The Editorialiste

A one-sentence review of Salon's new look

2012-04-29T11:14:00.001-04:00

If this is the future of news-reading online, I want no part of it.

Running a publication is like running a public company

2012-04-18T08:00:00.002-04:00

Dan Hesse, the chief executive of the U.S. telecommunications company Sprint, said the following to Bloomberg when describing the challenges of convincing investors (by way of his company's board of directors) that the long-term view is worthwhile:

“There is a disconnect with Wall Street because if you’re building a brand, it does take a long time. It’s hard to quantify.”

His frustration: that investors clamored for the iPhone, putting the company in a commitment with "punishing" terms. Short-term desires bested long-term decisions.

A publication, especially an online one, is very much the same. The editor must convince investors -- by way of his publisher, or his general manager, and always his CFO -- that some expenses (certain writers, events, photography, investigative journalism) just won't immediately pay off in a given metric, e.g. pageviews or unique users.

What's your iPhone?

The Huffington Post Pulitzer win: 7 feelings

2012-04-16T18:58:00.001-04:00

1.) Pride that an online-only outlet won. This is a trend that will continue.

2.) Frustration that online-only peer publications refuse to swing for these fences, because short-term ROI dominates planning meetings.

3.) Understanding, despite my ceaseless criticism about them, that those awful posts and shameless slideshows pay the bills.

4.) Anger that advertisers continue to think that sheer reach, not true engagement, is the mark of a successful online campaign. They're the ones driving this runaway train of endless verticals and volume.

5.) Impatience that Arianna Huffington won't publicly acknowledge this tension. Lots of talk about influence and good journalism, not a lot of talk about 98% of what she publishes.

6.) Disappointment that a 24-year-old still needs to go to a local paper to do hard-hitting journalism. At HuffPo, they're doing slideshows.

7.) Jealousy, because I wish I had architected such quality journalism for my own publication.

Philly.com hates news. So what?

2012-03-26T12:54:00.001-04:00

A blaring headline on Romenesko today: "Philly.com doesn't much like news."

So what?

The problem is not that Philly.com has a penchant for Naked Bike Ride photo galleries or sports coverage. The real issue is that Philly.com is trying to serve three audiences with one site.

Philly.com is one of three brands offered by its parent company, but each has been mismanaged online. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News websites have been scuttled in favor of a locked-down online experience, so most Delaware Valley readers expect Philly.com to have their daily news.

And it does. But it's conflicting at every turn.

A Philly.com reader wants the slideshow of historic Philadelphia photos, but hates the crime coverage.

A Philadelphia Inquirer reader wants the Inga Saffron or Craig LaBan column, but not the effusive Eagles coverage.

A Philadelphia Daily News reader wants Phillies spring training coverage, but could do without the suburban home prices feature.

But each reader goes to the same place: Philly.com. Each reader hates what he or she sees.

This is Philly.com's real problem. It's not what it does or doesn't cover; it's brand mismanagement.

Five steps to a better Philly.com:

1.) Give the Inquirer its own grand, fusty website. If you want things behind a wall, put them there. See: WSJ.

2.) Give the Daily News its own vibrant website. Again, if you want things behind a wall, put them there.

3.) Let Philly.com develop its own content as a standalone property, and stop relying so much on Inquirer and Daily News coverage. It should be at least 60-40, not 10-90. And based on its history, it should embrace things like "Philly's Hottest Chefs."

4.) Let subscribers pay for what they want. I want to read the Inquirer, I don't care about the latter two, and I don't want a paper copy. What's my option? Currently, awful PDF-like reading. It's like the company built a moat and flooded the castle in the process. (In turn, I read the New York Times. In Philadelphia.)

5.) Allow marketing to separate the three. To use a typographical metaphor, the Inquirer is Baskerville, Daily News is Impact and Philly.com is Helvetica Neue. Allow them to appeal to their particular demographics, and stop mixing the message.

The painful truth about unpaid media internships.

2012-03-14T17:49:00.000-04:00

In an earlier era, most big newsrooms and magazines had transcribers or used transcription services. You don’t see a lot of that anymore. On the rare occasion I can wrangle an intern to transcribe a long interview for me, I jump at the chance. Does that intern learn something from the experience of listening to me conduct an interview? The first few times, probably yes. The fiftieth time, not so much.

