Why are red carpets red? Will humans ever live on Mars? How does Angelina Jolie always look so damn good? There are some pretty important questions in life but right now, Ed wants to know just one thing: Why is there so much unspoken animosity between magazine edit staffs and their web counterparts?
Magazine editors acknowledge the importance of having their own online presence (Heck, Ed even has a website and a Facebook account!) and even take pride in the prettiness of their creations yet most seem to shun the idea of working on a magazine's site. Some, even go as far as to ostracize themselves from their online team. Ed's seen quite a few publications where the two editorial staffs are so disjointed, you'd think they worked for different companies—They don't sit in on editorial meetings, they don't know what the other entity is working on, some staffs don't even know the names of the others! Ed wants to know why! It's 2008, people. The Internet is not going away. In fact, some magazines (ahem: Teen People and ELLEgirl) now exist only on the web. So why don't the two mediums work together more often? (Look how well it worked for New York Magazine!!!) Why are more print editors not willing to work on the web? Why can't one conglomerate staff do the print and web job?
Ed Speaks readers, tell Ed: How's the print/web vibe at your publication? Would you ever consider working online? Why or why not? After all, it seems like a valuable skill to have.
Signing offline (for now!),
Ed
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5 comments:
You know, Ed, I've been wondering the very same thing. At my company, the web editors for all the different publications sit together and have meetings together, but rarely take part in anything the print staff is up to, and vice versa. The magazine staff have no idea what the online staff is up to. In terms of content, the web editors have less in common with each other than they do with their respective print partners. It just doesn't make sense. I, personally, would love to be generating content for both platforms. It seems to be carry-over from how the departments were structured when we first started on the web, but it looks like things are slowly starting to change. I hope.
At my company, there isn't such animosity between print and web. Some print people contribute to the web, but I think others are mystified by it. It would be nice to have one staff work in both mediums, but I don't think there's time to do both. The magazine focuses on long features once a month, while the web focuses on daily content. It's like two publications.
Where I previously worked, the print editors treated us web people as an afterthought and there was a severe disconnect between the two editorial teams.
My experience is the same as Jennifer's. I've work for two magazine web sites (at my second web job now) and very few print people talk to us or even acknowledge our existence. They think web is a fad and the site is only there to generate subscriptions. When I tell them that we update the site daily they are stunned. But as Jessica suggested, it really is like working for two different publications.
I was reading an article a couple weeks ago about how writers and photographers are hesitant to work with web because it doesn't have the same prestige as print. We have the same problem; even some celebrities will refuse to be "on some web site," they want to be in the magazine. It's a daily struggle.
I completely agree. Whenever a story doesn't run in print at a certain children's magazine, they push it on the web team last minute, as though that's where they put their garbage. The web is supposed to be an avenue of fresh content, not regurgitation and crap. Even the art & photo department ignores the web team's requests, plainly stating that photographers don't want their credibility diminished by their spreads being cut up into grainy web slideshows. I don't know if they're afraid that the web is the future and they never trained for it--which isn't necessarily true--or if they really do believe magazines are better. Why can't they exist in harmony?
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