FOLIO: Section Blogs by Editorial

The Rise of First Person Storytelling

traphael — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 13:21:33 -0500

When I was in journalism school (which, frankly, wasn’t that long ago), my professors decried what was thought to be a golden rule, one that I have broken several times already: Do not write in the first person. I, me and my are words that should not be used—if “dire” circumstances do present themselves, it is suggested that writers like this reporter find ways to get around it (hint).

With the rise of millennial audiences, the proliferation of social media and the advent of “selfies,” a general me-centric culture has come to the fore, and women’s lifestyle media outlets are certainly taking notice.

This week I wrote about the new online-only property from Say Media and Jane Pratt—xoVain.com. When I interviewed Kate Lewis, Say Media’s senior vice president and editorial director, she outlined Say Media’s strategy for reaching their target millennial audience:

“It’s the story of real women, living their lives and sharing their experimentation and rituals...Our whole reason for being is to create what we call point-of-view publishing, which is a unique, special and personal voice in the digital space. That is what appealed to us on this unique take on beauty—it’s a number of women of all different ages and walks of life talking about what role beauty plays in their life everyday. It’s that personal, intimate, experiential thing.”

xoVain.com is really taking this “point-of-view publishing” model to extremes. On the site’s homepage, a rotator prominently displays images of not models, but the editors (a lot of whom resemble models, which could be another post all together). The bylines are first names only, and many of the stories center on the journalists themselves.

One prime example is this post. xoVain’s 20-something beauty editor, known only as Annie, writes that the staff suggested she go partying, which she did until almost dawn (see her actual text to her friend that was embedded into the article, time-stamped 4:44 AM), and then document her experience using a new beauty cream from the site’s launch sponsor that is designed to refresh the face even after the longest night of partying, supposedly.

Annie took and embedded a few before photos at home, some during pics while she used the cream en-route to the office on the subway, and the final product as she strolled up to work. Annie is the subject of this story and the product review is just folded in.

The post has 157 comments, with one commenter saying: “I've been on the fence about buying this, and I now think I just might ... It's hard to do things when you're hungover. It's hard to put makeup on in the subway. Mixing the two is a nearly impossible task...that I'm faced with...a lot. Thank you, Annie. Thank you.”

xoVain isn’t the only one, though. In August, Glamour magazine’s editor-in-chief Cindi Leive chatted with me about the brand’s redesign. Leive said the idea behind it came from a need to update the magazine to reflect the desires and personalities of contemporary women.

“We’re living in a culture that gives way to the rise of the personal,” she told me. “Our readers care about celebrities, but we also showcase clothes in the fashion pages featuring our own editors. I see our fashion assistants walking around the office looking amazing in an outfit they put together themselves at home. We started taking pictures and posting them to our website and we saw readers really responding to them, so we’ve done that in the magazine as well. What’s aspirational to women now is much more individual, personal and idiosyncratic than it may have been ten years ago.”

She added that a studio photo is “the way a still-life picture might have run in a magazine five years ago. It’s all of the context and story surrounding [a] bag and the personal elements of it [that make it more successful]. It gets five times as many comments or re-pins or notes than the more antiseptic shot from a studio. We’re living in a culture of personal storytelling.”

Another Condé title, Self magazine, recently underwent its own redesign and adopted many of the same principals. Editor-in-chief Lucy Danziger told me the title “(R)eally needed to refocus the way we were talking to women.” She added: “Now we have this new voice—it’s much more conversational in tone.”

xoVain.com, Self.com and Glamour.com are incredibly similar. To be honest, the sites look almost identical. Which, I guess, is not really a surprise considering that Lewis came to Say Media from Condé Nast in December 2012, where she was managing editor of (you guessed it) Self, and previously held an editorial management position at (surprise!) Glamour.

It seems that women’s lifestyle journalism is being transformed by a single generation—after all, it does take three to make a trend. Maybe this is the new, new, new journalism Tom Wolfe could have never imagined?

T.J. Raphael is the associate editor of FOLIO:. Follow her on Twitter: @TJRaphael.

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T Magazine Gets Heat From Readers On Lack of Diversity

traphael — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:14:14 -0500

The New York Times’ style magazine, T, was reintroduced to readers this Sunday with a new look and feel. It has been redesigned, and its newly tapped editor from The Wall Street Journal, Deborah Needleman, has already gotten some feedback from readers, though not in a good way.

Several readers contacted the Times saying they were disappointed at the lack of diversity among the pages of the new magazine. The publication itself conceded this fact:

“(M)any readers found one aspect of the magazine disturbing – its lack of people of color. Indeed, there could be no argument; it was overwhelmingly white,” wrote the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, in a post online. One reader commented that she in fact saw “only one African-American and one Asian-American among the thousands of models in the ads.” She added, “T doesn’t look like my neighborhood or America.”

Is this really a surprise? No. Especially considering what the fashion landscape looks like: According to Jezebel, the models included at shows during the Fall 13’ fashion week events are getting whiter, making up about 82.7 percent of all models. Asian models were the second most represented group with 9.1 percent, black models at 6 percent and Latina models with a mere 2 percent.

