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PLUS, A Magazine With A Mission: Where The Readers Are Much More Than Their Status. The Rebranding Of HIV Plus Magazine – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Diane Anderson-Minshall, Editor-In-Chief.

April 27, 2015

“Print is not dead for us; it’s thrilling. Of course, I hear it in other magazines and it scares me to death because I’m such an old print horse that I never want it to go away. And so it’s really exciting for me to be at a magazine where there’s never talk of not doing print anymore. Yes, it’s doing well.” Diane Anderson-Minshall

Although we live in the 21st century and in an era of natural enlightenment overall; unfortunately, there is still a stigma attached to the three letters HIV virus and the implications and stereotypes that may follow.

That’s why the powers-that-be at HIV Plus magazine decided that their message of care and concern for people who suffer from HIV and all chronic, medically-managed illnesses would be better served to rebrand without those three letters. Hence, Plus magazine was born with the intent of opening up a whole new conversation with people who felt uncomfortable picking up the magazine when it was known as HIV Plus.

Diane Anderson-Minshall is editor-in-chief of the magazine and is a staunch advocate for the magazine’s mission. I spoke with Diane recently and we talked about the rebranding and how the hope of reaching more people with the magazine’s message was the driving force behind the change in title and design.

I hope you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Diane Anderson-Minshall, Editor-in-Chief, Plus magazine, and a woman whose passion for the HIV/AIDS community and all who endure the pain of chronic illnesses, is genuine and far-reaching.

But first the sound-bites:

On changing the name from HIV Plus to simply Plus: We did have people who told us if you don’t have HIV in the title, even though we’re still a magazine for people with HIV, but if we don’t have it in the title, it looks like a health magazine about several things, including HIV. You don’t have to be HIV positive to read it.

On the new tagline; you’re more than your status: The bottom line is we’re recognizing that our readers have HIV, which is a chronic manageable condition and it’s not a definer of their lives, so we have to recognize that they need more out of a magazine than just treatment information. They’re looking for a whole magazine for the whole totality of their lives.

On keeping the website and social media with the original name: We didn’t rebrand the website or the social media sites and part of that is because a magazine is something that is very visible versus a website where anyone can sneak onto it; we all know that because we sneak onto certain websites all the time.

On the new celebrity-oriented covers and whether they convolute the message the magazine is trying to render: I don’t actually. I think that our mission is the same. We started doing celebrity covers when I came onboard as editor-in-chief and part of that is because celebrity covers are aspirational. I think that we’d be foolish to not recognize that people like to see aspirational profiles of other people who are doing something related to their lives.

On whether any celebrity has ever rejected the magazine’s offer to be on its cover: Yes, absolutely. I’m not sure I can name who those people are, but that absolutely happens all of the time. And those are oftentimes celebrities who are doing something with an AIDS charity already, but who don’t want to be associated with a magazine. Sadly, it has happened a number of times.

On the biggest stumbling block she’s had to face: The biggest stumbling block was getting our people who write for the magazine to recognize that our readership is a high school educated level readership, because I think people find that’s sometimes harder to write to.

On her most pleasant moment at the magazine: There have been so many. But at the U.S. Conference on AIDS last year in San Diego, for example, we made a life size cover of the magazine, with just the logo and a little bit of text, and then basically people came up and posed in front of the magazine like they were the cover star of the magazine. And then they Tweeted out the photos or we did and that was a great moment.

On whether she considers herself a journalist first or an advocate for the magazine’s mission: I consider myself a journalist first, but there’s no denying that this is advocacy journalism. There’s just no denying that in order to do this magazine, you have to consider yourself an advocacy journalist.

On anything else she’d like to add: One thing that people do keep asking me is whether we’ve made this change because we’re losing money? And this is the very first time I can say this, because a lot of times I’ve been at publications where what I’m about to say was not the case; where we did make a change and it was because we needed to deal with dropping revenue. In this case, we’ve been doing phenomenally well and we’ve been consistently doing well over the last few years that I’ve been here.

On why she believes print is not dead: Print is not dead for us; it’s thrilling. Of course, I hear it in other magazines and it scares me to death because I’m such an old print horse that I never want it to go away. And so it’s really exciting for me to be at a magazine where there’s never talk of not doing print anymore.

On what keeps her up at night: In terms of publishing, just production can keep me up at night. Just knowing production is two weeks away and that I have to file 80,000 words by then. That can keep me up at night. And that’s just the very beginning of what keeps me up at night.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Diane Anderson-Minshall, Editor-in-Chief, Plus magazine.

Samir Husni: Why did you change the name of the magazine from HIV Plus to just Plus?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: My publisher, Joe Valentino, and I had been talking for a couple of years about whether the name of the magazine was kind and modern and really reflected all that we were doing with it for readers. We started doing some informal questioning of those readers and of people who distribute the magazine; because we’re a bit like WebMD in that we reached our quarter of a million reader’s right at the point of care, for the magazine in particular, of course, the mobile app and the web as well.

We started talking about how the name was; what we were doing with it; if it was reaching readers, that kind of thing, because when we started the magazine in the late 1990s it was a very different landscape in terms of who was reading the magazine and the kind of information that we were providing.

In the last couple of years, we’ve definitely become much more service-oriented than we were before. The magazine before had been very newsy, of course in part because it was also run by that staff of The Advocate, which is an LGBT news magazine, so it had been very newsy, but maybe wasn’t as useful when it came to what readers were looking for at that point.

This sort of informal questioning and surveying people kind of coalesced at the U.S. conference on AIDS last fall, where we did informal focus groups and we talked with a lot of people who were reading the magazine and also people who provided the magazine, like social workers, clinicians and people who ran LGBT centers or health centers or AIDS service organizations.

And when we started questioning them, we found a couple of things at that point and one of them was that we had a number of people who came up to the booth, picked up the magazine and said, oh my, I love Plus magazine and I read it all the time. And that made us realize that there was a chunk of our readership that was already calling us Plus magazine, sort of like the little HIV in our masthead or our logo at that point wasn’t resonating for them that it was part of the name of the magazine the way we had designed it.

And then at the same time we spoke with a number of people who said, I have a lot of people who read your magazine when they’re at my office or at the center, or getting their monthly healthcare or shots, but they won’t take it home, in part because it’s called HIV Plus. It’s really clear that it’s a magazine only for people with HIV.

So, I asked those people by just dropping the word HIV from the title, would it allow them to take the magazine home and feel comfortable about it? And the consensus was from all these people, yes, just removing the word; those three little letters from the title kind of eliminated the stigmatizing language that led with the virus. And this helped us think, well, OK, maybe this is a time for us to rebrand ourselves as Plus and eliminate the stigmatizing language that leads with the virus and tell our readers that at this point we understand that they more than their HIV status; you’re you, plus a little something more and for a lot of our readers that can be HIV or Hepatitis C or another condition.

At the same time, the change would open the magazine up for those people who would not pick it up or take it home because of having that HIV in the title. The change would make those people feel comfortable and safe to carry the magazine on a subway or read it in their cubicle or leave it on their coffee table if their friends come over.

A part of it was we recognized that there were different types of people reading our magazine and several of those people were very happy and proud to use HIV as a way to describe themselves and those are the people that we feel we were reaching at that point, and those people aren’t often living in the areas hardest hit by the virus. And we knew that there were a lot of people living in areas where they weren’t getting the right kind of treatment or getting connected to care; they’re weren’t getting the right kind of information because they were afraid for people to recognize that they had HIV.

So, we did have people who told us if you don’t have HIV in the title, even though we’re still a magazine for people with HIV, but if we don’t have it in the title, it looks like a health magazine about several things, including HIV. You don’t have to be HIV positive to read it. That’s kind of our angle; we’re trying to work to get those people who are afraid to pick up the magazine and we’re asking those people who lead with HIV in their lives to understand that we’re not going in the closet about being a magazine for people with HIV, we’re just asking them to make some considerations for those people who are afraid to pick up the magazine. By losing those three little letters in the title, we sort of open ourselves up for those people to join the conversation and have access to the information that they desperately need and aren’t getting yet.

Samir Husni: And that led to the new tagline under the name: because you’re more than your status?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Yes, I mean, we’re really just sort of playing around with different things and for me; I kept thinking with Plus, we wanted to tell our readers that we get you, you’re you, plus something extra, in this case, HIV, but it could be other things too.

But the bottom line is we’re recognizing that our readers have HIV, which is a chronic manageable condition and it’s not a definer of their lives, so we have to recognize that they need more out of a magazine than just treatment information. They’re looking for a whole magazine for the whole totality of their lives.

Samir Husni: You’re website is still HIV Plusmag.com…

Diane Anderson-Minshall: It is and that’s actually going to stay that way for now. We didn’t rebrand the website or the social media sites and part of that is because a magazine is something that is very visible versus a website where anyone can sneak onto it; we all know that because we sneak onto certain websites all the time. People generally don’t see a browser history; they don’t look into what we’re searching for, so you can actually go onto HIV Plusmag.com without feeling the stigma. And I’m assuming a lot of people will still do that, so you don’t feel any stigma when you do it because no one knows what you’re doing online, versus a magazine which is very visible; it’s something that you take home or have on your coffee table or next to your bed.

It’s something very different for people when they’re carrying the magazine versus reading the website. And we recognize that sometimes those are two different audiences with two different needs. So, we went ahead and left the social media and the web and our mobile app with the brand HIV Plus for a variety of reasons, but that’s one.

And then another reason is that making a change to those things right now; we just don’t want to scare off the readers that are accessing us through those channels at this point and we don’t need to lose traffic or any of those kinds of things. And we felt like again, with the website and the social media accounts, it just wasn’t as pressing to change those because people aren’t monitoring you when you’re looking at those sites versus when you have a magazine and it’s everywhere around you. Does that make sense?

Samir Husni: Oh yes, that makes perfect sense. In fact, you give more ammunition to my fight that digital and print each has its own role in today’s world.

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Yes, absolutely.

Samir Husni: We all know that we live in a digital age and as you mentioned, it’s much easier for somebody with HIV to sneak onto the web and look for answers or help; yet with the magazine, it’s like announcing it to the world. As you move into Plus, even into the design of the cover with its celebrity-oriented nature; do you see any conflict between the message the magazine is providing and the look of the magazine?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: I don’t actually. I think that at this point, we’re the leading provider of HIV health information through the magazine and our online portals and mobile platforms and we still have the same mission, which is bringing accurate and trustworthy information about HIV and other related mental and physical health conditions, but in a way that’s empowering and entertaining and up-to-the-minute.

And so I think that our mission is the same. We started doing celebrity covers when I came onboard as editor-in-chief and part of that is because celebrity covers are aspirational. I think that we’d be foolish to not recognize that people like to see aspirational profiles of other people who are doing something related to their lives. Everybody picks up a magazine with a celebrity on it; it’s much harder to get people to pick up a magazine without a celebrity, so there’s no reason for us not to run those as well.

What we do is interview celebrities who are either people who do have HIV or have some relationship to HIV or AIDS, maybe through a family member or they work in a social cause related to it as a charity or they’re playing a role of an HIV-positive person on television or in film. And those are some of our most popular pieces.

What I think of these celebrity pieces is a little bit like the cherry in the cough syrup, you know; we need to make this sweet for people to pick up and then they get the information they need inside. The celebrity covers bring people in.

You’re at the doctor’s office and you’re looking at the array of magazines on the table and you’re next to us and you’ve got Sofía Vergara on the cover of WebMD and we’ve got somebody to compete with that so you’ll pick us up. And then you’ll find the information that you need; the treatment and medication information, but also the fitness, mental health, nutrition, sex and dating advice and the real, but aspirational profiles of other people living healthy lives with chronic conditions.

Samir Husni: Have you ever been rejected by a celebrity or a celebrity’s agent who said, no, we don’t want to be on the cover?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Yes, absolutely. I’m not sure I can name who those people are, but that absolutely happens all of the time. And those are oftentimes celebrities who are doing something with an AIDS charity already, but who don’t want to be associated with a magazine. Sadly, it has happened a number of times.

And then we’ve also reached out to some celebrities we know who are HIV-positive themselves and tried to see if they were ready to have their coming-out interview and they were not. We don’t hold any ill will in those cases because we understand how difficult it is to come out about being HIV-positive, but again if you’re a celebrity with all the resources of the world at your fingertips and you’re not able to come out about being positive, imagine how difficult it is for the 18-year-old kid in the southeast who’s just found out he’s positive and has no resources.

Samir Husni: What has been the biggest stumbling block that you’ve had to face since becoming editor-in-chief of the magazine and how did you overcome it?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: The biggest stumbling block was getting our people who write for the magazine to recognize that our readership is a high school educated level readership, because I think people find that’s sometimes harder to write to. We’ve had to refocus the magazine a little bit and recognize that there are a couple of things happening here with this readership and one is that the readership isn’t college educated. And that changes how you’re writing things. I have a policy where I send back any story if I have to go to the writer and say, do you understand this sentence, and they say no, and I respond, then neither will our readers. I’ll send back anything where I can’t understand it and I think it’s really hard for people to like medical stuff without getting very science-oriented and boring. So, I believe we have a responsibility to our readers to make this stuff more interesting and understandable; to make it information that they’re going to want to read, rather than information that feels like it’s a package insert.

I feel like in a lot of ways one of our responsibilities is to take what pharmaceutical companies are saying about their medication for example, or about clinical trials or studies or new research and development, take that information and then translate for actual readers. And that’s a really heated task because there’s just such a big disconnect between science, academia and the way that they speak and the way an average real person does and the way that we understand things.

That’s actually been a challenge, making the magazine more service-oriented and more understandable to a group of readers who basically don’t know that kind of language and information that I think we sometimes fall back on.

We’re a niche magazine and I’ve always managed niche magazines, but I think in this case, we’re a niche magazine that’s finding out consistently that we have a wider audience than we once thought and so we’re trying to understand how to reach and speak to that audience cross range; 90% of our readers are men and among those, over half are people of color, and a larger majority are gay or bisexual, so that means we have 10% of women who are almost entirely straight, some are transgender, and of our readership, only about 88% have HIV, so I feel like we speak to the health needs of these readers more than any other magazine does. And I can say that even though we belong to the company that has the two largest gay publications on their roster; that we can speak to the health needs of gay and bisexual men in a way that other publications just can’t because we have the know-how and the experience.

But I do think we speak to both gay men and straight women and across different ethnic groupings; it’s a pretty broad range.

Samir Husni: And what has been your most pleasant moment at the magazine?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: There have been so many. I went to the ‘HIV is not a Crime,’ which is an anti-criminalization conference that was held last summer and was the very first, and is basically aimed around reforming HIV criminalization laws in the country, many of which were put together in the 1980s when AIDS was a terrifying thing and a lot of the lawmakers who originally worked on those initial laws are now arguing for those laws to be updated, reformed or ditched completely. I went to the conference, both to cover it and lend any advice and to really just support it to show that our organization supports that movement.

