Nicole and I have a lofty statement about the purpose of this editor’s blog in our strategic plan, but I think what it boils down to is that our magazine needs what all magazines need:
- a way to initiate conversation with its readers;
- another way to invite readers to enjoy its print and online content;
- a way to introduce readers to the people who are delivering that content to their homes.
Nina (who moves the content of the online edition content to the web), Bridget (v-p of our division) and I took part in a simulcast this week from the CASE Editors Forum. We heard Sally Hicks, editor at Duke University’s divinity school, speak to this annual gathering of college and university editors about her well-read online-only publication, Faith & Leadership. The Duke team moved Faith & Leadership online four years ago, she said, and it has proved hugely popular with their readership. Looking back, though, she wished they had made a space for conversation with their readers; she wished they had paid as much attention to pushing their content out across various platforms as they did to producing it. (Oddly, in more or less the same breath she dismissed their blog – which does both those things – as “something everyone had to have, four years ago.”)
She wondered, too, about the fact that her readers often did not realize. as they landed on her content, that it came from Duke. Here, I think it’s important not to miss the point. The web offers us a magnificent opportunity for generosity. Disseminating great content – news, reflection, entertainment, inspiration – is right in line with the mission of the institutions of higher learning we represent, and surely it is good communications practice, also. After all, we are not the only ones both contributing to, and benefiting from the constant flow of information. We can leave it to the economics of abundance to take care of the rest.
And, let’s be honest, it is plain good fun for an editor to have a place where she can free-write and break a few rules with impunity: rules like the one about, never run a question as your headline!
Oh, and for any who care, here’s the afore-mentioned lofty objective for THIS blogging project:
To broaden visibility and recognition of St. Norbert College by establishing an editor’s blog that connects St. Norbert College Magazine, its publication process and its online and print editions, with its readership, and a broader audience that includes other professionals in publishing and higher education.
