Pie in the info sky: if you believe in the information superhighway, invest in it

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 15, 1994 by Anne M. Russell

If you believe in the information superhighway, invest in it. And that means putting your money where your people are.

"... And they want us to do it without spending any more money! They won't even let us add a junior person," wailed the editor.

Her complaint is one I've heard over and over, almost verbatim, from every editor whose company is taking its first steps in online services. "Don't worry," the reply from management usually goes, "when we start seeing some revenues on this, they'll come back to the individual magazines."

Excuse me for being skeptical, but if the argument against adding staff runs along the lines that there's no money to be made, then when, exactly, are those revenues going to return and - more important - what kind of condition win the parent publication be in when they do? If you're going to pull the top editors off their daily duties - and, after all, if your commitment to going online is serious, you need senior people working on the project - how likely is it that the quality of their magazines won't suffer?

The era of two-hour lunches and long, boozy press events is past. I don't know an editor in our industry who isn't working at full throttle. (Well, okay, I know one or two. But even at the most notorious bastions of editorial leisure, there's some whip-cracking going on.) There just doesn't seem to be a lot of "spare time" for editors to take on massive projects like designing and executing online publications and administering electronic bulletin boards and forums.

If you think I'm gearing up to make a plea for greater humanity in the workplace, you're wrong: My plea is to make the workplace more businesslike - to invest in and operate new-business ventures like businesses, not hobbies.

The most interesting observation about our industry that I've heard all year comes from Hearst new media and technology president Al Sikes, who told Lorne Manly of "Folio: First Day": "Traditional media have been spoiled because they haven't had to do R&D. But look at AT&T, Microsoft and Intel. These companies know that their financial soundness will be based on what products they come up with for the future."

Sikes is right: You won't find a manager at a software publisher instructing his designers, "Oh, by the way, in your spare time, could you write a new operating system?" or a pharmaceutical company where the boss says, "I know you're busy testing that ulcer drug, but I'm sure you can find a cure for cancer in your downtime. Don't worry if it's not the best you can do; just get something together."

If you believe in the potential of nonprint media - a.k.a. the information superhighway - then invest in it. Cliche though it may be, you really do have to spend money to make money. Maybe, if you have Donald Trunp's financial charisma, you won't have to spend your own money - but you will have to spend someone's. There is a clear need for R&D here, and the more parsimonious publishers are upfront, the less likely they are to have, as Sikes points out, products ready for the future.

The third quarter Folio:Ovation: To two magazines whose September issues prove that investigative journalism is alive and well and has a significant role in consumer magazines: Boating, for its well-researched "Who Killed Michelle Von Emster?" by Neal Matthews; and Out, for its courageous "The Men from the Boys" (as in, "How do you separate the ... ") by Jesse Green. Neither a nubile young woman chewed up by a sea creature nor men who crave sex with preteen boys are topics that lend themselves to reasoned, intelligent and fair-minded exploration. Kudos to Boating and Out for eschewing the easy take on their respective subjects and to the two writers for their perspicacity.