Inspire them. For instance, we’ll do what people learn nationally until many of the papers join in and do it locally.

On what keeps her up at night: It’s making sure that the people who are working here who are giving their best are also getting the best out of it.

And now the lightly edited Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Maggie Murphy, Editor of Parade Magazine and Jack Haire, CEO…

Samir Husni: You’re the editor of one of the largest, if not the largest, mass magazines left in America. What are some of the skills you believe you need to publish a general interest mass magazine in today’s digital audience of one marketplace?

Maggie Murphy: I think the skills you need are the ones you needed a century ago: curiosity about what’s going on in the world around you and that means every part of that world. For instance, whenever I’m somewhere I always ask people, who are you, how did you get here, where did you go to school, or tell me about your kids. And certain themes come up again and again. And listening closely to the people you’re working with.

I really think it’s curiosity, being curious about things and realizing there is a story there. And I think that transcends any medium. And if you’re curious and can ask enough questions to deliver interesting answers it doesn’t matter what format it is; you engage people.

Samir Husni: So how do you hook the people to pick up Parade from the vast pages of the newspapers? It’s getting a bit easier, since the Sunday papers are getting a little bit smaller.

Maggie Murphy: Well, we pop out in Parade. I always think about what Jack Haire, our CEO says about Parade when he compares it to the prize in the box of Cracker Jacks. People who are readers of the Sunday paper, of which there are still many, many millions, appreciate that pop of Parade and I think the fact that we’re simply color and we’re also going to be delivering something that will be optimistic.

I think I said to you once, and it still holds true; after my very first story meeting here, and Parade has gone through so much iteration through various editors; there was a time and a place where we were the newsweekly for little papers across the country that didn’t have those resources and so the magazine was allowed to be a very serious news-driven magazine and it certainly was under my most famous predecessor, Walter Anderson.

But in the years after Walter and the other editors leading up to me; the world changed, you can get that news at your fingertips. So my goal is to surprise people and to put something on the cover that they have been thinking about and we got there and articulated that before they even realized they wanted to read a story about whatever it was.

We were talking before about rebuilding America’s schools, that was a story we did last fall, actually two years ago where when I was walking by a crumbling school, and we’ve all talked about this and we said these schools were built primarily after World War II, if not before and we’ve not put any money into infrastructure and we said what would it take and how could we make schools more efficient and we set out to do that story and I think that’s the kind of story that people connect to because everybody walks past the school whether they’re sending their children there or it’s the place where their children once went.

So I think the goal is to really just find stories that are stories of consequence, delight and stories that inform. Some of our best covers are things like: the science of siblings which we did, where we actually used a Simpson’s illustration background and did a special illustration of the Simpson’s for us growing up. Because who knows? Maybe on Sunday you’re about to spend three hours with your siblings and wondering how to get through it. It’s very intuitive, I think.

I believe the people look for Parade because they do view it as: OK – it’s Sunday morning and maybe I’ll look at the front page, I know I’m going to get to that, but I want to start with something light first. And I’m perfectly comfortable with that. My goal is to kind of catch people feeling something that they didn’t expect; a little bit of emotion and that piece of information. And I think that’s the trick; that’s the magic.

Samir Husni: You are the conductor of this vast train that has millions of people waiting for you on Sunday; do you feel a burden to deliver?

Maggie Murphy: This is the best job ever, people just don’t realize it. I get to do my job 52 weeks a year and I still don’t do all of the covers that I would like to. We get to do food, politics; we get to do roundtables and celebrities. We get to say no to celebrities if they don’t do what we want. I think there are so many jobs that are so much harder than mine and I think the variety of what we get to do make it an incredibly interesting place for myself and the staff. Everybody who comes here has certain areas that they specialize in. I certainly came as more of an entertainment journalist, I had done food and lifestyle at People and Country when I was there and at Life Magazine. But now I have a whole food magazine that I help execute, in Dash, which is now over 8 million and it’s really humming along and doing very well.

So every week you get to be something different and I’ve worked at genre magazines; I loved when I worked at Entertainment Weekly and looking at the world through the prism of entertainment. And I loved working at People, where you could look at the world through the prism of celebrities.

