Northeast Region Azbee Winners Now Listed Online

For the first time this year, we decided to experiment by splitting the Northeastern Region awards ceremonies between two cities. A banquet was held in the Boston area June 19 for the winners from New England; a second banquet was held June 28 in New York City.

See the full list of regional winners.

At the banquet, national ASBPE president Roy Harris noted that six of the 10 top Magazine of the Year candidates in the under-80,000-circulation division and three of the top 10 in the over-80,0000 division come from the Northeastern Region. (The Magazine of the Year award is given nationally to one magazine in each circulation category.)

ASBPE Magazine of the Year Candidates — Northeast Region

Less than 80,000 circulation:
  • CIO Decisions
  • CIO Insight
  • CSO
  • Information Security
  • Meetings & Conventions
  • The American Lawyer
More than 80,000 circulation
  • CIO
  • CFO
  • Computeworld
The evening's featured speaker was Mark Schlack, vice president of editorial content for TechTarget. He shared his thoughts on the state of the art for web publishing.

Read some of Schlack's comments.

Note, 10/17/06: This post has been expanded to include material that originally appeared on the old ASBPE chapter web page. This blog has replaced that page.
 

Meet the New Chapter Officers

Photo: Courtney HowardCourtney E. Howard, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, graduated cum laude from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in English with a writing concentration. She has been writing and editing technology articles for business publications for more than a decade.

After college, she began her career as an editor at Audio Amateur Inc., where she worked on several high-tech industry newsletters, consumer magazines, and books. In 1998, she joined PennWell's Advanced Technology Division working on Electronic Publishing magazine.

Today, in the role of managing editor, Courtney composes articles on various publishing, printing, and design topics, as well as oversees product coverage in each monthly issue, manages the magazine's web site (www.electronic-publishing.com), and constructs its e-newsletters.

Matt Kelly has been managing editor of Compliance Week since January 2006. Prior to that, he was a freelancer for Compliance Week and Time, the Boston Business Journal, eWeek, and numerous other publications since 2001. Earlier in his career he was associate editor at Mass High Tech, and a reporter at the Quincy Patriot-Ledger and at Foster's Daily Democrat in Dover, N.H.

In his spare time, Matt also likes to travel the world and methodically cross off items on National Geographic's list of 50 places to see before you die.

Photo: Julia KingJulia King,
executive editor/events and national correspondent for Computerworld, is an award-winning business and technology journalist with more than 20 years’ experience covering a wide range of beats, from technology management and labor issues to electronic commerce, IT return on investment issues and offshore outsourcing.

Julia was the founding executive editor of the award-winning Computerworld
ROI
magazine and spearheaded Computerworld's coverage of information economics. Prior to joining Computerworld in 1994, Ms. King worked for nearly a decade as a reporter and writer for national business and technology magazines. She also worked for five years as a daily newspaper reporter and later, as a features writer and editor.

Her IT reporting has earned her several awards from ASBPE, and she is a frequent presenter and panel moderator at industry conferences. She is editor of a recent book titled Executives’ Guide To The Wireless Workforce, which was published by John Wiley & Sons in July 2003.

Julia holds a master's degree in international relations and a bachelor's degree in political science, both from University of Pittsburgh.

Photo: Jeff KlinemanJeffrey Klineman, editor, Beverage Spectrum, is an award-winning journalist who has written for numerous publications, including Boston Magazine, Self, George, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine. He is a contributing writer to Commonwealth and Razor magazines and worked previously as a courts and general assignment reporter for the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune. A graduate of Yale University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Jeffrey is also a partner in the Internet media company Snoutsinyourtown.com.

Jeffrey joined the chapter board because “I’m interested in working with a community of journalists facing similar challenges to the ones I face every day.”

Photo: Sue PelletierSue Pelletier, MeetingsNet web editor, mad blogger, and executive editor of Medical Meetings magazine, spent her first 10 journalistic years mired in sewage sludge and garbage as a writer and editor of national and international trade magazines for the environmental industry. “I can't tell you how much I appreciate and enjoy covering the meetings industry for The Meetings Group,” she says.

Since she started covering the meetings industry, Sue has developed a huge interest in adult education in all its many facets — an interest that made joining ASBPE’s board a natural fit for her. She says she has “a fascination with how all the elements come together to create a learning environment that actually gives people the tools they need to do their jobs better once they get home.”