And I met so many people there who just treated me like a rock star, being the editor of Plus magazine, and it was amazing seeing these people who are frontline activists, working directly with politicians and people who had gone to the White House to speak to President Obama about HIV; people who are really major players in what we would call the HIV activist movement. And they were just very excited to have Plus represented there and excited to meet the people behind the magazine. I wouldn’t say it was like being One Direction or something, but it was really amazing.

Certainly, when we go to these events, it’s for us; it’s partly about a new opportunity for audience development, because that’s a part of what events are for publishers and their publications. And we love it. When we go these events we see people moving between our platforms with the brand, and once they get one platform, they explore the other and we’re a part of that when we’re doing these events.

But at the U.S. Conference on AIDS last year in San Diego, for example, we made a life size cover of the magazine, with just the logo and a little bit of text, and then basically people came up and posed in front of the magazine like they were the cover star of the magazine. And then they Tweeted out the photos or we did and that was a great moment because, again, when we’re trying so desperately to reach people who are afraid to pick up the magazine, at the same time, we have all of these other people who are so proud of the work that they’re doing or so proud of the life they’re living.

And some of them aren’t activists; they’re ordinary people living with HIV. But they were so proud to be on the cover of the magazine, to be like cover stars. Just the excitement and the energy around something like that; it wasn’t even about our social media numbers shooting up, which they did, but it was really about that wonderful feedback that people were getting what we were doing, that they like what we’re doing and that we’re giving them something that’s really adding to their lives.

Samir Husni: What do you consider yourself? I know you’re the editor-in-chief, but what do you consider yourself to be first, a journalist, an advocate, or a rock star?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: (Laughs) I consider myself a journalist first, but there’s no denying that this is advocacy journalism. There’s just no denying that in order to do this magazine, you have to consider yourself an advocacy journalist. I think those two things are first and the rock star is very, very far down on the line. I have moments of feeling like a rock star, but I know I’m not.

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

Diane Anderson-Minshall: I feel like we reflect the best the country has to offer in coverage of HIV and Aids and we’re trying to take a magazine that’s largely a service publication and work in hard-hitting news and health investigations and have the latest treatment information, and these interviews that are always inspirational, for our readers.

We’ve won a number of awards for our coverage of HIV and AIDS, including the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association; they have an excellence in HIV/AIDS coverage award which we’ve won a few times. We’ve won some other awards as well and I was given the Western Publishing Association; the Maggie Award last year. They have an inaugural leadership award and I was given that for the work on HIV Plus mobile app. So, we get pretty good validation from other journalists in other areas media.

One thing that people do keep asking me is whether we’ve made this change because we’re losing money? And this is the very first time I can say this, because a lot of times I’ve been at publications where what I’m about to say was not the case; where we did make a change and it was because we needed to deal with dropping revenue.

In this case, we’ve been doing phenomenally well and we’ve been consistently doing well over the last few years that I’ve been here. In fact, we’ve often been the top print magazine in the company and that includes both Out and The Advocate magazines, because our ad sales are consistent and we don’t face the same economic setbacks that other advertising arenas do, like fashion or travel and advertising industries, for example. Pharmaceutical industries have specific things they need to advertise and they have requirements for that advertising, so as long as the medication market is robust, then we continue to have consistent ad sales, which is our primary driver of funds.

So, it’s important for me to make it clear that this was not a decision we made because we weren’t selling, it was quite the opposite and I’m really proud of that.

Samir Husni: So, you’re telling me that print is not dead?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Print is not dead for us; it’s thrilling. Of course, I hear it in other magazines and it scares me to death because I’m such an old print horse that I never want it to go away. And so it’s really exciting for me to be at a magazine where there’s never talk of not doing print anymore. Yes, it’s doing well.

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

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Everything. Even though we’re doing well, we still have limited resources allocated to editorial, so we still have everyone doing the job of four different people.

In terms of publishing, just production can keep me up at night. Just knowing production is two weeks away and that I have to file 80,000 words by then. That can keep me up at night. And that’s just the very beginning of what keeps me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

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Harvard Business Review: A Magazine That Readers Care About. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Adi Ignatius, Editor-In-Chief.

April 24, 2015

“When I’ve worked at legacy publications, we’d create this content that was basically designed to be an adjacency to advertising. Whatever, fine. Then the advertising disappears. Advertising definitely comes and goes; you have to make sure that you have a product at the end of the day that your readers actually care about, because the advertising dollar today will disappear tomorrow.” Adi Ignatius

Focusing on areas such as leadership, finance, marketing and the art of managing people, among many other business-related topics, Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a magazine dedicated to improving all facets of management in today’s fast-paced world.

Adi Ignatius is editor-in-chief, or as he likes to refer to himself, the balancer-in-chief of HBR. He came to the magazine in 2009 from TIME, where he was deputy managing editor, helping to oversee the week-to-week editing of the magazine and was also responsible for many of TIME’s special editions, including the Person of the Year and TIME 100 franchises.

After coming onboard at Harvard Business Review, Adi set about reinventing the academic read into more of a consumer-type magazine, one that has seen circulation growth and subscription prices increase since his joining the team.

I spoke with Adi recently and the discussion was both fun and informative. He has definite opinions on where HBR is heading and the future of magazine media in general.

So, I hope you enjoy this conversation with a man who believes in the timelessness of his brand and the collectability factor he thinks all magazines need today, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Business Review.

But first the sound-bites:

On the transition he had to make in 2009 when he came to HBR right after the Market crash: When I came on in 2009, Harvard Business Review hadn’t written a word about the recession and that seemed odd. I understood that the magazine always wanted to be timeless in everything it did, but it seemed that this was a different period; readers were desperate for information about the worst economic situation that we’ll all hopefully face in our lifetimes. Luckily, the people who run this place wanted somebody who had that kind of metabolism, someone who could bring a sort of timely sensibility to the timeless tradition and deal head-on with some of the topics people were worried about.

On the advice he would give media leaders about the future of print today: I think getting past the sense of a lot of things that we thought were traditionally important like print, front pages, home pages, viewing yourself as only a destination site; I think you have to let go of these assumptions and really follow where the market is going and where readers are going. And make sure your content is unique and valuable and make sure you are maximizing every possible connection and platform that you could be on.

On some of the stumbling blocks that would prevent magazine media from implementing his common sense advice: We all know where this plot line is heading; we all know that we are moving rapidly toward a more digital, or even fully digital, future. The problem is we’re in the present. And the present is still in some ways attaching more value to the print part of our operations than is likely to happen in the future. So, it’s very difficult to handle that transition when we’re still relying on print for the bulk of our revenue and ad revenue, in some cases. It’s very hard to forego the short-term revenue that we all depend on to make the sort of long-term future digital.

On whether he thinks publishers are placing too much dependence on social media these days: We used to depend on LinkedIn for a huge amount of traffic, but when LinkedIn realized they weren’t simply a place for people to search for jobs, they decided to have content and stickiness, and a lot of that content was HBR. Then they sort of realized that they could be developing their own content and didn’t really need partners. So, that was a moment of panic, but I think as long as you’re creating content that’s valuable to your audience, whether it’s a big or a niche audience, you can adapt to these things.

On whether he can ever see a day when HBR will not have a print component: In theory, yes; it’s not a part of any of our plans at this point. I can imagine a reduction in print, in the number of print copies, and I would say that’s probably likely for us. And that would be driven by two main things: the decline in print advertising, which is real and profound and we see no sign of that being reversed, and more interestingly, a kind of shift in consumption habits.

On the cover price of HBR: Yes, we are higher-priced, but this magazine is for people who love ideas and you’ll find ideas in this publication that can improve your company and your career, well beyond what we’re charging. That’s essentially our value proposition.

On whether the collectability factor is important in magazine media today: I think we’ve all realized the value of the archives. We have an archive that goes back 25-30 years and subscribers get full access to anything that we’ve published during that time. And we tested that a couple of years ago and found out that subscribers were willing to pay significantly more when they realized they had access to that archive.

On anything else he’d like to add: That was a reinvention in 2010 and by any measurement that you could use, it worked. Our circulation has risen and is now at a record level, about 300,000. We have to do this again. We have to reinvent the business model again for all the reasons that our colleagues in the industry are doing it.

On what keeps him up at night: Our situation is a little more complicated because we also need contributors to feel like we’re the best place for them to publish their ideas. We’re this hybrid; we’re somewhere in between a normal magazine and an academic journal. And that sometimes keeps me up at night; whether I can keep that balance intact, while still driving the business forward. That’s what I do; I’m balancer-in-chief.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Adi Ignatious, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Business Review.

Samir Husni: You’ve been at Harvard Business Review since 2009, so you had just come onboard when the Market crashed. Can you describe how the transition for you was during that precarious time?

Adi Ignatius: I interviewed for the job in 2008, so when I came on in 2009, Harvard Business Review hadn’t written a word about the recession and that seemed odd. I understood that the magazine always wanted to be timeless in everything it did, but it seemed that this was a different period; readers were desperate for information about the worst economic situation that we’ll all hopefully face in our lifetimes. And a publication like Harvard Business Review could provide insight.

Luckily, the people who run this place wanted somebody who had that kind of metabolism, someone who could bring a sort of timely sensibility to the timeless tradition and deal head-on with some of the topics people were worried about.

We took that opportunity to kind of reinvent the magazine, the website and set out a path for growth from that.

Samir Husni: If you were going to apply the same formula that you did for the Harvard Business Review on its business side to magazine media today, in 2015; what type of magazine would you create to help magazine publishers and editors adapt to all the changes that are taking place and what advice would you give those media leaders about the future of print today?

Adi Ignatius: I wouldn’t necessarily get hung up on print. I don’t think the answer for all of us is finding out a way to maximize print; some of us will be print; some of us will be digital, and then some of us will be a hybrid.

I think getting past the sense of a lot of things that we thought were traditionally important like print, front pages, home pages, viewing yourself as only a destination site; I think you have to let go of these assumptions and really follow where the market is going and where readers are going. And make sure your content is unique and valuable and make sure you are maximizing every possible connection and platform that you could be on. That’s obvious maybe, and the hard part might be actually implementing that. I guess that would be my first bit of advice.

Samir Husni: What do you think are some of the stumbling blocks that are stopping people from implementing that common sense solution?

Adi Ignatius: I guess some of them you’re probably very familiar with. We all know where this plot line is heading; we all know that we are moving rapidly toward a more digital, or even fully digital, future. The problem is we’re in the present. And the present is still in some ways attaching more value to the print part of our operations than is likely to happen in the future. So, it’s very difficult to handle that transition when we’re still relying on print for the bulk of our revenue and ad revenue, in some cases. It’s very hard to forego the short-term revenue that we all depend on to make the sort of long-term future digital. And we all think that we can manage that transition and jump from one to the other and do it at the perfect time versus our knowledge of a company like Kodak, which knew very well the digital future was coming, didn’t handle the transition well at all. And that’s what happens if you don’t.

But I think one big problem is simply the fact that print remains hugely important for most of our business models and, as I said, it’s very difficult to forego the short-term revenue.

The second thing is just the landscape is moving so quickly. If you look at social media, the Harvard Business Review is very successful in social media. We have a huge number of shares and a huge number of followers; we generate a lot of traffic through social media. What will our relationships be with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others in a few years; it’s impossible to know. Probably very different from what they are now.

There’s a fundamental uncertainty that means we’re all experimenting a lot, but it’s somewhat difficult to have as much confidence in precise, future digitally-focused plans because it’s such a moving target.

Samir Husni: Do you think we’re making the same mistake as we did when we put all of our dependence upon advertising, because now we’re trying to depend so much on social media? What if Facebook decides to listen to the rumors I’ve been hearing and becomes an enclosed website, where it won’t take you to your website?

Adi Ignatius: I think we have to be open to that possibility. I think the most important thing is not to panic. There will be surprises like that. We used to depend on LinkedIn for a huge amount of traffic, but when LinkedIn realized they weren’t simply a place for people to search for jobs, they decided to have content and stickiness, and a lot of that content was HBR (Harvard Business Review) and I think HBR was some of the best performing content on that site.

And then they sort of realized that they could be developing their own content and didn’t really need partners. So, that was a moment of panic, but I think as long as you’re creating content that’s valuable to your audience, whether it’s a big or a niche audience, you can adapt to these things. So, we don’t have the same kind of relationship with LinkedIn now, but we’re working on developing other relationships with LinkedIn. Facebook and Twitter are great referrals to our site. If they’re cut off, we’ll figure something else out. A good brand with good content just has to be nimble. And if some of these things happen, we’ll figure something else out; I really do believe that.

Samir Husni: Can you foresee a day when HBR will not be in print?

Adi Ignatius: In theory, yes; it’s not a part of any of our plans at this point. I can imagine a reduction in print, in the number of print copies, and I would say that’s probably likely for us. And that would be driven by two main things: the decline in print advertising, which is real and profound and we see no sign of that being reversed, and more interestingly, a kind of shift in consumption habits. The challenge for us is to truly make digital a long-form reading experience that is as effective as print is now. And that involves new personalization, new utility, kind of a reinvention of what a long-form article is online, which is what we’re doing.

You talked about advertising before; the trap that many legacy publications have fallen into over the years is the pursuit of advertising at the expense of the relationship with the reader and the creation of quality content.

Nowadays, native advertising is viewed as a panacea for a lot of publications and a lot of native advertising solutions are great. We at HBR haven’t plunged into that yet, but we will and that’s fine. But I worry when I see some legacy publications, when they talk about what they’re doing; all they seem to be able to discuss is native. And my only feeling on that is advertising comes and goes, that is fact.

When I’ve worked at legacy publications, we’d create this content that was basically designed to be an adjacency to advertising. Whatever, fine. Then the advertising disappears. Advertising definitely comes and goes; you have to make sure that you have a product at the end of the day that your readers actually care about, because the advertising dollar today will disappear tomorrow. And there will be a new model, fine, you just have to make sure that you’re creating content that people actually care about and that isn’t just being created or advertising dollars.

Samir Husni: Somebody recently told me that the magazine industry doesn’t have an ink on paper problem; it has an advertising problem. Do you agree?

Adi Ignatius: Meaning what, exactly?

Samir Husni: That advertising is disappearing from print.

Adi Ignatius: Well, yes, that’s true. There are other models; some of the magazines that you and I love most are essentially subsidized by, I don’t know, a wealthy benefactor, maybe, something like that.

Samir Husni: (Laughs)

Adi Ignatius: And that’s also a good model. At HBR, just so you know; we’re not subsidized by the school, quite to the contrary. I’ve worked at Dow Jones and I’ve worked at Time Inc. And at HBR, we’re as commercially focused as any other publication that I’ve ever worked at. And we have to be successful on the bottom line and we have to be significantly profitable and the money that we make goes back to Harvard Business School to fund its case studies and research.

So, we’re very much in the real world and we’re very aware that advertising dollars have disappeared, but we’re a premium-priced subscription. Advertising is an important revenue source for us, but subscription is a more important source. What we’ve been able to accomplish in recent years is to increase circulation and increase the average price of a subscription and we want to keep doing that. So, I think there are ways if you have the right model and a target audience.