But here it’s like every week we have a different prism. Now the challenge is generally that sometimes there’s a real knock against general interest magazines, I think. I think that advertisers get a little like: well, what are you? But I think the ability to be so many things is great. It’s like everybody’s Facebook page where 80 things are there and at least some should reflect what our publication should be.

I think with the demise of Newsweek, sometimes you’ll say: well, that’s kind of a Newsweek story or has Time done that story yet. So we compete. I mean, I love Nancy Gibbs; she’s an incredible editor that I’ve always admired, since I was at Time as a younger editor myself. And I think she has done an amazing job so far; but I would look at those covers and say: could I do those or how I could do those covers differently.

So we just have a great time here. It’s just a great audience to have.

Samir Husni: The reason that I asked you that question is because of late the success or demise of a magazine has fallen on the shoulders of the editor. When you have the freedom with the weekly to do what you want every week; how do you keep your hand on the pulse of the nation, on someone say, in Memphis and then someone in L.A.; how can you check that pulse when we have this nation of audiences of one?

Maggie Murphy: You’re absolutely right and that’s a great question. I think there are a number of things first. I love the opportunity and I do think the staff that works here now also loves the opportunity, to write about a variety of things. But make no mistake; there are also huge responsibilities that any editor faces.

I remember very early on in my career at Entertainment Weekly, it was right at the beginning of the magazine’s success and the magazine got rated; people who had been a part of the early start-up like Barbara O’Dair, who ended up going to different publications had the editor, Jim Seymore, worried. I had just arrived there, and I said, well, people leave; what’s the big deal? He was a Time Inc. person and had been there a long time, but I was of a generation that said, what’s the big problem? And he said to me, “I’m trying to keep 117 people employed.” And that was the first time I realized what that part of the job was. That wasn’t a part of the job that the editors all talked about when we’d go to ASME and it was an eye-opener. And I feel very strongly about that. Having a positive business story is important to me and the success and viability of the magazine.

And the second part is how do you stay in touch with people? In so many ways the digital age has provided a way for Parade, which has never been able to have a day-to-day relationship with its readers, because it came through newspapers, to be able to through our Facebook initiatives, Twitter and Parade.com, to have an engagement with a reader we’ve never had before. So we’ve been able to leverage both.

I just think you go out and talk to people and writers and editors go out and talk to people and salespeople who are out there communicating with people and they hear them say, hey, this is what’s happening now. And that’s how you stay in touch.

The truth is whether or not people out there people actually think the magazine speaks to them or not; I’m not sure that I can be the judge of that.

Samir Husni: You hear everybody preaching about the audience of one and everybody wants their own specialization and they can’t find exactly what they want; yet we have a lot of examples of magazines that are still general interest, whether it’s Parade or Reader’s Digest. And there is an audience out there. But in your gut feeling, forget about the business, just your gut feeling; do you think you can exist without the newspapers? Do you feel like if newspapers are gone, I’ve lost my job and does that keep you up at night? Do you feel like there will ever be a day we won’t have newspapers?

Maggie Murphy: I don’t think there will ever be a day we won’t have newspapers. I don’t know if I want to live in a country that doesn’t have a newspaper. Whether a newspaper is delivered in paper; I think that could be debated.

But there is always going to be contact and there is always going to be certain basic connectors to contact. And one of the things that I think keeps Parade relevant is our value, which is what we celebrate. We celebrate families and the act of taking time off on Sunday or any day during the week. We celebrate food, we celebrate personalities; all these things.

The truth is; I can go to a playground anywhere in the United States and talk to a mother because a mother knows a mother. You can ask about the schools, you can ask about what stage they’re in and I think there’s a kinship of that. As Americans we can collectively agree there are certain things that we love to talk about. We love to talk about food, celebrities and sometimes politics and what is the essence of American pride; what is capturing America’s attention. So I think if you put it in that perspective, it’s kind of easy to figure out.

Samir Husni: Without putting words in your mouth; are you telling me that you can envision a day where Parade exists without newspapers or without print?

Maggie Murphy: I don’t know. Jack, do you want to try that one?

