Mr. Magazine

“Our readers still like hard copy. I think print is important for this kind of content to sort of snuggle up with, while you’re feeding your baby even, and just be able to read and be stimulated intellectually with a magazine on your lap.” Marcelle Soviero

Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers was founded in 2000 and is an award-winning literary magazine dedicated to motherhood. Unfortunately, four years ago the magazine was about to shut down its operation when an essayist and writer happened to send in a submission to the magazine. When she was told that no submissions were being accepted due to the publication’s closure, she did what she felt she had to do when she heard the news: she bought it.

That writer was Marcelle Soviero, who bought Brain, Child in 2012 and immediately launched Brain, Teen to complement a magazine that she had believed in since its inception in 2000. As a mother of five children, Marcelle had grown her children up with the magazine and had always been one of its biggest fans.

Now as the owner, and editor-in-chief, she has expanded the magazine’s social media footprint extensively and has moved the print edition of Brain, Child into the digital realms, while maintaining Brain, Teen and the brand’s annual anthology, in print.

I spoke with Marcelle recently and we talked about her passion for the brand and the decision to take Brain, Child digital-only and her hope that someday the magazine will once again be offered in print as Brain, Teen and her yearly special issues are. And we talked about the brand’s mission: to bring the voices of women of different backgrounds and circumstances together on the page, the website and in the online community. Through essays, fiction and feature stories, Marcelle chooses the best writers she can find to connect mothers with many diverse perspectives on dealing with motherhood in the 21st century.

Marcelle is a woman who believes in print and the need for it in today’s digital age, but also understands the positivity and reach that digital can bring to a brand when the two components are working together for a complementary common goal. And with a literary magazine like Brain, Child, the need for print and digital is strong.

So, I hope that you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Brain, Child’s own mother of invention, Marcelle Soviero.

But first the sound-bites:

On what made her buy Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers: I was a reader and a writer when my children were young. And I have five children, so I sort of grew them up with the magazine, if you will. I went to submit my writing to them one day and it said that they were ceasing publication. So, I immediately called them up and told them that I wanted to buy it and asked what the picture looked like, because I still believed in the magazine.

On whether her decision to buy was based on business or passion: It was definitely a decision of passion. And then when it became real; when I called the owners and they told me that they hadn’t even thought of selling it; I started to do the numbers and thought that it really made sense and that I could make it work because I was so passionate about it.

On whether people told her she was crazy to invest in print in a digital age: Many people said that to me in jest, but in truth as well. And it has been hard; it’s not easy to keep it up, but we’re healthy and have a good readership. I certainly brought the magazine into the digital age; we have digital products and our social media footprint has gone up to 190,000 on Facebook. When I bought it we were at 8,000, so we’ve certainly developed a wider audience using digital tools and having digital products.

On how she would describe the magazine to someone who had never seen it before: Brain, Child is the magazine for thinking mothers; it’s the largest, oldest literary magazine for mothers. And we’re distributed worldwide. And I also own and edit it.

On what she’s offering mothers that they can’t get anyplace else: We’re offering personal stories and narratives that are edited; we actually edit our pieces. These aren’t just long pieces slapped up on the Internet; we have a rigorous editing, fact-checking, proofreading system that’s expensive, but I will keep it in place because I believe in it.

On whether she changed anything about the magazine after she bought it or kept it the same: No, we did a whole redesign of the magazine after the first issue. We went in and sort of updated everything with a professional designer and we’ve had good feedback with that. In fact, what was most interesting was when I first took it over and it was announced by the previous owner that they weren’t going out of business that I was buying it instead; I received fan mail from around the world, literally, as though I were their knight in shining armor, thanking me for saving the magazine.

On launching Brain, Teen simultaneously with taking over the magazine: Yes, I bought the magazine in August, 2012 and we began planning, and I think the issue actually came out in 2013, the special Brain, Teen issue. It was my immediate plan. It was the business idea that I thought of immediately to sort of bring the business up to speed.

On how large her team is: They are all consultants to the company, freelance, and I have a managing editor. Otherwise, certainly our writers are from all around the world. We get about 1,000 to 2,000 submissions each month for the magazine, both online and digital.

On which she finds more exciting as a writer, seeing her byline in print or online: I would say initially it was print that I found more exciting, but now, as I tell my authors, because we publish a lot more online than we do in print, the readership is so much greater online. It’s not even comparable; our circulation is relatively small, and as I said, I’ve already told you the numbers on our community pages and other digital outlets. So, in terms of actually having the writing out there, it’s become much more important to have the online byline, but my passion is to have my byline in print, I’d say.

On why she thinks print is still important in this digital age: Our readers still like hard copy. I think print is important for this kind of content to sort of snuggle up with, while you’re feeding your baby even, and just be able to read and be stimulated intellectually with a magazine on your lap.

On any challenges she’s had to face during her four-year journey with the magazine: There have been many challenges and hurdles in just supporting a print magazine with the numbers being nearly impossible. And if we didn’t have the online component, I don’t think that I could do it. Just supporting the print and production and design process and doing it well, as I said, with the best writers; the best design team and things like that, has been a real challenge to make it work.

On whether her magazine is print + digital free and whether she feels they complement each other: No, our magazine Brain, Child is only digital, it’s only online. And our print product, the special issue for parents of teens and our annual Greatest Hits, are print. So, they’re pretty separate in terms of the content and the production process. But they do complement each other, but we never offered print + digital free. Never.

On what motivates her to get out of bed in the morning: The possibility of finding a new writer, the next best piece that I’m going to read and share with the world, with the mothers and the excitement of working with great writers. For someone who is a writer and a mother, I can’t think of anything better.

On whether she thinks Brain, Child will ever come back to print: Yes, absolutely. Some people will call me crazy for that, but we sort of had to get the revenue pieces in check. And as I said, Brain, Teen is a print product and our annual special issue is a print product, so we haven’t abandoned print.

On anything else that she’d like to add: Buying Brain, Child was the best thing that I ever did, outside of marrying my husband. (Laughs) I do want to be clear that Brain, Child is not print anymore, it’s just Brain, Teen that’s print.

On what keeps her up at night: Competition; that there’s more people publishing narrative than ever before. I think when Brain, Child started we were certainly the one and only person writing about motherhood, but now there are plenty of blogs and sites for women. I don’t feel we have the competition, but I worry about it.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Marcelle Soviero, Owner, Editor-In-Chief, Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers.

Samir Husni: Tell me about Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers; what made you buy the company?

Marcelle Soviero: I was a reader and a writer when my children were young. And I have five children, so I sort of grew them up with the magazine, if you will. I went to submit my writing to them one day, I’m an essayist and I have a few books, and it said that they were ceasing publication. So, I immediately called them up and told them that I wanted to buy it and asked what the picture looked like, because I still believed in the magazine.

I had had a career in magazine publishing and online publishing when I bought it, and I had just left a job where I was commuting to Chicago in a very high-powered corporate position, so it was like all of the stars came together and I bought the magazine within three weeks. I went down to Virginia and cut thousands of back issues and brought them up to Connecticut where I live, and I just started producing the magazine and keeping it going, so we only missed one issue when I bought it.

Samir Husni: Was it a business decision or a decision of passion that caused you to buy the magazine?

Marcelle Soviero: It was definitely a decision of passion. And then when it became real; when I called the owners and they told me that they hadn’t even thought of selling it; I started to do the numbers and thought that it really made sense and that I could make it work because I was so passionate about it. And the readership of the magazine was equally as passionate about it as I was, they had grown their kids up with it too, so it was a little bit of both, but definitely first passion and just a gut feeling that it was the right time to do it.

Samir Husni: And four years ago, did anyone say to you that you were crazy to invest in a print product for children; haven’t you heard that we live in a digital age?

Marcelle Soviero: Many people said that to me in jest, but in truth as well. And it has been hard; it’s not easy to keep it up, but we’re healthy and have a good readership. I certainly brought the magazine into the digital age; we have digital products and our social media footprint has gone up to 190,000 on Facebook. When I bought it we were at 8,000, so we’ve certainly developed a wider audience using digital tools and having digital products. No question about that. I sort of took advantage of that, while still producing the print magazine.

Samir Husni: If you met someone on the street and introduced yourself to them by telling them you were the owner, editor and publisher of Brain, Child magazine; the first question they might ask you is “what’s that?”

Marcelle Soviero: And my answer would be Brain, Child is the magazine for thinking mothers; it’s the largest, oldest literary magazine for mothers. And we’re distributed worldwide. And I also own and edit it.

Samir Husni: Tell me a little bit more about the content; what are you offering mothers today that they can’t find any other place?

Marcelle Soviero: We’re offering personal stories and narratives that are edited; we actually edit our pieces. These aren’t just long pieces slapped up on the Internet; we have a rigorous editing, fact-checking, proofreading system that’s expensive, but I will keep it in place because I believe in it.

So we offer personal stories and connection for women, one story at a time, for mothers in our community, to our pages and our digital products. It’s essays, fiction, poetry, debates and book reviews.

Samir Husni: Since you assumed ownership of the magazine, what has been the feedback that you’ve received? Could the legacy readership tell there was a new ownership with the magazine or have you kept the flow and pace, in terms of the content, the way it was before you bought it?

Marcelle Soviero: No, we did a whole redesign of the magazine after the first issue. We went in and sort of updated everything with a professional designer and we’ve had good feedback with that. In fact, what was most interesting was when I first took it over and it was announced by the previous owner that they weren’t going out of business that I was buying it instead; I received fan mail from around the world, literally, as though I were their knight in shining armor, thanking me for saving the magazine. There was just a ridiculous amount of passion and feedback, so that was the first step that fired my own passion to continue to do it.

I would say the connection with the readers is very good. The biggest thing we’ve done in more recent years is as I aged out of the magazine, because Brain, Child is for mothers who have children 0-12, is I introduced a special issue for parents of teens called, Brain, Teen. Basically I kept for mothers like me who grew up with it and now have teenagers; I kept the product line going so that we could really meet that need. And that has been our more successful product out of the two now in the last four years.