Jeff Bercovici speaks the unspeakable.

Stop hurting the Internet

2012-02-17T14:56:00.001-05:00

Can we please just stop hurting the Internet?

Please?

Inside baseball on the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News sales talks

2012-02-16T10:47:00.001-05:00

(But not the inside scoop, I'm afraid. I'm merely a spectator.)

News arrived this morning that the chief executive of the Philadelphia Media Network, publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com, may have massaged stories about its own sale to buyers.

He denies it, of course, but the obvious interest is to play down bad news (it's been a rough decade for the beleaguered company; 37 layoffs occurred only yesterday) until the sale goes through. The potential for pressure is there.

I've complained before about the problem of Philadelphia being a one-newspaper-company town, and here we are confronting it head-on: there are few broad-interest news outlets willing to cover the sale of a major employer in the city, because most of the bootstrap reporting on such topics is done by the company in question. (Which is why the New York Times and Washington Post have stepped in to fill the void.)

It was bad when the company's products began to degrade in terms of quality.

It was worse when the company hit bankruptcy.

It was even worse when the company continued to lay off whatever value it had lying around, from its building to its talent.

And it was even worse when the company's only interested suitors are the major city power players who have, for much of their careers, been the subject to critical coverage by the paper. (As Erik Wemple wrote this morning in the Washington Post, "How could the reporters at these Philadelphia papers cover anything aside from Halloween without crossing this ownership group? How could the papers avoid becoming a factory line of conflict-of-interest disclosures?")

Now, this: a potential violation of the very ethical core to a newsgathering organization.

However hellish the business, the PMN should have taken steps to avoid all this.

It should have walled off a reporting group to report on the company, with zero intervention. Placed barriers where they needed to be, for the benefit of both parties. Explained, publicly, what it was going to do ahead of time. And, for the reporters' sake, made sure that every word that went live in those reports was perfect, because any edits to the published product would be immediately suspect.

You say you didn't intervene? Release email conversations to the public. Let us decide, instead of leaving it he said, she said. (A journalistic no-no, as any editor with his head screwed on straight will tell you.)

For a company that has been troubled for so long, it's amazing that there is still confusion when it comes to managing internal reportage around its activity.

Like General Motors, this company's going to have to fail, and fail hard, before it ever has the chance of succeeding again. It's just too bad it came from its own mismanagement, and not stiff competition.

Poor user experience: no one's fault but yours.

2012-02-05T13:59:00.004-05:00

"We can't. That's how we've always done it."
"We can't. We would be giving up revenue."
"We can't. [Insert internal group here] won't let us."

The bigger a company gets, the more frequent excuses become a form of social currency. Eighty percent of the time, they directly hinder innovation. Somewhere along the way, breaking the rules turned from a business model to a business stigma.

But here's the thing:

There is no excuse for pop-up or pop-under advertisements.
There is no excuse for rollover links that trigger ads littering the copy of your publication.
There is no excuse for that useless "social engagement" bar that runs on every page of your publication's website. Look at the data -- no one uses it. Just get rid of it.
There is absolutely no excuse for autoplaying talking advertisements hiding somewhere on the page. Minus double points for processor-sucking video ads.

How much is reader satisfaction worth to your organization? Quality control for your publication starts with you. The bottom line can't be ignored; that's true. But for every user-hostile experience you allow on your publication's website, you effectively wager that the money is worth more than the reader. And that, my friend, is a race to the bottom.

(Who's waiting at the bottom, you ask? The great Google monster, with a massive bat, ready to bludgeon your publication's SEO with a results-destroying swing.)

That social engagement bar? That autoplaying video ad? Those entirely irrelevant sponsored links? Those horrific Google advertisements that roadblock articles? A daily reminder to all of your readers that you can't say no.

You wouldn't do such things to the front page of your printed product, would you? Why do you allow it online? Find a better business model, before you lose all of the readers who attracted those advertisers in the first place.

The squishiness of digital reader satisfaction.

2012-01-19T14:13:00.004-05:00

For some reason, when a product goes digital, we quickly forget that real people use it.

We become focused instead on traffic metrics: how many pageviews did we get? Did we increase our unique users? What's our average duration?

