Selective binding unites readers with editorial: special cards dropped in high-school issues solicit essays

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1990 by Tony Silber

NEW YORK CITY-Thanks to selective binding, Newsweek has been able to produce a special summer issue, with the help of its high-school readers.

Newsweek's current special edition, "The New Teens," features first-person essays by four teenagers. The student-writers were recruited through personalized messages bound into the magazine and sent to high schools throughout the country. it was the first time Newsweek had used the emerging technology of selective binding for editorial rather than advertising purposes.

To find the student writers, Newsweek went to Dick Burch, its circulation manager for student marketing. "What we did was identify our names of students who receive Newsweek in the classroom," he says. "Those issues were pulled out on the binding line, and the cards dropped in."

A message, ink-jetted onto the insert card in the March 9 issue, included the name of the specific high school receiving the copy. The response was reportedly strong, with 1,200 essays submitted. Newsweek refused to say how many teens were targeted with the special insert.

"It was kind of a surprise [to teen readers] to open the magazine and see it personalized, " says Jim Woody, Newsweek's manager of new business development. "It was a unique approach. The response was excellent. "

Burch says selective binding is an effective communication tool for editors as well as for advertisers. "It shows the flexibility and the dialogue you can create with your own audience, and certainly it strengthens our relationship with that audience," he says.