Samir Husni: When did you launch Brain, Teen?

Marcelle Soviero: In 2012.

Samir Husni: So at the same time that you were taking over Brain, Child?

Marcelle Soviero: Yes, I bought the magazine in August, 2012 and we began planning, and I think the issue actually came out in 2013, the special Brain, Teen issue. It was my immediate plan. It was the business idea that I thought of immediately to sort of bring the business up to speed.

That was a big change and the design was a big change and certainly we post edited, beautiful blog posts every day as we’ve built up this readership. Our social imprint online has become huge and I sort of tapped into that passion. As I said, we have a very large community on Facebook that’s highly engaged in terms of our numbers, compared to other sites that have a million followers and we have around 200,000. Our engagement can be as much as 100,000, which is half our audience.

Samir Husni: As I hear you talk about the magazine, I can hear the passion and fire in your voice. How do you handle everything as a mother of five kids? How big is your team; is Brain, Child Marcelle and a few others? Or do you have a large team working with you? I know you said that you have a very expensive fact-checking system in place that you don’t want to change.

Marcelle Soviero: Right. They are all consultants to the company, freelance, and I have a managing editor. Otherwise, certainly our writers are from all around the world. We get about 1,000 to 2,000 submissions each month for the magazine, both online and digital.

But I think my passion comes from being a writer and having intellectual stimulation in reading all of the submissions that come in. And I love the editing process, being a writer. It makes my own writing better and I realize that we’re doing something different in working with writers and improving the content to make it perfect to be seen by the public, again as opposed to just throwing stuff up online. I also believe in paying our writers. We pay our writers, not much; we’re a commercial magazine and we’re distributed widely, but we’re also a literary magazine and traditionally they’re not high-paying. And we’re not high-paying, but one of my premises, being a writer, is that I pay my writers.

Samir Husni: Let’s forget for a moment that you’re the owner of the magazine; as a writer do you feel a different reaction when you see your name in print as opposed to seeing your name online? Which excites you more and gives you that thrill of saying, look I’ve published something?

Marcelle Soviero: That’s a great question. I would say initially it was print that I found more exciting, but now, as I tell my authors, because we publish a lot more online than we do in print, the readership is so much greater online. It’s not even comparable; our circulation is relatively small, and as I said, I’ve already told you the numbers on our community pages and other digital outlets. So, in terms of actually having the writing out there, it’s become much more important to have the online byline, but my passion is to have my byline in print, I’d say.

Samir Husni: And why do you think print is still important in this digital age?

Marcelle Soviero: Our readers still like hard copy. I think print is important for this kind of content to sort of snuggle up with, while you’re feeding your baby even, and just be able to read and be stimulated intellectually with a magazine on your lap.

But we have a lot of digital adopters. Our print now is really the special issue for parents of teens and our annual anthology and our magazine is more digital and online now.

Samir Husni: In your four year journey with the magazine, has it always been smooth sailing, or have you had some choppy waters with major challenges along the way?

Marcelle Soviero: There have been many challenges and hurdles in just supporting a print magazine with the numbers being nearly impossible. And if we didn’t have the online component, I don’t think that I could do it. Just supporting the print and production and design process and doing it well, as I said, with the best writers; the best design team and things like that, has been a real challenge to make it work.

Samir Husni: Have you ever considered stopping the print edition and only staying online?

Marcelle Soviero: Brain, Child, actually, the original product, is online now. And our print product is Brain, Teen. And our special issues are print too.

Samir Husni: You said that without online you feel like you could not have survived, but how do you juggle between the need for print and the need for online? Do you view them as complementary to each other or as enemies? Is it print + digital for you or is it print or digital?

Marcelle Soviero: No, our magazine Brain, Child is only digital, it’s only online. And our print product, the special issue for parents of teens and our annual Greatest Hits, are print. So, they’re pretty separate in terms of the content and the production process. But they do complement each other, but we never offered print + digital free. Never. We always did print + and/or pay the same amount for digital.

Samir Husni: So you always charged for digital, there was nothing free? No welfare information society?

Marcelle Soviero: No. The issues were paid for. Obviously, our website is all free content and eventually what’s in print makes it to the website, but it’s much, much later on in the process.

Samir Husni: But the digital editions are paid for?

Marcelle Soviero: Correct.

Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and say it’s going to be a great day?

Marcelle Soviero: The possibility of finding a new writer, the next best piece that I’m going to read and share with the world, with the mothers and the excitement of working with great writers. For someone who is a writer and a mother, I can’t think of anything better. So, I’m excited and I always think that I’m going to find the next best piece, the next Pushcart Press Award. And I really love working with all of our writers.

Samir Husni: Do you think Brain, Child will ever come back to print?

Marcelle Soviero: Yes, absolutely. Some people will call me crazy for that, but we sort of had to get the revenue pieces in check. And as I said, Brain, Teen is a print product and our annual special issue is a print product, so we haven’t abandoned print.

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

Marcelle Soviero: Buying Brain, Child was the best thing that I ever did, outside of marrying my husband. (Laughs) I do want to be clear that Brain, Child is not print anymore, it’s just Brain, Teen that’s print.

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

Marcelle Soviero: Competition; that there’s more people publishing narrative than ever before. I think when Brain, Child started we were certainly the one and only person writing about motherhood, but now there are plenty of blogs and sites for women. I don’t feel we have the competition, but I worry about it. I think about somebody who really would start actively treating the process of producing a magazine and an online product like we’ve done, somebody who is larger and has more resources.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“No, never. I just can’t. I think it’s important for a legacy brand like ours to continue in print. I believe our readers want it very much. What’s happening in digital and on the website is amazing and wonderful, but I think that the print edition will always be core to our brand and core to what we do.” Susan Spencer (on whether she can ever envision Woman’s Day without a print component)

“Yes, I do. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now if I didn’t. I believe the question has almost become moot in the last few years. Readers have shown us time and time again that print magazines are here to stay. I love print magazines and I always have; it’s how I got into the business and I can’t imagine them going away.” Susan Spencer (on whether she believes in the future of print)

As far as legacy brands go, Woman’s Day holds a spot among the women’s service magazines that have texture and substance when it comes to longevity in the industry. The magazine’s content is as relevant today as it was nearly 80 years ago (79 to be exact) and has proven that fact with its total immersion into the wants and needs of its audience and a commitment to excellence in the coverage of many topics of interest, most especially health and food.

As the magazine gears up for its 13th Annual Red Dress Awards to be held February 9 at The Allen Room at Frederick P. Rose Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York, Editor-in-Chief Susan Spencer is passionate about the brand’s diligence to continue to heighten awareness of heart disease throughout the country.

I spoke with Susan recently and we talked about the Red Dress Awards, their past, present and future fusion with Woman’s Day and how readers and the public in general have come to recognize the Awards’ connection with the magazine. And we talked about the magazine itself, where it’s been and where it’s going and about how Susan believes that both print and digital together will be the catalyst that propels the legacy brand forward and keep it relevant and healthy for many, many more years to come, with the foundation and cornerstone core of print still being an integral part of the readership’s involvement with the brand.

Susan is as delightful as the magazine itself and brings an aura of joy, fun and animation to the brand that’s contagious. Zest and relevant information keeps the essence of Woman’s Day always reflective and pertinent to its audience and that’s just the way Susan wants it.

So, without further ado, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Susan Spencer, Editor-In-Chief, Woman’s Day.

But first, the sound-bites:

On what Woman’s Day means to its readers today, in the 21st century: Woman’s Day today, as it has done for many years, takes the concerns, the things that are truly relevant and important to her right now and really helps her. And I see us as a real helpmate to this woman; to make that complicated, messy life a little bit easier.

On how it feels to edit a magazine that Ellen Levine once edited: It has never felt awkward; I feel like I stand on Ellen’s shoulders and some other wonderful editors before me who I think created something that American women really turn to. And I think Ellen was pivotal and critical in doing that.

On the history of the Red Dress Awards: Again, turning to past editors, my predecessor, Jane Chesnutt, 13 years ago put together a luncheon to bring together some of the players in the heart disease world. I think at that time she felt that it was a disease that wasn’t getting a lot of attention, but it’s so pervasive and so huge in the lives of our women that she felt that it needed to be brought more into the open. And again, I’m standing on her shoulders; I think what I did when I came on four years ago was that I saw that the disease was still the number one killer of women and while a lot of progress has been made, it hasn’t gone far enough. I wanted to put more resources and more thinking and more pages against this disease.

On whether the power of the brand and the ink on paper magazine made it easier for the Red Dress Awards to be recognized and connect with readers: Yes, very much so. The amount of space that we devote to this topic, again, all year-round, I think our readers now associate us with the Awards. They don’t see it as simply a marketing cause, they see it as something that we’re really deeply passionate about and I think our readership has come to recognize that.

On how as editor-in-chief she maintains balance with the many diverse topics that the magazine covers: I’m both blessed and cursed to edit a magazine that covers many, many topics. (Laughs) Health and food, by far, are our two most important topics. We do a lot of research and Hearst has been very supportive of that. I’m a real research geek and Hearst has been very supportive of me and my desire to understand our reader. So, health and food are the two biggest topics.

On if she could instantly strike the magazine with a magic wand and turn it into a person, who that person would be, herself or some composite woman: I don’t think she would be me, although I come pretty close. I’m a suburban New Jersey mom like many of my readers. (Laughs) But I think that she’s a lot of women. Again, when you have an audience this big, she can be married or not married. She can be an empty-nester or a young mom. She can have kids or not have kids. So, I think that she’s a lot of different people.

On whether the Bible verse that remains today, even after all of the changes to the magazine, is part of its DNA and will never leave: I would say that it’s definitely part of the DNA that will never leave Woman’s Day. We have it there and we have no intention of taking it away. What’s important about the magazine is that we’re not a Christian magazine; we embrace many, many different viewpoints in the magazine and always have. But the Bible verse is intrinsic to who we are and what we are.