Samir Husni: With the price of the newsstand edition for just one copy, you can buy a year’s subscription to other magazines.

Adi Ignatius: Yes, that’s true. But I think if you get a subscription offer from Time magazine for $20 for a year and a half, it feels a little like the magazine is saying this publication has no value, please subscribe. And that’s not our approach. Yes, we are higher-priced, but this magazine is for people who love ideas and you’ll find ideas in this publication that can improve your company and your career, well beyond what we’re charging. That’s essentially our value proposition.

Samir Husni: One of the things that you mentioned earlier in our conversation was the need to create this timely, yet timeless, content. Do you think this is the future of print, that the printed word has to have a collectability factor and that it can’t be something described as disposable?

Adi Ignatius: I think we’ve all realized the value of the archives. We have an archive that goes back 25-30 years and subscribers get full access to anything that we’ve published during that time. And we tested that a couple of years ago and found out that subscribers were willing to pay significantly more when they realized they had access to that archive. And I think other publications are doing the same thing and unearthing archival ways that are proving valuable, informative and fun. I think in that sense, a smart curation of archives is a way to prove the timelessness of some of the ideas that we publish. And we want to do more of that.

The Harvard Business Review in the past was only about timelessness and I think the brand has proven adaptable enough that now, particularly on the web, we do things that are really timely.

Samir Husni: On a personal level with the magazine; what has been the biggest stumbling block that you’ve faced and how did you overcome it?

Adi Ignatius: When I came in 2009, we decided that we were going to reinvent the magazine. The company had just hired a consultant who had done focus groups and research and who had talked to people and concluded that the way we used to produce our covers, I don’t know of you remember it, but HBR used to be like an academic journal or like National Geographic in the old days, where the table of contents was fully listed on the cover.

And the consultant concluded that the table of contents on the cover was as iconic for Harvard Business Review as the red border is for Time magazine. And that you mess with that at your own peril. And I wasn’t sure that I bought that. (Laughs) And I saw the focus groups and heard what they were saying, things like, yes, I’m a marketing guy and I can see the table of contents, check out if there’s anything for me and if I’d really like to read it.

But to me that meant they were looking at the table of contents and if there wasn’t anything that appealed to them, they weren’t even going to open the magazine or even tear the plastic covering off, so all that work that one does to produce a magazine, the photos, the layout, the headlines and callouts; they weren’t even going to see any of that.

And our readership was pretty much going to decide that they should just go online and research what they wanted and buy articles there and they weren’t even going to subscribe.

So, we decided to do nothing that was revolutionary, but basically remake HBR more like a magazine. Maybe it was late in the era of print magazines, but it was still very important to us to create more of a personalization. HBR articles are hard going, so we wanted to make them somewhat more accessible, in terms of the art, headlines and presentation, because that’s it, right? You want people to read the articles they didn’t think they wanted to read from the table of contents, but they’re drawn into it for some reason and realize how interesting it really is.

Samir Husni: Anything else you’d like to add?

Adi Ignatius: That was a reinvention in 2010 and by any measurement that you could use, it worked. Our circulation has risen and is now at a record level, about 300,000; our newsstand sales, even in this climate, basically have risen every year from 2010 onward, we average about 40,000 on the newsstand at $17.95, so by any measure, that’ s been successful.

We have to do this again. We have to reinvent the business model again for all the reasons that our colleagues in the industry are doing it. We’re kind of in the process of a strategic rethink to redefine what it means to be a subscriber, a member who belongs to Harvard Business Review. And I believe we’ll have some pretty interesting things to talk about in a few months.

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

Adi Ignatius: (Laughs) Business thinkers often say that you need to focus on one audience primarily and that would be readers, focus on your readers and keep your eye on them. But our situation is a little more complicated because we also need contributors to feel like we’re the best place for them to publish their ideas. We’re this hybrid; we’re somewhere in between a normal magazine and an academic journal.

And maintaining that sweet spot requires us to play this game of wanting HBR to be more accessible, but it also needs to sustain its level of rigor so that we remain true to who we are, but we also remain the place for the kind of authors that we want, who come up with the great ideas and that we remain the place they want to publish them. And that sometimes keeps me up at night; whether I can keep that balance intact, while still driving the business forward. That’s what I do; I’m balancer-in-chief.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

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‘Riding Out The Storm’ With Innovation, Creativity & A Firm Hope For The Future Of Regional Magazines – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Fred Parry, Publisher, Inside Columbia Magazine.

April 22, 2015

“People still want them (Magazines). If people didn’t want those magazines, basically our business model would fail. While it’s been reduced; I think there’s still a market for that. Print is still credible; people still want that tangible experience and they still want to have that quiet time with a magazine. And I also believe there are times when people want to be on a digital diet, they want to be away from all of those devices. They just want some quiet time.” Fred Parry

Never let it be said that Mr. Magazine™ misses an opportunity to pick the brain of a magazine publisher. Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Fred Parry, publisher of Inside Columbia magazine, as he was visiting Oxford and the University of Mississippi on a private visit.

Upon receiving word that Fred was in town, I invited him to attend my early morning magazine service journalism class at Ole Miss and then afterward we went back to my office for an in depth discussion of the future of city and regional magazines and what innovations and mind sets he has put into place at Inside Columbia (Missouri). As a University of Missouri – Columbia graduate myself, my ears were attuned to the many wonderful and inspired thoughts he had on the industry, and the city and regional category in particular.

From his opinion that traditional advertising is no longer a sustainable model for magazine publishing to the fact that he believes custom content and sponsored advertising is the new path in the woods that magazine media should take; we had a lively and informative talk that raised important questions and also answered some that have been broached over the years.

I hope you enjoy this heart-to-heart with Fred Parry, Publisher, Inside Columbia magazine, as much as I did participating in it, but first the sound-bites.

On whether magazine publishing has recovered from the 2008 crisis: We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t think we’ll ever see the revenue levels and the level of activity that we saw in 2008 before the Market crashed. I think for the first few years we all hoped things would get back to “normal” or what we were used to, but I believe we’re all slowly waking up to the fact that advertising is no longer a sustainable model for magazine publishing.

On how he sees the transition from print to digital and going from a monthly to an hourly publication: I think it’s pretty clear that people want an hourly publication. I think people want content updated as frequently as we’re willing to do it, so that’s a real transition for us and a paradigm shift certainly.

On whether he believes that people will pay for custom content or that the status quo of our Welfare Information Society will remain intact: We have done ourselves a great disservice by creating that Welfare Information Society and I think that it’s going to be almost impossible to teach people that they have to pay for content. Somebody will hopefully find a way to do it.

On whether he thinks we can sell a publishing future to consumers without a printed product: Absolutely, by selling sponsored content. I think that’s where the revenue model is.

On the fact that we live in a digital age, yet we’re continuing to produce magazines in the same way as we did in 2007: People still want them. If people didn’t want those magazines, basically our business model would fail. While it’s been reduced; I think there’s still a market for that. Print is still credible; people still want that tangible experience and they still want to have that quiet time with a magazine.

On how Inside Columbia magazine has changed over the years: One of the things that have changed for sure is that our magazines are much smaller than they were in 2008. And I think that we’re probably more in tune with our target reader and what his/her needs are.

On whether the future of city and regional magazines appears brighter now than for the rest of the industry: I think it’s brighter because we’re smarter than we were six years ago; it’s brighter because we’re much more efficient; we’re spending money much more cautiously and really, for most of us, there is a better return on our investment. We’re leaner and meaner, and I think we’re poised to sort of ride out the storm.

On the main stumbling block Inside Columbia and other city and regional magazines are facing today: It’s the traditional advertising model. Trying to go out and sell paid advertising and display advertising gets harder every single day. Six or seven years ago advertising revenue was 92% of our revenue. Today, our core magazine might be 50% of our revenue.

On what keeps him up at night: I think that it’s always a struggle to try and figure out what our advertisers are thinking. There’s always something shiny and new that comes along and steals the attention of the traditional marketers that have supported us over the years. So, I think the thing that keeps me awake is trying to figure out how to stay a step ahead; how to outsmart these “innovators” that come in with these latest and greatest ideas that nine times out of ten are not sustainable.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Fred Parry, Publisher, Inside Columbia magazine.

Samir Husni: As the publisher of a city and regional magazine; where do you see the future of that genre’ heading? And have we recovered from the crisis of 2008? Are you still seeing black clouds or are there rays of sunshine peeping through?

Fred Parry: We are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t think we’ll ever see the revenue levels and the level of activity that we saw in 2008 before the Market crashed. I think for the first few years we all hoped things would get back to “normal” or what we were used to, but I believe we’re all slowly waking up to the fact that advertising is no longer a sustainable model for magazine publishing. And I think the sooner that we can break ourselves away from the addiction of advertising revenue, the sooner we’re going to make that transition into being really content companies versus magazine publishing companies.

As we look at ways to distribute the content that we produce every day, whether it’s through a daily e-newsletter or some type of Smart newspaper or Smart magazine that you described in one of your recent blogs, I really believe that is our future and as soon as we embrace that, we’ll stop wasting time and money trying to make the advertising model work.

Samir Husni: How do you view the transition from ink on paper to digital? And also going from a monthly publication or six times per year to say an hourly, if not a by the minute type publication?

Fred Parry: I think it’s pretty clear that people want an hourly publication. I think people want content updated as frequently as we’re willing to do it, so that’s a real transition for us and a paradigm shift certainly.

But I think there are still going to be people who want that tangible reading experience, whether it’s in the bathroom or on the beach, there will be a need for that magazine. It will just become a very small percentage of our annual revenue model.

And the custom content, the way that’s evolving; the lines between editorial and promotional content have become so blurred, and there doesn’t seem to be much of an effort to defend those lines any longer. People tend to find as much value in promotional content as they do in editorial content.

So, those of us over the age of 30 in the magazine publishing business are still scratching our heads. And the real innovators are the people who are figuring out that john Smith wants to read about wine, baseball and Manchester United Soccer, and until we are able to provide custom content for John Smith, we’re going to lag behind.

Samir Husni: Do you think if we’re able to do that, and I know that technology makes it easy for us to provide that custom content; do you think that people will be willing to pay money for that or do you think they’ll expect the free ride of digital to continue and the Welfare Information Society to remain status quo?

Fred Parry: We have done ourselves a great disservice by creating that Welfare Information Society and I think that it’s going to be almost impossible to teach people that they have to pay for content. Somebody will hopefully find a way to do it.

We’re spending a lot of time in the publishing business right now; I’ve been to three magazine conferences in the last month and the one common thread that is being woven through all of these conferences and what publishers are talking about today are these universal or integrated audience data bases, where every engagement a reader has with our magazines; we need to capture that engagement.

So, if John Smith is reading about wine in our magazine or online, we need to somehow note that engagement and to know that the next time we have some content about wine, we need to alert John Smith that there is an article coming out in next month’s magazine about wine and we think that he’d enjoy it. Or let readers know that we just posted this on our blog or on our website. Being able to capture intelligence about our readers’ preferences and being able to say we know that reader 6279 is interested in these 15 verticals, these 15 categories of interest.

There are a couple of companies that are helping publishers capture that information; it is high-minded; it is something that’s very difficult for those of us that grew up in the traditional world of publishing to get our heads around, but I think it’s very clear that’s our future.

Samir Husni: Do you think that we can monetize that future without the printed product?

Fred Parry: Absolutely, by selling sponsored content. I think that’s where the revenue model is. Once we have the audience established; once we have a greater degree of confidence about the significance and validity of our data bases; I think that we can go to marketers and say, look, I can put you right in front of and help you interact with this small cluster. And maybe that small cluster is just 150 readers or maybe it’s 15,000, but they are uniquely interested in what you’re selling. And I can make it very easy for you to interact with them.

Samir Husni: And what if that advertiser or marketer tells you that they have the same capability of reaching them directly, why would they need you?

Fred Parry: They can’t produce the same kind of content that we’ll produce. They won’t have the same creditability that we do as a content provider. I think that’s going to be our only unique vantage point that we have the creditability and a reputation for generating quality content that people are going to be interested in.

As long as we can preserve our brands and keep building our brands, I believe we’ll have that advantage over the marketer.

Samir Husni: I think you’ll agree with me when I say we live in a digital age. Why are we continuing to produce magazines today like we did in 2007?

Fred Parry: People still want them. If people didn’t want those magazines, basically our business model would fail. While it’s been reduced; I think there’s still a market for that. Print is still credible; people still want that tangible experience and they still want to have that quiet time with a magazine. And I also believe there are times when people want to be on a digital diet, they want to be away from all of those devices. They just want some quiet time.

Maybe I’m just fooling myself, but I’m hoping that there’s still some desire for that physical magazine.

Samir Husni: Have you changed at all? If you compare a copy of Inside Columbia from the early years to a copy from today is there a major difference? I’m one of those people who say there’s not a problem with ink on paper, the problem is with what is being put on the ink on paper. Do I still need a local guide to restaurants in town or a list of all the attorneys in town in print, or should my content change to reflect the new realities of the digital age?

Fred Parry: One of the things that have changed for sure is that our magazines are much smaller than they were in 2008. And I think that we’re probably more in tune with our target reader and what his/her needs are.

At Inside Columbia magazine we have identified a 43-year-old female, named Lisa, as our target audience. And we have painted a picture of Lisa; we have a fictitious character that’s on a poster in our office. Our editors ask what would Lisa think about this; our advertising sales reps ask don’t you want to get this message to Lisa, so that’s one thing that’s changed since 2008. We’re a lot more in tune with what our reader wants and what our reader needs. We know what Lisa’s insecurities are and we know what her frustrations are; we know what keeps Lisa awake at night. If our magazine can somehow satisfy that concern and her needs; we’re really filling a nice void.

Probably more than anything, our magazine is Lisa’s connection to her community and to the real world. Lisa is pretty inundated right now with trying to get the kids to soccer and to school and trying to maintain the house, but also finishing that degree that she’s working on and working part-time somewhere. Lisa’s plate is absolutely full, but if our magazine can serve as that connection between Lisa and the world that she wants to belong to, the world that she wants to be engaged with, that’s probably the strongest benefit that we offer.

Samir Husni: Do you think that the future of the Lisa’s of the world and of the regional and city magazines is a little brighter than the rest of the industry?

Fred Parry: I think it’s brighter because we’re smarter than we were six years ago; it’s brighter because we’re much more efficient; we’re spending money much more cautiously and really, for most of us, there is a better return on our investment. We’re leaner and meaner, and I think we’re poised to sort of ride out the storm. And as the industry evolves and continues to change and be affected by technology; I feel like we’re going to be in a much better position to either innovate or jump on board.

Samir Husni: If you had to name one stumbling block facing the future of Inside Columbia and the future of city and regional magazines, what would it be?

Fred Parry: It’s the traditional advertising model. Trying to go out and sell paid advertising and display advertising gets harder every single day. Six or seven years ago advertising revenue was 92% of our revenue. Today, our core magazine might be 50% of our revenue.