And then we use these as a proxy for how satisfied our readers are.

Instead of running the numbers, two questions we should ask ourselves:

1.) Would I be happy with this publication? (What would I fix?)

2.) Are my readers happy with this publication? (What would they change?)

Don't try to read the data tea leaves for emotion. Just ask.

On building a publication from scratch.

2012-01-18T11:11:00.000-05:00

Building a publication from scratch -- scaling it so that there's regular content, and then regular good content, and then regular original content, and then increasingly new and different kinds of regular original content, is very much like a game of Jenga in reverse.

Add a piece. Add another. And another. Ever higher you go.

Don't topple the tower.

On (finally, incredibly) paying for news online.

2011-12-31T17:26:00.003-05:00

I just subscribed to a newspaper for the first time in my life. I'm a journalist, but a young one, and so have until now been able to get my news for free, on the web. (Fun fact: I have paid for exactly two copies of a newspaper in my life: one for each journalism degree, as required by a professor for class.) As paywalls are slowly but finally erected, my hand is forced. In this case, for the New York Times.

A few thoughts as I offer my credit card number to the news gods:

1.) This is an especially difficult transition for anyone who could be called a "Millennial," since we've never paid for news.

2.) The value proposition is also challenging because advertisements remain all over the site. Online users have been taught that payment for a website often allows for a tradeoff in the amount of ads. This is not the case here.

3.) In the New York Times' case, the payment structure is, in a word, ridiculous. (If you're unfamiliar: $15 per month [$195 per year] for website + smartphone app, $20 per month [$240 per year] for website + tablet app, $35 per month [$455 per year] for website + tablet + smartphone apps.) Make no mistake: I'm not harping on the sticker price, I'm complaining about how these products are packaged. How much does high-quality journalism actually cost? How much does app development for each platform really cost? Bundle pricing understandably masks this, but the NYT's particular structure takes the representative costs way out of proportion to the end user. (Do apps really cost more than high-quality journalism? They do according to the structure outlined above. To the reader, it's an a la carte menu devised by Tim Burton, as perplexing as a medical insurance bill.) Even without comparing these prices to those of other newspapers -- let's assume, for argument's sake, that the NYT is unique and irreplaceable, kind of like The New Yorker -- it just doesn't add up to the consumer. Yes, it's reasonable to charge extra for multiple ways to view the content, since each platform costs money to maintain. But this pricing structure makes it appear as though NYT is trying to penalize the reader for being technologically savvy. It's unbecoming.

4.) Another thing with regard to the NYT: all but the "all access" digital subscriptions don't allow a family member access. This is malarkey. If I subscribe to the print newspaper, I can share it with everyone in my household. Call it the "kitchen table" concept. This should be the same digitally. There's no reason my wife should pay full price for the NYT if I subscribe, and every method I could use to get around this (having her use my computer; sharing my login information) creates a road that NYT can't monetize. NYT bean counters: get smart and adjust the prices to align with actual use cases, or risk losing money like record companies did in the Napster era when they moved to block, instead of reasonably monetize, the ways users were using their content.

5.) Paywalls spell trouble for many newspapers, and I expect to see consolidation in the industry accelerate. I no longer live in New York, but I'm more willing to pay for NYT than the Philadelphia Inquirer online. I wish I could get both. Most people will only have the time to read, and be willing to pay for, one daily newspaper. How will the cards fall? To survive, regional papers will need to wrestle potential digital readers in their region away from national brands like NYT, WSJ, etc. with quality content and products -- good enough to be an alternative to the above marquee brands -- or face apathy. (A point for further exploration: regional daily papers who pursued the "local only" strategy, such as the Inquirer, will be forced to price themselves to complement a daily national news subscription, e.g. the New York Times, to survive -- or rebuild their diminished national and foreign desks to be good enough to compete for a single daily subscription.) Similarly, the NYT will, as most have predicted, lose its occasional readers. The era of "filter failure" is rapidly coming to a close as paywalls go up. Which news brands will readers choose when they are forced to pay for just one?

6.) Corollary to the above: the wild card here is the always-free websites, from the reblog-happy Huffington Post to other sites like TheAtlantic.com or those for which I work. Do those sites benefit from paywalls going up? In a sense, yes, because occasional readers of NYT et. al. will find their news elsewhere, where it's free. On the other hand, the affinity of those readers is low -- not a good foundation on which to build a readership against which to sell ads, from a publication's perspective.

