Split decisions

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 15, 2001 by Scott Baltic

Sharing editorial staff between two or more magazines can be a good way to maximize editorial know-how and minimize costs. But basic ground rules are needed to make it work.

In 1999, when I edited Fire Chief and another title owned by the same company, Midwest Real Estate News, I needed to increase their editorial staffs. Between Web sites, supplements and growing page counts, both magazines were struggling to come out on time. Neither magazine's budget could support another full-time editor, however. But since the two books were right down the hall from each other, it was decided they would split a new position 50-50.

We hired an entry-level assistant editor and assigned him to work the first half of the week on one book and the second half on the other. This initial strategy was quickly abandoned, however, because it didn't give him nearly enough continuity to be productive in either job. Although a new schedule that divvied up the shared editor's time mostly in two-week blocks worked much better, the position was still exceptionally challenging. Because the two magazines cover unrelated fields and are structured very differently, the new person's learning curve was essentially twice as steep as it otherwise would have been.

After the new assistant editor was promoted 14 months later, other arrangements were made to meet the staffing needs.

So is sharing an editorial position among two (or more) magazines a workable approach, or simply a necessary evil? Discussions with others who have shared editors on their staffs revealed that the reasons for doing so are as varied as the magazines that do it. They also showed that our foray into editor-swapping broke some rules on how to make these positions work well.

Modern Bulk Transporter, Trailer/Body Builders and Refrigerated Transporter have shared editorial staff for at least 20 years. "That's just the way things were," says Chuck Wilson, editor of Modern Bulk Transporter. "Everybody pitched in to get things done."

The three magazines, part of Primedia Business Magazines' Transportation Group (and sister publications to Folio:), have three chief editors and four associate editors among them. In addition, they share a copy editor and a proofreader, positions that require somewhat more experience, and a news editor and a directories editor--typically less-experienced positions. Workflow generally isn't a problem, Wilson explains, because the people in the shared positions know which magazine takes priority at any given time. It also helps, he adds, that the subject areas are so closely related. Sharing editorial staffers across publications, he adds, "makes people realize that we all share in the success of the overall operation."

That sentiment, and that tradition, are also prominent at the National Wildlife Federation, where the conservation group's two bimonthlies, National Wildlife and International Wildlife, have pretty much always shared all their editorial staffs, says Mark Wexler, editorial director of NWF and editor of National Wildlife. "Essentially, we put out a magazine a month," alternating between the two, he explains.

Wexler's counterpart, Jonathan Fisher, is editor of IW and a senior editor on NW, and five other editors fill out the combined staff.

To avoid overlaps in editorial content, Wexler says, "everyone is fully plugged into what both magazines are doing." Both chief editors, for example, sit in on editorial meetings for both magazines.

Wexler singles out one potential problem area "You really need a stringent set of deadlines." At the NWF, he says, "everyone knows when they have to do everything."

NOT FOR ALL SITUATIONS?

Although sharing editorial staff clearly can work, some editorial managers reserve it for special circumstances. "I'm not a proponent of universal copy desks to serve more than one magazine, or, more accurately, more than one market," says Vein Henry, corporate editorial director at Advanstar Communications. "We've pretty much dedicated staffs to single magazines."

Advanstar isn't rigid about sharing editorial staffs, however. Last year, two of the company's magazines that were in the same office had become a study in contrast. One was looking good and consistently coming out on time, largely because of a new editor and managing editor and a strong editorial staff. "I wished I could rim the staff through the copy machine," says Henry. But the other magazine, though viable, had become a bit stagnant. "We had employees playing out of position," Henry explains, such as writers who had become editors.

The solution was to put the editor and managing editor of the first book in charge of both. "We really didn't lose anybody" as a result of the shift, says Henry. The editor of the second book was reassigned to a writing position. "Now everyone can concentrate where their strengths are," Henry concludes. "I'm very pleased with the results."

If some companies are a bit leery of combined editorial staffs as standard operating procedure, others, such as Washington, D.C.-based Hanley-Wood, have embraced them in a big way. One aspect of that philosophy is a centralized products department, reports Boyce Thompson, editor in chief of Builder and Big Builder. It consists of an assistant and an associate editor who are supervised by the editor in chief of Building Products. The two provide "substantive product writing," 250-to 500-word pieces on product trends, says Thompson, and also supply product blurbs daily to Hanley-Wood Web sites. They also coordinate meetings with manufacturers' reps, attend trade shows and manage a buyer's guide database for four magazines.