Improving editorial morale

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July, 1989 by Rita Stollman

Improving editorial morale

Staff morale low? Creativity on the wane? Then it's time to get your editors, reporters and writers out of the confines of the workplace and into a different setting.

If it's winter, try the lounge are at a local hotel. The more informally it's arranged, the more serene the setting, the better.

If it's summer, why not try a picnic in the park?

You'll be in good company if you do. More and more magazines of every size and shape--from Business Week and People to Better Homes and Gardens and the do-it-yourself Old House Journal--are getting into the act. Increasingly, they are finding that getting out of the office into new surroundings can reinvigorate their editorial output and get people really talking to each other again.

The events may vary in scope and cost, from the formal editorial retreat at an executive resort to a day of sailing on someone's boat. But the principle is the same: Get your staff away from those same four walls so that they can look at your magazine and each other with fresh eyes and a clear mind.

A magazine office can get to be an incredibly stifling place when you and your editorial staff spend all your waking hours there, pushing deadlines and tensions to the breaking point. Over the years, I've seen far too many staffs where the big problem wasn't lack of dedication to the job or a dearth of creative talent. The difficulty was that everyone--from editor in chief to proofreader--was caught in a rut.

One editorial operation that suffered from morale problems found that sending the junior editors from several magazines off to a hotel lounge to talk with one another helped each feel more important. It helped them believe that their ideas were significant, and were ones they could share with the top editors on the magazines. The event also gave the younger staff members someone to turn to--one another--for feedback and assistance whenever their bosses were busy with deadline problems.

Locked into a pattern

Some magazines, though, have been going through the same motions for so long that the editorial offices have become a closed environment. Staffers seem to be locked into the same interrelationships or rivalries they've held for years. And that makes any kind of change tough.

That's a bit of what James R. Gaines says he found when he took over in May 1987 as the new managing editor of People. "There were a lot of institutionalized distances among departments," Gaines explains, "and the distances were not just physical ones."

People also had the additional problem that many larger magazines have: 26 staff correspondents stationed in 12 locations around the world. So, to bring everyone together both physically and emotionally, Gaines took 130 editorial and art people to the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida, for three and a half days in March 1988.

Part of the purpose, Gaines adds, was to bring everyone together so he could help the staff hear how successful People really is, and to explain at one time his vision of the magazine and its future.

The retreat was more than worth the investment of time and money. "I can't say enough for it," Gaines says. "It drew the staff together in more ways than just bringing them [physically] together. It created bonds between people."

In addition, the Florida retreat opened up communication lines among the staff and got people thinking in more creative ways. Many of the retreat sessions were organized as giant problem-solving events. Then, smaller groups of staffers were sent off to brainstorm possible solutions.

For instance, Gaines says that one larger problem-solving session was organized around the issue of improving the flow of information between New York and the correspondents. The answer that came back, he adds, was a simple one that had eluded many at People's main office: Get FAX machines installed in the bureaus so correspondents can see what the New York editors are doing to their stories.

The editorial retreat was so successful that Gaines is now talking about trying to hold one again every other year. And since the Florida meeting, the editors have sponsored other events designed to bring the staff together in a nonoffice setting. People recently held its first annual Photographers' Ball, a black-tie affair designed to honor the magazine's photographers, as well as a staff-organized bowling night at a local bowling alley.

Editorial retreats, of course, are nothing new. Large publications such as Business Week have been holding them for years. Editor in chief Stephen B. Shepard says the weekly business magazine has been holding away-from-the-office meetings of the editorial staff about every two years since at least 1966, and probably earlier.

Fostering harmony

And even though the staff now numbers 200-plus people, Shepard believes the retreats foster "harmony and collegiality" for the big, geographically separate staff. With 80 bureau people stationed in 27 cities around the world, he says the retreats help solve the problem of "maintaining morale, spirit and contact."