And so we’re replacing that advertising revenue with custom publishing, which has been a big growth sector for us. We’re replacing that magazine revenue with events, digital newsletters, e-blasts and different projects that really have nothing to do with the magazine, other than the fact that we’re borrowing or trading on the goodwill of our brand. And that brand opens the door for us. Inside Columbia is a very strong brand, just like 5280 is in Denver or Boston Magazine. It doesn’t really matter what we’re selling, because we have the creditability of our brand behind us and people trust our brand. I think that’s probably where we have an edge over a lot of other people who are trying to produce content.

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

Fred Parry: (Laughs) I think that it’s always a struggle to try and figure out what our advertisers are thinking. There’s always something shiny and new that comes along and steals the attention of the traditional marketers that have supported us over the years. So, I think the thing that keeps me awake is trying to figure out how to stay a step ahead; how to outsmart these “innovators” that come in with these latest and greatest ideas that nine times out of ten are not sustainable. But they come in and they temporarily steal our milk and bread and it’s a disruption, to say the least.

I think the thing that keeps me awake is figuring out how to outsmart those folks; how do I go in and make my relationship with that marketer, with the person who’s paying the bills, so strong, that they’ll stop looking at other places and be as faithful to me as I am to them.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

Magazines As Informers. The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines. A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past: Dissertation Entries Part 8

April 17, 2015

Magazines as Informers
1983

Mr. Magazine™ in his official role as a professor and educator.

In a country such as the United States, media critics claim that mass communication media should have a social responsibility toward the audience it is serving. In the case of magazines, for example, Roland Wolseley argues that they should have the obligation “to provide the people with a fair presentation of facts, with honestly held opinions, and with truthful advertising.” This obligation was obvious in the case of Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts where the court penalized the Saturday Evening Post for not taking more time in checking its story on coach Butts. The Magazine Advertising Bureau agreed that magazines have more obligations than other mass media because they “do not have the spot news function of either the newspaper or the radio. With the advent of television and its role in entertaining, magazines began to focus more on informing people about different matters that help them with their daily living. This new focus covered a broad base of information. Topics such as how to prepare food better, or to cope with rigors of living, or even how to survive a nuclear war, are but a few examples of this new focus.

The role of magazines as informers is chiefly detected through the news they print, the meanings they give to events, and the descriptions used to identify those events. Benjamin M. Compaine divided this role of magazines into two parts: passive and active. The passive information, he said, is information intended for the reader’s entertainment or for his general knowledge. On the other hand, active information is intended for specific use. Compaine gave an example of each type. Passive information might be an article on the life of Billie Jean King, while active information might be an article on how to cure tennis elbow. Compaine also noted that the special interest consumer magazines deal with active information and that general interest consumer magazines deal with passive information.

Whether active or passive, the role of magazines as informers witnessed no basic change through the years. “There are just as many people who turn to magazines primarily for information,” the study found. “People regard magazines as an excellent way of keeping abreast of trends, keeping informed about new products, and securing information about individual and special interests and activities such as hobbies, decorating, family care, and fashion.”

John Tebbel went a step further in discussing the role of the magazine as informers. He said, “Among the consumer magazines, the informational function is preeminent, no matter what audience is being reached…We live in an Age of Information, and certainly magazines are the prime carriers of it.” Magazines carry information that is far different from that found in other media. This information, especially in the newsweeklies, has helped, according to John Hohenberg, to “fill an indefensible gap in the reporting of national and international affairs by less qualified daily newspapers of the nation and the bulletin-type coverage of radio and television.” This gap would only be filled by magazines in their roles as informers by offering the readers something quite different from that of newspaper or television information.

To put it in the words of Louis M. Lyons, then curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, this information should “give the readers something to chew on, to mull over, something to stir his imagination, to reflect about, not only to broaden his awareness of current issues but to lead him to consider matters that are not now and may never be current issues, but should engage the attention of the questing mind.”

The above information was written in 1983 and is taken from a portion of my dissertation when I was at the University of Missouri-Columbia where I obtained my doctorate in journalism. And while the majority of the material still holds true, things have changed drastically in some areas.

Magazines as Informers
2015

While many facets of magazine media have changed drastically over the years, this is one area that has not. In fact, I still stand behind every word that I wrote in 1983 concerning magazines as informers.

The voices remain status quo as well. In 2015, the passive information exists and so does the active. Examples today of Compaine’s observation could be: passive – Reese Witherspoon on the January 2015 cover of Glamour, offering a look inside her personal life with the statement “I don’t do regret,” and active – February’s Muscle & Fitness, which compels you to ‘Pump up Your Gains with a Proven Workout.’

Magazines inform on many levels: political, epicurean, fashion and beauty, science, celebrity, health, fitness, and the list goes on and on. The words of Louis M. Lyons have never been truer than they are today, the information one finds within the covers of a magazine should “give the readers something to chew on, to mull over, something to stir his imagination, to reflect about, not only to broaden his awareness of current issues but to lead him to consider matters that are not now and may never be current issues, but should engage the attention of the questing mind.” And without a doubt, they do.

Next week Mr. Magazine™ begins the journey of The Commercial Role of magazines then in 1983, and now in 2015.

Until next week…stay ‘informed,’ pick up a magazine.

Posted in A Mr. Magazine™ Musing, Magazine Power, News and Views | 1 Comment »

Travel With A Purpose: Smithsonian Embarks On New Journeys (The Magazine, That Is). The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Publisher Steve Giannetti And Editor-in-Chief Victoria Pope

April 15, 2015

“I’m very excited about this part of our business. I was brought up in print and I do believe that it’s the role of print and how it plays in the overall world of our media. You see it as much as I do; now we’re seeing digital-only plays that want to get into the print business and so, isn’t it right that we should actually start with the median and grow it the other way? That’s where I see the future going, creating content that can be deeper and articulated in different ways in the world of publishing.” Steve Giannetti

“I believe very much in the importance of the commercial side. I don’t feel successful without being successful.” Victoria Pope

If you love to travel and you love to learn about the places and destinations you’re traveling to, then Smithsonian’s new magazine, Smithsonian Journeys is for you. The magazine could easily have the tagline, “Travel with A Purpose.” Of course, the one it has bodes well for it too, “Seeing the World in a New Light.”

Steve Giannetti is the chief revenue officer and Victoria Pope is editor-in-chief and the two together have a collaborative bond that is apparent throughout the pages of the sleek magazine. The editorial is wonderful and the ads are dynamic and only add to the energy and flow of the magazine.

I spoke with Steve and Victoria recently and they praised their new baby as only parents could and should, without ignoring the inherent pitfalls of growing up that every infant has. The power and beauty of print was a driving factor behind the powers-that-be of the Smithsonian’s decision to launch a new title. And by the deep, enriched feeling you get from just flipping through the pages, I would say they made a stellar decision.

So, sit back and enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Steve Giannetti, Publisher and Victoria Pope, Editor-in-Chief, Smithsonian Journeys.

But first, the sound-bites:

On why Smithsonian decided to launch a print magazine in a digital age: What a great opportunity to create a tangible, tactile, beautiful product that is able to take all of our travel resources and put them together in one place. (SG)

On why Paris was the city of choice for the first issue: Honestly, when I came into the job, I could do whatever I wanted, but within a very short period of time. And I wanted to pick a place that I felt I knew on the ground a bit. I knew a little bit about Arab culture there; I had read a lot about black American culture historically there, so I felt like I had a strong starting point. (VP)

On whether the history of the city or region chosen will play an integral part of every issue: That’s the idea. We’re in the midst of doing an issue now that will be on what’s called the “Inca Highway,” the countries of the Andes, so Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile. Again, it’s trying to create a rounded, curated view of that region. We have a piece on what’s called “Astro Tourism” in Chile, which is to say it’s going to be a story on the southern night sky and about stargazing. (VP)

On whether anyone told Steve that Smithsonian was out of its mind for launching a print magazine today: I can tell you that exact quote was said to me several times. I was asked why we would do it and I explained to them that if you look at the magazine business today, Samir, where is it resonating the most? With high quality, beautiful, tactile publications and that this is far more than just a magazine print launch. And I also said wait until you see the issue.

On where Steve sees the future of print: There is no doubt the future of print, I think, is creating products that are more a part of a larger medium mix, it’s not just print alone. It’s now the launching point of a content platform that we’re going to be expanding, so I see this more as print’s role in the entire medium mix and I see us growing in, and I don’t want to call them niches, because that’s not the right word, but I see us growing in areas that can create content that is deeper and more easily articulated in other platforms. And I think consumers will pay for that. And if consumers pay for it, advertisers will follow.

On the major stumbling block Victoria felt they had to face while launching the magazine: Of course, you have to start small and by that I mean small budget as well. For me, it’s been quite an issue to find the kinds of contributors that I want in a foreign venue. I have to start from scratch basically when it’s a place far away. I don’t have the budget to send people from the states and I’m not even sure that’s the model that I want to follow.

On Steve’s opinion of the biggest stumbling block: The biggest stumbling block was really in convincing people that we were creating a beautiful product that no one had ever seen before, but tell them also that they were going to have trust and take that ride with us.

On whether Steve believes pricey magazines and consumer-driven revenue may be the new business model for magazines: As the chief revenue officer and I’m also in charge of consumer marketing as well, so yes, I don’t want to be reliant on just sponsors and advertisers, so the answer to that question is yes. We do feel a product has to be paid for, or at least somewhat paid for or monetized through the consumer.

On the human being Victoria feels the magazine would become if struck with a magic wand that could turn Smithsonian Journeys into a person: It’s Victoria, but it’s also the Smithsonian Journeys traveler, frankly. I spent a lot of time talking with the people on the travel side about the people they’ve met on the trips, who they are and what they are, people who are autodidacts, who are very interested in all kinds of subjects. Then I try to incorporate my personality and the things that I’m interested in and the visual sense of the art director, in with those people, so truly it’s rather a cohort of people.

On what motivates Victoria to get our bed and look forward to going to work: I really love the process of figuring out how the magazine is going to look with the art director.

On what motivates Steve to get out of bed and look forward to going to work: Having been in this business for a long time, what I really love about getting up today is that we’ve created a new product that’s amazing. I’m sitting here with the editor-in-chief, right? I believe in church and state, but what I really love is that we’ve created this arm-in-arm, not me telling Victoria how to write the edit or what to write, but us constantly talking about how we can make it better and sharing what we think about every facet of the magazine.

On what keeps Steve up at night: What keeps me up at night is very simple right now. It’s that I know we’ve created a great product, but is the consumer going to think it’s great.

On what keeps Victoria up at night: I’m kept awake by the many needs to move very quickly ahead and whether I’ll be able to make something as good as I want it to be. There really isn’t a lot of time between issues, it seems that way, and that keeps me up.

And now for the lightly edited transcription of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Steve Giannetti, Publisher, and Victoria Pope, Editor-in-Chief, Smithsonian Journeys.

Samir Husni: Why did Smithsonian decide to launch a new magazine in print in today’s digital age?

Steve Giannetti: There are a couple of reasons why and the first one is that travel is in the DNA of the Smithsonian brand and our travel division is called Smithsonian Journeys. Smithsonian Journeys is a place where you can book a trip to virtually any place in the world and when you go on one of our trips a Smithsonian expert is with you. This has been around for about 30 years and it’s a really robust business for us.

From a commercial standpoint, travel has been a really large part of our advertising and sponsorship and the Smithsonian consumers love to travel; we know that from our business; they have money and they have time.

We felt with all these areas coming together; what a great opportunity to create a tangible, tactile, beautiful product that is able to take all of our travel resources and put them together in one place. That was really the genesis of this idea and then we brought Victoria on, who used to work at National Geographic, and she’s just brought a whole new perspective. As we say on the cover: seeing the world in a new light is exactly what this publication is about.

Samir Husni: Victoria, that leads me to the question, why did you choose the city that never ceases to delight and fascinate Americans, Paris, for the first issue?

Victoria Pope: (Laughs) Doesn’t that say it all? Honestly, when I came into the job, I could do whatever I wanted, but within a very short period of time. And I wanted to pick a place that I felt I knew on the ground a bit. I knew a little bit about Arab culture there; I had read a lot about black American culture historically there, so I felt like I had a strong starting point. I also just wanted a place in which we could follow very vividly the template that I think is important in this kind of journalism, which is taking history and bringing it into the modern and bringing it alive. Paris is a city that does have those connections everywhere, so it was a good model location for us.

Samir Husni: Victoria, what was your position at National Geographic?

Victoria Pope: I had several positions. For most of my nine years there I was deputy to the editor-in-chief, so I was number two at the magazine.

Samir Husni: When I flipped through the pages of the first issue, I felt as though you were a curator of Paris. If someone is interested in Paris and its history and how it relates to Americans; you’ve done a great job with that curation. Is this what we’ll see with every issue’s topic?

Victoria Pope: That’s the idea. We’re in the midst of doing an issue now that will be on what’s called the “Inca Highway,” the countries of the Andes, so Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile. Again, it’s trying to create a rounded, curated view of that region. We have a piece on what’s called “Astro Tourism” in Chile, which is to say it’s going to be a story on the southern night sky and about stargazing.

Then there will be a piece on La Paz on the ways in which superstition infuses everyday life. Charles Mann, who is the author of 1491, is going to be looking at the ecology of the region and how that ecology really gave it the possibilities of becoming a great civilization back at the time of the Incas. And several stories deal with Incan civilization.

What we do know with each issue is that we want to follow the kinds of subjects that are most important to the Smithsonian readers, meaning Smithsonian in a general sense, the Smithsonian partaker, if you will, the people who go on tours and who like the museums in the magazine. And we’re always going to try and have one science story; we’re always going to have history, whether it be deep history, like archaeology in the case of the Andean countries, or in the case of Paris, we went back to the 17th century.

So we know that these two elements will be in each issue and then also a certain amount of food history, but also some contemporary food reporting. We feel that people care about this a lot and we’re trying to do everything a little bit deeper than it is in most travel publications because I personally find that most travel magazines don’t give me enough of what I want.

I was a foreign correspondent for over 10 years and I remember that when people would visit me, tourists and friends, they really wanted to know about the places; they really wanted to know more than just what they could find out quickly in a list of places to see, such as monuments and restaurants, and that’s what we’re trying to cater to.

Samir Husni: Steve, this is a print publication in a digital age and as the chief revenue officer, you had the responsibility of trying to sell this magazine to advertisers. Did anybody tell you that you were out of your mind to bring another print publication into this digital age?

Steve Giannetti: I can tell you that exact quote was said to me several times. I was asked why we would do it and I explained to them that if you look at the magazine business today, Samir, where is it resonating the most? With high quality, beautiful, tactile publications and that this is far more than just a magazine print launch. And I also said wait until you see the issue.

The initial response was that, but after a bit it was more of, I’m really happy you’re doing this and that you’re staying committed to a platform that is very important. And as you can see, we were very successful in bringing in a quality group of advertisers to the magazine and we hope to bring in more.

Samir Husni: The whole “print is dead” marching band has dissolved and now the new group’s mantra is “print is in decline.” Where do you see the future of print?