Fashion and magazines clearly intersect in a variety of ways—fashion pubs not only cover all the happenings at fashion week, but also include the designer’s clothes, and models, in their advertisements. A lack of diversity in represented ethnic and racial backgrounds could eventually hurt publishers in a serious way.

Publishers are struggling at the newsstand, as the latest numbers from the Alliance of Audited Media shows. By having the majority of photo subjects in the pages of a magazine be Caucasian, the magazine industry, and specifically women’s magazines, are already hurting their soon to be newly defined base.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the non-Hispanic white population is projected to peak in 2024, at 199.6 million, up from 197.8 million in 2012. Unlike other race or ethnic groups, however, its population is projected to slowly decrease, falling by nearly 20.6 million from 2024 to 2060.

The Census Bureau says the Hispanic population will more than double, from 53.3 million in 2012 to 128.8 million in 2060. Consequently, by the end of the period, nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Hispanic, up from about one in six today.

The black population is expected to increase from 41.2 million to 61.8 million over the same period. Its share of the total population will rise slightly, from 13.1 percent in 2012 to 14.7 percent in 2060.

The Asian population is projected to more than double, from 15.9 million in 2012 to 34.4 million in 2060, with its share of the nation's total population climbing from 5.1 percent to 8.2 percent in the same period.

It’s not 2060 yet, but demographics online have already changed. Last week, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report that shows non-whites are more active in social media—68 percent of blacks use social media, 72 percent of Hispanics and 65 percent of whites. When getting more specific, 26 percent of blacks use Twitter, 19 percent of Hispanics and 14 percent of whites. Minorities also use Instagram more, with 23 percent of blacks using the platform, 18 percent of Hispanics and just 11 percent of whites.

While many Hispanic publications saw drops at the newsstands (like their non-Hispanic counterparts), just as many saw double-digit subscription growth: Meredith’s Siempre Mujer magazine increased its paid subscriptions by 11.9 percent, Cosmopolitan En Español increased its paid subscriptions by 99.9 percent, Poder Hispanic posted a 36.5 percent gain in paid subscriptions and Vanidades saw a 28.4 percent jump in the number of paid subscriptions, and newsstand sales increased by 18.6 percent.

If magazine-media is supposed to be one of the most cutting edge and dynamic industries, why is there a serious lag in even playing to a changing audience? My advice to T and to you would be to learn your new audience, and learn it quick.

T. J. Raphael is the Associate Editor of FOLIO: Magazine. Follow her on Twitter: @TJRaphael.
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Discover Magazine Rebuilds Entire Edit and Design Staff

Bill Mickey — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:49:18 -0500

After an acquisition, some staff turnover is expected. But when that acquisition also means moving the brand halfway across the country, you'd better be ready to do some significant rebuilding of personnel.

This rings especially true when a magazine relocates from, say, New York to Wisconsin—as happened with Discover magazine after Waukesha-based Kalmbach bought it.

Privately-owned Kalmbach, an enthusiast, craft and hobbyist publisher with titles such as Astronomy, Model Railroader and Cabin Life, among others, picked up Discover two years ago from private equity backers WallerSutton and Sandler Capital Management. At the time, Discover had revenues of about $14 million.

Less than a year later, Kalmbach outsourced the sales operation to James G. Elliott, Co., a partnership that's still in place.

Which left the edit team (production and back office operations were already set up in Waukesha) still in New York.

In August this year the company finally announced that it was closing the editorial offices and moving operations to Wisconsin. At the time, about 20 edit and design staff were faced with the decision on whether to move.

All opted out—except former editor-in-chief Corey S. Powell, who was with the brand for 15 years and will continue as editor-at-large and columnist, and executive editor Pamela Weintraub, who remains in a consultative role.

Today, Discover announced a completely rebuilt edit and design team. The magazine has hired 13 new staff members.

The magazine's new editor-in-chief is Stephen George, who was last with Reader's Digest at the Greendale, Wisconsin branch as its executive editor in the book and special publication group.

Former managing editor of Kalmbach's Trains magazine will take the same title at Discover.

From there, two senior editors, a photo editor, four associate editors, a senior graphic designer, staff writer, editorial assistant and copy editor have also come on board.

Still open is a design director spot, says vice president-editorial and publisher Kevin Keefe.

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Hiring in the Digital Age

Bill Mickey — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:43:41 -0400

Not so long ago, magazine and newspaper editors knew exactly what they were looking for when hiring young journalists. Certain jobs called for certain skills: Reporters had to report, researchers had to research, designers had to design.

These days, things are more complicated. Most of the new jobs in journalism are on the digital side, where a broader and somewhat different set of skills is required than we print hires possessed a generation or two ago. What editors need now is a new breed of journalist.

