In my blog yesterday I wrote about the “more conservative” Reader’s Digest. I and many others in the media world based our comments on an article that appeared in The New York Times. Well, I guess we assumed that “the paper of record” had their facts checked and checked again. In a phone conversation with the folks at Reader’s Digest, followed by a written response from the magazine’s editor in chief Peggy Northrop, we learn a different set of facts. For the record here is Ms. Northrop e mail letter to me regarding The New York Times’ story and the future direction of Reader’s Digest.
As editor-in-chief of Reader’s Digest since November, 2007, I am happy to clear up the confusion generated by the New York Times article, which has been picked up, quoted, and spun out into the far reaches of the blogosphere. To be perfectly clear, Reader’s Digest has not changed its editorial direction to a more conservative approach. What we have done over the last year is modernize our look, sharpen our voice, and add new sections that hark back to our roots as a ‘digester’ of valuable content—all while maintaining our focus on the “hometown” values that our millions of readers share.
The Times’s characterization that “the publishers are pushing [Reader’s Digest] in a decidedly conservative direction” is both misleading and puzzling, considering the pains we took to describe what’s we’re up to. Our real push is strategic: We are now creating a host of new products that will be available on multiple media platforms under the “Reader’s Digest Version” banner, taking advantage of our historic reputation for delivering concise, authoritative information to a mass readership.
The misleading impression was only compounded by the podcast interview with reporter Stephanie Clifford that accompanied the Times story online. In it she described us as “choosing sides in the culture war, and that side is to the right.” Certainly, our readers value community service, family and, often, some form of faith. But the “culture wars” and the divisive political posturing evoked by that phrase do not interest our readers in the least. I know this from extensive reader research, and I shared a summary of it with Ms. Clifford. There is an interesting story in how regular folks define their values and their needs; unfortunately the Times chose not to tell it.
A glance at a recent Reader’s Digest table of contents would reveal that while yes, we do cover aspects of military life (from stay-at-home dads dealing with the long deployments of their wives, to mothers caring for their severely injured sons), we also continue to cover healthcare, jobs, the environment, finance, and other topics that don’t fall onto any particular spot on the conservative-liberal values continuum. I would wholeheartedly agree with the author on one point she made about our magazine’s transformation in the past year: “Out are generic how-to magazine features.” Indeed, the American Society of Magazine Editors recognized Reader’s Digest with a National Magazine Award for General Excellence this year—a first for us, and a fact that was omitted from the story.
I can’t really blame the Times for the blogospheres’ reaction to the report, which has ranged from The National Review online welcoming us back into the fold while questioning our conservative bonafides, to the examiner.com headline “Reader’s Digest Takes Aim at Obama, Shoots Self in Foot.” I would urge readers who are curious about our magazine’s strategy—and who wonder about what truly appeals to a mass audience—to look past the chattering classes’ fixations and pick up a copy of the new Reader’s Digest for themselves.
Do you want a commemorative edition that honors, explains and documents the late King of Pop Michael Jackson? Well look no further than the special issue of TIME magazine that started arriving on the newsstands last Sunday afternoon beating all the celebrities titles including TIME’s parent company’s own People magazine. The 68-page magazine (all devoted to MJ) was done in less than 24 hours and was printed on heavier stock cover and inside paper. In addition the magazine was able to sell one ad page to Pepsi that created an ad in honor of the late King of Pop. (See cover and ad above). Newsweek, on the other hand. had to do some quick adjusting to their issue hitting the newsstands last Monday. The main cover story was about books and what to read now. 
However, the newsstands cover was replaced by a picture of MJ and the tag line The Meaning of Michael and a 9-page special section was produced devoted to MJ. The subscribers cover remained unchanged. What bothered me with the Newsweek cover is that it was made to appear as a special issue on MJ rather than a few pages insert, especially that the cover price for this issue has been hiked to $6.95, one dollar more than the regular price of $5.95. (For the record, TIME also increased its cover price on the special issue by one dollar to $5.99 from $4.99).
In the last few months I have noticed that my subscription copies of some magazines are arriving with a cover mount that is nothing but an ad. Rolling Stone few months back did that and now my most recent issue of Playboy covered with a New AXE Instinct ad. You can barely (no pun indented) see the word promotion on top of the name of the magazine, but you can easily see the famous trademarked bunny on the cover as part of the ad and an invite to “uncover…”
Unlike Playboy, my recent issue of Wallpaper came with no warning, and not one but two naked women on the cover. Now, I am not a purist and I think that I have seen it all, but for a design, interiors, fashion, art and lifestyle magazine to have naked women on their cover is, at least to me, stretching the word “interiors” a little bit too much. (Of course the naked women cover is a limited edition rewarding those of us who subscribed to the magazine as opposed to the single copy buyers; so do not rush to the nearest newsstand since you will not find that copy there).
A publisher, a story–teller and an editorial director, Bryan Welch wears more than one hat at Ogden Publications, Inc. He oversees Mother Earth News, Natural Home, Utne Reader and Grit magazines among many others. He has been called an eco-pioneer and has been interviewed by various media outlets seeking his advice and insights on independent magazine publishing, circulation driven publications and all things “green.”