Steve Giannetti: There is no doubt the future of print, I think, is creating products that are more a part of a larger medium mix, it’s not just print alone. It’s now the launching point of a content platform that we’re going to be expanding, so I see this more as print’s role in the entire medium mix and I see us growing in, and I don’t want to call them niches, because that’s not the right word, but I see us growing in areas that can create content that is deeper and more easily articulated in other platforms. And I think consumers will pay for that. And if consumers pay for it, advertisers will follow.

I’m very excited about this part of our business. I was brought up in print and I do believe that it’s the role of print and how it plays in the overall world of our media. You see it as much as I do; now we’re seeing digital-only plays that want to get into the print business and so, isn’t it right that we should actually start with the median and grow it the other way? That’s where I see the future going, creating content that can be deeper and articulated in different ways in the world of publishing.

Samir Husni: What was the major stumbling block that you had to face during this launch process and how did you overcome it?

Steve Giannetti: In terms of advertising or in general?

Samir Husni: In general, or in terms of what you consider the major stumbling block from the point of conception to the point of birth of Smithsonian Journeys?

Victoria Pope: Of course, you have to start small and by that I mean small budget as well. For me, it’s been quite an issue to find the kinds of contributors that I want in a foreign venue. I have to start from scratch basically when it’s a place far away. I don’t have the budget to send people from the states and I’m not even sure that’s the model that I want to follow. I felt finally, when I did get the freelancers that I wanted in Paris to contribute that I would be much happier that I had people who were based in Paris doing it than sending people that I knew from National Geographic or some other place to go over, but it’s very tricky to do that and also not have a very big budget or lead time.

Those are the typical kinds of problems of a start-up and you work on fumes a lot of the time. I’m just very pleased that the first issue has turned out well and I think the second issue will be very good too and we’ll probably be able to grow and put more resources quickly into it.

Steve Giannetti: And that’s the word: resources. The biggest stumbling block was really in convincing people that we were creating a beautiful product that no one had ever seen before, but tell them also that they were going to have trust and take that ride with us. There are going to be bumps from a budgeting standpoint, and I from the chief revenue officer’s standpoint said, we’re going to bring more advertisers into this as well. Hopefully, Samir, what we’re going to find is that it won’t be just travel advertisers, but we’ll get more advertisers that are in the travel genre.

And once we overcame that and people started seeing the magazine being created and seeing it as it grew, internally here at the Smithsonian it’s become a fulcrum of “I want to see this.” I’m in D.C. and I’m carrying a copy and keeping it close to my vest so people don’t steal it from me.

It took a while to get over that first hump, but once we got there and people saw what we were creating and the type of advertising that we were bringing in and the product itself, everybody called and said let’s do it. And you get that with a lot of start-ups.

Samir Husni: I noticed that the cover price is $13.99, for one issue, while you can get almost an entire year of Smithsonian for that price. Is this the new model? Are we going to see more consumer-driven revenue generation from print than from advertising?

Steve Giannetti: As the chief revenue officer and I’m also in charge of consumer marketing as well, so yes, I don’t want to be reliant on just sponsors and advertisers, so the answer to that question is yes. We do feel a product has to be paid for, or at least somewhat paid for or monetized through the consumer. To be successful in the future, Samir, I think any print publication has to look at that model, absolutely.

Samir Husni: The new magazine that National Geographic just launched, National Geographic History, the cover price is $9.99 and published 6 times per year, so we’re starting to see these high cover prices, which to me is sending a signal that if you really like what you see, you will pay for it.

Steve Giannetti: That’s exactly right and remember, Smithsonian Journeys is all original editorial, while some launches are able to use and take into consideration refurbished editorial. So nobody has seen this before. And we felt if we were able to create this unique editorial, it would be great. And this is unique, not only in terms of the content, but also in the view that we’re looking at traveling, and I think this is something that consumers will pay for. And the consumers will talk, so knock on wood, Samir; I’m hoping you’ll buy 200 copies. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too) Victoria, if I give you a magic wand and you strike Smithsonian Journeys premier issue with it and a person, a human being, appears in place of the magazine; who would it be and how will that person, male or female, engage with the audience?

Victoria Pope: It’s Victoria, but it’s also the Smithsonian Journeys traveler, frankly. I spent a lot of time talking with the people on the travel side about the people they’ve met on the trips, who they are and what they are, people who are autodidacts, who are very interested in all kinds of subjects. Then I try to incorporate my personality and the things that I’m interested in and the visual sense of the art director, in with those people, so truly it’s rather a cohort of people. I try to bring all of that into this person who represents the magazine. And I think if that’s successful, then I’ve reached a large enough readership. We don’t need to be huge; we just need to be…

Steve Giannetti: …loved. (Laughs)

Victoria Pope: By a subset of people who love to travel and like knowing about places and like the idea of reading several stories about a region or a city at once. And I have to say, I think quite a few people fit that.

Steve Giannetti: If you were going to go to Paris and you read this magazine, I think you’d have a huge head start on seeing the city in a way that probably you would not have experienced in a first-time journey. And that’s what our people want. The traveler from Smithsonian; the cultural traveler wants to learn about things that are new. Not new in the fact that they’re brand-new, but they’re uncovered. They like to discover and they’re curious and that’s the type of person that we want to read this. The ability to take this content and grow it out is something that I’m excited about as well.

Samir Husni: What is the initial launch; can you share some numbers?

Steve Giannetti: We’re putting out 150,000 on the newsstand and I have some alternate distribution going into some cruise lines as well. So, it’s probably about 170,000 altogether.

Samir Husni: Will the magazine have subscriptions or be strictly on the newsstands in the beginning?

Steve Giannetti: Good question. What we did, Samir, was a pre-launch email exchange with some of our list to see if they would buy the magazine in advance. And the response has been very robust, so that’s good. And we have a card in the magazine that asks the reader if they’d like to receive it, I want to get that feedback. I would love to grow it, but right now I think you have to establish the beat ship with the fact that if it works on the newsstand, I would love to grow it, yes. But we have to wait and see what the consumer says here first, if that makes sense.

Samir Husni: Most good magazine launches considered the newsstand as their acid test; if it worked on the newsstand first, then they could go from there.

Steve Giannetti: That’s exactly right. We’re confident that this is going to work, that’s why we’ve committed to four of these.

Samir Husni: Victoria, would you think it was a horrible nightmare if Steve came to you and said let’s do this magazine monthly?

Victoria Pope: (Laughs)

Steve Giannetti: (Laughs too) Yes, the answer is yes.

Victoria Pope: Definitely. (Laughing) That would be an impossibility, but we do need to grow in a lot of ways. We need to grow both in having more editorial products, whether they are specials that come out of Journeys or other things. I have lots of ideas of things that we could produce. I want to spend my free time that I’ll someday have, building up our digital extensions, because I feel there is so much that I could do to help them. We want to make at lists of eating, for example, with the feature that we have on food and the history of food, a very regular and important feature digitally, so I’m trying to get people every week to write something on the subject of food history. We have many things to do beyond the print location.

Steve Giannetti: So, the growth process is to not necessarily increase frequency, it’s increasing the engagement with the consumer in different areas of this great content. And I think if we can do that, frequency will become part of it, but that’s really not going to be our barometer of growth. You don’t want to be just pumping out magazines that don’t have the quality that we have with the Smithsonian. Quality is something we always strive for, whether it’s the magazine or anything else we do. We always ask the question, is this going to represent the brand that we have to represent?

Samir Husni: Anything else either of you would like to add?

Victoria Pope: When you have time to settle down and read it; I’d love to have your thoughts about how we could make it better. Maybe it’s unfair to ask that of you, but I’d love to have your practiced eye to tell us what you think might be missing because it’s evolving; it’s definitely going to evolve.

Samir Husni: I’ll be more than happy to do that.

Samir Husni: Victoria, what makes you get out of bed in the mornings and motivates you to say, wow, I can’t wait to get to work?

Victoria Pope: I really love the process of figuring out how the magazine is going to look with the art director. I have, for probably the fifth time in my life in journalism, probably the perfect partner in my art director because we’re able to bounce ideas off of each other and we often agree about things and that to me, being able to create a product that’s so visual and written that is in harmony, where the visuals are exciting and help to bring people into the storytelling, is really wonderful.

Samir Husni: And Steve?

Steve Giannetti: Having been in this business for a long time, what I really love about getting up today is that we’ve created a new product that’s amazing. I’m sitting here with the editor-in-chief, right? I believe in church and state, but what I really love is that we’ve created this arm-in-arm, not me telling Victoria how to write the edit or what to write, but us constantly talking about how we can make it better and sharing what we think about every facet of the magazine. So, it has really re-jazzed me and reenergized me to say that I’m in a business that has a lot of growth areas.

We’re working together now and I really love that. Years ago, the church and state chasm was so big that it just didn’t work. But now, being able to collaborate on something new and come out with a great product, that’s really energizing, even for an old guy like me.

Samir Husni: (Laughs) Steve, since you mentioned the old guy and I did not, my typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Steve Giannetti: (Laughs too) What keeps me up at night is very simple right now. It’s that I know we’ve created a great product, but is the consumer going to think it’s great.

Samir Husni: And Victoria?

Victoria Pope: I’m kept awake by the many needs to move very quickly ahead and whether I’ll be able to make something as good as I want it to be. There really isn’t a lot of time between issues, it seems that way, and that keeps me up. I still have two assignments to make for the next issue.

Let me just say something about the collaboration with Steve. It’s been really nice. I remember the very first day we met on my fifth day on the job and I said, I think that we’re going to have to stream these quarterlies; it’s going to be better if we just, instead of covering the world every four months, we narrow it down to cities and regions. And Steve immediately picked up on that and was able to reinforce what I was thinking editorially from a business standpoint. And that meant a lot to me.

I believe very much in the importance of the commercial side. I don’t feel successful without being successful.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Magazine Power, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

Forbes’ Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin To Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni: The Magazine Business Does Not Have An Audience Problem; The Magazine Business Has An Advertiser Problem. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview.

April 9, 2015

“I think that the pendulum always swings back and forth and I think the pendulum, which had swung pretty much to digital, now may swing, while not all the way back, certainly somewhat toward starting the comeback a bit, because there is a recognition that audiences do like their magazine products.” Lewis DVorkin

Lewis DVorkin at the Magazine Innovation Center, The University of Mississippi

If you sell it and the public buys it; it’s a product, according to Lewis DVorkin. And it’s very hard to argue with his straightforward logic. And why would anyone want to? Lewis DVorkin is chief product officer for Forbes and believes whole-heartedly in his brand as a valuable product worth selling, and with the across-the-board success of the Forbes brand, obviously worth buying to the consumer.

Lewis is the one-and-only chief product officer in a legacy media company and knows something about platforms, strategies and the power of print integrated in a digital world. With impressive style and intuition, Forbes has done powerful things with native advertising, both within its pages and on its covers.

I spoke with Lewis recently during his visit to Meek School of Journalism and New Media where he was the opening keynote at the 2015 Ole Miss New Media Conference at the University of Mississippi. After his speech Lewis and I visited in my office at the Magazine Innovation Center and engaged in a conversation about print, digital, the small screens that we consume our information on and how they seem to be getting even smaller, and we talked about the future of devices in the world of magazines and magazine media. His answers were succinct and informative.

I hope you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Lewis DVorkin, Chief Product Officer, Forbes magazine; I know you’ll be very enlightened by his answers.

But first the sound-bites:

Lewis DVorkin at the Magazine Innovation Center, The University of Mississippi[/caption] On the role he believes print plays in a digital world: Obviously, we’re big believers in print. Audiences love, and I can’t speak for newspapers, I’ve been out of that business for a while, but I can say audiences love magazines. They love the identification they have with a magazine; they love the tactile part of the magazine; they love getting it, whether they buy it or it comes to them; they love the storytelling; they love the photography, and they love what a magazine offers. The magazine business does not have an audience problem; the magazine business has an advertiser problem.

On whether he believes the industry will have to continue to depend on advertisers for survival or will it ever make money on its customers: There is something more to it than the size of the audience, there is also what are the new kinds of products and features that you’re developing for your print product, and as you probably know, we have native advertising in Forbes magazine and we’ve done some dramatic things with second covers and placing a native ad on the cover of Forbes.

On the fact that we’ve moved from a big screen to a small screen and with the Apple Watch coming out, an even smaller screen: Devices will get smaller and smaller. It’s what I was mentioning before; so what’s the kind of content that you consume on these devices and how do we produce content for these devices? It’s difficult enough to figure it out on the Smartphone and there will be a time when we need to figure it out on these wearable devices, but I would also caution you to remember however many years the iPad has been out, maybe four or five years now, that was going to change everything and it really didn’t.

On why he refers to Forbes’ platforms as products: People are buying it. When you buy something; you’re paying for a product. And if you’re paying to buy this collection of 200 pages or 250 pages, it is a product. If you’re going to a mobile website to look at advertising; it’s a product that houses the advertising.

On the major stumbling block he’s had to face: Technology is hard. Technology is really hard to move fast enough for the change in consumer behavior. Consumers move faster than advertisers; they move faster in some ways than publishing technology; this is not about us; it’s about the industry and I think that we’re always finding ourselves just stumbling over the question: how do we move fast enough with the technology that we have?

On what keeps him up at night: I generally sleep really well, but I do think a lot about the notion of websites and apps, browsers and apps. It’s very difficult and since I’m a chief product officer; if we can’t make money, that’s not a good thing. And the app world is a difficult world to make money in, but more people are on their Smartphones than ever. So, how do we monetize our users on a Smartphone and when apps are not, so far in the news business, great revenue-drivers and we struggle with that.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Lewis DVorkin, Chief Product Officer, Forbes magazine.

Lewis DVorkin and Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni at the Meek School of Journalism, Ole Miss.

Samir Husni: You told me that anytime you hear the word start-up, it gives you a rush. Today, there are a lot of new start-ups being launched in print and also a lot of digital entities. What do you think is the role of print in today’s digital age?

Lewis DVorkin: Obviously, we’re big believers in print. Audiences love, and I can’t speak for newspapers, I’ve been out of that business for a while, but I can say audiences love magazines. They love the identification they have with a magazine; they love the tactile part of the magazine; they love getting it, whether they buy it or it comes to them; they love the storytelling; they love the photography, and they love what a magazine offers. The magazine business does not have an audience problem; the magazine business has an advertiser problem. And advertisers are now trying to move to where they believe their new audiences are, which certainly is digital.

It was interesting; Martin Sorrell recently talked about how magazines have been undervalued or not valued enough by marketers, so I think that the pendulum always swings back and forth and I think the pendulum, which had swung pretty much to digital, now may swing, while not all the way back, certainly somewhat toward starting the comeback a bit, because there is a recognition that audiences do like their magazine products.

Samir Husni: At Forbes, you’re one of the few entities in your space that digital actually brought more readerships to your print. How can you monetize that? Will there ever be way where we can start making money from our consumers, our customers, the readers; or will we have to continue to depend on advertisers for our survival?

Lewis DVorkin: You know, the number that I talk about is an MRI number and advertisers do buy on MRI numbers, so the fact that our MRI numbers have risen is a good thing and our salespeople go out and sell our magazine.

