An Editor's Eye
March 2013
1 post
February 2013
3 posts
“Ten years ago, this could have been done and no one would have figured out about it. Social media makes work easier to steal—but it also makes the people who take it more accountable.”
—
When DKNY mistakenly used some of Brandon Stanton’s (a.k.a. Humans of New York) photographs in a store display in Bangkok without his permission, Stanton found out thanks to a fan. Stanton asked for the company to donate $100,000 to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. The company has apologized and agreed to give $25,000.
Read the full story. (Also, follow Humans of New York.)
June 2012
5 posts
“We report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. We strive to give our audience confidence that all sides have been considered and represented fairly.”
—NPR ethics handbook, Fairness in presenting the news (via copyeditor)
“A good curator is thinking not just about acquisition and selection, but also contextualizing.”
—Joanne McNeil in What We Talk About When We Talk About “Curation” (via explore-blog)
“Journalists used to be powerful. But now there are so many 25-year-old bloggers, many of them showing up on the TV talk shows, that the old-timers are struggling to catch up, tweeting their hearts out and using hip language like ‘hashtags.’”
—Sally Quinn on the end of power in Washington. (via peterfeld)
May 2012
1 post
April 2012
1 post
In Which Editors Become Brand Managers →
wwd.com
Click through to read John Koblin’s piece on the new role editors have had to take on as magazines develop into multi-platform brands. Highlights below.
Some aren’t worried.
Everyone at Condé Nast is supportive of the most important thing — editorial freedom and independence — and, at the same time, I know that financial health is essential and so is getting our work to new readers through new technologies. Still, I don’t much love the talk of ‘brand’ and ‘brand managers’ — I prefer ‘the magazine’ and ‘editors.’ Harold Ross used to talk about The New Yorker as a cause and that’s what it is for me and for all of my colleagues.
-David Remnick, Editor, The New Yorker
Some are a bit worried.
Journalism, photography, design, creative thinking, editing and packaging, they’re what drive it all; they require a great deal of care, thought and attention, and I don’t hear a lot about them these days. What I hear is ‘That’s great for the brand.’ No, that is the brand!
-Jim Nelson, Editor-in-Chief, GQ
The consensus: This isn’t a bad problem to have.
Even though it can be annoying to hear magazines talked about as brands — because magazines themselves are fantastic creatures and brands sounds a little more homogenized — they are brands. I’m just a big believer in a good editor to understand his or her reader and their needs better than anyone. I like the future of a magazine industry that puts editors in charge of directing their brands in partnership with publishers. Would any of us really want a world that those decisions are being completely made by people who are not relating to our readers?
Cindy Leive, Editor-in-Chief, Glamour
FJP: I’d like to pull a different question out of this debate, one related to a comment Nelson made when interviewed. He argued that editorial work suffers on account of the meetings that distract from it.
Meantime, magazine making? It’s become an assumption that that’s the easy part of your day; you’ve got that covered. But it has never been easy, and the day you take your focus off it is the day the magazine becomes less interesting. So yeah, I worry about ADD, about being spread too thin, absolutely. And sometimes I think we’re pushed to do too much with too little. And I’m concerned about stress levels, for quality-of-life and quality-of-job reasons but also because, crucially, you need mental space for creativity and excellence.
Mental space for creativity and excellence. I’m instantly reminded of a Digiday piece I read yesterday, on whether privacy or collaboration better fosters creativity. It referenced an earlier NY Times opinion on the same topic, in which Susan Cain wrote,
Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.
Now this isn’t completely related to the editor-turned-brand-manager dilemma, but it is some interesting food for thought. I think Nelson’s point about needing mental space for creativity and excellence warrants a lot of attention. That allotting time for non-editorial endeavors is crucial for the financial health of a publication is indisputable. But I do wonder what steps publications are taking to nurture the creative health of their content.
—Jihii
March 2012
2 posts
February 2012
6 posts
“Our goal is not to please those whom we report on or to produce stories that create the appearance of balance, but to seek the truth.”
—NPR’s ethics handbook and Jay Rosen’s great post about it (via soupsoup)
There's a terrible stereotype about Web editors...and it's true. →
open.salon.com
“A terrible, pernicious thing has happened to journalists in the past decade, that’s had us second-guess everything we know.”
January 2012
6 posts
Thought You Should See This: Submit a Résumé? Pfft. How Last Century →
thoughtyoushouldseethis.com
No More Résumés, Say Some Firms is an interesting piece in the Journal looking at how companies are trying to implement more rigorous filtering systems for their hiring processes and avoid having to wade through countless impersonal CVs. Fred Wilson and his New York City-based VC firm, …