Online journalism needs '20 percent time.'

2011-12-23T10:00:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I ask myself if there's really any creativity left in online journalism.

Let's face it: innovation in online publishing is awfully hard to come by these days. It may be because we're so busy looking at everyone else's work 24/7 that we can't wall the assault off and think for ourselves. But it may also be because we are, in this endless and boundless news cycle, without the structure that forces us to think.

In the magazine world, the format dictates idea incubation. A lead time and a firm publication date helps drive hard but reasonable deadlines. The inability to publish sooner insulates the a person's ideas from escaping unbaked. The structure forces them to think; the same applies to broadcast television and radio.

But online, the beta culture that persistently urges to get-it-up-right-now-and-move-on reinforces a reactive, not proactive, stance. Investigative journalism, pensive features and other hallmarks of quality content are, like the process of drug withdrawal, difficult to confront when the easy way out presents itself at every turn, every second.

The "hair of the dog" would not exist without the hangover; shoddy -- OK, perhaps just superficial -- journalism would not be so pervasive if it were more difficult to publish it. The burden then rests entirely on an editor's shoulders to build this structure, often in direct opposition to the data-driven interests of his superiors.

Google made headlines early in its corporate life by publicizing that it gave engineers "20 percent time" -- that is, one day a week to work on whatever the hell they wanted, so long as it would benefit the company in some abstract way.

Why don't we have this at media companies?

For an industry that must reinvent itself constantly, I'm kind of baffled by this. Sure, editorial meetings serve as a sort of forced innovation, but they only provide narrow results: find a new story for this, a surprising source, a new theme for a forthcoming issue. Ideas about coverage get bounced around, but no one's rethinking how the business works.

Online, where editorial people need to find a new feature and product people need to rethink how they present content and engineers need to rethink how they build the systems that lie beneath, this matters. Media companies can't just give their engineers a day to daydream; they need to do the same with marketing, editorial, communications, product and sales teams.

Because if you're not innovating, you're dying. And too many publications are already dead.

The death of learning in journalism.

2011-12-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

I wish I had a mentor. Several of them, really.

Sure, I've got an editor, and he's swell. But he's only one guy, with one career's worth of insights. In our 21st century-style distributed workforce, built largely upon the backs of freelancers around the globe, there's one key thing that's missing: a heirarchy of learning.

I'm not alone. The problem also manifests itself during the hiring process: leaning ever more heavily on freelancers, media outlets -- and editors, specifically -- find themselves facing a chicken-or-egg scenario where they need talented writers but can't find them.

How is this, you ask? There are a ton of freelancers out there ready and willing to work; that's true. But quality -- in writing technique, in work ethic, in creativity -- is rarer than you might think, and no modern editor seems to have the time to teach the freelancer, cultivate that quality and grow a talent pool. Meanwhile, there are a ton of already-talented journalists in the industry, but no editor wants to take the headcount lump to hire them away from another publication.

From a writer's point of view, journalism schools have become a near-requirement. "You can learn on the job," a seasoned journalist might crow when met with the suggestion that a young journalist seeks to attend j-school. But the truth is, you can't. Media companies are willingly outsourcing training to journalism schools, and the bill is footed by the eventual employee his- or herself. (I would know; I have the staggering loan bills to prove it.)

Do we really think all those bloggers are increasing their knowledge with each passing year, or merely refining what they've already got on tap? We are all stuck moving sideways. Few are climbing, mentally speaking.

The problem persists in the editor's chair. I've always been an eager learner, and I devour information wherever I can find it. But I often feel as though I can't devour it fast enough.

In the online world, at least, all outlets are on the same level. Magazines compete with newspapers compete with startups. But the smaller the outlet, the less knowledge that's accessible. You can watch competing publications' work from afar, but you can't really know how things tick unless you sit down and ask them to lunch. (Which, of course, they don't have time to do. Because we're all overworked in this new paradigm.) This was something that media companies used to provide internally. Now the chain of knowledge has been broken in so many places that there's barely enough there to grab.