But there is something more to it than the size of the audience, there is also what are the new kinds of products and features that you’re developing for your print product, and as you probably know, we have native advertising in Forbes magazine and we’ve done some dramatic things with second covers and placing a native ad on the cover of Forbes. And those new products and features have attracted a lot of advertisers to us who are interested in being able to participate.

So, again, when I say that print has an advertising problem, we’re trying to find solutions to that. And one of the solutions is the integration, clearly labeled, of marketing content in our magazine in powerful ways. And I think that’s going to have a significant impact on the revenue of the magazine.

Samir Husni: Tomorrow, the preorders for the Apple Watch will begin; the Apple store will start selling the Apple Watch, which based on what I’ve read can actually replace the mobile phone. So, we’re moving from a big screen to a smaller screen and then to an even smaller one.

Lewis DVorkin: As I told someone, what I want is a chip in my ear and all I have to do is tweak it and I can talk, or turn it off or whatever. I mean, devices will get smaller and smaller. It’s what I was mentioning before; so what’s the kind of content that you consume on these devices and how do we produce content for these devices? It’s difficult enough to figure it out on the Smartphone and there will be a time when we need to figure it out on these wearable devices, but I would also caution you to remember however many years the iPad has been out, maybe four or five years now, that was going to change everything and it really didn’t. Smartphones were going to change things.

So, I think the recognition is that everybody (has a device); you have a six-plus; I have a five; some people have watches; some have desktops; there will be many different form factors, and I think the challenge for journalism is that each form factor will require a different kind of format of content. It’s not going to be 3,000 words on a watch, nor is it going to be on a watch what it will be on a Smartphone. That’s a big challenge and we’ll figure it out.

Samir Husni: You took the unprecedented step of getting the title of Chief Product Officer and you identify the magazine and the digital devices as products. Some people in the industry think that we are much more than products; we are the journalists and the marketers; what’s your answer to that? Why do you refer to the magazine, the app and the website as products?

Lewis DVorkin: People are buying it. When you buy something; you’re paying for a product. And if you’re paying to buy this collection of 200 pages or 250 pages, it is a product. If you’re going to a mobile website to look at advertising; it’s a product that houses the advertising. It doesn’t feel as glamourous or as professional perhaps or as romantic. I go back to the days when journalism was a public trust, but all of those things were still on the TV shows, which were products.

And I think that what we have to recognize is that these things are things that make money and are being sold and we need to treat them as something different than just stories. They need to be treated differently than that. And I think that if you pay attention to that, then you will be able to deliver the journalism in a more effective way.

Samir Husni: What has been the major stumbling block that you’ve had to face in recent years and how did you overcome it?

Lewis DVorkin: Technology is hard. Technology is really hard to move fast enough for the change in consumer behavior. Consumers move faster than advertisers; they move faster in some ways than publishing technology; this is not about us; it’s about the industry and I think that we’re always finding ourselves just stumbling over the question: how do we move fast enough with the technology that we have?

And when you combine that with again, consumers are moving faster than the advertising business, and working with marketers and agencies is a little difficult stumbling block on the Smartphone device as well.

So, these are sort of industry-wide stumbling blocks; I don’t think that there is anything specific to Forbes, but they’re really hard.

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

Lewis DVorkin: I generally sleep really well, but I do think a lot about the notion of websites and apps, browsers and apps. It’s very difficult and since I’m a chief product officer; if we can’t make money, that’s not a good thing. And the app world is a difficult world to make money in, but more people are on their Smartphones than ever. So, how do we monetize our users on a Smartphone and when apps are not, so far in the news business, great revenue-drivers and we struggle with that. We have some ideas, but they’re early. Those things, if I do worry about anything, would be it. We have built a very big desktop presence, with very big revenue. How do we achieve the same on the Smartphone devices? That’s probably where I spend the majority of my time, so that’s where I have the majority of my worries. But I can really sleep OK.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | 2 Comments »

She Has The Whole “Parents” In Her Hands… Parents Latina: A New Addition To The Parents Brand. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Content Officer Dana Points.

April 9, 2015

“People think that print has gone away because they don’t understand what they’re hearing about the decline of newsstand sales. But newsstand is only a small portion of magazines and the idea that, in the case of Parents and American Baby, thousands of them a day are raising their hands and inviting print products into their home, which to me says this is still a really robust area.” Dana Points

The Parents (as in the magazine and its family of platforms) brand is a phenomenal scope of content that exceeds expectations when it comes to platform and audience. The success and popularity and trustworthiness of the brand are unquestionable and pave the way for a new baby for the ‘Parents’ to love: Parents Latina.

Dana Points is editor-in-chief and content director for the Parents group at Meredith. The passion and knowledge that she brings to the table when it comes to this niche in the publishing marketplace is unequivocal.

I spoke to Dana recently about the new infant over at the Parents hospital and was delighted to learn that this title was a very welcomed addition to the family. The need for a parenting magazine in English for second-generation Hispanics was the selling factor behind this new venture. The hope is to touch readers that Parents and Ser Padres might miss and give that audience a voice and an information outlet to consider.

So, I hope that you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Dana Points, content director, Parents Latina, and consider yourself invited to the new baby’s first birthday.

But first, the sound-bites:

On why she believes publishers are rediscovering print: I don’t know if it’s that publishers are rediscovering print; I mean across the industry I think you are definitely seeing a lot of experimentation and innovation happening, looking for alternate revenue sources because of what’s going on in the larger print ad market.

On the impact print has on readers and advertisers: We see, not only for the readers, but for the advertisers, that print advertising has a proven impact on consumer behavior and sales, so I think that’s a strong story as well.

On whether she thinks Latina-oriented magazines are a trend and every major publisher will soon be launching one: I don’t know, because I think this is a very fast-moving market when you look at the pace of the adaptation of the consumer. It could be that for many publishers, the portion of their audience that is Hispanic, reading on their regular titles that they already produce, will grow to match the portion of Hispanics in the population. I don’t know.

On the Hispanic heritage that is thriving in the U.S.: Already 26% of children under age one are in a Hispanic household. So, my audience for American Baby, for example, which we tend to get these women often in their first pregnancy to around five months of age, that’s already a very Hispanic audience.

On the fact that Parents Latina is leading the pack in its market niche and who its real competition is: I think people would argue to some extent that our competition is from the Hispanic mom’s phone. With the Hispanic consumer there is higher mobile use incidence in that population.

On where she believes the magazine will be a year from now: I’d like to see our Hispanic readers grow on Parents, as it grows and as the population of moms who are Latina grows, I would like to see the numbers pick up on the main magazine, Parents, the English magazine as well.

On her directives to her editorial team: In the United States, Mexican heritage is dominant. The directive to my small team that works here on Parents Latina is that we want to speak, in English, to the parenting passions of the new generation of Hispanic moms.

On the biggest stumbling block she’s had to face so far: I would say in part just the linguistics of working on a magazine that is quarterly. Right now, we’re just in kind of start-up mode from a staffing perspective, so just working out the intricacies of the production schedule, tucking it into the group here when we are already producing 12 issues of Parent, 11 issues of American Baby.

On what it feels like to be the Queen Bee of the entire parenting garden: I don’t feel like a Queen Bee at all; I feel like there’s a lot of worker bees that are surrounding me at all times and I’m just another worker bee. But I will say it’s really fun.

On whether there will ever be a parenting magazine on teenagers from Meredith: People ask us about teenagers all the time. I think that often readers might graduate from Family Fun to Family Circle. And Family Circle has, under Linda Fears, over the last few years done a considerable amount of coverage of issues that would be of specific concern to parents of teenagers,

On what makes Dana click and tick: First of all, I love working, and I’ve done this at other points in my career, but I love working on brands that really make a difference in people’s lives; a contact that really makes a difference.

On what keeps her up at night: Really, not much, which is not to say that I don’t have concerns, but I’ve always been a good sleeper. I think that people are finally getting the straight story about what’s going on in print magazines, but there are still some people who don’t fully understand.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Dana Points, Editor-in-Chief and Content Director, Parents Latina…

Samir Husni: Why do you think that suddenly publishers are rediscovering print? Meredith just came out with Parents Latina; Bauer has a new title, Simple Grace; National Geographic just came out with History; Rodale is launching Organic Life…

Dana Points: Right. And then you have the examples such as the CNET magazine; all of these digital/verticals that are creating print products and obviously, I know you’ve covered the very successful Allrecipes trajectory.

I don’t know if it’s that publishers are rediscovering print; I mean across the industry I think you are definitely seeing a lot of experimentation and innovation happening, looking for alternate revenue sources because of what’s going on in the larger print ad market.

And I think, in the case of Parents Latina, we really saw a group that no one was talking to directly, which is the English-dominant, largely second-generation Hispanic mom. She is very likely, at this point, to have been born in this country and prefers to read in English versus Spanish. We have a magazine, Ser Padres, that serves our Spanish-dominant customer, and then we have Parents, which is really for anyone who wants to read in English. And we know we have a significant group of Hispanic women who are reading Parents already, but we looked at Parents Latina to sort of fill in the gap between the people who we might be missing with Parents and the people who are reading in Spanish with Ser Padres.

Samir Husni: Without new magazines we don’t have an industry. You have to keep adding new blood, while you are reinventing the established ones. And as you said, no one is talking about print being dead anymore; they’re now saying that print is in decline. I give them five more years and they’ll once again be talking about the power of print.

Dana Points: I think so too. We see, not only for the readers, but for the advertisers, that print advertising has a proven impact on consumer behavior and sales, so I think that’s a strong story as well. And I applaud all that the MPA has done to tell the whole story about magazines and audience and include digital.

Samir Husni: Do you feel there’s a trend in the wind to reach that English-speaking Hispanic market, because as you know, Cosmopolitan launched Cosmo Latina in English and now Meredith has launched Parents Latina; do you think that we’re going to see every major magazine spinning a Latina edition in English?

Dana Points: I don’t know, because I think this is a very fast-moving market when you look at the pace of the adaptation of the consumer. It could be that for many publishers, the portion of their audience that is Hispanic, reading on their regular titles that they already produce, will grow to match the portion of Hispanics in the population. I don’t know. I think in the case of parenthood, it’s a very emotional, personal experience and so we felt that there was a need, and in our research we saw a need, for a product that hit on some of the aspects of parenthood that are unique for this audience.

Samir Husni: As editor-in-chief and content director and as you consider all of the parenting magazines underneath your umbrella; you mentioned a bit about the similarities, but also that there are some unique differences when it comes to content. And according to the most recent census you researched, by 2030 one out of three children born in the U.S. will be of Hispanic heritage.

Dana Points: Yes and already 26% of children under age one are in a Hispanic household. So, my audience for American Baby, for example, which we tend to get these women often in their first pregnancy to around five months of age, that’s already a very Hispanic audience. And we’ve recognized that for really as long as I’ve worked on the brand, which is six years now. We adjusted our photography, for example, in American Baby to reflect more Latina moms on our pages. So, we’ve been incubating and following this audience for a while.

Samir Husni: As the leader of the pack, and I don’t think there is really even any competition for you in this field…

Dana Points: Not really. I think people would argue to some extent that our competition is from the Hispanic mom’s phone. With the Hispanic consumer there is higher mobile use incidence in that population.

We are platform agnostic here at Meredith; we work on everything. But I think that we have seen the fragmentation of where this woman is consuming her information and I will share with you that we have some new data coming on that probably in the next couple of weeks. We are releasing another wave of our Moms and Media survey that we’ve done now for several years and I can tell you that this mom, be she Hispanic or not, is just using so many different sources of information.

So, one of the things that I’ve been very interested in over the last few years is when you have so many different sources of information; what really grabs your attention in an immersive way; what do you focus on, and where do you place your trust?

In the Parents brand, we have this incredibly trusted, 85-plus-year history behind us and this very well-recognized brand and then we have this immersive experience of reading print. When you’re reading print, and I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but when you’re reading print, there’s nothing else that’s going across your screen. If you’re looking at print, there is nothing else popping up on the screen, although, if we could figure out how to make that happen, it might be cool.

Samir Husni: (Laughs).

Dana Points: But anyway, that’s an opportunity to really get to her on a very personal topic at a time when she’s a huge sponge when it comes to information consumption and in a setting that is immersive and visually rich.

Samir Husni: If I’m talking with you a year from now and ask you about the success of Parents Latina; what do you think you’ll tell me?

Dana Points: I would like to be able to tell you that 700,000 was no problem, which I’m sure it will be; we’d like to see it potentially grow and possibly grow in frequency, but there is no plan for that right now; it’s a quarterly.

And then I’d like to also see our Hispanic readers grow on Parents, as it grows and as the population of moms who are Latina grows, I would like to see the numbers pick up on the main magazine, Parents, the English magazine as well. And then of course, build out a presence of Parents Latina on Parents.com, which is very embryonic at this stage of the game.

Samir Husni: I was flipping through the pages of the first issue of Parents Latina and for some reason it took me back in time to 1978 when I first came to the United States and when Parents magazine had its first major reinvention. The magazine just feels so close to the audience.

Dana Points: That’s good. We did a lot of digging into, not only the research that we have on the audience, but also what’s out there in the larger population. I’ll give you an example; one thing we know is that a modern, second-generation female Hispanic, of those who marry, about 40% will marry someone who is not Hispanic. So, this is an issue of blending cultures; people think, oh, here’s a magazine for this population, we’re going to have to talk about being bi-cultural or being Hispanic and “American.”

Well, in the case of this particular reader, it’s actually often tri-cultural. We have a case in the first issue that acknowledges and speaks to that. And you can see a little bit of that also in Grace Bastidas’ editor’s letter in the first issue.

Another area that is more specific to this population is, first of all, how they might handle discipline. Typically, you might have a more traditional approach to discipline, particularly in a first-generation, Spanish-dominant reader. But this is a reader who is maybe a little farther down the spectrum and maybe is wrestling with how she can reconcile the discipline that she grew up with and the discipline that her mother might favor versus what friends who are not Latina are doing.

And then you have nuances like the fact that a family member, particularly the grandmother, is more likely to be a caregiver for this reader, so it’s things like that, hopefully, that are giving you this sense of specificity when it comes to the audience.

Samir Husni: What’s your directive to your editorial team when they are actually reflecting that specificity? It’s my understanding that there several different Hispanic backgrounds, whether they’re from Mexico, Cuba or the Caribbean.

Dana Points: In the United States, Mexican heritage is dominant. The directive to my small team that works here on Parents Latina is that we want to speak, in English, to the parenting passions of the new generation of Hispanic moms, so that means culturally relevant, advice, information, just doing so much of what Parents magazine does; you know, we say: we answer your questions, address your concerns, advocate your causes and celebrate the joys of raising children. That’s the same across both brands; we just want to do it in a way that’s culturally relevant.

Samir Husni: What has been the biggest stumbling block that you’ve had to face so far and how did you overcome it?