On the biggest stumbling block that she’s had to face: For me personally, I think my biggest stumbling block happened about four years ago when I started at this magazine and my publisher at the time told me that in a week I had to make a speech in front of about 500 people. (Laughs) That was a big stumbling block for someone who had never done any public speaking.

On the most pleasant moment so far that she’s had working at Woman’s Day: There have been so many pleasant moments that I can’t even begin to list them. I think getting this job in the first place was such a wonderful experience and I’m really deeply grateful for the opportunity that David Carey gave me four years ago. There have been some moments that have been sort of mindboggling. Last year standing next to Elvis Costello on the red carpet at the Red Dress Awards; I don’t think I’ve ever put up a Facebook post that’s gotten more likes than that one did. (Laughs) It was pretty amazing.

On what has kept Woman’s Day vibrant throughout the years: I think that we work really hard to stay relevant to our readers. When I mentioned research before, that’s definitely part of what we do. Women’s service magazines can tilt into evergreen territory very quickly and I think that we really work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen with Woman’s Day. We make sure that we’re relevant to the moment; our health coverage; in telling women what to cook for dinner; just the things that we put into the magazine, we’re reflecting their lives back at them and really trying to understand where they are.

On whether she can ever envision a day when there is no print component to Woman’s Day and it’s digital only: No, never. I just can’t. I think it’s important for a legacy brand like ours to continue in print. I believe our readers want it very much.

On whether she believes in the future of print: Yes, I do. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now if I didn’t. I believe the question has almost become moot in the last few years. Readers have shown us time and time again that print magazines are here to stay.

On how she got into the magazine business: A long time ago I graduated from college and moved to New York City and got a job at Redbook magazine. My first job was with Hearst and I have just been passionate about magazines my whole life and was a big consumer of Seventeen and Time magazine and Cricket magazine. I was able to get started and find a job and stay in this industry for almost 28 years now.

On what motivates her to get out of bed every morning: What I love about running a magazine is when I’m sitting in a meeting with my staff and suddenly we click on an idea and then all of us are firing up on all cylinders and this idea is being batted around and we’re figuring out how we’re going to do it and how it’s going to be pertinent and relevant and those are the moments that I live for, as I’m sure most editors do.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up at her house one evening unexpectedly: As I said before, I’m a suburban New Jersey mom; I have two daughters, one of whom is at home and the other is in college. In the evenings, you might not even catch me at home. I might be driving my kid around or I do a ton of volunteering; I might be making dinner or trying to get my husband to do it. (Laughs again) Like my readers, I have a big, messy complicated life and I think if you were to come over in the evening you would catch a glimpse of that.

On anything else she’d like to add: I thank you for this opportunity. I think that Woman’s Day is a really special brand and I think that we speak to a mass market audience, but I think that we connect with her in a very special way.

On what keeps her up at night: (Laughs) Not much keeps me up at night. I’m usually pretty exhausted by the end of the day, to the point where my 12-year-old actually comes and tucks me in at night. Nothing keeps me from falling asleep.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Susan Spencer, Editor-In-Chief, Woman’s Day.

Samir Husni: When you hear the words Woman’s Day, what comes to your mind? Having a magazine that has always been a status quo on the newsstand; everybody has always known it and seen it and every woman has been in touch with the magazine on a regular basis, but what does Woman’s Day mean today?

Susan Spencer: When I think about our reader, she’s the average American woman. I think that’s the simple answer to who she is. But in reality I believe it’s a lot more complicated than that because she’s a lot more complicated and she has this wonderful, big, joyous, messy life and I think that the magazine today is reflecting that. And we’re adjusting her concerns and giving her solutions for all of the things that make her life messy, whether it’s wanting to get dinner on the table or not being sure of what clothes to buy in the store or house concerns, which are huge for our readers.

Woman’s Day today, as it has done for many years, takes the concerns, the things that are truly relevant and important to her right now and really helps her. And I see us as a real helpmate to this woman; to make that complicated, messy life a little bit easier.

Samir Husni: I asked Ellen Levine once how she felt when Woman’s Day came to Hearst; did it feel like a reunion or a homecoming? Do you ever have an awkward feeling that you’re editing a magazine that Ellen Levine once edited?

Susan Spencer: It has never felt awkward; I feel like I stand on Ellen’s shoulders and some other wonderful editors before me who I think created something that American women really turn to. And I think Ellen was pivotal and critical in doing that. So, I definitely stand on their shoulders, but I’m also moving it forward in my own way, with lots and lots of support from Ellen. I feel very grateful to work with her.

Samir Husni: I know you have a big event coming up on February 9, the Red Dress Awards. Can you tell me a little bit about the history of the Red Dress Awards and why it’s such a big event for Woman’s Day?

Susan Spencer: Again, turning to past editors, my predecessor, Jane Chesnutt, 13 years ago put together a luncheon to bring together some of the players in the heart disease world. I think at that time she felt that it was a disease that wasn’t getting a lot of attention, but it’s so pervasive and so huge in the lives of our women that she felt that it needed to be brought more into the open.

And again, I’m standing on her shoulders; I think what I did when I came on four years ago was that I saw that the disease was still the number one killer of women and while a lot of progress has been made, it hasn’t gone far enough. I wanted to put more resources and more thinking and more pages against this disease.

And because it’s so widespread and because our audience is so enormous, we have 16 million women, it touches everybody. Many of the cancers absolutely touch a lot of lives, but heart disease is different; it’s really, really widespread and pervasive in both men and women.

So, I put some more pages and ink against this idea; we started a column called “Live Longer and Stronger,” which is a monthly column, so we don’t just run our heart disease coverage in February, it’s year-round.

Out of that column we grew an editorial franchise called “Live Longer and Stronger.” And basically what we do is we go out and find a group of women, four to five women, every year that are at high risk or have heart disease and we put them on a plan with our nutritionist, Joy Bauer, and help them lose weight and lower their risk factors.

This program sprang out of our desire to bring to our readers what we’re saying in the magazine and really activate it for them. We just finished up with our third group and they’re going to be onstage February 9 at the Red Dress Awards and they bring a lot of heart to the event and a real sense that the event is more than just honoring the doctors and the researchers; it’s also about the women who are being impacted by this disease every day.

Samir Husni: Do you think the power of the brand; the power of the ink on paper magazine, made it easier for the Red Dress Awards to be recognized and known, to actually connect with the audience, with those women?

Susan Spencer: Yes, very much so. The amount of space that we devote to this topic, again, all year-round, I think our readers now associate us with the Awards. They don’t see it as simply a marketing cause, they see it as something that we’re really deeply passionate about and I think our readership has come to recognize that.

And not just heart disease, I have to say. We’ve had a halo effect, where it’s impacted all of our health coverage, which has become increasingly popular in recent years with our readership.

Samir Husni: As an editor-in-chief, how do you balance the health coverage with the food coverage with the everyday life coverage and as you continue to move Woman’s Day forward, what’s the secret recipe? What are the ingredients that you put together to create this magazine called Woman’s Day?

Susan Spencer: I’m both blessed and cursed to edit a magazine that covers many, many topics. (Laughs) Health and food, by far, are our two most important topics. We do a lot of research and Hearst has been very supportive of that. I’m a real research geek and Hearst has been very supportive of me and my desire to understand our reader. So, health and food are the two biggest topics.

As I said in the beginning of our conversation, she has concerns that range from “is this the right mascara” to “what am I going to put on the table for dinner.” So, we try to address those and we have a rich balance of content. I try to put together a magazine every month with the help of an amazing team that reflects back at her with all of these things. So, it’s a little bit of a balance certainly.

Samir Husni: If I gave you a magic wand that could instantly humanize the magazine, turn it miraculously into a person, who would that person be? Would it be you or some composite woman?

Susan Spencer: I don’t think she would be me, although I come pretty close. I’m a suburban New Jersey mom like many of my readers. (Laughs) But I think that she’s a lot of women. Again, when you have an audience this big, she can be married or not married. She can be an empty-nester or a young mom. She can have kids or not have kids. So, I think that she’s a lot of different people.

What we do when we think about her is not think about the details of her life; we think about her in terms of her values and I think that’s what pulls our readers together and that’s why they come to Woman’s Day because we do reflect her values back at her. We think about what’s really important to her. We know that her family is number one; they’re absolutely the most important thing that she values.

She’s also deeply involved with friends and her community. We’ve had a lot of success in the magazine with columns that show readers doing good deeds and helping other people. Her faith is also something that is important to some of our readers and drives them.

So, we think of her in those terms as opposed to what she is or who she is. It’s really more of the shared values that all of these women have.

Samir Husni: If you feel blessed and cursed because of the variety of the content; do you feel even more blessed and cursed for having all of these women rolled into one? (Laughs)

Susan Spencer: (Laughs too) No, I think it’s wonderful.

Samir Husni: One thing I’ve noticed over the years with Woman’s Day, with all of the changes that have taken place, that Bible verse is still there.

Susan Spencer: Yes.

Samir Husni: Is it part of the DNA that will never leave Woman’s Day?

Susan Spencer: I would say that it’s definitely part of the DNA that will never leave Woman’s Day. We have it there and we have no intention of taking it away. What’s important about the magazine is that we’re not a Christian magazine; we embrace many, many different viewpoints in the magazine and always have. But the Bible verse is intrinsic to who we are and what we are.

Samir Husni: It’s a positive lift-up verse then?

Susan Spencer: Certainly. It’s meant to put a little stamp on the table of contents and the magazine to give women a lovely moment that’s important to them.

Samir Husni: You’ve been at Woman’s Day now a little over four years; as you approach your next anniversary with the magazine, what has been the most challenging stumbling block that you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?

Susan Spencer: For me personally, I think my biggest stumbling block happened about four years ago when I started at this magazine and my publisher at the time told me that in a week I had to make a speech in front of about 500 people. (Laughs) That was a big stumbling block for someone who had never done any public speaking. But with training and lots of support, I got through it.

Samir Husni: And what has been the most pleasant moment; if you can identify THE most pleasant moment so far in your four years?

Susan Spencer: There have been so many pleasant moments that I can’t even begin to list them. I think getting this job in the first place was such a wonderful experience and I’m really deeply grateful for the opportunity that David Carey gave me four years ago.