Over the last few years at The Atlantic, I’ve played a part in hiring several dozen young digital journalists—into new jobs, thanks to our web expansion, or into open slots created by departing employees. (We have, of course, brought on lots of experienced journalists, too.) What we’re looking for, I’ve come to realize, is people who can do a bit of everything: report and write stories; write headlines and deks; select and crop photos; fact check and copy edit the work of others; make charts and graphs; oversee social media; manage outside writers. (And hey, can you do some coding?)

The upshot: Today, everyone is an editor-in-chief.

This transition from vertical job descriptions to horizontal job descriptions is perhaps the most profound change in newsrooms that are full of change. I can’t say whether this is a sign of trouble or triumph for journalism. Probably both. But it is definitely a matter of fact.

As an industry, we’ve come to the point where we are asking a lot of relatively inexperienced twentysomethings, perhaps too much. The range of duties, combined with the need for speed, can lead to mistakes. But my sense is that there’s no going back. The new platforms and the new business environment demand a shift from more genteel times. The good news is that as much as we expect of these new hires, it’s been my experience that they can do the work. There’s a surprising amount of talent and energy and sophistication out there.

Finding this talent marries traditional recruiting methods with an eye toward the new realities. On the traditional side, it still pays to cast a wide net, even if that means sifting through more than a hundred resumes for every opening. And we’re still looking at customary markers of excellence: success in past jobs, intellectual curiosity, dynamic thinking.

But the new world prizes other skills, too. The best hires possess a kind of creativity and entrepreneurialism that my peers and I surely didn’t have at that age. Today’s young web journalists are learning to frame and write stories in innovative ways. And as smart at they are, they’re also playful, ready to bring some fun to the game.

We also look for a candidate’s ability to make lateral connections across topics. In interviewing business writers, we might ask about tax policy and retail trends but we’re most interested in how candidates think about non-business topics—and whether they have the instinct to apply a business or economics lens to everyday subjects. Likewise, we look for what Gabriel Snyder, editor of The Atlantic Wire, calls “keyboard presence.” Just as actors can have stage presence and athletes can have field presence, a good web writer is a natural in front of the screen.

And then there’s speed. Digital hires ought to be able to move quickly from task to task, keep active multiple windows—on their screens and in their heads. But not, alas, at the expense of accuracy. In a world where there’s typically one layer of editing instead of two or three (or more), you gotta get it right.

In pursuit of journalists with these new skills, we’ve found that it can pay to look in unlikely places. Alan Taylor, who oversees The Atlantic’s crowd-pleasing “In Focus” photo blog, was a web developer at the Boston Globe when he started assembling image galleries on the side. James Hamblin, The Atlantic’s new health editor, is a medical doctor who had just finished his internship in radiology when he joined us as a full-time editor and writer. Neither Alan nor Jim came to us with anything close to a traditional journalism background. But they have the right sensibilities—and the skills to succeed in a new age.

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How “Google Journalism” is Killing Our Credibility

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:56:06 -0400

Granted, there’s not many things more certain than death and taxes but I found one more: any time I started off a declaration with the phrases “Back in my day…” or “When I was YOUR age…” with one of my classes of Introduction to Writing & Reporting at the University of South Alabama, I could pretty much guarantee a room full of collective eye rolling. “Is that when you drove your Model T to school?” one of the class clowns would invariably smirk.

In this particular instance I was explaining to the room of Gen Y-ers that in my first job as a newspaper reporter I went to what is known as a public library and did research…in BOOKS! Well, they were largely unimpressed, and why shouldn’t they be? For the uninitiated it’s much easier to simply Google a topic or go to Wikipedia to get the information you need to write a fairly comprehensive story. The problem is that by no stretch of the imagination can that be considered “reporting” or “journalism." At best, it’s simply laziness. At worst, it’s plagiarism.

Google Journalism actually reared its ugly head when I was a judge for the Eddy Awards in 2010. One of my categories was association publications and I was perusing the pages of a travel association’s magazine when I came across an article on European cruises. The alleged writer of the article was clearly guilty of not picking up the phone to find out more information and it was obvious by what I was reading; the story read like promotional copy gleaned from minute upon minute of research on the cruise line’s website. Worse yet, it was terrible: it wasn’t until five or six paragraphs into the piece that it stated exactly where the ships sailed to and from, pretty basic information, if you ask me. Not only was this lazy writer just Googling his research, he had never heard of our friend, “the inverted pyramid.”

At the risk of being called a hypocrite, I must confess to my own dalliances of Googling info and putting it into a story. It occurred when I worked at a dysfunctional publishing company where the left hand (editorial) seldom if ever knew what the right hand (sales) was doing. One of the sales assistants walked into the editorial suite and asked if one of us could write up 1,200 words on skiing in West Virginia. I stupidly volunteered—I had neither skied nor been to West Virginia—because I thought I would have the luxury of time to make some calls and do some research. “When do you need it?” I asked. “Ummm, around lunch,” was the reply. This editorial was to go around ads in a special advertising section in a national magazine so time was of the essence in order to meet the magazine’s stringent deadline.