The old joke is that you should put a line in for "media consulting" when you're an unemployed journalist. The truth is, each working editor and freelancer could really benefit from tapping that knowledge. Perhaps consultants should consult individuals, not corporations.

Disclosure: this is a cop-out.

2011-12-22T09:40:00.001-05:00

I spotted the following disclaimer on Mashable this morning:

"Mashable Op-Ed: This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication."

A fine warning, if the author was a contributor who had nothing to do with Mashable. Except the post I saw it used on was written by none other than Mashable's editor-in-chief, Lance Ulanoff. In other words, the guy who is hired to speak for the publication.

If Lance's opinions aren't Mashable's -- which is fine, Lance is an individual -- then who, exactly, speaks for the publication? Corporate communications?

(This reminds me of all those Twitter accounts with the disclosure, "The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer." Clearly! Does any reasonable person really believe that one small cog in the machine really speaks for the 25,000-employee-strong organization?)

In an age where it's acceptable to speak for oneself and not one's publication, does the publication still have a viewpoint?

Letting the cables sleep.

2011-12-21T09:16:00.001-05:00

If you've been wondering why I've been so lax in updating this blog, here are my reasons. (See also, from August: "Jobs you'll have as an editor.") I promise I'll get back on the horse with haste.

The Internet's Valley of Death: Expectation

2011-11-30T16:48:00.001-05:00

We all say that the Internet is full of poor journalism, bad (or none!) copy editing and churnalism at every turn. Yet few of us as consumers are willing to change that. In fact, we indulge it.

Yet when there's a terribly short or sensational or just plain wrong news article or blog post or the like, we wrinkle our nose. Some of us even leave nasty comments about the lack of quality of the work.

And yet this product -- this website, this blog -- was free to consume. Sure, it has ads, but it's pretty clear that a bunch of MPUs aren't going to pay the full-time salaries of all the writers, editors, product managers and developers to meet this expectation of quality. And too often, it results in a hostile user experience to maximize the profits, which irritated readers are all too willing to point out.

I hear you, reader. But it's akin to seeking Hermes levels of customer service in a Wal-Mart. Good luck, honey. You get what you pay for.

There is a tremendous disconnect in consumers between what they get and what they pay for. The dots don't connect. It's not their fault; this is what I'd call a B2B problem that ought not involve the C -- something a business needs to figure out for itself, and not blame the customer for acting naturally.

Still, the rift exists. We consume a bunch of low-quality news, and we dislike or hate it. But we keep doing it. And we don't visit the websites of those who practice high-quality news -- even if a paywall hasn't been implemented. Publishers with print editions use them as an anchor; their high-dollar advertisements and lead sales drum up enough revenue to shore up the online edition's inadequacies, even if the latter is in the black. The margins on the former are high enough to guarantee more than the minimum amount of quality for the latter.

But if you're only an online publisher, and your products are all free (albeit ad-supported, and any other business model you've rigged), well, good luck. You can't afford high quality content because your users aren't paying enough.

This isn't the consumer's problem; as with any product, companies must meet their customers halfway. But I'm not sure I have an answer.

When algorithms go wrong.

2011-11-01T16:54:00.002-04:00

I like to use Philly.com as an occasional product punching bag, it's true.

But sometimes mistakes can be comical.

I give you this right rail module promoting photo galleries of historic Philadelphia:

I know we only have a month left in 2011, guys, but jeez.

The problem with Silicon Valley 'scoops.'

2011-10-20T13:47:00.001-04:00

Foster Kamer demonstrates, as he's wont to do, how scattershot and blind tech blogging in pursuit of pageviews can have a very real impact on the financial markets.

Related: MG Siegler defends the practice while disparaging competitors for doing the same.

Everything that is wrong with online publications.

2011-10-17T12:23:00.002-04:00

OK, not everything. But something that is rampant and unchecked on many esteemed online outlets.

Done right, cross-promotion can be a service to the reader: you're surfacing content that they would also be interested in.

Done wrong, and it's just like those students standing on the sidewalk with clipboards hawking some cause: it makes you cross the street to avoid them, going out of your way to go where you want to go.

I usually use the Huffington Post as the hood ornament on which to hang my criticism, and it would be an appropriate reference here. But they're not alone.