There have been some moments that have been sort of mindboggling. Last year standing next to Elvis Costello on the red carpet at the Red Dress Awards; I don’t think I’ve ever put up a Facebook post that’s gotten more likes than that one did. (Laughs) It was pretty amazing.

I presented an award two years ago to President Bill Clinton and last year to the head of the FDA, so we’ve really had some wonderful moments just in the context of Red Dress. And some wonderful moments just putting issues together and having stories that really resonate with our readers and with us and that makes every issue we do worth it. So, there have been a lot of wonderful moments.

Samir Husni: When I was in college in the early 80s, Woman’s Day was referred to as one of the seven sisters. Today, we’ve lost some of the seven sisters, they’ve aged and disappeared; some have renewed their energy and are still alive and kicking and doing very well. What’s the secret of Woman’s Day that has kept it vibrant over the years?

Susan Spencer: I think that we work really hard to stay relevant to our readers. When I mentioned research before, that’s definitely part of what we do. Women’s service magazines can tilt into evergreen territory very quickly and I think that we really work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen with Woman’s Day. We make sure that we’re relevant to the moment; our health coverage; in telling women what to cook for dinner; just the things that we put into the magazine, we’re reflecting their lives back at them and really trying to understand where they are.

I’d also like to say about the magazine; we’re not an aspirational magazine, we’re an inspirational magazine. We’re not showing her the life that we think she should have; we’re celebrating the life that she has right now. And I think that goes a long way toward keeping us relevant. I’d like to share a quote with you that I got from a reader; she started following me on Instagram and in the comments she thanked me for the magazine and was really excited about it and she said that it helped her to be “the woman that she really was, rather than the woman marketers said that she was.” And I really like that. It’s very nice.

Samir Husni: As you get all of the social media interaction: the Instagram comments; the likes on Facebook; can you ever envision a day when Woman’s Day has no print component and is digital only?

Susan Spencer: No, never. I just can’t. I think it’s important for a legacy brand like ours to continue in print. I believe our readers want it very much. What’s happening in digital and on the website is amazing and wonderful, but I think that the print edition will always be core to our brand and core to what we do.

Samir Husni: Do you believe in the future of print?

Susan Spencer: Yes, I do. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing right now if I didn’t. I believe the question has almost become moot in the last few years. Readers have shown us time and time again that print magazines are here to stay. I love print magazines and I always have; it’s how I got into the business and I can’t imagine them going away.

Samir Husni: How did you get into the business?

Susan Spencer: A long time ago I graduated from college and moved to New York City and got a job at Redbook magazine. My first job was with Hearst and I have just been passionate about magazines my whole life and was a big consumer of Seventeen and Time magazine and Cricket magazine. I was able to get started and find a job and stay in this industry for almost 28 years now. I feel very fortunate.

Samir Husni: After 28 years in the industry, what motivates you to get out of bed every morning and still be excited about your job?

Susan Spencer: A couple of things. First of all, I’m a natural problem solver; it’s something that I really enjoy doing and I really love a good challenge. So, that definitely gets me up in the morning, knowing that I have a pile of problems that I have to solve.

What I love about running a magazine is when I’m sitting in a meeting with my staff and suddenly we click on an idea and then all of us are firing up on all cylinders and this idea is being batted around and we’re figuring out how we’re going to do it and how it’s going to be pertinent and relevant and those are the moments that I live for, as I’m sure most editors do. And it’s being in the company of people who are just so creative and know their brand and their audience so well that you can really come up with these amazing ideas and figure out how to execute them.

Samir Husni: If I were to show up unexpectedly to your home one evening, what would I find you doing, reading a magazine; reading your iPad; watching TV, or something else?

Susan Spencer: You’re always invited. (Laughs) As I said before, I’m a suburban New Jersey mom; I have two daughters, one of whom is at home and the other is in college. In the evenings, you might not even catch me at home. I might be driving my kid around or I do a ton of volunteering; I might be making dinner or trying to get my husband to do it. (Laughs again) Like my readers, I have a big, messy complicated life and I think if you were to come over in the evening you would catch a glimpse of that.

Samir Husni: How often do you cook the recipes that you feature in the magazine?

Susan Spencer: A lot, although my food director wants me to cook them more than I do. It’s more a reflection of the time I have to actually cook. It’s one of the secret benefits of being editor-in-chief of Woman’s Day; I can run up to an incredibly accomplished and experienced food director and ask what should I make for dinner? (Laughs) And she has an answer for me.

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

Susan Spencer: I thank you for this opportunity. I think that Woman’s Day is a really special brand and I think that we speak to a mass market audience, but I think that we connect with her in a very special way. I love talking about the magazine and reminding people that we have scale and we have voice and I think it’s a pretty amazing group of women that we speak to, so it’s a real privilege.

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

Susan Spencer: (Laughs) Not much keeps me up at night. I’m usually pretty exhausted by the end of the day, to the point where my 12-year-old actually comes and tucks me in at night. Nothing keeps me from falling asleep.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“In my business, I’ve been around a long time, 20 years at Rolling Stone, and then the next 15 at a variety of publications. All I know is that the alarmists are almost never correct. Print is far from dead and it’s a great time still to be a journalist.” Bob Love

“I believe it’s (print) far from dead. There are people who think that we’re in the buggy-whip business, but when you deliver 1.3 million new readers to your publication in the last year, I would say that’s not quite true.” Bob Love

When media people and those in the advertising side of the business think of audience engagement or reaching core customers and entrancing new ones into the fold, their minds are usually on that sector of individuals dubbed millennials. Fair? No, far from it. True nonetheless. And while millennials are a very important part of the industry’s life’s blood, there is another extremely large group of people, in fact, 100 million strong, who are being overlooked and slighted when it comes to cultivating their readership. That group is the 50+ audience.

Bob Love is out to change that one-sided practice and perception. Bob is editor-in-chief of the largest circulation magazine in the country: AARP The Magazine. And at AARP The Magazine, the 50+ opinion is the only one that matters. According to the magazine’s research, 50+ Americans will soon control more than 70 percent of the disposable income in this country. They buy two-thirds of all the new cars, half of all the computers and a third of all movie tickets. They spend $7 billion a year shopping online. And travel? More than 80 percent of all the premium-travel dollars flow from their credit cards.

So why then do magazines and magazine media and advertisers think this group of readers is not a viable investment? Bob’s answer for that is one simple word: ageism. And he should know since he worked at Rolling Stone magazine for 20 years and saw every assignment and every move the magazine made through, as he called it “the lens of youth.” And now he sees through a much more mature lens that is entirely in focus on the needs of his readers.

Having worked with some of the greats like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and P.J. O’Rourke, he also knows good writing when he reads it and brings that skill and others he has gained throughout his life’s work to AARP The Magazine to make it a force to be reckoned with in the world of magazines. Through respect for his reader and stories, design and photography that engages as well as informs, Bob is making the statement that 50+ is now the age to be and to attract if you want a readership that can spend money, share their free time and have a love for print that no other audience has right now in this country.

So, I hope that you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with the inimitable Bob Love, Editor-In-Chief, AARP The Magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

Eli Meir Kaplan for AARP The Magazine Portrait of AARP The Magazine editor-in-chief Robert Love on Thursday, August 8, 2013 at AARP in Washington, DC.

On why he thinks the advertising and media worlds today are only interested in what millennials have to say instead of including baby boomers in the conversation as well: First of all, I think there’s ageism in our society. And at AARP we are in kind of a constant battle to counter the pernicious effects of ageism, that thinking that people can be dismissed or counted out because of how many years they’ve lived on earth. I think that advertising and the media itself has fairly ageist persuasions. And I believe that’s the problem.

On the magazine’s readership growth over recent years: Our readership from the fall of 2003, when we were first measured by MRI, has grown by 11.669 million readers, which is more than the total population of Greece. The growth of the magazine is bigger than 88% of all the MRI measured magazines. That’s why I think this is the great story that’s underneath the noses of all of the media reporters, and you were the only one smart enough to come back to me and say let’s do this interview. This is a very rare success story in publishing in the 21st century.

On the fact that baby boomers have more money to spend and more free time that millennials and yet they remain almost invisible to marketers: It’s a gigantic wave of baby boomers that are still purchasing and still making decisions about what they want to do. They travel more than anybody else and it’s kind of a mystery. That’s why I said you asked me the hardest question first, because I don’t know why the advertising community; why media in general thinks that it’s OK to slag off people over 50.

On how his role of editor has changed since his years at Rolling Stone: The short answer is we saw everything through the lens of youth and now I see everything through the lens of the fifty-plus American who has dreams and deserves to live a dignified life and to be treated with respect in society.

On how he has utilized his skills to change AARP The Magazine: I’ve been at AARP The Magazine for 2½ years now and I’ve taken my skills of a lifetime in publishing, a combination of Rolling Stone, which was a mass market dual audience magazine, and my time at Rodale magazines, where service is preeminent; Playboy and Reader’s Digest, which each had their own sort of secret sauce, and I sort of combined them together, but the truth is AARP The Magazine is a dual audience, general interest magazine with a mass audience and a mass reach. We had a chance to do Bob Dylan on the cover in February 2015, and that proved to be kind of a shot-heard-round-the-world, in terms of the impact. People kind of had an “aha” moment: oh my gosh, AARP The Magazine has Bob Dylan on the cover. And Bob Dylan chose us to be on the cover and take his message to Americans who are 50 and over.

On whether he used his Rolling Stone connections more than AARP’s connections to get the Dylan cover: I have to say in all humility that Bob Dylan chose AARP to take his message out. He could have had the entire arts and leisure section of The New York Times if he’d wanted. But he chose our team and I did know his PR guys and his manager from phone calls at Rolling Stone, but the truth is he made that decision. We just took the ball and ran with it as much as we could.

