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Hi Lisa,

It's easy to accept boring magazines don't sell. They need more spice for better reading.

Yet when people with different habits (thinking generational and diveristy issues) come to our associations we don't always celebrate the benefits of increase in the flavor of membership.

Cynthia

Thank you for the comment, Cynthia! You're definitely right--diversity of representation is an important part of keeping your magazine from being boring.

I do think that the kind of blandness I was thinking about--in terms of avoiding controversial topics or articles or art that pushes the envelope somewhat--is something that publications editors tend to choose deliberately, while not fully reflecting diversity isn't something that any editor I know would choose to do deliberately (in the sense of saying, "No, I want my magazine to only reflect the viewpoints of our members over 60/under 30/from the East Coast/etc."). It's more a combination of factors: not realizing that your magazine isn't reflecting a particular kind or kinds of diversity, not taking the extra time required to find authors and viewpoints that reflect that diversity. It's a lack of action rather than action (at least in the cases I know of).

For that reason, I think the answer to the issue you're raising might in some ways be the opposite of the answer to the issue I was thinking of. I was thinking that editors need to stop squashing some of the naturally "spicy" ideas and elements that come to their magazines; in the case of diversity, you're probably going to have to open your eyes to see the ways you're not representing diversity, and then actively go out and seek new authors/art/etc. to rectify that weakness.

Your comment really got me thinking! Thank you very much for raising an issue that's very important to making association publications the quality publications they should be.

As usual, a great post. The last paragraph of the post got me thinking, and searching for a quote I had heard once before about disagreement. It goes like this:

"Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress." - Ghandi

I agree that when we eliminate all of the potentially "spicy" story topics, or aren't willing to publish something that might promote some healthy discussion of opposing viewpoints, our magazines and publications can become "boring." No editor that I know, myself included, wants their publication to be known as boring.

At the same time, I have to ask if all association publications are looking for the spicy stories and topics if their magazine is a part of the member benefits? In for-profit publications, they are many times trying to sell their issues to the general reader through those types of pieces. They need to have the spicy stories to sell magazines - take the recent New Yorker cover for example. That was pretty spicy, and got a great deal of publicity...

In my experience with our magazine, I try to find the best pieces that I think our members are going to get the most benefit from, and at times, that includes stories that might promote some discussion amongst people from opposite sides of an issue. When I see a story that achieves some good positive discussion, I know that we've done a good job.

Thank you so much for your perspective, Bruce! I definitely agree that association magazines don't always look for the "spicy" stories in the same way that commercial pubs do. But I worry that we (association publications) are competing with so many things for our members' attention--if we don't give members a good reason to pick up the magazine every time it arrives, it's pretty easy for members to drop us into the "to read" pile and then never get around to reading us. And then they're missing out, and so are our associations.

I loved this post because I was thinking about this when judging the Gold Circle Awards last month(?) for the large association category. Now, of course, I was looking at the "best of the best," or at least the pubs that the editors/publishers thought most award-worthy, but I was really impressed by the overall quality and also the degree to which most of those magazines sought to present a full spectrum of issues concerning their professions, industries, causes and markets. (I wonder how often association based editors and publishers actually get a chance to look at such a great cross-section of publications outside their direct space, and if seeing what's possible might help them put their own quality, or 'excitingness vs. boringness' into better context.)

Of course, some associations have rendered the point moot by eliminating their print publication(s), or simply never going there. One of my former (large) association employers didn't have a magazine. I was asked to go through all due diligence to assess demand for a new editorial product among potential readers AND advertisers, even chose an external publisher to negotiate a final deal. At this point we chose not to proceed although the financials would have been great and we had the content and talent to deliver a great magazine. I think a large part of our no-go decision reflected the sense that we probably couldn't allow this to interfere with a strong advocacy program--limiting our own ability to bring up provocative issues & fearful of controversy.

Of course, it's probably hard to have the self-awareness that we can't launch a pub, or that the existing one is boring. Most of us don't lie at the extreme of a "Pravda" in terms of being able to broach issues or speak outside the voice of our sponsoring organization, but I'm sure many of us self-censor to take into account what flies & what doesn't, perhaps subconsciously if we've been at it long enough.

That was more negative-sounding than intended, but I suspect many of us operate in environments where we probably have high advertiser loyalty for representing quality audiences, our controlled and paid circulation outside the membership is probably quite low, we generally don't face the same constraints of market discipline that face for-profit publishers. So it's easy to slide into complacent editorial choices--we still run the risk of losing our readers, but in our systems, we probably won't notice...

Kevin, thank you for your thoughtful comment! My original post was actually somewhat inspired in the same way your comment was--I helped to judge SNAP's Excel Awards, and one of the pubs that was highly recognized this year was Leader's Edge. One of the benefits of my job is that I have the chance to see something like Leader's Edge, say "Wow! That's such a great magazine! I'm going to call up the person who leads it and see how he and his team do such a great job." Which led to my conversation with Rick Pullen ...