CJR Magazine Survey: Tangled Up in 1998
Well-worth perusing for newspaper types: Victor Navasky’s survey on editorial practices at magazines in the U.S. He got about a fifth of magazines to respond, a good number, though hard to tell how representative. Lots of questions about editorial practices — corrections policies, fact-checking, independence of web editors, skills, etc. My overall sense: great baseline survey to suss out some basic editorial practices. My secondary sense: Magazines seem like newspapers of more than 10 years ago, uncertain exactly what they are affixing their (once?-)valuable print brands on. While newspaper people haven’t figure out a lot; they have largely ported over the basic craft principles of the trade by now.
The all-over-the-board responses show you that many of these magazine companies haven’t yet figured out that this isn’t just a hobby, a sideshow, but an alternative reader view of their very essence (not to get too Navi on you). And it reminds me: the magazine people want to forget the whole unpleasant interim of the desktop/laptop web and just got onto the tablet, where they can they think they can reclaim their turf, paying readers and grateful advertisers. Somehow, I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.