Jack Haire: With your comment about the audience of one; I think individuals choose whether they’re going to read print or not. I think there’s a collective out there of people who like to share in an experience, whether it’s mothers interested in other mothers or Americans who are universally concerned about Crimea, or people who are passionate about this or that.

I think it’s going to be a while before the printed newspaper goes away. If you took a look at the percentage of 60-year-olds today who read a newspaper; it’s a smaller percentage than the 60-year-olds of ten years ago. It’s a smaller percentage of 50-year-olds. But it’s still a big percentage. Is Time magazine going to go away; are you going to experience it only on the web? Are books going away? I don’t know.

I think you can walk around with an iPad or you can walk around with a phone. But is everybody going to want to do that? Is that a better way of doing it? I think that’s a little more into the future.

Maggie Murphy: I also think that if it is an audience of one, you want it whatever way you want it. And the reality is that you and I spent two days with editors, some of whom wanted nothing to do with the print and many of whom relished it.

I mean, I don’t know what’s going to come next. The goal is to know what’s right now and be connected.

Jack Haire: Let me answer it in a slightly different way; I mean this is way more business side than editor. Is there an evolution to digital products; absolutely. But people say to me when they find out that I work at Parade, well, it’s really got to be tough for you with what’s going on in the newspapers. And honestly our distribution in the newspaper channel is a very productive and stable part of the business.

When you compare that to what’s going on in the advertisement side, let me give you just one little bit of an explanation. Years ago when Parade set up its distribution panel we could be in the Chicago Tribune, but we couldn’t be in any newspaper within 35 miles of Chicago. And a lot of that still exists. In Minneapolis, for years, well, in the twin cities, I should say; for years we were in the St. Paul Pioneer Press and by contract, we could not be in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Well today we’re in both. And the reason we’re in both is because, in my view, both players wanted the best content for their audience and they realized that if you live in White Bear, Minnesota, which is a St. Paul suburb, and you want to get local news, you’re going to get it from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, you’re not going to get it from somewhere else. If you live in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb right outside Minneapolis, you’re going to get it from the Minneapolis paper.

So in a way they weren’t competing. In a world where the newspapers are forced to be far more local, to deliver for schools, sports and maybe some national things, depending on their aspirations, but I’m sure you remember not long ago where the notion of I want my paper to be the statewide paper; I want to be the journal of record for the state of New Jersey or I want to be the paper of record for Oklahoma, by contrast in those days, we couldn’t go into a paper 90 miles away because of the contract. But now we can.

But what that’s meant, being in Minneapolis, which has a circulation on Sunday of almost 500,000; we now, in my view, have a better circulation. We have more papers and more drop-off points, the Rubik’s Cube is a little more complicated, but we’re in both. And we deliver far more in that metro than ever and I think that’s a positive side of the more locally-focused, the more server-oriented focus of newspapers today.

Maggie Murphy: When you talk about the audience of one, my sense is…well, there’s an audience of one, but then they turn around and share it with as many people as they can. I think human nature requires communal sharing of information and connectedness. And that’s what we try to do right now and that’s what we’ll continue to do in all forms that exist now and will exist.

Samir Husni: In the old days where few media companies beamed the information on the masses, we now have more media companies doing it, but the masses are now clusters of masses. And as you said; we have to get that 25 million audiences of one and they start sharing with each other, so although there is an audience of one, there are the clusters now. And the question is: how do you reach them?

Maggie Murphy: They are narrators of their own story, but they also don’t just want their version of events. They need other voices. I think one of the great things that has happened is information has been democratized, and I think that people actually understand the responsibility of that. We built a contributor network this past year and really found some wonderful people who write about food across the country and just write about lots of different topics and we’ve empowered them to be part of the voice. In a previous universe all the information came from here and it went out.

Now that information comes from there and it comes back to us, we bubble it up, give it Parade’s brand and it’s a great partnership. And I think that lots of companies are working to empower everyone to have a voice.

The way I put is it used to be one type of table and we sat at it and we sort of dictated and the information went out. Now everybody is sitting at that table and it’s a big boisterous long table, kind of like the one I grew up at with my loud Irish family. And I think that that’s challenging, but it’s fun and it’s also diverse in a way that maybe there was a certain amount of east and west coast elitism to media and I think our Parade of voices comes from all over the country and that helps us also really then reflect what should be on the cover and channel it back.