So this time, I highlight the Hollywood Reporter:

This is ridiculous. Every paragraph of this otherwise nice report has a cross-promotional link shouting at me. It's in the same size and typeface as the original article, only screaming at me, bolded and bright red. Worse, only two of the four really has anything to do with the article at hand, about a prominent movie executive's memories of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The rest are just shameless Apple-related plugs for content you already know isn't worth reading. (Because really, would you have run a sidebar to this story in print about Apple products in TV & movies? Really?)

Reading content on the Internet is different than print publications; that much is true. But too many publications embrace the worst habits of the medium.

How To Lose Colleagues And Alienate Employers

2011-09-17T19:47:00.001-04:00

(Background: AOL buys popular tech site TechCrunch for $25 million. Site's founder and mascot Michael Arrington violates ethics rules by starting a venture capital fund to invest in companies the site would cover. Corporate communications snafu ensues. Ends with Arrington fired and staff outraged at his superior, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, for floundering on policy enforcement. Some quit.)

Exhibit A: In a public letter of resignation, columnist Paul Carr throws Arrington's replacement and right-hand man, Erick Schonfeld, under the bus.

What I knew last week, but can only write now, is that while Heather, Mike and other senior editorial staffers were making a stand for the site’s editorial independence from The Huffington Post, Erick cut a side deal with Huffington to guarantee him the top job once Mike was gone. [...]

One of these two men is your new ethical champion, Arianna. The other one is the guy you fired.

Exhibit B: Newly-installed editor-in-chief Erick Schonfeld posts a bitter public retort to Carr's post.

Paul Carr, one of our columnists who was hired for his grandstanding ways, has decided to fall on his own sword and quit very publicly on TechCrunch. I believe this is the second or third time he’s quit in public in the past couple weeks. I keep losing count. He thinks he is somehow being loyal to Mike and standing up for the editorial independence of the site. But he is not. He is just grandstanding.

Exhibit C: Staff writer MG Siegler (publicly) laments the public dispute, takes a shot at his current employer and takes another at a potential one.

I’m just sincerely worried about the state of AOL that they seem to have a total disregard for the actual situation. TechCrunch is a key property and one of the few bright spots in their portfolio. But to them, it’s apparently just numbers.That’s a losing stance. TechCrunch may survive with that stance, but it will not thrive as it has. That’s the CNET stance. Complacency is poison.

(In full disclosure, CNET is owned by the same company I work for.)

Three posts, three journalists, and given enough time, zero with jobs. Not a terribly good way to demonstrate professionalism to industry observers in the face of uncertainty.

How to write like a journalist.

2011-09-07T09:58:00.002-04:00

Want to know how to write like a journalist? Read journalism.

Sounds obvious, but there's really no better way. You don't need to know what a "lede" or a "nut graph" or a "dek" or a "narrative arc" or a "kicker" are if you can internalize the flow of a good news story. Spot news or feature, op/ed or news analysis, the best way to be a better writer is to surround yourself with good writing -- then read it.

Read Associated Press stories each day to internalize hard news. Read stories in a magazine's feature well to internalize a good (or bad!) lede, a narrative arc and how to string together 3,000 words to make them feel like a more fleeting 300. Read weekly columnists to see how they support an argument without venturing off on a book-length tangent.

A good editor can hold your hand on a tour through these examples by breaking down what makes them tick. But he or she can't help you absorb the steps, pivots and leaps that make good prose memorable.

It only comes with practice. And it starts with reading.

Why journalists shouldn't join Twitter.

2011-09-02T09:15:00.008-04:00

Well, some of them.

Fox 29 Philadelphia chief meteorologist John Bolaris reports:

(Click to enlarge.)

I doubt this is in compliance with News Corporation's social media policy.

Update: Philly.com's Dave Merrell makes a sound suggestion urging for pre-tweet troll education. I agree; many news types aren't used to managing their own reader mailbag, much less in real time.

Jobs you'll have as an editor.

2011-08-31T20:08:00.004-04:00

The job title and role of "editor" often means much more than its literal definition.

A list of jobs you might have while you're editing a publication:

Intern
Writer
Reporter
Copy Editor
Assignment Editor
Photo Editor
Special Projects Editor
Researcher
Administrative assistant
Sales account executive
Product manager
UX designer
Creative director
Customer support specialist
"Evangelist"
Marketer
Communications director
Audience acquisition specialist
Social media coordinator
Event planner

Call it a different kind of journalism (perhaps publishing) education. But when you're responsible for keeping your ad pages (or pageviews, or unique users) up, you'll find yourself wearing more and more caps in an effort to meet your goals.

