Supereditor: making the myth work

Supereditor: Making the myth work

Bradford Brownline has been the editor in chief of a successful special interest magazine for two years. He's a nationally respected authority on his book's subject matter and a good writer as well. But he's perceived as a poor administrator, and publishing management is beginning to doubt the wisdom of its choice of chief editor. The solution? Find someone of Brownline's authority who's also a first-class editorial manager and planner.

The situation is a familiar one not only to editors with a degree of self-awareness, but also to their management superiors and to sub-editors. In thebest of situations, an editor--who, wondrously, may be good at everything--has the sense to delegate responsibility. In the worst situation, an editor who lacks skills or experience in specific areas and is unwilling to delegate invariably gets into trouble. Confidence ebbs. Management and staff become inclined to magnify the editor's faults and forget the editor's strengths.

Publishing management's solution to apparent failure often is to seek Mr. or Ms. Wonderful as a replacement. Such head-hunting, however, has all the earmarks of Hollywood's search for a star actor at a roadside hot-dog stand. The truth is that the job description of a great editor embraces so many talents--often conflicting--that they can seldom be found in a single indvidual.

More than 10,000 magazines are published in America. Are there 10,000 people who fit the following description?

* Must have speed and facility in conceptualizing. The strong editor has the ability to see in the particular (a fact, a news item, or a series of events or personnel changes) an article idea and can quickly conceive its place in the magazine.

* Must be adept at articulating ideas so they can be assigned and carried out.

* Must be an excellent writer of titles and blurbs or decks. The editor must have skills in presenting a story in its strongest light, then find the words that capture its essence and entice the reader to pick up the magazine and read it.

* Must have rewrite and copy editing skills. The editor shouls be a first-class judge of writing, be able to improve material through rewrite, and be able to scan a manuscript for significant omissions and errors.

* Must be steeped in the knowledge of his field. BEcause most magazines are special interest (consumer) or trade (a specific industry), the editor can hardly succeed without acquiring expert knowledge. At some magazines the significance of ahving an "authority" at the top of the masthead is often so great that it overrides all other considerations of editorial skill.

* Must be able to direct the editorial staff and clearly define their work. The editor should be able to lead and inspire the staff, be a good people manager and have the ability to select and teach young, talented people the skills of editing.

* Must have a thorough knowledge of the medium of print. The editor needs to be an excellent judge of layout, and know photography, color separations, color impositions, typography and printing.

* Must have skill in working and negotiating with writers, photographers, artists and their agents. It also helps to know something of publishing law--rights, libel, et cetera.

* Must understand the business of publishing. The strong editor knows how to interpret research, single-copy sales, renewals and ad marketing, and can use the information sensibly to guide the editorial content of the magazine.

* Must be well organized and have a clear operating plan for the department. This includes details of knowing how manuscripts and photos should be filed, understanding article indexing, building a library, compiling expenses and reading a budget.

* Must be able to plan and enforce schedules so that deadlines are met. The successful editor must ensure that everything in the issue--manuscript, art, type, cover--comes together in an orderly manner.

Moreover, magazine issues are not produced one at a time. While the editor is closing one issue, he is usually working on another in its advanced stages, another in earlier stages of preparation, and is successfully planning as many as nine or a dozen future issues. Have you met anyone like that recently?

* Must be able to schedule time to get out in the filed. The effectivoe editor has to stay in touch with important sources of news and story ideas, as well as readers.

* While doing all of the above, the editor must use his remaining time to explain to management what the hell is going on in editorial. This includes, by the way, being able to articulate to circulators and ad sales people information about the editorial product they are selling.

Propping up the editor

It's little wonder that such an incredible array of talents seldom, if ever, can be found in one person. The real wonder, though, is that so many publishing managements contemplate just such as possibility when they seek candidates for the editorsship of magazines. Worse, they may allow specific deficiencies in the performance of an existing editor to undermine their confidence in his overall value to the magazine.

In a perfect world of magazine publishing, however, the editor is aware of his strengths and is prepared to work on his shortcomings.

A good place to start is with a freewheeling compilation of the editor's strongest talents. Compare his "strengths" with the catalog of editorial qualifications described above. What are the missing abilities?

If this seems like an approach that serves the selfish interests of the editor, it is. It starts with the premise that a successful magazine is characterized by a strong editor who supplies its central thrust. There is no room for weakness or uncertainty in defining what the editor does. To some extent, then, everyone else's job description follows. (As we shall see, it can help at this point to make some creative use of the masthead.)

The next step is to prepare job descriptions for other staff members that include work that the editor recognizes he hasn't the time or skills to do adequately. If the editor is an authority and writer but has a distate for administration, for example, clearly the next person in the chain of command should be strong in areas of budgeting, scheduling and sensing how to carry out assignments coming from the editor. For this reason, we see on more and more mastheads today the title of "executive editor."

While the title of "managing editor" may denote the top editor at Time Inc., the fact is that managing editors on many gazines today are traffic directors for copy and finished pages on their way to the printer. The convenience of an executive editor often is to balance the top-level functions of the editor.

Some special interest magazines experience a reverse problem. They are blessed with an editor who creates a lively magazine, but who--for some time, at least--lacks detailed, authoritative knowledge of the subject matter. A smart, creative editor of this kind will find it useful to position, directly under him, a group of senior editors who are technical experts in the specialized fields on which the magazine focuses. The editor will use his talent to make these specialized sub-editors shine creatively. The result should be a brilliant magazine that maintains responsibility for accuracy and authority.

The variations in balancing a masthead are considerable. Make your masthead a reflection of an organization that really works.

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