Samir Husni: What can newspapers learn from magazines like Parade?

Maggie Murphy: I saw a presentation, and Jack laughs when I keep mentioning it; the presentation by Alan Rusbridger, from the Observer and how it created a virtual circle of connectivity.

Jack Haire: Virtual reporters, voices in the field covering a story or a tragedy; can they be on the scene sooner…

Maggie Murphy: And also just the journalists themselves, rather than going out and pursuing the story without asking before they got on a plane: I’m coming to cover the story about X, can anybody provide me any sources? Publishing a story and taking information if you think it is valid and correcting your story; there’s a link to it. He gave this talk at NAA last year and it’s really informed the way that I think about it. It’s an empowering place for everyone. Journalists are not the only experts.

Here’s one of the examples: he talked about for instance, the critic for The Observer goes to see a play on the East End and publishes his review and anybody who was there could also publish their review simultaneously, right?

So there is The Observer East End critic’s review, but there is also another one. And I think the truth is, what people want are conversations. And we now have the technology to have those conversations and I don’t think that we’ve done as good a job as we will in the future by incorporating those conversations into the content. And some of that is just difficult.

Our print brand has specific needs and a finite amount of space and is published three weeks ahead of when you actually see it. But anyway that we can have conversation is what we’re charged with doing. And that’s what newsrooms need to do. I think it was the Naples paper; they have this gorgeous newsroom, there is a television studio in it, but there’s also a community meeting place, so a lot of meetings involving the community take place there. To actually create the place where people come and they have discussions – wow.

Jack Haire: But I think to answer your specific question, we try to interact with the editors and publishers of the papers. We were getting ready for a meeting that we had last spring in Phoenix and I was calling around and asking some of our partners and colleagues how was Parade doing with their readers and one of the guys I talked to said Parade allows us each to do what we do better, to focus more.

You know if Maggie is going to do a story on a new movie that’s breaking and she has access because people in Hollywood value the broad reach of a first person interview of George Clooney or whoever it might be, one of the lead stars, that in turn enhances what the Minneapolis Star Tribune delivers to its readers.

But he also is saying, honestly we can’t get that unless Clooney lives in St. Paul or nearby and it’s a special kind of a thing. So we value that color and that access. You know a lot of papers have moved away from food because it’s hard to do and it’s hard to do well. If you’re in a university town, you might have a thriving food culture, Providence, Rhode Island or something, so maybe you’d do it in the form of reviews, but we’re not doing the local story and increasingly in the area of popular culture that are less geographic, but still of high interest, the readers that we have, but that’s what we bring to the party. So we have what we hope complements what the papers are doing.

Maggie Murphy: Or inspire them. For instance, we’ll do what people learn nationally until many of the papers join in and do it locally. At NAA next week, we’ll bring our social media editor and one of the goals is to give them a sense of what we’re going to do and say, here is maybe what you want to join in on and just keep broadening that conversation so that we can complement each other.

One of the things that I do like about ASME and the judging is that you get a lot of people in the room doing similar things for different people and the coming together and having that conversation and I think everybody is better for it. And I think that’s what we keep trying to do with our newspaper partners. What do you need or how can we help; how does what we want to do nationally dovetail with what you’re hearing and seeing locally? I think it just boils down to conversation.

Samir Husni: What keeps you up at night?

Maggie Murphy: I think what keeps me up at night and there are lots of different ways I could respond, but I think I am going to answer that question in a very personal way.

I just want the people who are working here to really feel they are getting the best experience, because I think that’s what really matters. These guys here are coming in every day, inventing different things, taking chances and my best times as an editor was, the single best times I had, up until this job, at EW was when we were like, “OK – this thing may not work, but we’re going to throw this against the wall and see if that works.”

So for me it’s making sure that we remain a culture of experiment and that they’re getting a chance to do things that they may not have before in a bigger-structured corporation. Obviously, the wellness of Parade itself and its vitality is important as well.

But it’s making sure that the people who are working here who are giving their best are also getting the best out of it.

Samir Husni: Thank you.