Folio: plus: ideas! Ideas! Ideas! and more ideas for successful magazine management

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan, 1998

* Charging on the Internet: The b-to-b press must take the lead

"You guys in the business-to-business press are the ones who have to lead the industry in charging on the Internet," Chuck Martin, author of The Digital Estate, told attendees at the American Business Press 1997 Top Management Meeting. "If you started charging a little bit, then everyone would be charging. Everyone is watching the media industry to see what to do. Exxon is clueless about this stuff. They just have a Webmaster who's looking to see what all of you are doing. And you guys are asking, `Is Exxon charging?' It's a leadership position that's really required here." Tiering is the way to go, he said. Put the free stuff lower and then tier it up. Other thoughts shared by Martin: (1) It is better to be the aggregator than the aggregated. "Brands in this environment are very valuable," he said. "But that's a short-term window, and it's a window that I believe has to be leveraged." (2) We're moving from content to context. For example, right now the real-estate listing is the crown jewel of realtors. In the future, however, the real-estate listing will be the commodity, and the value will be in tying all the information around it. (3) The old environment was publisher-centric; the new environment will be consumercentric. The reason, he said, is pull-casting -- the concept that the individual can take control and determine what he or she wants. "This is great for you because consumers will tell you what they want before they tell someone else," he said. "As long as you are in a position to fulfill that, you have an enormous opportunity for success. The opportunity is yours to lose."

* Editors: Review your personal stock portfolios

The subject of editors being charged with manipulating stock prices through their editorial coverage has made headlines from time to time. (There was a case involving The Wall Street Journal "Heard on the Street" column about 10 years ago, for example, and one more recently involving Fortune, in 1996.) But while some individual magazines and companies have addressed this sensitive issue, the industry hasn't. New ethical guidelines to preferred practices for editors from the American Business Press do the job. A section on investments reads: "Editors, their spouses or minor children should not hold investments in companies and/or industries they personally cover. Those interested in making personal investments should choose such vehicles as mutual funds, money market funds or government bonds. If a conflict arises in an investment held by an editor before his or her employment, or because of a merger or acquisition, he or she should immediately bring the conflict to the attention of the supervisor. Investing on the basis of insider information is a violation of securities law and is strictly prohibited." Joe Cappo, senior vice president, international, Crain Communications, and head of the ABP editorial committee, told Folio: Plus that the intent is to offer voluntary guidelines to members. "This view on investments is long-standing and held by various journalistic organizations," he said. "At Crain Communications you can't own stocks of companies you cover. You might benefit by favorable coverage. It could just be a case of too much coverage. Or it could be negative coverage. It might be a hubris on our part to think we can affect stock prices. But, in any case, the policy avoids the appearance of conflict of interest. I think it's bedrock good policy to have it."

* Stay away from circulation's never-never land

In the eighties and early nineties, the circulation of Outdoor Life grew so substantially that the page rate became too high for many of the magazine's small niche advertisers, said Efrem Zimbalist III, president and CEO, Times Mirror Magazines, at the Audit Bureau of Circulation's 1997 Conference and Annual Meeting. As a result, the magazine became reliant on general advertisers. But the editorial focused heavily on hunting -- and the general advertisers didn't like putting their products next to a dead "Bambi." That, they felt, was sending the wrong message. So the editors responded by softening the editorial, trying to do more articles on kayaking and backpacking. But the core readers didn't like that and began canceling their subscriptions. So Outdoor Life went back to serving its core audience and flourished. The lesson is that managing how far you can go in diluting that core is critical. If you have a small and targeted circulation, say under 100,000 and maybe up to 300,000, according to Zimbalist, you will attract advertisers who are dying to reach that market of enthusiasts for maybe $5,000 a page, and you can be profitable. If you have a broad appeal and a large audience -- say 800,000 or, even better, over one million -- you can attract the very large advertisers and you can do well. But if you are somewhere where in-between, you are in "dangerous ground for a magazine," Zimbalist said. "And you see a lot of unsuccessful magazines in that middle ground."