How Much Money Does An Editor Make? (2011 Edition)

2011-08-12T09:50:00.002-04:00

Folio Magazine has released its 2011 salary report for editorial folk, from editorial directors to editors-in-chief to senior editors and managing editors.

It breaks down salary by position as well as geography.

Some highlights:

Averages in New York City: EIC $109,000; Executive Ed $102,000; Managing Ed. $82,000.
There's a huge gender disparity: $14K for managing, $8K for executive and a whopping $22K for EIC.
If you're not in NYC, you're looking at more than $20,000 less for the above roles.
You can work 25% more during the week, but it won't bring in much more at the lower levels. If you're EIC, it's all the difference.
The bigger the company, the better the salary.
A graduate degree (of any kind, not just journalism) nets you an additional $5-8K per year. It's unclear whether these people just ask for more (loan pressure!) in the first place, though.

Plus some qualitative feedback:

EIC: Feelings of 'over-worked, under-appreciated' and under-compensated.
Exec. Ed: Strain of fewer staffers, more work. Assignments going on uncompleted. Acting as their own HR departments.
Managing Ed: Changing technology is screwing up copy flow. Small teams mean change is unavoidably disruptive. And, above all, pressure to publish "redundant" and "dumb" content.

Why You Didn't Get That Freelance Writing Gig.

2011-08-09T14:22:00.008-04:00

This year, I've put up (and filled) several job postings looking for freelance writers.

Aside from drive-by applications -- you know, the kind that didn't even refer to the job at hand, and just basically throw their name into the ring without any justification -- the most frustrating responses I've received were those who in so many words said, "I can write whatever you want!"

This is not a reassuring statement.

On the other hand, that doesn't mean what you might think.

Coming up in the editorial ranks, I was told that a journalist should specialize. "You have a better chance at a job," my elders said.

This frustrated me, because I have the curiosity of a journalist -- meaning I don't see the world divided into "Things I won't write about" and "Things I will." Couture, computers or cloture, I'll write about it. Because I like learning. (This is probably why I ended up being an editor; I prefer to be a generalist.)

I suspect many journalists carry the same sentiment. But to get a specific gig, you need to show proof that you can write about a specific topic. Catch-22: so what's an intrepid writer to do?

First: recognize that showing specific proof doesn't preclude those who have no experience in that area. It's OK to be a generalist -- I repeat, it's OK to be a generalist --but you need to show me, the editor, that you can handle it.

Too many applicants over the years offered what amounted to "writing services" -- that is, whether its press releases or physics, they can handle it. And that may be the case, but it requires a tremendous leap of faith from the part of the editor, because there's no way for me to connect the dots.

Worse: inevitably, given a large enough volume of applicants, you'll get washed away by those who have better demonstrated that they're a good fit.

It's nothing personal. It's merely the quickest way to cut down the noise and get the slot filled.

It is surprising that so many professional storytellers fail to tell their own story adequately -- or for that matter, recognize that gap and attempt to bridge it.

Don't have any relevant clips to show? Write something up as an example. (This is why editors occasionally prompt applicants for example/test clips for the site in question; they don't want free work, they want reassurance.)

My worry as an editor is not that you can't put sentences together; I can figure that out pretty quick. It's that you can't approach a topic with enough rigor to do it justice. That's why showing me clips on a completely unrelated subject are only 50 percent useful: they help me determine competency, but they don't help me ascertain relevancy.

So if you're a generalist, don't fret. There's nothing wrong with it, and I'm firmly in the camp that you're better off in the long run because your potential client base is far wider.

On the other hand, you need to work harder than a specialist during that crucial application period to show you've got the right stuff. To do so, you need to frame your talents in a way that can be digested for the job in question. (It's what a cover letter is supposed to do, but I don't know anyone who bothers with such formalities anymore.)

And if you're unclear on the job in question -- I've seen some pretty slapdash job postings in my day, let me tell you -- ask more questions.

It's not that you're not up to the gig. You're just not telling the right story.