As for other interests, Sue says, “In those rare times I'm not chained to my keyboard, I like to hike the woods around my home in rural Massachusetts with my husband and my surrogate children, two Australian Shepherd dogs.”

Note: This post was updated on Oct. 17, 2006, to include the full story about the new chapter officers; originally it included a shortened version and referred readers to the full article on the old ASBPE Boston web page. This blog has replaced the old Boston web page.
 

A Former IDG Employee's View of the PC World Lawsuit

A little over a month ago I wrote about a story in Folio: on accusations that PC World inflated its circulation numbers.

Just today I happened to come across this commentary on the issue by Mark Jones, a former IDG employee who lives in Australia. His comments, in part:

The company didn't make any comment about the suit, but it seems to me this accusation is very much out of character with the IDG culture that I know. ... But on the other side, you have this interesting dynamic where the US PC magazine market is now dominated by just two magazines, PC World and PC Magazine. ... [W]hen there are just two publications the competition is intense. Who knows if that was a factor.
I haven't seen anything new about the lawsuit against PC World on the circulation lawsuit. If you do, please email me.
 

ABM Research Shows How B2B Media Are Used

Results are in from some new research commissioned by American Business Media on how corporate decision makers use B2B media. The research, conducted by Harris Interactive, set out to uncover the role different types of B2B media play and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each.

The research looked at factors like:
  • time executives spent with B2B media sources.
  • how engaged/involved executives are with each type of media.
  • what sources of information they rely on when researching or buying products or services.
  • how they use each of those information sources.
While much of the research focused on marketing issues, there is some good news for editors:
  • 41% of the respondents named B2B magazines as the information source they rely on to do their jobs. That put B2B ahead of general business media.
  • Executives are more engaged by B2B media than with general business magazines, television or newspapers.
  • On average, executives read four B2B magazines and visit seven B2B web sites each month. (Those results are about the same as the results from a 2001 ABM study.)
  • They spend slightly more time with B2B web sites (about 2 and a half hours per week) than with B2B magazines (2 hours per week).
Interestingly, respondents saw magazines' strong suit as trustworthiness. Not so surprisingly, respondents thought web sites' major advantage was their immediacy. Trade shows were valued for the opportunity to network with peers and sales reps and to learn about new products.
 

ASBPE Book Highlights Hard-hitting Reporting From B2B Mags

ASBPE will launch its second book,* Journalism that Matters: How B2B Editors Change the Industries They Cover, July 21st at its two-day National Editorial Conference in Chicago.

The book looks in depth at how editors of business-to-business publications drive change in the industries they cover, with plenty of examples showing how of some great reporting was done. For instance:

There are 17 stories in the book, all by ASBPE members or from publications that have won Azbee or Tabbie awards.

For the launch, ASBPE immediate past president Rob Freedman, co-editor of the book with ASBPE D.C.'s Steven Roll, will discuss the book's origins and goals. Tom Freeman, editor of Legal Business, will recount the story behind the magzine's reporting on the U.K. court system.

Investigative reporting will also be the topic of another conference session. Chicago Tribune business reporter Mark Skertic will be the speaker at the session "Covering Public Companies: Digging Up the Numbers and Information That Matter." Skertic, a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, will tell where to dig for information, including hidden information in SEC filings.

*ASBPE's first book was Best Practices of the Business Press, published in 2004.
 

TechTarget's Mark Schlack:
Web Nearing End of Awkward Adolescence



Mark Schlack, vice president of editorial content for TechTarget, spoke at the chapter's Northeastern Region Azbee awards banquet (a second banquet for the region will be held in New York City on June 28). Schlack shared some thoughts on the current state of web publishing. "I can't claim that I'll give the definitive talk on the Internet -- I don't think anyone can -- at least, no one who actually works in the Internet," Schlack said. He did, nevertheless, have a few ideas about how to approach web publishing.

Conventional Wisdom, Circa 1995

For starters, Schlack noted that the people with money to invest in web sites used to think you had to be the first on the web with a new idea or you weren't worthwhile. "But does anyone here use AltaVista as a search engine? Or think that AOL is the best way to connect to the web? And there was iVillage. But now many of us are networking on a site called MySpace."

Another myth busted: "The punditry from the mid-'90s held that the web was a mass media phenomenon, and if you were going to do something, it had better be big. That turned out to be true, up to a point," Schlack said. Yet TechTarget has succeeded by focusing on its market.