On when he thinks he’ll feel like he’s accomplished that “it” moment with the magazine: I don‘t ever feel like this is it; with a magazine you’re constantly tweaking the design, the editorial approach and it pretty much is what I love to do. I hadn’t really been in charge of a magazine since Rolling Stone and it’s great fun. I don’t think there’s any stopping it. We poll our readers online every issue because we’re not sold on the newsstand. We do a great deal of internal research and so we find out the things that they want in their magazine and the things that they consider must-reads.

On whether he can ever envision AARP The Magazine without a print component: Can I see a day when we don’t have a print component? I can see a day maybe into the future, but older readers tend to be the people who are reading magazines. If you look anywhere around you, young people are reading their phones. It’s older people who are actually reading magazines still. So, we’ll be one of the last ones probably to go over because print is still so necessary to reach our readers. And I believe it’s far from dead. There are people who think that we’re in the buggy-whip business, but when you deliver 1.3 million new readers to your publication in the last year, I would say that’s not quite true.

On working with people such as P.J. O’Rourke, Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson: (Laughs) The thing is, I survived; there are editors who did not quite survive their contact with Hunter. First of all, I loved Hunter and I loved working with him. And I was grateful for the privilege of working with him. I wrote a piece about him in the Columbia Journalism Review and if you read it you’ll see that it was quite a journey to work with Hunter.

On whether he believes journalism today is more lower-case or upper-case: I don’t think I would venture an opinion on that because there’s so much more journalism now. When I grew up there were three television stations; there were a few very good national newspapers, and now with the Internet, there are so many more people making journalism and there are so many more outlets, that it would be wrong of me to make a judgement whether or not it’s lower-case journalism.

On the secret sauce of AARP The Magazine: That’s a good question. I think it’s treating its readers with respect, not talking down to them, giving them as much variety and depth in the pages of an every two month magazine as we can fit. And keeping it modern and up-to-date, not pandering, and using the best talent in photography and design and journalism that you can afford.

On audience engagement with the magazine: I think it’s not taking their interest for granted. We’re an association magazine with all of the joys and exigencies that come with that. People get so much mail that they could throw it away. And AARP generates a lot of mail, but we happen to know from our own surveys, in addition to the independent surveys like MRI, that somewhere between six or seven out of ten readers really read all four issues.

On whether his colleagues and friends thought he was crazy to consider the job as editor-in-chief of AARP The Magazine: (Laughs) I’m the only one out of all of my contemporaries and colleagues who has a full time job. Everybody else is putting together the freelance life and trying to keep body and soul together job to job. People on the inside who have to make a living practicing the art of journalism know that a general interest magazine that serves 36 million readers is nothing to laugh at.

On the biggest challenge he’s had to face since taking the job with AARP The Magazine: That’s another great question and I know the answer and I’ll be very succinct. The greatest challenge in making an interesting AARP The Magazine is the lack of pages. And because our printing and postage costs are so phenomenally high there is a great deal of energy in getting the number of pages that we do down. Like any magazine, it’s the calculus of how many pages of advertising you have versus how many pages of editorial you can afford to put out to 22 million homes. It is the biggest problem because there is so much more that we could do, that I personally would love to do with the magazine.

On anything else he’d like to add: We’re fighting the good fight at AARP The Magazine to disrupt the idea of aging in America. And that’s an important notion and that’s what we see as the role of the publication. And by the way, I’m also the editor of the AARP Bulletin, which similarly goes out to 22 million homes, 10 times per year.

On what someone would find him doing at home in the evenings if they showed up unexpectedly on his doorstep: Typically, I watch the cable news shows in the early evening around dinnertime, one liberal and one conservative, so I can understand the mood of the country. (Laughs) And then if I read at home, I probably tend to read newspapers and magazines on my tablet. I have the paper magazines at work so this just keeps the clutter down in my home.

On what keeps him up at night: I think I’m concerned about the political discourse in this country. Every time I think I’m shocked by it, by how the backbenchers have grown into a chorus of haters, with their own biosphere of radio, television and print, something else happens. I fear for the nation and I fear for an emerging generation of millennials who will, I also fear, not have as rich a life as we’ve had, because it’ll be harder for them to have higher wages to buy homes and other things that have always been associated with the American Dream.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Bob Love, Editor-In-Chief, AARP The Magazine.

Samir Husni: When you were working at Rolling Stone and at almost any other job that you’ve had, people were constantly clamoring to get your views and ideas on everything, and the magazines’ views and ideas that you were working on at the time. And now that you’re working at the largest circulation magazine that we have in the country and serving almost one-third of the Baby Boomers out of the 72 million, everyone only wants to talk about the millennials. Why do you think that’s the case?

Bob Love: Did you have to ask me the hardest question first? (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Bob Love: First of all, I think there’s ageism in our society. And at AARP we are in kind of a constant battle to counter the pernicious effects of ageism, that thinking that people can be dismissed or counted out because of how many years they’ve lived on earth. I think that advertising and the media itself has fairly ageist persuasions. And I believe that’s the problem.

If you want to get it on record here about who we are at AARP Publications, we are the largest consumer magazine in the nation. We have 22 million subscribers and 35.95 million readers according to the fall MRI.

Samir Husni: You’ve shown a very healthy growth from years past, where you had something like .75 percent readership per copy and now you’ve increased that readership quite a bit.

Bob Love: Our readership from the fall of 2003, when we were first measured by MRI, has grown by 11.669 million readers, which is more than the total population of Greece. The growth of the magazine is bigger than 88% of all the MRI measured magazines. That’s why I think this is the great story that’s underneath the noses of all of the media reporters, and you were the only one smart enough to come back to me and say let’s do this interview. This is a very rare success story in publishing in the 21st century.

Samir Husni: As an editor who has quite a few years under your belt, whether it be at Rolling Stone or editor-at-large at Playboy or as an adjunct professor at Columbia University; what can you do to change the stereotype? I tell my students all of the time; we have as many baby boomers as we have millennials in this country.

Bob Love: That’s right.

Samir Husni: Who has more money to spend; who has more free time: the millennials or the baby boomers?

Bob Love: (Laughs) This is certainly true. We know, because we pay attention to these things. People over the age of 50 are 100 million strong. We will soon control more than 70 percent of the disposable income in this country. We buy two-thirds of all the new cars, half of all the computers and a third of all movie tickets. We spend $7 billion a year shopping online. More than 80 percent of all the premium-travel dollars flow from our credit cards. Add it all up, as my AARP colleague Jody Holtzman did last year, and U.S. adults who are over 50 ka-ching as the third largest economy in the world, trailing only the gross national product of the United States and China!

And still, older Americans are virtually ignored by marketers mired in last century’s obsession with youth. In fact, only 5 percent of advertising is directed at older consumers, according to Nielsen, which has been tracking Americans’ habits for decades. It’s insulting.

As veteran ad man Bob Hoffman put it recently, “Almost everyone you see in a car commercial is between the ages of 18 and 24. And yet, people 75 to dead buy five times as many new cars as people 18 to 24.” Nielsen calls people 50 and up “the most valuable generation in the history of marketing.”

It’s a gigantic wave of baby boomers that are still purchasing and still making decisions about what they want to do. They travel more than anybody else and it’s kind of a mystery. That’s why I said you asked me the hardest question first, because I don’t know why the advertising community; why media in general thinks that it’s OK to slag off people over 50.

I think it’s a reflection of ageism in our society and now that I’m in the middle of this revolution about what it means to be middle-aged and older in our society, I find it very, very interesting.

Samir Husni: You have over 35 years of experience under your belt as a journalist; if you were to compare your role as managing editor at Rolling Stone and your role now as editor of AARP Magazine; how has your role as editor changed since your years with Rolling Stone?

Bob Love: That’s an excellent question and I’ve thought about it. At Rolling Stone we saw everything through the lens of youth; the crime stories were about youth; the political stories were often ones that interested youth, college loans, etc. Jann (Wenner) wanted himself and his readers to have a seat at the table of public discourse, and Rolling Stone was kind of the first on the scene to do that.

So, the short answer is we saw everything through the lens of youth and now I see everything through the lens of the fifty-plus American who has dreams and deserves to live a dignified life and to be treated with respect in society.

Samir Husni: How have you utilized those skills that you have to, maybe not change people’s perceptions of the fifty-plus American, but in reality to change the magazine?

Bob Love: I’ve been at AARP The Magazine for 2½ years now and I’ve taken my skills of a lifetime in publishing, a combination of Rolling Stone, which was a mass market dual audience magazine, and my time at Rodale magazines, where service is preeminent; Playboy and Reader’s Digest, which each had their own sort of secret sauce, and I sort of combined them together, but the truth is AARP The Magazine is a dual audience, general interest magazine with a mass audience and a mass reach.

And so it basically comes natural to me to think that what I’m interested in and what I know my friends are interested in, and the people whose opinions count, will be of interest to many of the millions of readers who get the magazine.

We had a chance to do Bob Dylan on the cover in February 2015, and that proved to be kind of a shot-heard-round-the-world, in terms of the impact. People kind of had an “aha” moment: oh my gosh, AARP The Magazine has Bob Dylan on the cover. And Bob Dylan chose us to be on the cover and take his message to Americans who are 50 and over.

Samir Husni: It’s my understanding that you used your connections more than the AARP connections to get that Dylan cover and also to get the CD that went to very specific, lucky subscribers.

Bob Love: I have to say in all humility that Bob Dylan chose AARP to take his message out. He could have had the entire arts and leisure section of The New York Times if he’d wanted. But he chose our team and I did know his PR guys and his manager from phone calls at Rolling Stone, but the truth is he made that decision. We just took the ball and ran with it as much as we could.

And we got to deliver the new CD to thousands of our readers and also a discount to millions of our readers if they wanted to buy it.

That’s one of the things that I love about my job here, the access I am granted. I got to interview Bob Dylan, President Obama, Robin Roberts, Bill O’Reilly and Michael Douglas, all in the space of about 14 months. And I get to work with one of the grand dames of women’s publishing, Myrna Blyth, who dispenses great magazine ideas as easily as breathing.

Samir Husni: When will you feel like this is that “it” moment with the magazine?