I called and emailed West Virginia’s bureau of tourism. Nada. So in order to meet my deadline I had to resort to the very practice I loathed: Google journalism. Not a proud moment but I think I was able to put the info into my own voice enough so that it would not be a direct rip off of www.skiwestva.com or whatever site I came across. In this case, it was more of a challenge as a writer to take unfamiliar material and reinterpret it in your own voice…or at least that’s how I justified it to myself at the time.

The best stories occur when you’re able to get out there and meet and mingle with people and get the lowdown on what it is you’re covering. As I told my students, you need to become an expert on what it is you’re writing about so that the reader won’t have any questions about the story they just read.

Google has its place, but mainly to find sources and background information. It is a crutch that threatens to retroactively cripple our industry, especially the next generation of budding journalists. Cue eye roll.

Mark A. Newman is a Senior Editor with Hanley Wood's Remodeling magazine. He has spent close to two decades in the publishing world and has been everything from Editorial Director to Editorial Assistant and literally everything in between.

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Writing for the Web, and Other Journalistic Hardships

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:50:04 -0400

Journalists get a bum rap these days if they don’t “write for the Web” in an optimized manner, or if they write stories that are too long and detailed (I still miss the twenty-page profiles of Amazon butterflies in The New Yorker from decades past).

There are just too many rules about writing, these days. We have all of the Twitter-pated editors and publishers spewing out 140-word stuff, which is sometimes nonsense (I am guilty of this, too—felt kind of dumb last weekend, so I tweeted about the weather).

So I guess—as a businessperson with a J-degree—I pity the journalist who is being bombarded with figuring out ways to make a buck. It used to be that they could write smart things and the sales folk would sell blank pages. Agencies demanded far forward or negotiated being opposite something; it didn’t much matter what was on the blank ad pages. Audience relevance was assured because the editors filled up the edit well with relevance, and there was a BPA audit that assured they got to the right people (disclosure—I am on the BPA board). Now, they have to be contextually relevant and all that jazz.

Then they have to tweet, Facebook and Link In (out?) to the community that isn’t necessarily the community that they used to write for; who took an annual subscription to the magazine but have been acquired through SEO, nurturing and mollycoddling but are, alas, anonymous. That is, until you convert them to register, which they are loathe to do as they found you by mistake. But they can be counted and even audited, and even though they won’t mail IN a bingo card, they fill OUT bingo cards (you hope) online. And then, Gadzooks, you have a lead that someone has to follow up on, but not by a salesperson—but by a technological something or other.

Which gets back to the LEAD (not the lead)—that journalistic introduction to 200 words or 20,000 words.

How about a new kind of lead that can be repurposed to social: The combined Twitter and Haiku lead. Perhaps a Twitku?

Warren Bimblick is senior vice president, strategy and business development, at Penton Media. Follow him on Twitter @wbimblick.
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A Curious Commencement Speech, Brought to Butler Students By TIME

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:42:42 -0400

On May 12, TIME managing editor Rick Stengel spoke at Indianapolis’ Butler University graduation ceremony. While such a large media presence likely excited the recent grads at first, some of what Stengel said must have left the crowd a bit...perplexed.

As FOLIO: sister publication min points out, one quote shows promise for an insightful speech, as Stengel reflects on the difference between information and knowledge: “Information is data; knowledge is understanding. Information is statistics; knowledge is insight. Information is foreground; knowledge is background.”

But then he quickly takes a strange turn as he says, “Information is everywhere, and it’s largely free…[knowledge] is scarce and valuable — and you might just have to pay for it.”

The paid content jabs don’t stop there, as seen in the following quotes:

“Information feels like it’s free because it comes to you in a frictionless way with a click on your keyboard. But the information – the knowledge you get from a TIME story about the Middle East—comes at the cost of keeping correspondents in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Jerusalem. That’s not free. And those people are often risking their lives to bring you that information and knowledge.”

“A comment on a blog is free. But you will have to pay for the insight of [TIME columnists] Joe Klein or...Fareed Zakaria, for there is a deep investment that has been made in their experience, their talent, their contacts, their perspective. That’s worth a lot."

While getting consumers to pay for content is a hot button issue in the publishing industry, I wonder exactly what Stengel was hoping to accomplish by broaching the subject during his speech. Were his intentions to convert graduates to subscribers? Perhaps Stengel should have saved his paid content woes for an op-ed, and used this platform instead to demonstrate what actually makes TIME worth paying for: wisdom from a trusted, researched source.

Sadly, this marks a missed opportunity for Stengel, TIME and the magazine industry overall. Educated youth should be enticed to become readers of legacy media brands, not guilted into a subscription purchase.
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I Hate VC Firms

Wed, 02 May 2012 11:10:23 -0400

As it was reported by FOLIO: on March 29th, our long-time competitor, Texterity, has been acquired by Godengo. That same day, actually hours later, a venture capital firm contacted me and asked if I had heard the news. They then wondered if they could help me "keep up with the great things that Texterity and Godengo were going to do together." The question made me pause and take stock in what indeed had happened. Then it brought a smile to my face.

