PressEthic

This week, Jon Friedman of MarketWatch wrote a love letter to the editors at Runners World. (My apologies, it's behind a subscriber wall.)

Apparently the guys over at RW are shaking things up-- and actually selling magazines in the process. He says,

At a time when editors and publishers from Boston to San Francisco are sitting around their offices and bemoaning the state of advertising revenue, this magazine is shaking up its presentation. And while publishing hotshots wring their hands and recycle the same tired formulas for stories and layouts, these folks aspire to be adventurous and give the readers something fresh.

I read this and was a little skeptical. I mean, I hear you on giving "the readers something fresh," that's always good. It's a constant requirement though. For every good article written somewhere, a subject or angle becomes stale. That's just how it works.

As far as the editors in Boston and San Franscisco, well I'm pretty sure that those are the editors of newspapers, which no one's reading. At all. The editor of RW is right though-- "these are the good old days" (emphasis mine).

Runner's World has taken a fresh approach though, that's a good tip for those news editors, hands raw from praying for readers. "We've never done a focus group," says David Willey, editor in chief.

Why not?

"I don't care if you run for a bus-- you're a runner," says Willey (emphasis MarketWatch).

They're just aiming to hit everyone. They've taken their subject matter and decided that they can and will make it interesting to everyone.

Now if we could just bring that freshness to the news. The difference with the news, though, is that newspapers aren't aiming to inspire anyone, or pump their ego. They're aiming to be impartial.

"Willey says, though, that "storytelling is the great equalizer."

That's got to be true in some respects. If we can become good enough to be tellings stories and not just reciting events, and do it without editorializing, well, I guess there it is: the key to bringing in readers.

Oh- one more thing though-- hot shirtless men help too. Runner's World, in their "repackaging" to bring in all types of readers has a tendency to put shirtless men on the cover. And these are not guys who just run for the bus.

I guess it's back to square one.