Bob Love: I don‘t ever feel like this is it; with a magazine you’re constantly tweaking the design, the editorial approach and it pretty much is what I love to do. I hadn’t really been in charge of a magazine since Rolling Stone and it’s great fun.

I don’t think there’s any stopping it. We poll our readers online every issue because we’re not sold on the newsstand. We do a great deal of internal research and so we find out the things that they want in their magazine and the things that they consider must-reads.

So it’s my job to reinvent service for the fifty-plus readership; it’s my job to bring them something surprising in each issue if we have the pages to do it. And I don’t think that’s a job that’s ever done. I feel like you just keep doing it every day. And surround yourself with people who love to do the same job.

Samir Husni: If I heard you correctly, you said you poll the people online; I thought us older folks didn’t use online. We’re ink on paper people, right?

Bob Love: (Laughs) That’s far from true.

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Bob Love: We know that our readers do a lot of online reading. And we get to them for the most important thing, which are our reader engagement surveys, and we do that online.

By the way, one of the things that MRI turned up for us in the fall is that we continue to have the highest reader engagement metrics in the business bar none. Actually, 66% read four out of four of the last issues, compared to the other top ten total reach magazines, which are at least 20 or 30 points behind that.

So, this is a magazine that people really take quite seriously and they love it. They spend 45 minutes with it every time they get it and it’s quite successful when it comes to engaging its readers.

Samir Husni: I know we live in a digital age, but can you ever envision AARP The Magazine without the ink on paper component and everything will be digital-only?

Bob Love: That is the great issue of our time. How do we cross over that divide between paper and digital? We have an active online site for the organization; we put our magazines out on tablet and I’m negotiating with Texture right now to get us onto that platform.

Can I see a day when we don’t have a print component? I can see a day maybe into the future, but older readers tend to be the people who are reading magazines. If you look anywhere around you, young people are reading their phones. It’s older people who are actually reading magazines still. So, we’ll be one of the last ones probably to go over because print is still so necessary to reach our readers.

And I believe it’s far from dead. There are people who think that we’re in the buggy-whip business, but when you deliver 1.3 million new readers to your publication in the last year, I would say that’s not quite true.

Samir Husni: Not too many journalists can say they’ve worked with and edited people like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe and P. J. O’Rourke. One of my colleagues here at the University of Mississippi is Curtis Wilkie, who was a very good friend of Hunter S. Thompson’s. So, just the mere fact that you worked with Hunter S. Thompson should have left some kind of an impact on you.

Bob Love: (Laughs) The thing is, I survived; there are editors who did not quite survive their contact with Hunter. First of all, I loved Hunter and I loved working with him. And I was grateful for the privilege of working with him. I wrote a piece about him in the Columbia Journalism Review and if you read it you’ll see that it was quite a journey to work with Hunter.

But the guy had such a distinct voice and was so very generous as a writer and as a seer in our society that it left me thinking that there are possibilities with voices in journalism that are out there. But you have to be careful, for every Hunter there are a thousand Hunter imitators. For every Tom Wolfe…it’s the same story, you know?

But to seek out the voices, the truly unique voices working in journalism, that was something that Jann Wenner did very well and I’ll always take my lessons from him and be grateful to him for all of the things that he taught me. And one of them was, believing in people who have an idiosyncratic view and supporting them. It was a long haul with Hunter; it was a long haul with Tom Wolfe’s book, which was serialized in the magazine. I enjoyed working with Tom too, very much; he’s such a great talent and a gentleman to work with. And P.J. O’Rourke; I even brought him into AARP The Magazine to do something on the baby boomers last year.

Does it change you to work with great writers? Yes it does. It shows you possibilities; it shows you the unique power of voices in journalism, which is a subset of what we do.

Samir Husni: Do you think today’s journalism compared to the journalism of the pre-digital age is more of a lower-case journalism or more of an upper-case journalism?

Bob Love: I don’t think I would venture an opinion on that because there’s so much more journalism now. When I grew up there were three television stations; there were a few very good national newspapers, and now with the Internet, there are so many more people making journalism and there are so many more outlets, that it would be wrong of me to make a judgement whether or not it’s lower-case journalism. I would think that some of the stuff we’re seeing now is of the highest quality. It’s much harder to break through to readers in this environment where we are saturated with information.

Samir Husni: When you referred to Reader’s Digest and Playboy as having their own secret sauce; what is the secret sauce for AARP The Magazine?

Bob Love: That’s a good question. I think it’s treating its readers with respect, not talking down to them, giving them as much variety and depth in the pages of an every two month magazine as we can fit. And keeping it modern and up-to-date, not pandering, and using the best talent in photography and design and journalism that you can afford.

Basically, it’s all of the ingredients that I learned at the other publications. Reader’s Digest is a mass market magazine that is much smarter than young people might give it credit for. It’s a very smart magazine. At Rodale, they reinvented service and brought young men into the tent that hadn’t been in, and they basically have done so much work in making service relevant and to have its voice speak to young men and young women.

Samir Husni: Not to put down any former editors of the magazine, but somehow you’ve used your magic journalism skills to actually give me, and I am that audience, something to engage with when I sit down to read.

Bob Love: Do you read it?

Samir Husni: Yes, I do. I am an active member. (Laughs)

Bob Love: I think it’s not taking their interest for granted. We’re an association magazine with all of the joys and exigencies that come with that. People get so much mail that they could throw it away. And AARP generates a lot of mail, but we happen to know from our own surveys, in addition to the independent surveys like MRI, that somewhere between six or seven out of ten readers really read all four issues.

So, we pay attention. I think maybe that’s the best way to shorthand what an editor can do to serve his or her readers and that’s to just pay attention and to give them what they want, and also to lead and to give them something surprising in each issue. In the last issue we had a piece on aging gangsters, who of course do not get social security, do not have 401K plans and most of the time do not live to get very aged. But today’s gangsters are living quite long, so it was sort of a surprise curve ball piece to appear in the magazine.

Samir Husni: When you told people you were offered the job as editor-in-chief of AARP The Magazine; did they think you’d lost your mind to even consider it or did they say wow and congratulate you?

Bob Love: (Laughs) I’m the only one out of all of my contemporaries and colleagues who has a full time job.

Samir Husni: (Laughs)

Bob Love: Everybody else is putting together the freelance life and trying to keep body and soul together job to job. People on the inside who have to make a living practicing the art of journalism know that a general interest magazine that serves 36 million readers is nothing to laugh at.

Again, it comes back to the inherent ageism in our society. It seems to be OK to make fun of older people, and to make fun of AARP because it represents those older people. We used to be called the American Association of Retired Persons, but we’ve dropped that because maybe 40% of our members work part time or full time now. It’s a different population of people 50 and up, as you well know.

Samir Husni: What has been the biggest challenge that you’ve had to face since taking the job and how did you overcome it?

Bob Love: That’s another great question and I know the answer and I’ll be very succinct. The greatest challenge in making an interesting AARP The Magazine is the lack of pages. And because our printing and postage costs are so phenomenally high there is a great deal of energy in getting the number of pages that we do down. Like any magazine, it’s the calculus of how many pages of advertising you have versus how many pages of editorial you can afford to put out to 22 million homes. It is the biggest problem because there is so much more that we could do, that I personally would love to do with the magazine.

We should have a column for men because women are more natural magazine readers than men and I’d like to appeal to men more. I’d like to use my experience at Best Life and Men’s Health to figure out how to speak more directly to men and bring men into the fold. We know that we’re slightly more women than men in terms of readers, but we also know, and you know too, that women are the great readers of service. They are always looking for ways to improve their lives, their families’ lives, their homes, and men are not that. Men gravitate toward other things.

I would do that and I would expand the feature well. We have this really great little section in the back of the book called “Personal Best.” And these are all photo-driven stories about people 50 and older who are doing really cool and interesting things. That’s a section that I would expand too. Or I would move some of it up front. I’m literally held back by the number of pages in which we have, which is somewhere around 52-53, six times per year.

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

Bob Love: We’re fighting the good fight at AARP The Magazine to disrupt the idea of aging in America. And that’s an important notion and that’s what we see as the role of the publication. And by the way, I’m also the editor of the AARP Bulletin, which similarly goes out to 22 million homes, 10 times per year. The magazine is the glossy paper with the color photos, which is a bit more accessible. People remember they’re getting it in the mail. It’s kind of our flagship method of communication with our readers.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly one evening at your home, what would I find you doing; reading a magazine; reading your iPad; watching TV or simply relaxing with a glass of wine?

Bob Love: Typically, I watch the cable news shows in the early evening around dinnertime, one liberal and one conservative, so I can understand the mood of the country. (Laughs) And then if I read at home, I probably tend to read newspapers and magazines on my tablet. I have the paper magazines at work so this just keeps the clutter down in my home.

And then later on in the evening I go to a book or Netflix or something like that. So, if you arrive unannounced, it depends on what part of the evening you arrive.

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

Bob Love: I think I’m concerned about the political discourse in this country. Every time I think I’m shocked by it, by how the backbenchers have grown into a chorus of haters, with their own biosphere of radio, television and print, something else happens. I fear for the nation and I fear for an emerging generation of millennials who will, I also fear, not have as rich a life as we’ve had, because it’ll be harder for them to have higher wages to buy homes and other things that have always been associated with the American Dream.

And I’m not just being facetious; those are the things that keep me up. In my business, I’ve been around a long time, 20 years at Rolling Stone, and then the next 15 at a variety of publications. All I know is that the alarmists are almost never correct. Print is far from dead and it’s a great time still to be a journalist.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“Personally, I’m very passionate about print. I love magazines and I love working on magazines. I love the fact that magazines actually are finite. There’s something about that that’s really special. So, I personally have a passion for print.” Jane Francisco

“In terms of how important print is to our business, more than half of our audience is in print. It requires finer attention, shall we say, because of the fact that it can’t be changed once it’s printed. That’s one of the things about print; people keep it longer. I still think it’s a hugely important part of our business and certainly right now, it’s where our audience is, with nearly 20 million readers every single month, that’s a big deal. And when we sort of carve that audience up and look at it and we look at how many women in our audience are in a certain age and stage in life or are of a group, for instance, people who are very interested in beauty or some other category; we still speak to more women in those niches than a lot of the verticals do.” Jane Francisco

As Hearst Magazines celebrates several milestones; Good Housekeeping is 130 years strong; Town & Country is 170, House Beautiful is 120 and Harper’s Bazaar is nearly 150, and these are not typos as David Carey wrote in his recent end of the year letter to the global magazine company; one might ask how do legacy brands such as these inimitable titles stay necessary, relevant and sufficient in this digital age?