In my opinion, venture capital is definitely one direction a company can go when you need money and are growing a company. Many great companies have started that way and went on to do great things. However, I also believe this same strategy is a reason many companies have failed over the years. What follows the influx of cash from VC firms is generally a call to grow the company via customer acquisition, with little regard to making a profit. The model dictates that if you only get more customers, the rest will take care of itself.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Profits are really what allow that company to pay back investors or make the company so profitable that the venture capital people will get the payday they so desperately seek. If and when that doesn’t happen, then you are expendable and subject to a merger, with the goal of the repackaged asset looking more valuable than it was before.

My partners and I determined long ago we were going to grow our business organically; taking anything we made and pouring it back into the company to grow Nxtbook into what we know it could be. It’s not always easy to do that, given the promises of easy cash that can be achieved now through VC funding.

Since 2003, I have received calls or emails from 27 different VC firms, most of them multiple times over the years. These calls hit a frenzy in 2008 when we were named 303 on the Inc 500 list of fastest growing companies in America. Calls ranging from, "I just wanted check in and see if Nxtbook was ready for an investment yet," to "We will stay out of your way and let your team run the business" and my favorite, "You won’t even know we are around." Each time we turned them down because we knew what the investment would ultimately mean; we would lose control over our own business.

Like any industry, but especially prevalent in our industry, most of our competitors are funded by venture capitalists and seem to work hard at customer acquisition while not working at all to generate a profit. I draw this conclusion based on how many are providing software almost for free or charging very little for their product. Obviously customer acquisition is paramount to their play, since they long ago abandoned profit as a core to their business.

This lack of profit translates directly into a lack of customer service. How can you have any customer service, much less good customer service when you aren’t making money to pay the people who provide it? Over time, this results in the changing of what was once a feared competitor. That change begins when the people who were the core of the company leave or are asked to leave because the company can no longer afford their talents. These people leave and the knowledge they have about the company and the industry is lost forever. Who sees it most are the customers who expected certain service levels to be maintained, yet those levels certainly erode over time.

I strongly believe that as a company your business life is made of choices, what you do and how you grow is all part of your business, your core fundamental belief in where you will travel as an organization. We as a company are here to make a profit. Not a crazy rich profit but one that provides an ability to grow as a company and keep up with the demands of the rapidly changing technology sector. We make that profit simply because that profit allows all things to be. Without it, we would be just another failed digital supplier being combined with another company with the hopes of something relevant coming out the other side.

We know that we are relevant right here and right now. Our customers depend on us to have a great product backed up by service that is second to none. I’m not saying we always hit the target exactly in either area but I assure you we have and will continue to do our best in both regards. That is what makes us a great company, always striving to be the best partner to our very valuable clients.

Our employees depend on us to be around a long time and provide great benefits and good solid living potential for each and every one. This is a responsibility that we don’t take lightly. They commit to give us with their best and they certainly deserve the same consideration in return.

Lastly, our community depends on us to be a light or shining example of a technology company right here in Lancaster, PA. We have no intention of shying away from that responsibility. We work in the community to show young people what is possible in technology without having to move away from home. We provide students job-shadowing opportunities, fund classrooms, and provide speakers to classes or invite teachers to Nxtbook to see us for themselves.

We feel all of these things are important to us as an organization but most important to us are you, our customers. We want you to know that we will continue providing strong product offerings backed up with customer service that is the best in the business. We are built for the long haul and I want to personally assure you that we will be here for you as our industry continues to move and shift. We won’t let you down.

Michael Biggerstaff is the chief inspiration officer at Nxtbook Media.
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Misconceptions About the Homepage

Tue, 01 May 2012 14:42:17 -0400

Does the homepage really matter? Yes -- but not, perhaps, for the reasons you may think.

The homepage is the single best way for editors to convey the sensibilities and values of their websites. Everything about the page – the design; the selection of stories and images; the treatment of features and widgets; the language and cadence of the headlines; the typeface; the frequency with which the page is updated; even the ads – is a statement about what matters to the publication. With one glance at the page (literally, a 10-second glance), a reader can get answers to these questions:

• What’s this site about? News? Analysis? Service? Gossip?

• What’s the sensibility? Serious? Playful? Quirky? Geeky?

• What are the subject areas that matter most to its editors? Washington? Wall Street? Hollywood? Silicon Valley?

For these reasons, the homepage is, as the marketing team would put it, the ultimate brand statement. And, by the same logic, all this is true for the home screen of a magazine’s tablet app, too.

There’s one thing, though, that the homepage is not much good for: driving traffic. While I don’t have data on this, it’s my sense, anecdotally, that many editors continue to believe that one of the primary goals of the homepage is to guide readers to the articles on the site. I know that’s what I long believed. But the evidence – and here there is data – suggests the homepage is overvalued as a mechanism for generating visits to interior pages.

Across The Atlantic sites, the fraction of visits that begin on the homepage is surprisingly small. About 13 percent of visits to our flagship TheAtlantic.com start on the homepage. That figure is about 8 percent for The Atlantic Wire and 10 percent for The Atlantic Cities. That means, of course, that roughly 9 in 10 sessions begin on an article page or, much less frequently, a channel or author landing page.

It is the case, of course, that getting promoted to the homepage can give a boost to an article. Just not as much as we might have thought – and not the way we imagined. In the ongoing cubicle game to puzzle out the Google algorithm, our editors have noticed that a story that gets a big burst of traffic in a short period of time tends to fare better in search returns. The overall number of readers to the piece may not be huge, but if they come to the article within a narrow band of time, that may be enough to affect search returns, even days later. And, naturally, a story that does well in search tends to attract a larger audience.

So here’s a traffic lever: a homepage tease can, in certain circumstances, generate a concentrated burst of readers to an article, which can tickle the Google algorithm and improve the story’s performance in search. This peculiar bankshot is one way that a story’s placement on the homepage can bring substantial traffic.

Still, with 90 percent of visits starting on a page not considered the homepage, one conclusion is obvious: Every page is a homepage. However readers arrive at our site – from a Yahoo link or a Facebook post or a Google search or a mention on YourMomsBlog – we need to find ways to keep them there. That means designing article pages to drive the next click: related content headlines, video boxes, most popular modules, most shared modules.

Many sites are good at this, but, paradoxically, being too good can be a problem. I’ve seen article pages on popular and respected sites with pop-ups, oversized social buttons, and right rails that look like Times Square. Don’t forget why the audience came in the first place: to read the article.

For big media companies, all this can be scary. As powerful as the brand may be, it’s disconcerting to realize that each article lives out there by itself and has to succeed on its own. This is more true than ever in the atomized world of social media, where the individual post, photo gallery, and infographic is untethered from the brand and shared as an independent unit.

You can post that unit to your home page – and if it’s good, you should. But that’s not how readers will find it.

Bob Cohn is editor of Atlantic Digital. In this role, he oversees all editorial components of The Atlantic’s digital and mobile properties, including TheAtlantic.com, TheAtlanticWire.com, and TheAtlanticCities.com, as well as the print publication’s integration on digital platforms.
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Notes from the 2012 WPA Conference

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:42:23 -0400

The Western Publishing Association had its annual conference Friday in Los Angeles after a layoff of a couple of years. Called WPA Media Publishing Conference 3.0: Navigation. Innovation. Growth, the event was lightly attended, with perhaps 100-120 total attendees, including speakers and exhibitors. (Pictured to the right is the closing panel: Rick Calvert, CEO, BlogWorld & New Media Expo; Jordan Gold, VP, products & content, Freedom Interactive; Dan McCarthy, partner, DeSilva + Phillips. Pictured below to the right is the closing panel audience.)

But the content was often quite strong, and as with all face-to-face events, there are always important snippets of insight and business approaches worth holding on to. Following are some of the highlights.

• Paul Miller, CEO of UBM Electronics and UBM Canon, on the future of his business: “I don’t think advertising is the future for us. We’re engaged in marketing services and e-commerce.”

• Also from Miller: “The tech-publishing sector is the front seat of the roller coaster.”

• Dan McCarthy, partner at DeSilva + Phillips, in the executive forum: “The holy grail is to push your way into your audience’s workflow. Salespeople need the tools to say, ‘This is exactly what I’ve given you, but what are you giving me credit for?’ Counting outcomes is the single biggest practice that needs to move from digital to print.”

• 1105 Media CEO Neal Vitale, during the same session: “Prepackage what it is you want your client to know.”
• McCarthy in the same session: “Clients stop doing business with you not because your results are bad, but because your customer service is bad.”

• McCarthy during the closing session: “There are three trends in companies that are doing really well. First, demand value for the things they think are valuable. They sell something. Second, they build their companies around technology, including emerging ones. And third, they have people of all ages working at their companies. They don’t need young people, they need smart people able to learn new things. And here’s another: They are increasingly willing to partner.”

• McCarthy during the closing session: “The position of ‘chief digital officer’ is window dressing. It makes me cringe. The guy or woman who runs the company should be responsible.”
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You've Got Mail

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:52:42 -0400

It’s 6 p.m. on a typical Monday and my office e-mail box has logged in 110 e-mails today. As is true of most workdays, about 20 percent of them were from people or businesses I knew or people or products I want to know. The rest were solicitations or introductions from those who shall be know as the “deleted mob.”

I’m not complaining, mind you . . . I can tie a chunk of my own compensation to efficient and targeted e-mail as can most modern day publishers. We live by the marketer who wants to use our qualified readers to target, often in some sort of adjacency to content. But does anyone else think it’s just gotten out of hand?