Dana Points: I would say in part just the linguistics of working on a magazine that is quarterly. Right now, we’re just in kind of start-up mode from a staffing perspective, so just working out the intricacies of the production schedule, tucking it into the group here when we are already producing 12 issues of Parent, 11 issues of American Baby; I mean really silly things like we can’t be shipping all of these products simultaneously; we have a good-sized group here working on all the magazines, but from a logistics standpoint, it’s a little bit like creating a calendar from scratch and I’ve had the managing editor of Parents, Michaela Garibaldi, working on that and she’s done a terrific job.

Samir Husni: How does it feel to be the Queen Bee in this whole parenting marketplace? You’re it, in terms of anything that comes to parenting or the brand as a whole.

Dana Points: No pressure.

Samir Husni: No pressure? (Laughs)

Dana Points: (Laughs too) I don’t feel like a Queen Bee at all; I feel like there’s a lot of worker bees that are surrounding me at all times and I’m just another worker bee. But I will say it’s really fun. I’m looking at my wall right now, looking at Family Fun and Parents, American Baby and Parents Latina, and then we also have in this portfolio Ser Padres and there are global specials and lots and lots of great stuff that’s being created and thinking about how all these things fit together is a wonderful, challenging, fun puzzle. I think that is another aspect of what’s challenging about it, not just squeezing it into the production schedule.

My goal is to have magazines that are distinct, in terms of brand identity and appearance. For example, in the case of Parents and Parents Latina, they feel like they’re of the same family. They don’t look the same; you wouldn’t confuse them if they were lying on the table next to each other, but they come from a similar heritage. I always think, and this is not how the reader sees the product, because we have very minimal overlap from an audience standpoint on the various titles, but when we go into a discussion with an advertising partner, I want to see, when you lay all these products on the table that my group works on, I want to see a consistency of quality, great visual design, journalistic chops, and really understanding who the consumer is and speaking to her directly.

Samir Husni: When I put all the magazines next to each other that Meredith has, and when I look at the 100-million-women database the company uses for part of the research; you seem to have all of the babies and parents covered, but there is a gap between Family Fun and Better Homes and Gardens; is there any plan to fill in that gap? To create magazines for when those babies become toddlers or teenagers?

Dana Points: People ask us about teenagers all the time. I think that often readers might graduate from Family Fun to Family Circle. And Family Circle has, under Linda Fears, over the last few years done a considerable amount of coverage of issues that would be of specific concern to parents of teenagers. I think what’s interesting about it is, and I now have a teenager, Samir, at the point that you are the parent of a teenager; on one hand you have a really acute need for help in areas like texting and driving, college admissions and academics and social stuff, but on the other hand you’re also feeling the beginnings of the distance and that’s why I feel like there might not be a product in print that totally revolves around the care and feeding of your teenager. You have kids, right?

Samir Husni: Oh yes, kids and grandkids.

Dana Points: American parents are really involved in their kids’ lives and there’s been a lot of back and forth about that statement. It’s very different from how it might have been a generation or two ago or in other cultures and so if you get really wrapped up in your kids’ lives, there’s a point where you need to make sure that there are other things on your dance card because you can’t live through your kids. So, I think that a product that has diversity, in terms of its coverage is important.

Samir Husni: What makes Dana click and tick? What makes you get out of bed in the morning and look forward to going to work?

Dana Points: First of all, I love working, and I’ve done this at other points in my career, but I love working on brands that really make a difference in people’s lives; a contact that really makes a difference. You hear that a lot and I hear it when people come to interview me; I hear it when people leave our group to go on to other jobs, that they feel like they weren’t just kind of selling space, that they really did have an opportunity to impact people’s happiness, their behavior, by virtue of the fact that they’re consuming our content.

I like the kind of do-good aspect of my job, even as I also like the business part of my job, which is all the stuff we’ve talked about already, thinking about all the brand entities and how they all fit together and how do we do what we need to do on the budgets that we have, strategizing about new projects or PR or redesigns or special sections, things like that.

And then I just love the team that I work with. We have a great group here and in Northampton at Family Fun and in our Spanish-language group as well.

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

Dana Points: Really, not much, which is not to say that I don’t have concerns, but I’ve always been a good sleeper. I think that people are finally getting the straight story about what’s going on in print magazines, but there are still some people who don’t fully understand. Occasionally, I’ll be somewhere and someone will meet me for the first time and say, how’s it going? And they sound worried and I think that there are still too many people who have the perception that print is going away, which I’m talking to some of the youngest customers out there and we are simply not seeing it. These readers do still love their print magazines.

I think what’s happened, most acutely in the last year, in terms of newsstand sales, has tarnished the idea of print a bit. People think that print has gone away because they don’t understand what they’re hearing about the decline of newsstand sales. But newsstand is only a small portion of magazines and the idea that, in the case of Parents and American Baby, thousands of them a day are raising their hands and inviting print products into their home, which to me says this is still a really robust area. That people like to have that magazine hit their mailboxes, be on their coffee tables, be beside their beds at night, etc. So, that perception that print is threatened keeps me up some at night.

And then right now we have a lot of great products and just sort of keeping all those balls in the air and working with the digital team here to make sure that you really have brand evenly across the platforms, which is not to say that we have to do the same thing across platforms because it’s different and the audience can be different. But how do we continue to use digital and social, which is so fragmented and everybody is always on to the shiny new thing; how do we continue to bring new audiences into our brand, whether that be print, digital or whatever.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Magazine Power, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

Get Out Of Your Mind & Step Into The GOOD World…Re-launching A Good Magazine – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Max Schorr, Co-Founder & Will Tacy, General Manager, Good Media…

April 7, 2015

“As we designed the magazine we weren’t thinking, OK – we need to make sure that everything in this magazine is going to work in digital just as well, because that’s not what it’s meant to do. It’s meant to work beautifully as a magazine. And everything that we do on the site is meant to work beautifully in digital. We’re not trying to make sure that we can optimize every effort so that everything is working in both media. I think by doing that, you lessen the quality of both and you don’t let either media do what it can do wonderfully.” Will Tacy

The “Good” movement was born 10 years ago with the ambitious dream of “pushing forward an emerging community of people committed to living like they give a damn.” This statement comes from the minds of the original founders of Good: Max Schorr, Ben Goldhirsh and Casey Caplowe. In 2012, Good shifted its focus to its social network and stopped print production.

Today Good in print has been reborn from its social pixels-only, with a new format and redesign. The mission is the same, to live well and do good, but the journal-type magazine with a quarterly frequency is a brave new attempt to get back into print with the positive gusto the brand has always stood for and believed in.

I spoke with Max Schorr (one of the original co-founders of Good) and Will Tacy (former managing editor of The New York Times.com) and now general manager of Good Media, recently about the innovative design and re-launch of the magazine. It was an informative and affirming conversation about the magazine’s mission and where the two men see the brand heading in the future. Their positivity and assurance of the need for that mission was contagious and emboldened our discussion and the re-launch with the same zeal and impactful appetite.

I hope you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Good Co-Founder, Max Schorr and Good Media General Manager, Will Tacy, because it’s a given you’ll find it a “good” read.

Max Schorr, (right) Co-Founder GOOD and Will Tacy, Good Media General Manager.

But first, the sound-bites…

On why Good magazine shifted strategies and came back to print in journal form: Good never actually moved away from print. We took some time to reimagine and redesign the magazine, but there was never a time where we decided that we weren’t going to be in print. We did want to make sure that the magazine was something we felt would really resonate with the audience.

On defining the audience as a global citizen: The one thing I would say is the nature of global citizenship hasn’t really changed from what it was in 2006. It’s still rooted in this idea of people who give a damn; people who have faith that the world can be better and are willing to invest in it and make it better.

On the major stumbling block they anticipate on facing with the re-launch: I think that we have to reintroduce ourselves to the world, but I have faith that the audience that has been there for Good all along is still there and in fact, is bigger than it’s ever been. I also have faith that there is an audience that understands what we’re trying to create: something that’s not disposable and that was very intentional on our part.

On defining the magazine’s mantra of living “the good life,” to live well and do good: We see an increasing amount of people who really feel connected across the whole world and so part of it is creatively engaging the world where you are and finding what it is that brings your purpose alive.

On how Good balances digital and print: As we designed the magazine we weren’t thinking, OK – we need to make sure that everything in this magazine is going to work in digital just as well, because that’s not what it’s meant to do. It’s meant to work beautifully as a magazine. And everything that we do on the site is meant to work beautifully in digital.

On where they see Good Media a year from now: I think that in both the digital realm and in print, you’re going to see Good as an ongoing part of a cultural conversation about what it means to live well and to do good; what our shared values are; what we need to push toward; what progress means; so, Good is going to be a reference point, a sounding board and a source of inspiration for people having that conversation, and also increasingly a source of pertinent and pressing questions.

On how Good has evolved over the last 10 years: We’ve been an independent media company for 10 years and it feels like now we’re sort of ready to go into the world. Maybe we’re graduating college and we’re now armed with a lot of knowledge and really ready to stand on our own in the world, but there are definitely challenges that are ahead and we need to now bring these things that we’ve learned into the world and really thrive and make the contribution that’s possible.

On what motivates Will Tacy and gets him excited about Good: What gets me excited, this opportunity to actually give people inspiration and energy and ideas to let them move forward to unleash their creativity and inspire them. On a personal level, I think that apathy and cynicism are the two things that are going to undermine us as a society, as a people and as sort of a global tribe.

On what motivates Max Schorr and gets him excited about Good: I think what motivates me is seeing how much work remains; we have everything from the warmest temperatures on record to wars to all sorts of hatred to a lot of inequality; so there’s so many vital issues that need attention and just being able to contribute as a part of that is a great honor.

On what Max Schorr’s role is today at Good: I’m helping across the company right now and really focusing on partnerships that can help bring our brand to life and also help other organizations embody the meaning of Good and to realize their purpose and engage people in a smart way.

On anything else they’d like to add: The heritage of Good, being the first company to curate YouTube’s home page, as one of the early players that was providing high-quality media that would also be shared, is now really hitting its stride and we’re growing digitally, while back in a strong way in print, makes for an exciting time.

On what keeps Will up at night: One thing that keeps me up at night, not really in a worried way, but in a my-brain-can’t-turn-off way, is wanting to be sure that we’re executing at the highest level every day on everything. I want us to be excellent all the time.

On what keeps Max up at night: I just want to keep strengthening this business model so that we can support all the great people out there doing this work and be able to have wonderful jobs for people who want to live well and do good and realize their potential to contribute to the world.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Max Schorr and Will Tacy, Good Media…

Samir Husni: Congratulations on the re-launch of Good. Tell me, why did you decide to come back to print and shift from the strategy of Good – the magazine, to Good – the journal?

Max Schorr: Good never actually moved away from print. We took some time to reimagine and redesign the magazine, but there was never a time where we decided that we weren’t going to be in print. We did want to make sure that the magazine was something we felt would really resonate with the audience. So, we took our time to be sure we were exactly where we wanted to be with the magazine.

In terms of the change in format and the change in design, it was really a question of what we thought the audience was hungry for. And the recognition that the magazine that was launched 10 years ago was, in many ways, perfect for that time and moment. But today, the media landscape has changed, culture has changed, and the movement that Good launched to embrace and cover has changed. Therefore the magazine needed to change and evolve along with that.

Samir Husni: I just came back from Cape Town, South Africa where I gave a presentation on: if you are still creating a magazine in the way you did before 2007, there is something wrong with that picture.

Max Schorr: (Laughs) Exactly.

Samir Husni: Then along comes Good with a very solid example of the role of the curator versus creator and how to reach an audience. And you’re now calling that audience the global citizen; can you define that audience for me and how you’re trying to reach them through the magazine?

Will Tacy: The one thing I would say is the nature of global citizenship hasn’t really changed from what it was in 2006. It’s still rooted in this idea of people who give a damn; people who have faith that the world can be better and are willing to invest in it and make it better.

One thing I would say that has changed is that sensibility and that movement has moved from being something that would look good on the fridge of common society and common conversation, to something that’s more a part of who we all are.

One of the things that we’re seeing is that global citizenship, which really means being rooted locally, but thinking globally and being global-conscious, is becoming more and more a part of how a larger and larger section of society behaves.

Samir Husni: Will, what do you envision the major stumbling block you’ll have to face with a magazine as good as Good to be, with its very hefty cover price of $14 and its quarterly frequency?

Will Tacy: I think that we have to reintroduce ourselves to the world, but I have faith that the audience that has been there for Good all along is still there and in fact, is bigger than it’s ever been. I also have faith that there is an audience that understands what we’re trying to create: something that’s not disposable and that was very intentional on our part.

A lot of magazines have moved into this realm of being truly disposable. And that’s not a great place to be. To be in a place where a magazine is bought by someone to take with them on a plane and then they leave it there when they get off. So, we wanted to build something that has lasting value that people would want to keep on their coffee table and come back to and continually think about over the course of weeks and months.

But I do think that we have to introduce that to a larger audience; we need to make sure that we’re creating something that is resonant and that people want to make that kind of investment in. And that’s not just in terms of the cover price, but also in the audience’s time. We are building a print product that’s asking people to spend time with it and not just to skim through and read one or two pieces and then set it aside.

Samir Husni: In one of the promotional cards inside the magazine, it reads: Good is from people to meet to ideas to ponder, each issue of our quarterly journal spans the globe, exploring what it means to live the good life today. Tell me in an elevator pitch how you define “good life today?”

Max Schorr: We see an increasing amount of people who really feel connected across the whole world and so part of it is creatively engaging the world where you are and finding what it is that brings your purpose alive; part of it is being present; part of it is doing work that you believe in and part of it is helping to make your community better, and the combination of people doing that locally everywhere, connected all around the world, is a really exciting proposition for us.

Samir Husni: Do you think that meets the definition of a good life?

Max Schorr: You remember our first issue, Samir; it was ___________ (blank) like you give a damn, and we’ve always liked definitions that are open-ended. We don’t try to prescribe to people that there’s one answer for the good life, but we think when people have their own questions come alive in a very real way and they find out how they can contribute locally in their own lives that begins to tell a really great story.

You asked about global citizenship; we actually brought back a Thomas Paine quote from the first issue; my country is the world and my religion is to do good, and that sort of speaks to this idea of a global citizen.

We intentionally used the term “the good life” because part of what we want to do is push against the assumed definition of it; that the good life is a life lived for the common good as much as it is for the personal good and that there’s not a conflict there. There’s not a conflict between doing good and living a good life, in fact, they’re connected; they’re necessary to one another. Just as we say we firmly believe that there’s not a conflict between pragmatism and optimism; the solutions are born from the combination of those two things. We’re intentionally using that term to say it’s time to think more deeply about it and redefine it for our new time.

Samir Husni: Will, you were the managing editor of The New York Times.com and now you’re the general manager for Good Media. Where do you see a balance between, what I call, the seductive, beautiful mistress called “digital” and the old man called “ink on paper?” Since you have been and still are in both worlds; how can you balance digital and print?

Will Tacy: It’s funny, because I never saw a conflict between the two. I’ve always felt that they serve very different purposes; very valuable purposes, but different. And one of the things that I think, in particular a lot of magazines have stumbled on, is trying to figure out how you do the same thing in both, rather than simply embracing the two different media for what they’re wonderful at.