With Good Housekeeping, Editor-In-Chief Jane Francisco says it has to do with retaining all of the magazine’s strengths and values that it has stood for through the generations, while simultaneously making sure they stay aligned with the lifestyle of each subsequent generation. And at Good Housekeeping the proof is in the pudding or the Good Housekeeping Institute anyway.

I spoke with Jane recently and we talked about her two-year anniversary with Good Housekeeping after a successful tenure as editor in chief of Chatelaine, the leading women’s lifestyle media brand in Canada. We also discussed the multifaceted extensions that the brand is showcasing in this new year of 2016, such as the inaugural Best New Car Awards for 2016 that GH teamed up with Car and Driver magazine to introduce, the celebration of The Year of the Connected Woman, which they have deemed 2016 to be, and the special themed issue in September tied to the year of The Connected Woman.

All in all, 2016 is lining up to be the magazine’s best year yet. And according to its editor-in-chief, it will only get better and stronger in every area, with each successive year to come.

Jane has settled in at Good Housekeeping and is prepared to steer her massive brand-ship into exciting new waters as the New Year unfolds and Mr. Magazine™ is very anxious to board the GH ship. So without any further ado, here is Mr. Magazine’s™ interview with Jane Francisco, Editor-In-Chief, Good Housekeeping.

But first the sound-bites:

 

On whether her first two years at Good Housekeeping has been all smooth sailing: The first six months was a lot of absorbing. The magazine that I worked on previously was quite similar, in terms of mix of content, audience, marketing, etc. So that part was a fairly easy transition, but working with a new team and then having the Good Housekeeping Institute also be a part of that, was really an exciting new element for me and sort of a steeper learning curve. Understanding the processes and the methodology of all of the testing and research that’s done there and then working with the team to look at how we could develop more content from that testing and research.

On how it feels in this digital age to edit a legacy brand that’s 130 years old: First and foremost I feel a huge responsibility to the company that owns the brand and to the audience and their expectations that come with them. It’s a huge challenge because as you go from generation to generation, you have to make sure that this brand continues to be as relevant to the next generation as it was to the previous one. And that’s the challenge.

On whether as an editor she ever feels overwhelmed as the role constantly evolves: We certainly do have a lot of pots on the stove. A couple of different things about that; one, I would say as someone who has worked on general lifestyle magazines like Good Housekeeping and Chatelaine, the one I worked on previously, and I’ve also worked on verticals, so I’ve worked on shelter publications; I’ve worked on a health and beauty magazine and a fashion magazine. It’s a very different challenge to focus on all of those various areas at one time to a very large audience, than it is to try and deliver depth and expertise in just one area. So, Good Housekeeping presents that challenge on its own, just the magazine because of needing to deliver relevant content for every life stage in health, beauty, fashion and real-life stories; that’s big.

On how important the print edition is to Good Housekeeping in this day and age: Personally, I’m very passionate about print. I love magazines and I love working on magazines. I love the fact that magazines actually are finite. There’s something about that that’s really special. So, I personally have a passion for it. In terms of how important it is to our business, more than half of our audience is in print. It requires finer attention, shall we say, because of the fact that it can’t be changed once it’s printed. That’s one of the things about print; people keep it longer. I still think it’s a hugely important part of our business and certainly right now, it’s where our audience is, with nearly 20 million readers every single month, that’s a big deal.

On whether her print audience is the same as her digital audience: Our research is showing that there’s not a huge amount of overlap. Of course, we do have a lot of different audiences within digital as well. There’s online, but then we have Facebook, which is online, but our Facebook audience is really important and that’s fairly sizable as well. And then all of the other social components: Twitter, Instagram, etc.

On her reaction when she was made the offer to become editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping: I got the offer for the job through several months of very deep conversations and proposals. So by the time that happened I was pretty engaged in the process, so it wasn’t surprising in the sense that it wasn’t like someone just called me up and said, hey, let me give you this job. (Laughs) But of course, I was thrilled and at that point I had made a decision that it was something that I wanted to do.

On the major stumbling block that she’s had to face: Well, this may tell you more about me than the job, which is kind of sad. (Laughs) I think the biggest stumbling block for me was probably the same stumbling block that I had on my previous job when I started, and that was making assumptions, thinking that because you had done a job similar to this one before that it was going to be smooth and easy. Not saying necessarily that it wasn’t smooth and easy; it’s just that you kind of come in with an assumption that the learning experience you had before you’ll be able to apply directly and of course you can, but it’s more to the point to say that you apply it more indirectly.

On what motivates her to get out of bed in the morning: I feel like every day there are too many new things to do. Not too many in a bad way; it’s just every day I feel like I can’t wait to get there. I want to get there early so I can get a jump on the day and the things that I need to do.

On whether service journalism is the core of the print edition or the entire Good Housekeeping brand: I would say that service journalism is really the core of the brand. In the digital space, the highest traffic drivers are often stories that really draw you in. So, I would say that while the site itself may have a lot of service journalism, a lot of the stories that draw people onto the site is the real-life stories.

On anything else she’d like to add: This year we are celebrating The Year of the Connected Woman, which is something new and exciting for us at Good Housekeeping. Technology has become such a huge part of women’s everyday lives. And not technology for technology’s sake, but it’s a part of how we connect with one another, with our family and friends and the community.

On what’s in store for Good Housekeeping in 2016: That’s our big focus, celebrating The Year of the Connected Woman. And we’ll have a special themed issue in September tied to the year of The Connected Woman. Women who are making a difference; women who are connected with their communities, and then we’ll also be looking at how we connect.

On what someone might find her doing in the evening if they showed up unexpectedly at her home: A typical work night, I would either be watching something on my iPad or, depending on what part of the month we’re in, I would have a stack of pages of the magazine in my lap. I would be flipping back and forth and thinking: I should really do my work now or maybe I’ll do it in the morning; I’ll just finish watching this show or movie first. That’s pretty typical for me once my son is asleep.

On what keeps her up at night: I may have half-answered this before, but what keeps me up at night usually is all of the balls that we have up in the air. I’m actually a pretty good sleeper, but if I was thinking about work, which I pretty much think about work when I fall asleep, and when I wake up I’m usually thinking: how are we going to get done; who’s going to get it done; and how can we move any number of whatever the projects are forward; and is it moving forward.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jane Francisco, Editor-In-Chief, Good Housekeeping.

Samir Husni: You’ve now been at Good Housekeeping for two years; tell me about those two years. Has it been smooth sailing the entire time or have you encountered some choppy waters? How easy has it been to adjust as editor-in-chief of one of the largest women’s magazines in the country?

Jane Francisco: The first six months was a lot of absorbing. The magazine that I worked on previously was quite similar, in terms of mix of content, audience, marketing, etc. So that part was a fairly easy transition, but working with a new team and then having the Good Housekeeping Institute also be a part of that, was really an exciting new element for me and sort of a steeper learning curve. Understanding the processes and the methodology of all of the testing and research that’s done there and then working with the team to look at how we could develop more content from that testing and research.

So that was the first thing and at that point we were really focusing on the redesign and a lot of that had to do with creating more content around the testing and the Institute, bringing forward some of our experts a little bit more into the pages and developing the lifestyle content in a stronger way.

At that point, we were 129 years old, so the heritage of this brand is really important. We have a very large, loyal reader base that we wanted to keep happy and excited about the brand. So, I would say that was kind of the whole first year of my initial experience.

I would say the last year has been more like measuring how it’s going and continuing to evolve all of the pieces.

Samir Husni: David Carey in his letter to the company and the media mentioned that Town & Country is 170 years old and Good Housekeeping is 130 years old and he followed that directly by saying this was not a typo. How does it feel today in this digital age to edit a magazine that’s 130 years old? And how is that different than editing the other magazine that you were working on?

Jane Francisco: The other magazine that I was at immediately prior to Good Housekeeping was the Canadian magazine, Chatelaine. In my last year there we celebrated 85 years, which is not 130, but once you get multigenerational and you’re enough generations along that there’s no one living who was around when it started, you’re essentially then dealing with the same type magazine.

But in answer to your question; first and foremost I feel a huge responsibility to the company that owns the brand and to the audience and their expectations that come with them. It’s a huge challenge because as you go from generation to generation, you have to make sure that this brand continues to be as relevant to the next generation as it was to the previous one. And that’s the challenge.

So, how do you retain all of the strengths and values that we’ve stood for over the years and at the same time make sure that it’s aligned to the lifestyles of the next generation? So that when the next generation starts to build their homes and start to think about their families, the offering that Good Housekeeping is providing is completely relevant, useful, compelling and exciting to them.

Samir Husni: Do you ever feel overwhelmed because of all of your responsibilities? You teamed up with Car and Driver to do the Best New Car Awards for 2016; you’re taking what the Institute has done with the Miracle Mop and linking it to the movie, and editing the magazine while trying to reach a new generation; that’s quite a plate-full. As the role of editor evolves; do you feel like you have too many pots on the stove?

Jane Francisco: We certainly do have a lot of pots on the stove. A couple of different things about that; one, I would say as someone who has worked on general lifestyle magazines like Good Housekeeping and Chatelaine, the one I worked on previously, and I’ve also worked on verticals, so I’ve worked on shelter publications; I’ve worked on a health and beauty magazine and a fashion magazine.

It’s a very different challenge to focus on all of those various areas at one time to a very large audience, than it is to try and deliver depth and expertise in just one area. So, Good Housekeeping presents that challenge on its own, just the magazine because of needing to deliver relevant content for every life stage in health, beauty, fashion and real-life stories; that’s big. But we have a great team and that’s the expertise that they bring, and as far as that goes, I’m like the conductor or the orchestra leader. I rely heavily on that team.