BW: Well, print’s biggest problem is not environmental. I ask environmentalists when they raise this issue to consider the differences between virtually any activity one could engage in and the act of sitting in natural light or under a single reading light and reading a book or magazine and then take into account the environmental footprint of journeying to the nearest Starbucks and consuming a latte and look at the gallons, you know more than 50 gallons of water is consumed, whatever your transportation costs are, etc. …Reading is a very, has a very low environmental impact. It’s a very positive, in general, it’s a very benign act, and people still prefer reading many media in the print form. I would, I argue, I believe strongly that the existence of print overall has a positive impact on the environment by distracting people from activities that require running around in automobiles or in busses or on trains that require you know going out to restaurants, that require going out to bars…there’s a long list of things. So, I argue in favor of whatever we can do to improve the environment and create a more sustainable presence on the planet. But I don’t buy the argument that print is somehow one of the great demons in this conversation
BW: No, I don’t think it’s dead yet, but I think it is on the descendant, and I think that the circulation driven or the audience driven model is on the ascendant among periodical publishers in general. I don’t think it’s possible to accurately predict the speed of the descent or the ascent, but I believe both of those trends are underway. I think we’ll see a short term rebound in print advertising for magazines in the near future. But I don’t think the print advertising market on the whole is destined for long term recovery. And I think it’s in the descendant, so I hate to be so meticulous in my answer. I’d love to make a more declarative statement, but I think all that can be said at this point is that indiscriminant mass market print advertising is in the long term going to decline, and more and more advertising is going to be on demand as well as the print products themselves. What I believe is that really successful advertising in the future will have to be so ingenious, provocative, and well-targeted that people will in fact request to see ads from advertisers in whose products they are interested. 
BW: Well, I think we are. I know for us, the engagement of editorial advisory boards which are made up of any reader who wishes to register online has been a powerful asset in improving our, the quality of the print products so that our covers of Mother Earth News look nothing like they looked 5 years ago. And they’ve, you know, we’ve sort of hit a sweet spot now so that they tend to look very much the same…issue in and issue out, which as an editor vaguely irritates me. Seems to take some of the creativity out of it, except that they sell like hotcakes. And our newsstand numbers are up dramatically. And in Mother Earth’s case, I think it’s largely thanks to the feedback we were able to get on the covers themselves. Historically, as we all know, editors created covers largely by the seat of their pants. I mean, the few research tools we had were primitive at best, and every editor felt like he or she really understood what the audience wanted to see and that was the end of that conversation. One way in which we could enhance the whole product is by seeking more feedback on the print product. We’ve started doing both before and after surveys of subject matter for every magazine so that we ask people before we publish the issue which of these topics do you find most interesting? And then we ask them the same question after they’ve seen the magazine to see where we’ve gone astray in how we crafted or presented specific stories. We’re looking for variation between the before question and the after question…to see where we haven’t presented or executed properly. And learning a great deal from that process. It’s letting us know as we’ve never been able to tell before when it’s not, we’ve never been able to sort out before whether a story was unpopular because of the subject matter or because of how it’s treated. And now we have tools at our disposal to do that. So I think this probably is infinite horizon for improvement of the print product. Have I discovered any silver bullets in terms of, you know, a new design for a table of contents or some damn thing or another that would create, you know, a huge popularity increases for the magazine? No, I don’t know that there are any, as I say, silver bullets…no miracle drug for the print products, but steady ongoing feedback loop with the audience is a, boy, that’s a fantastic improvement in the way that we craft magazines and I’m surprised that not every publisher out there is taking advantage of it. 
BW: Well, you know, we’re trying to innovate all the time. We’re trying to move them all in a hipper, younger direction all the time. Some of them are more successful at that than others. You know, I think the reader has built a young audience faster than the others. One important thing to remember, in my opinion, is that advertisers are always seeking out new customers among a younger generation…a generation so young that they’re not very good readers and they’re not contemplative in a way that long-formed journalism needs an audience to be. My wife a few years ago for fun gave me a book full of the minutes from the Missouri Press Association between, I think it was between 1916 and 1928 or something like that…this massive book. And all it was the minutes of the annual meetings of the Missouri Press Association. And I’m flipping through this thing, it’s a wonderful piece of history, and every single year between 1916 and 1928, the subject, one of the major subjects of their annual meeting is why young people don’t read newspapers and what are we going to do? We are going to be run out of business. It’s true to a certain extent that young people just don’t form a bond with a print brand the way that people in their child-bearing years and later do. We try to be as important to our audience as we can possibly be. We try to segment the audience by degrees of passion and not to segment the audience by other criteria. We try not to think about the audience, frankly as being one age or another. We don’t try to push the brand toward one age or another but now if we lose momentum overall, we may look at, whether we’re outmoded. In fact, we’re repositioning a couple of our magazines dramatically this year as we have done regularly over the years to change the design, change the production values, change the content, change whatever we have to do so that we remain relevant and valuable to the audience. Sometimes that means we’re pushing out towards a younger audience, but that’s not the primary motivator. The primary motivator is audience growth by whatever means we need to do that. I think it’s important to make that distinction. The advertisers say, you know, marketers like to say oh we’re looking for the 21-38 year old demographic or whatever. Well, ok, fine, and if we deliver that, fine, and if we don’t, I guess we’re not your medium. But we’re in the business of making the strongest possible attachment with an audience. We’re in the business of being as important as we can possibly be to an audience with a particular interest. And I believe that distraction from that fundamental goal is bad for the magazine and bad for the industry. So, that’s why I tell our marketers: Don’t talk to me about pushing, don’t change a magazine just to appeal to a 24 year old unless it’s going to make your magazine more appealing to the most passionate people in your audience. 
Mr. Magazine 