And some of that means that things we used to think were really the province of print, particularly newsweeklies, don’t really work anymore. They’re more effective in digital. And print has a very different purpose. The same audience is going to be incredibly psyched and excited about what you’re producing in print and in digital. As long as you’re meeting them where they are and where they want to be in each of those two media.

For instance, as we designed the magazine we weren’t thinking, OK – we need to make sure that everything in this magazine is going to work in digital just as well, because that’s not what it’s meant to do. It’s meant to work beautifully as a magazine. And everything that we do on the site is meant to work beautifully in digital. We’re not trying to make sure that we can optimize every effort so that everything is working in both media. I think by doing that, you lessen the quality of both and you don’t let either media do what it can do wonderfully.

Samir Husni: Put your futuristic cap on for a minute and tell me where you see Good a year from now.

Will Tacy: I think that in both the digital realm and in print, you’re going to see Good as an ongoing part of a cultural conversation about what it means to live well and to do good; what our shared values are; what we need to push toward; what progress means; so, Good is going to be a reference point, a sounding board and a source of inspiration for people having that conversation, and also increasingly a source of pertinent and pressing questions. Part of what we’re going to increasingly embrace is the idea that as this movement has matured and as it has moved farther and farther into the mainstream, part of our role is to ask the movement tough questions about itself and about ourselves.

I think you’ll see a much larger digital footprint; we’ve already seen our digital audience grow at an almost exponential rate over the last several months. You’ll see Good as a source of more and more content in pure digital streams, social streams and otherwise. And you’ll see Good as a voice in the national and global issues and values conversation.

You’re not going to see us playing in the breaking news game, that’s not somewhere that I think we can add value. You’re not going to see us playing in the “Gotcha’” media game and you’re not going to see us playing in the celebrity media game, but you will absolutely see Good as a contributor to a national conversation about what we all should value and where we all should be pushing.

Samir Husni: Max, this question is for you since you were there 10 years ago when this baby was born, and in the life of a magazine 10 years is an incredible lifespan; where do you see Good now from that infant that was born with a lot of fanfare 10 years ago?

Max Schorr: That’s a great question. We’ve been an independent media company for 10 years and it feels like now we’re sort of ready to go into the world. Maybe we’re graduating college and we’re now armed with a lot of knowledge and really ready to stand on our own in the world, but there are definitely challenges that are ahead and we need to now bring these things that we’ve learned into the world and really thrive and make the contribution that’s possible. The ideals from when we started are alive and well and they’re really what bring us all together as a cohesive team. So, we’re mature, but still hopeful and vibrant.

Samir Husni: I’m talking with two out of the three parents of Good: Will and Max.

Will Tacy: I would say that Max is definitely a parent, but I’m maybe a recently-discovered uncle. (Laughs)

Max Schorr: A wonderful uncle. (Laughs too)

Samir Husni: What happened to Ben (Ben Goldhirsh – one of the original founders)?

Max Schorr: Ben is still very much in the mix. He is currently recharging his batteries in Costa Rica; he visited us a couple of weeks ago and he’s coming through again in couple of weeks. He’s been such a huge part of this entire effort; he’s just recharging now because we’ve all put in a lot of work over the last decade.

Samir Husni: My question to you Will is; what makes you click and tick? What makes you get out of bed in the mornings and say, wow, I’m going to do some good today? No pun intended.

Will Tacy: (Laughs) No, actually, that’s the perfect way of saying it. I really do believe that fundamentally media has a critical role to play in providing people ways to think about our ability to move the world forward and ideas and models to inspire us.

And I think Good has such a wonderful opportunity to be that voice, that rallying, questioning, thoughtful, challenging voice that’s so necessary to begin to connect this larger and larger tribe and to be a sort of antidote to cynicism and apathy.

And that’s what gets me excited, this opportunity to actually give people inspiration and energy and ideas to let them move forward to unleash their creativity and inspire them. On a personal level, I think that apathy and cynicism are the two things that are going to undermine us as a society, as a people and as sort of a global tribe. And the opportunity to everyday try and kick down that door is just wonderful and inspiring.

Professionally, I’ve always loved being in places where you’re inventing and you’re constantly embracing the idea that there are new things we can do in media, there are new opportunities and that the audience is brilliant, hungry and thoughtful. And our job every day is to try and meet them where they are. There are no established rules that can never change and we can always think of ways to do this job better and more thoughtfully.

And to be at Good, where that’s not just accepted, but expected, and where there’s a hunger to continuously improve and to be thoughtful and forward-thinking, is just wonderful. And that’s what excites me every day.

Samir Husni: And Max, I’ll ask you the same question that I asked Will; what makes you get out of bed in the mornings and motivates you to say it’s going to be a good day?

Max Schorr: It’s just been such a great honor to start this magazine and meet people all around our country and all around the world who are putting these ideals into action and who are making changes happen in small ways, in their own lives and in their communities.

It started as a sort of audacious dream; we said that you could live well and do good and when we took the word good and decided to call our company that, people made fun of it. They didn’t understand how pragmatism and idealism could come together, or that doing good could ever be an appealing thing, but now we really see a growing movement of these people and we see it as the predominant sensibility.

And yet, I think what motivates me is seeing how much work remains; we have everything from the warmest temperatures on record to wars to all sorts of hatred to a lot of inequality; so there’s so many vital issues that need attention and just being able to contribute as a part of that is a great honor.

Samir Husni: Max, what’s your role now; I realize you’re one of the co-founders, but besides that; what’s your role at Good?

Max Schorr: I’m helping across the company right now and really focusing on partnerships that can help bring our brand to life and also help other organizations embody the meaning of Good and to realize their purpose and engage people in a smart way. So, I’m spending a lot of time here at Good and I’ve also been invited by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society out of Harvard Law School to study the intersection of social change in new media. So, I’m a student of that and doing research and also looking at how Good can really be the leading platform in moving the world forward.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else either of you would like to add about Good – the magazine, Good – digital, or Good – the global citizen?

Max Schorr: It’s an exciting time, Samir. Will mentioned our digital is really growing exponentially and that’s an important piece. We’ve launched this high-quality print journal for the global citizen and what’s really exciting is there’s a whole buzz in the office right now because we were at several million unique visitors in January, but then in February we were at over 4½ million as verified by Quantcast. And in March, it’s not official yet, but we’ve beat that by a wide margin and so we’re seeing that continued growth.

The heritage of Good, being the first company to curate YouTube’s home page, as one of the early players that was providing high-quality media that would also be shared, is now really hitting its stride and we’re growing digitally, while back in a strong way in print, makes for an exciting time.

Samir Husni: My typical last question and it’s for both of you; what keeps you up at night?

Will Tacy: (Laughs) There are so many things. One thing that keeps me up at night, not really in a worried way, but in a my-brain-can’t-turn-off way, is wanting to be sure that we’re executing at the highest level every day on everything. I want us to be excellent all the time. So, that is super-exciting and it’s what keeps my brain going.

There’s not a lot that keeps me up in terms of worry, concern or fear. What keeps me up is there’s so much to think about and so much to consider and so much great work to do and my brain just can’t turn it off.

Max Schorr: Similar to Will, I just want to do the best work possible, but also it’s been a volatile stretch of time for the media industry. We’ve learned a lot, but we’re still an independent media company and I think we’re still strengthening our business model and our financial position in the world. And we’re really grateful for the wonderful partners that are in this magazine like Apple, Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s.

I just want to keep strengthening this business model so that we can support all the great people out there doing this work and be able to have wonderful jobs for people who want to live well and do good and realize their potential to contribute to the world. There’s just a lot of work to do.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

Mr. Magazine™ Launch Monitor: A Healthy First Quarter And Second Quarter Opens With A Bang…

April 5, 2015

The first quarter of 2015 ended with 191 titles – down 19 titles from the 210 titles appearing in the first quarter of 2014. The largest drop were the titles published with the intention to appear at least four times a year on the nation’s newsstands. The total of new magazines with frequency in 2015 was 45 titles compared to 61 titles in 2014. As for the specials and book-a-zines, the numbers almost ran neck-to-neck with 2015 producing 146 titles compared to the 148 titles from 2014. To see each and every magazine launch click here.

The first chart below illustrates the total number of the titles, average cover price, average subscription price, average number of advertising pages, and average number of pages of the new magazines.

The second chart below compares the top 10 categories of the new launches in 2015 to those in 2014.

Chart One:

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Chart Two:

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And A strong start for Second Quarter:

The month of April is still in its infancy, but three major new launches are already on the nation’s newsstands with a fourth one arriving soon. Meredith was the first publisher to introduce the quarterly Parents Latina, National Geographic Society followed with the bimonthly National Geographic History, and Bauer Publishing with the monthly Simple Grace. Rodale is getting ready to launch Organic Life in ten days. A strong start for quarter two of 2015 and a good sign of a healthy and hefty spring ahead… and by the way, did I fail to mention that all these new launches are magazine launches, as in ink on paper launches? I guess March showers are indeed bringing in April flowers!

Posted in Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

Magazines As Influencers. The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines. A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past: Dissertation Entries Part 7…

April 3, 2015

Magazines as Influencers
1983

Whether or not magazines have any effect through their role in exerting influence on the public is still debatable, as is the general question of effects of the mass media on the public. Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton, two of the pioneering social scientists in this country, asked “What role can be assigned to the mass media by virtue of the fact that they exist?” Their answer was simple and brief: “It is our tentative judgement that the social role played by the very existence of the mass media has been commonly overestimated.” This does not mean that magazine owners, publishers, editors, and critics do not believe that magazines have an effect.

Roland Wolseley argued that magazines exert influence through two established policies: advertising and editorial. An example of the first can be seen in the 1968 issues of Esquire magazine. After the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the magazine adapted a policy of refusing advertising for any kind of guns. Science 83 and four other magazines, including Soldier of Fortune, have the same policy regarding cigarette advertising. On the other hand, decisions regarding the editorial policies of the magazine can be seen through the criteria editors set for their magazines. Page Knapp’s recent purchase of Geo made the news, especially with her argument that the editorial policy of the magazine will be shifted to show the brighter side of life, instead of the brutal and sorrowful side of it.

Wolseley considered this influencing role of the magazine as part of its social responsibility as well as its social effect. Although he believed that this role has been accomplished largely “through the magazine content rather than organized action,” Wolseley stressed that three departments have been influential: advertising, editorial, and promotion.

The above information was written in 1983 and is taken from a portion of my dissertation when I was at the University of Missouri-Columbia where I obtained my doctorate in journalism. And while the majority of the material still holds true, things have changed drastically in some areas.

2015

It’s a given fact that we rely on the media for news and facts that it deems important for us to know. This was true when the first piece of information was ever printed by a magazine or newspaper in ink and it still holds true today. However, a few things have changed. Where most of us trusted the news media and other information outlets implicitly; a few bad seeds have caused us to feel that trust was misplaced. We’re a little more wary and cautious these days.

With as much power as the media holds over public opinions and ideas, to say that magazines do not have a significant influence on society, maybe even more so today than in 1983 with the realms of cyberspace at its fingertips, is not only an understatement, it’s ridiculous.

Let’s compare a few occurrences with those listed in 1983. First, Esquire was mentioned with its 1968 ban on gun advertisements in the magazine due to the tragic assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. By banning weapons ads in the magazine, Esquire was making a statement that couldn’t be ignored and wasn’t.

In January 2007, then Vice-President Dick Cheney was featured on the cover of Texas Monthly holding a smoking shotgun pointed out toward the reader with the cover line: If you don’t buy this magazine, Dick Cheney will shoot you in the face. The magazine was playing off the famous 1973 National Lampoon cover of a hand holding a gun at a dog’s head with a similar cover line and using the Vice-President’s hunting accident where he shot a colleague in the face as the basis for the spoof.

Questions had already been raised regarding the shooting and media’s satirical portrayals could certainly have been said to ‘stir the pot.’ Did it influence anyone’s opinion about the shooting? Maybe no one can say for sure, but it’s a given it opened up a few heated discussions about whether it was in bad taste or good fun.

The second point of interest mentioned in my 1983 dissertation was several magazines’ policies on no cigarette ads. Eliminating teen-smoking and the overall ill effects of tobacco played an important role in how people saw tobacco products then and now, compared to eras like the 1940s and 1950s where everyone smoked and it was considered cool.

A computer-generated photo on a 2011 Newsweek cover of Princess Diana and Kate Middleton walking side by side was considered in very bad taste by some people who saw it. The representation showed the women dressed very similarly, with their heads inclined toward each other as if they were talking. The issue was geared toward what would have been Diana’s 50th birthday that year.

The article inside touted author and then-editor, Tina Brown’s take on what Diana’s life might have been like had she lived. At the time, The London Telegraph called the cover photo “ghoulish” and gave Brown the moniker “Newsweek’s grave robber.”

Saying that article and that cover had no influence over public opinion about what people consider a sacrilege would be like saying the 2006 Rolling Stone cover of Kanye West, with a crown of thorns upon his head and obviously depicting Jesus at the time of crucifixion, had no impact on what people deemed appropriate and inappropriate.

Magazines have played many roles over the years when it comes to society and the humans who occupy it, but none more so than that of influencer. In fact, the next time you pick up that bottle of shampoo at the store or decide not to buy that cut of meat because it’s just not healthy for you; odds are it was a magazine ad or article that influenced your decision.

Until next time when Mr. Magazine™ talks about magazines as Informers…

Posted in A Mr. Magazine™ Musing, Magazine Power, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

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Mr. Magazine

Archive for the ‘Magazine Power’ Category

PLUS, A Magazine With A Mission: Where The Readers Are Much More Than Their Status. The Rebranding Of HIV Plus Magazine – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Diane Anderson-Minshall, Editor-In-Chief.

Harvard Business Review: A Magazine That Readers Care About. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Adi Ignatius, Editor-In-Chief.

‘Riding Out The Storm’ With Innovation, Creativity & A Firm Hope For The Future Of Regional Magazines – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Fred Parry, Publisher, Inside Columbia Magazine.

Magazines As Informers. The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines. A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past: Dissertation Entries Part 8

Travel With A Purpose: Smithsonian Embarks On New Journeys (The Magazine, That Is). The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Publisher Steve Giannetti And Editor-in-Chief Victoria Pope

Forbes’ Chief Product Officer Lewis DVorkin To Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni: The Magazine Business Does Not Have An Audience Problem; The Magazine Business Has An Advertiser Problem. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview.

She Has The Whole “Parents” In Her Hands… Parents Latina: A New Addition To The Parents Brand. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Content Officer Dana Points.

Get Out Of Your Mind & Step Into The GOOD World…Re-launching A Good Magazine – The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Max Schorr, Co-Founder & Will Tacy, General Manager, Good Media…

Mr. Magazine™ Launch Monitor: A Healthy First Quarter And Second Quarter Opens With A Bang…

Magazines As Influencers. The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines. A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past: Dissertation Entries Part 7…

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