TechTarget's web sites tend to have large audiences, but its strategy in print has been to concentrate on small-circ magazines. "We take the elite of [the web] audience and build a print mag around their needs," explained Schlack. And TechTarget magazines deliberately leave out some staples of print publications: there are no new products or news. "Those things are done better online," Schlack insisted.

Fast Forward: 2006

Schlack debunked some current ideas about the web, too. "You hear a lot about the democratizing influence of the web -- citizen journalists, people being their own experts. It's interesting and exciting, and there's lot of truth to it, but it's pretty much overblown. The idea that as editors we build a stage and the real actors are our audience -- that we don't have much to bring to the party -- is pretty much ridiculous," he said, echoing some of Jim Lehrer's recent comments.

Schlack conceded that there are cases where "a programmer who can't spell puts up a text-only web site that gets five times the traffic of anything you ever did." Nevertheless, he said, "there's more to providing information and being useful and compelling than those types can provide." Our readers have very specific needs, he said, and as B2B journalists we know something about what those needs are. "That's our profession," he said. "There are no wizards out there that can wave a wand and make it happen."

Taking Ourselves Seriously

"The audience takes the web more seriously than it did 10 years ago," Schlack observed. "I see it in news. There used to be an attitude that said 'Just get something up right away. Who cares if there's a mistake? We'll just correct it.' The news that we wrote online was disposable. That was the audience's expectation, too." But today the audience gives the web more credibility, so we have to take ourselves more seriously, too.

Schlack thinks news is an area of major opportunity for B2B web sites. "We all work in markets that are terrifically underserved in news. … It's about time that the communities that we serve had [someone] focus on their issues."

Print vs. Web

In Schlack's view, B2B web sites don't have to have the same unified look and feel print publications do. "A magazine usually has a personality, a voice… It has to hang together. On the web that doesn't hold true. It's about having a collection of tools that the readers find useful. On one part of the site, there can be a discussion with people flaming each other, and on another part, there might be some expert you can have a Q&A with. And another part has crackerjack reporters doing some great reporting. The reader will accept that." And the best part, he noted, is that in web publishing there is no paper to buy. "You can try lots of different things."

Schlack overturned another piece of conventional wisdom: "The web has been seen as a short-attention-span theater, where you don't want to write articles over 200 words. But I've worked for sites that wrote 4,000 word articles that got great readership. There is a place for deep stuff online. We don't know if people will read news online in 5-10 years, or if they'll read them on smart phones or RSS feeds. Maybe then the longer and more complex stuff will be on the web."

As for the connection between print and web staff, Schlack had this to say: "We don't get too hung up on online/print coordination -- either not having online and print working together, or having them work together all the time." But, he added, "If you're using same people for both, you're not using both media to full advantage."

The Web's Future: No More Fright Wigs

"Print is in a position that radio was in in 1950," said Schlack. "[Radio] was the biggest medium. Then when TV came in it was the second-biggest. I think online will pass print pretty soon."

But despite its increasing maturity, the web hasn't hardened into old age quite yet. "Because the web is so new, we as editors get to do some different things online. It all comes under the banner of inventing the medium. We're still inventing the medium. This is not a done deal. We're out of the Milton Berle fright-wig era, but we still have a long way to go. … Some crazy things still happen."

Schlack concluded: "It's not so much how good you are at HTML coding or what fad you sign on to support. It's much more about building solid relationships with audiences and constantly refining what you do."

For more about the banquet, including the list of regional winners, see this post.

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Northeastern Region Award Winners Announced

For the first time this year, we decided to experiment by splitting the Northeastern Region awards ceremonies between two cities. A banquet was held in the Boston area June 19 for the winners from New England; a second banquet was be held June 28 in New York City.

See the full list of regional winners.

At the banquet, national ASBPE president Roy Harris noted that six of the 10 top Magazine of the Year candidates in the under-80,000-circulation division and three of the top 10 in the over-80,0000 division come from the Northeastern Region. (The Magazine of the Year award is given nationally to one magazine in each circulation category.)

ASBPE Magazine of the Year Candidates — Northeast Region

Less than 80,000 circulation:
  • CIO Decisions
  • CIO Insight
  • CSO
  • Information Security
  • Meetings & Conventions
  • The American Lawyer
More than 80,000 circulation
  • CIO
  • CFO
  • Computeworld
The evening's featured speaker was Mark Schlack, vice president of editorial content for TechTarget. He shared his thoughts on the state of the art for web publishing.

Read some of Schlack's comments in the next post.

Note: This post originally appeared on the ASBPE chapter web page.

Labels: