Abstract
Launching two books about writing and publishing magazines might seem a triumph of wishful thinking. According to the loudest media pundits, magazines have had it. But there are enough voices questioning digital to suggest we pause and take a breath. The week I write this, Times + members who receive their news on every conceivable digital platform have been sent their latest loyalty offering – a print magazine. The hottest teen website in the U.S. promotes its latest offering – it's a book. “350 pages of articles, interviews, collages, photo editorials and illustrations from Rookie’s second year – in print!” It costs $29.95.
Magazines aren't dead, they may even be hot again. I have plied my craft in journalism and publishing for 50 years and am well aware that I still have a lot to learn. Each of these books taught me things I didn't know. When I was editing, we believed that publishers couldn't edit a road sign. Publishers believed few editors could work out 10 per cent of a thousand. Today, editors are contributing to a successful publishing business package that includes distribution, finance, sales and marketing, revenue raising – advertisements, reader services, promotions – and editorial.
These books irritated me when I started to read them. You know those television cooks who show you how to deconstruct a perfectly good apple crumble into its component parts to become a scientific experiment in “fine dining”? Well, this is what the books felt like. But the more I read them, the more I wanted to know which apples? What crumble? With or without custard? They are not go-to-bed-early books (they are text books, for heaven's sake), but there was a point when I wanted to stay on the bus to finish a chapter.
Magazine Writing comes from seasoned journalists and academics Christopher D Benson and Charles F Whitaker: engaging narrative, interesting casebooks and background, but written for the American market. Is any of it relevant to the British experience? Much of journalism how-to is exactly the same: relating ideas to audiences, shaping stories for magazine news features. No student of journalism can get enough of that.
It isn't what I would call a difficult read, but they do occasionally make it sound like the search for the Higgs boson. In trying to find the perfect content, they have developed a Values Model, which attempts to match up audience and content. “Imagine a bar graph where the vertical axis represents “values” and the horizontal axis represents “content”. On the vertical axis you can plot the secondary values that reflect the readership interests … then on the horizontal axis there will be a list of broad content areas that correspond to the identified secondary values … Table 2.1 provides an illustration of how the process works …” There is more, but if any editor of mine had to resort to such things, her lack of empathy with the reader would encourage me to wonder why I had employed her in the first place. However, I will put this down to the authors’ temporary aberration. There is so much sensible thinking: they encourage new journalists to look at the trade magazines and business-to-business publications by stating that “it is easier to teach good writers and reporters how to communicate with industry professionals than it is to teach industry professionals how to write and report”.
They are as up-to-date as it is possible to be, for example, discussing the pros and cons of coding for journalists, but I would have liked some thoughts on the ethical issues surrounding native advertising.
Now, Inside Magazine Publishing. This is about “understanding the modern magazine publishing industry and the migration to digital”. The lead authors David Stam and Andrew Scott, have spent years in commercial publishing and, having moved on to consultancy and teaching, recognised the need for a “contemporary general magazine publishing textbook”. Neither has been a journalist or academic and they draw together a team to fill in their skill gaps. The tone of voice is consistent throughout: relatively straightforward, unpretentious and informative, but the different styles made it hard to digest at one reading.
Every chapter ends with a digital perspective, looking all the time at the changing business models required in the digital publishing world. As no one really knows what this sector will look like in the future, the writers lay out all the options for existing titles: PDF replica of print; enhanced replica; fully interactive bespoke; full interactive, branded application. They also discuss what kind of leadership is required in these new digitally infused organisations. In an excellent essay, Tim Brooks, formerly of the Guardian Group, reminds readers that Facebook now commands more UK consumer attention than the websites of all the UK's print media combined. And yet, most of the leaders of the print media in the UK proved themselves in the pre-digital age. Ask them how to decrease page download times and you are likely to be greeted with silence or bluster.
Every aspect of publishing gets a look-in, from paper buying to time buying; from the pyramids and diamonds used to construct the perfect news feature, to the hooks, the 10 classic feature types and designing editorial grids. The one thing left out of both these books is the one thing every new freelance journalist wants – a list of the emails of every commissioning editor in the business.