And then when we look at the business as a whole, there are a number of different things. You mentioned the Car and Driver awards, the Good Housekeeping Car and Driver awards that we launched this year with Car and Driver magazine. So, that’s really exciting and brand new in a way, but also in a way, we have been testing cars with Car and Driver for a number of years. It’s not new for our engineers. The process is not new and obviously testing products is not new for us, our engineers have been doing that for decades.

This year what was new was in how we packaged it and the fact that we decided to craft it in such a way that we were really focusing on the top cars in each category. So that’s the case for a lot of the different stuff that we’re doing.

You mentioned Joy (Miracle Mop inventor Joy Mangano) and the launch of the movie, and of course her products; she celebrates 20 years since she first got the Good Housekeeping Seal on her products. And that’s really exciting for us.

The Good Housekeeping Seal is the perfect example of the look back and the look forward. It’s something that’s a part of our history and a part of our heritage and very important to the brand.

Joy and her products have been an important part over the last couple of decades. And now here is something that’s really interesting and compelling that’s happening in the popular culture sphere with her and her products and for us to be able to celebrate that and really tell her story and get her personal with her, because of course, those really personal stories are a part of what really drives us at Good Housekeeping and is a big part of the connection with our audience. That was a really wonderful moment for us, to do that and bring all of those pieces together.

So yes, it’s very challenging, but I have fabulous teams and support from Hearst as well. And it is true that our jobs as editors are evolving; beyond the page is more of our job than on the page a lot of the time.

Samir Husni: Mentioning the page; how important is the print edition to Good Housekeeping in this day and age?

Jane Francisco: Personally, I’m very passionate about print. I love magazines and I love working on magazines. I love the fact that magazines actually are finite. There’s something about that that’s really special. So, I personally have a passion for print.

In terms of how important print is to our business, more than half of our audience is in print. It requires finer attention, shall we say, because of the fact that it can’t be changed once it’s printed. That’s one of the things about print; people keep it longer. I still think it’s a hugely important part of our business and certainly right now, it’s where our audience is, with nearly 20 million readers every single month, that’s a big deal. And when we sort of carve that audience up and look at it and we look at how many women in our audience are in a certain age and stage in life or are of a group, for instance, people who are very interested in beauty or some other category; we still speak to more women in those niches than a lot of the verticals do. I feel like we have a huge responsibility to these women.

We speak to more women who are classified MRI as big beauty spenders, than a vertical like Allure. To us our beauty coverage and our beauty lab and the work that we do in there and the information that we give about the products, is really important because we’re speaking to a huge audience of very engaged readers in that category alone.

And on top of that, you add in all of the women who may not be big beauty spenders, but when they do spend money in the category they want to make sure they’re spending it on the right item. What we do is really important.

The growth obviously in the last couple of years, our big growth, has been in the digital space and the big opportunity is how can we expand our audience through the digital space and have a more interactive relationship?

Samir Husni: Those 20 million print readers; are they also your digital audience, or do you have a different audience on the digital side? What’s the percentage of duplication?

Jane Francisco: Our research is showing that there’s not a huge amount of overlap. Of course, we do have a lot of different audiences within digital as well. There’s online, but then we have Facebook, which is online, but our Facebook audience is really important and that’s fairly sizable as well. And then all of the other social components: Twitter, Instagram, etc.

A lot of the online traffic now is being driven from Facebook, so we’re still “search first” and then Facebook. But again, the research is showing that a lot of the audience that we’re getting in the digital space is new audience and when you look at the audience as a whole in digital, the median age is younger. So it is a place where we’re addressing the next generation in terms of growth. And with print, we’re really looking at that as an important element as well.

Samir Husni: Do you remember your reaction when you received the offer to become editor-in-chief of Good Housekeeping?

Jane Francisco: I got the offer for the job through several months of very deep conversations and proposals. So by the time that happened I was pretty engaged in the process, so it wasn’t surprising in the sense that it wasn’t like someone just called me up and said, hey, let me give you this job. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Jane Francisco: I was pretty highly vested in it by that time. But of course, I was thrilled and at that point I had made a decision that it was something that I wanted to do. I will be honest with you, when I was first approached about it, I was very surprised and not 100% certain, because it was such a big move for me personally. I was working on a brand that I was really excited about and proud of; I’d been there for almost five years and so I felt like we were getting some real traction. We’d had significant growth, both on newsstand and in readership in the last couple years I was there. And I felt like we were starting to build a momentum.

And so when you’re in that situation, you feel like everything is working and it’s good and quality of life is happening for you, and then the next opportunity comes up and sometimes it’s hard to know. And at the same time going into it, I knew it was going to be rigorous and they weren’t just going to say here’s the job, take it. So going into it I wasn’t 100% sure.

But I sort of said, OK; let’s explore this together because certainly as an opportunity, I grew up in a household where Good Housekeeping came into our house every single month, so I was very, very familiar with it and it was really connected to me and my life and my mom and grandmother’s lives. It was my grandmother’s favorite magazine.

My ambiguity around it was not because I didn’t think it was an amazing opportunity; it was almost because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take on that level of commitment. But once I got engaged in the process and the more I learned about the business and the more I explored the possibility with David Carey and Ellen Levine and Michael Clinton, and eventually Pat, who’s the publisher here, I became more and more excited about the possibilities. So when the actual job offer happened, I was very excited and then of course, you sort of click into the, oh no, now what’s; and how do you move your family. (Laughs)

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

Jane Francisco: Well, this may tell you more about me than the job, which is kind of sad. (Laughs) I think the biggest stumbling block for me was probably the same stumbling block that I had on my previous job when I started, and that was making assumptions, thinking that because you had done a job similar to this one before that it was going to be smooth and easy. Not saying necessarily that it wasn’t smooth and easy; it’s just that you kind of come in with an assumption that the learning experience you had before you’ll be able to apply directly and of course you can, but it’s more to the point to say that you apply it more indirectly.

I’m not sure that’s a stumbling block, it’s more of a hindsight thing maybe, because now I feel comfortable in my job and at home with the brand and at home here in this building, with this team and this company and brand.

I guess with every new organization, you have to learn things layer by layer and that can be complicated. And coming into the U.S. market; I’m actually very familiar with it and there’s a huge amount of spillover, but that was new as well because from a human resource perspective, being in the same market you sort of take things for granted. You get to know people; you work with them, whether it’s freelancers or editors; you know of them and of their work indirectly. So coming in here was challenging. It took a little longer to get to know people and to get to know talent.

Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning and think, wow; I can’t wait to reach the Hearst Tower?

Jane Francisco: I feel like every day there are too many new things to do. Not too many in a bad way; it’s just every day I feel like I can’t wait to get there. I want to get there early so I can get a jump on the day and the things that I need to do.

My day is pretty much filled with meetings, back-to-back. And in almost every single meeting there is a new idea or a new partnership or a new program that I get excited about and that my team can get excited about.

I feel like the industry over the last couple of years feels like it’s speeding up, it’s pretty relentless. And as a result, you have to seize your thinking. And there are more and more opportunities being presented and the biggest challenge is figuring out which opportunity you’re going to follow up on and which ones you can execute well. So, every day I wake up and I can’t wait to get to the office and get started. Although, this morning, honestly, what woke me up was my sick son. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: Is service journalism still the core of the print edition or is it the core for everything that’s Good Housekeeping?

Jane Francisco: I would say that service journalism is really the core of the brand. In the digital space, the highest traffic drivers are often stories that really draw you in. So, I would say that while the site itself may have a lot of service journalism, a lot of the stories that draw people onto the site is the real-life stories. And at the same time, the Top-10 type of products and services that we’re testing for all of the time also are there.

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

Jane Francisco: This year we are celebrating The Year of the Connected Woman, which is something new and exciting for us at Good Housekeeping. Technology has become such a huge part of women’s everyday lives. And not technology for technology’s sake, but it’s a part of how we connect with one another, with our family and friends and the community.

So, as we look at this year, starting with Joy and our car awards and moving into looking at the kitchen of the future, and really melding what Good Housekeeping is best at, which is what is new and the authority that comes from the Institute, along with our relationship with real women in real time and how they’re living their lives. That’s what we’re thinking about right now and planning for and building.

Samir Husni: What’s in store for Good Housekeeping in 2016?

Jane Francisco: That’s our big focus, celebrating The Year of the Connected Woman. And we’ll have a special themed issue in September tied to the year of The Connected Woman. Women who are making a difference; women who are connected with their communities, and then we’ll also be looking at how we connect. How these changes that are happening all around us are going to impact us and how we can determine which ones we want to use and when we want to shut it down.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening, what would I find you doing; reading your iPad; reading a magazine; or watching television? It’s your own personal “me time” what would you be doing?

Jane Francisco: A typical work night, I would either be watching something on my iPad or, depending on what part of the month we’re in, I would have a stack of pages of the magazine in my lap. I would be flipping back and forth and thinking: I should really do my work now or maybe I’ll do it in the morning; I’ll just finish watching this show or movie first. That’s pretty typical for me once my son is asleep.

I find that reading; real reading, unless I’m reading for work, like excerpting from a book or something; real reading is something that I do mostly on weekends and on vacation, because so much of what we do all day is reading-oriented and I find by the time my son’s in bed, I’m pretty much ready to just wind down. Occasionally, I might have a glass of wine at that time, if my husband and I are hanging out and then I wouldn’t be watching anything.

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

Jane Francisco: I may have half-answered this before, but what keeps me up at night usually is all of the balls that we have up in the air. I’m actually a pretty good sleeper, but if I was thinking about work, which I pretty much think about work when I fall asleep, and when I wake up I’m usually thinking: how are we going to get done; who’s going to get it done; and how can we move any number of whatever the projects are forward; and is it moving forward. So I think the fact that we have so many things on the go is what keeps me up at night. And that’s in a good way.

Samir Husni: Thank you.