Here are just a few of the things that some publishers are doing today that really irritate me and, I think, help us devalue our brands and our relationships with our readers:

Let’s be chums: Why do publishers think it is okay to personalize e-mail blasts to, among others, “Dear Warren N,” or “Dear W,” or “Dear (insert name) or “Warren?" I’m a formal kind of guy so, “Dear Mr. Bimblick,” is fine for me. Or if you really prefer the familiar, “Yo” works for me more than these just plain wrong salutations.

The sneak attack: That’s those publishers who run webinars that I don’t sign up for and then email me – “You missed our client-sponsored webinar on a topic.” Only problem is they don’t always tell me the topic.

Speaking of webinar pitches: “Top 15 reasons why . . . “ or “A free checklist of the 7 things . . .” Couldn’t the marketers of these things be more original. How about, “Your business will self-destruct unless you listen to tips on how not to do email?"

Lousy house ads: So many e-letter published populate their e-letters with house ads for subscriptions or events that are clearly picked of from somewhere else. You can’t read the date of the event. Or, there are nine typefaces crammed into a tiny space. And the clip art.
Anyway, time to go home and get through my personal e-mail box.

Warren Bimblick is senior vice president, strategy and business development, at Penton Media.
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Pay-Per-View

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:44:16 -0400

In the world of publishing, it is expected that sales teams are rewarded for performance with commission; but for a long time, there was no opportunity for editors to earn outside of their base pay. “Church” may be considered holier, but “state” tended to be greener.

That is, until now. Recently, a few publishers began to compensate their editors based on performance. Performance is a relative term in this case: two publishers implementing this model chose difference audience indicators as the determiner of top editorial performers. Forbes’ chief product officer Lewis DVorkin expanded on how his company is rewarding writers at FOLIO:’s March Roundtable.

“We had two individual contributors, not staff members, who drove one million unique visitors each and they were incentive-based. They were incented to drive audience, not incented to drive page views, and they are further incented to drive repeat users per month,” says DVorkin.

DVorkin then stated that Forbes “doesn’t focus that much on page views” when quantifying successful articles.

On the other side is Vance Publishing Corporation, which launched its editorial rewards program in January. Dean Horowitz, vice president of e-media and market intelligence, details how Vance is rewarding top editors based on page views, or impressions, during a FOLIO: 40 interview.

“Now the editors who said they were posting and are not really posting are seeing how transparent it is, and how it affects their compensation. Initially, there was pushback: it’s open on who the top performers are,” says Horowitz. “We have to value the people making the content more than ever before. It’s about the product, more than it is the sales story.”

Vance installed an editorial audit board to keep the process fair as possible. “They help make sure the editors aren’t using search bait,” says Horowitz.

Both of these models seem to be in beta stages, but progressive nonetheless, in leveling the publishing payment field. At first glance, there are a few hitches that may or may not outweigh the positives. What constitutes a quality article may not always make it the most popular; for those tasked with more mundane subjects in any given niche, paychecks may suffer.

Vance’s transparent model is commendable in its honesty, but may inspire an increased amount of jealousy and rivalry among employees. While a bit of healthy competition is welcome in any work atmosphere, pitting co-editors against each other for dollar reward (in the already cutthroat industry of magazine publishing) seems to be an inevitable and dangerous outcome of this system.

Of course, no new system is without flaw. Cheers to empowering editors, however publishers choose to do so.
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Content Is King, Once Again

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:08:41 -0400

“E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial” was playing at the movies, Michael Jackson had just released “Thriller,” the average cost of a home was $82,000 and gas was 91 cents a gallon. It was 1982. TIME declared the computer its “Man of the Year” and CRN published its first issue under the name Computer Retail News.

For three decades, CRN has been reporting on technology news, and these advancements have certainly forced publishing–an industry that had seen few substantive changes in the prior 200 years—to rapidly adapt to new platforms, new mediums and new business models.

Thirty years ago, reporters and editors were using a fluorescent-green terminal called Atex to file stories. Today reporters use their phones to Tweet, Skype to conduct video interviews and Facebook to elicit comments or story suggestions from their followers. Until very recently those who produced the content distributed the content. Today social media and mobile apps provide a new distribution model where the producers no longer have complete control.

It would be an understatement to say that the Web forever changed publishing. Over the past two decades, business models have been disrupted, publishers have gone out of business and a new breed of online sites has entered the market. For editors, an unprecedented sense of urgency was born. In just the past few years, we have seen yet another dramatic change in journalism, again all in reaction to the incredible pace of technology. Enter citizen journalism, crowdsourcing and blogging; then throw YouTube, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Stumbleupon and others into the mix.

While technology has helped deliver the news, it also has delivered shortcomings in news reporting. Today a mistake can be corrected and a story reposted in a minute, with less consequence than in yesteryear. But who’s to notice, anyway? Today’s readers don’t consume news—they sniff it, take a nibble, and move to the next item in an endless buffet of shallow dishes hastily prepared. Scroll, scroll, click. Scroll, scroll, click. On the other side of the buffet table, frenzied reporters dish out the news as quickly as they can.

But the innovations that have made us sloppy could save b-to-b journalism in the future. Tablets and the subscription-based model—as opposed to qualified circulation and the current advertising model many of us have—could force b-to-b editors once again to write content that is not only timely, but that is accurate, unique and consequential. Readers will pay for such content, just as they once had. Nondifferentiated content can remain free; differentiated content can command a price.

All of this, of course, has begun to happen with digital subscription-based models and Apple’s Newsstand feature. That’s where CRN finds itself after 30 years—offering even more targeted content to give our readers a better perspective.

But, where will CRN and b-to-b publishing find themselves in 30 years? Artificial intelligence and data mining will enable even more precise data on what readers are interested in. Contextually relevant audiences will find us. And new companies that aren’t in existence today will force us to rethink how content is delivered. Never again will we have 200 years with basically the same model. Disruption will be the norm.

Kelley Damore is vice president and editorial director for CRN.
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What’s Your Digital Business Worth?

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:26:11 -0400

In between last week’s DMA Circulation Marketing Day and the upcoming MPA Digital: Swipe conference on March 20, I thought it may be appropriate to reflect on a pattern forming in the magazine publishing industry. It doesn’t require expert sleuthing skills to deduce how much the industry has changed over the past year; a massive shift in focus is evident.

Digital used to occupy a session or two at any given conference, though the open Q&A’s at the end of panel discussions showed this is where audience concerns really lie. In 2012, by hosting and participating in a plethora of digitally focused events, publishers are confirming digital is not an add-on or afterthought, but a necessary part of strategy (albeit a frustrating one, as publishers attempt to pin revenue models on the slippery suckers called apps).

I don’t think this means that print is doomed in 2012, as the rest of the world is predicted to be. What I do think it means is that print is a medium the magazine industry has more or less mastered, and peers are looking outward for guidance in the new digital terrain.

And one of the biggest concerns is digital revenue. At Circ Day, Meredith’s chief digital officer Liz Schimel explained her company’s app portfolio is a mix of paid and free offerings.

“Where they are free: we believe that getting scale to platform is most important, rather than monetization upfront. We monetize through advertisers, upselling packages and sampling for our magazine,” says Schimel. “We’re looking at contribution to circ, advertising details and discreet paid content. Getting out to the broadest possible audience is the main driver, rather than getting the most money up front.”

Katelyn Belyus, circulation fulfillment manager of The Nation, says their app is available to subscribers for an additional $10. She says the publisher is considering creating another paid non-replica app, but explained, “We’re not convinced apps are the future.”

Nina LaFrance, vice president of consumer marketing at Forbes, broke down Forbes’ current digital strategy. “Our digital strategy is different than the rest of the community. We don’t have a tablet app for the magazine. The apps we have in market are free apps designed to support Forbes brand content,” LaFrance said. “We have to decide which platforms will be paid or free. With the size of our audience, we can’t drive them through a paywall. The question is, is ad revenue high enough so Forbes Web content can remain free?”

What may be more interesting than current rev models is the uncertainity of presenters at DMA's Circulation Marketing Day. Those winning in the digital space looked visibly relieved their strategies are actually working; while others revealed how fluid current digital models are.

In the midst of all the reflecting and forecasting of the conference, it was refreshing to hear Bonnier's Bruce Miller (who was inducted into the DMA's Circulation Hall of Fame) reinforce what the industry sometimes seems to overlook, "We can do what we want in digital. We write our own ticket."
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The New Influences on Content

Bill Mickey — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 11:18:36 -0500

For our March issue cover story, we convened a Folio: Roundtable to deliberate on the current state and future of content. It’s a topic that can easily get overlooked while we get distracted by the various technologies and platforms that enable its production and distribution. Content is not the same old product we’ve been producing anymore. In no particular order, here’s why:

1. New Access Dynamics
Where our content gets delivered to and consumed from has not only enabled greater access, it has changed the way it’s produced, demanding a new skill set from its creators. We don’t simply pour identical content from one platform to another.

2. Social Media
More than just a content marketing vehicle, social media, and the audience feedback it fosters, directly influences the kind of content we emphasize and the kind we dial back.

3. Audience Data
The more platforms our content appears on, the more data that gets kicked back that influences the subject matter, frequency, length and any number of characteristics. We’re incredibly more informed about audience likes, dislikes and preferences.

4. Content Creators
You’ve heard it a million times—everyone’s a publisher. Your audience and your advertisers are becoming a larger and larger part of the content supply chain. Both have a valuable position in the creation phase and both can contribute to the economics of content.

5. The Role of the Editor
The curatorial power of the editor has diminished. That’s not as bad as it sounds and because of the way we’ve allowed our audiences into the process to drive deeper engagement, it’s inevitable. Editors certainly still drive what gets created, but the other 5 factors presented here have profoundly altered their role.

6. Economics
Paid versus free only scratches the surface. Cost pressures, cross-platform pricing configurations, bundling, a growing array of media platforms and audience data are all keeping the revenue formula in flux.

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