When I interviewed for my last job at W.I. Media, the editor, Kerry Knudsen, asked me what I thought of trade magazines. I told him they seemed to be primarily shills for advertisers, with the advertisers controlling most of the editorial content. "Yep," he said. "And that will never, ever happen here." I knew right then that I wanted to work on his magazines, Wood Industry and Coverings.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to Kerry for showing me the right way to do trade magazines and proving to my satisfaction that it is the only way that stands a chance of becoming profitable. Unfortunately, marketers are trying hard to kill print right now out of the mistaken belief that online channels can deliver the same thing for less. I share Kerry's conviction that one of two things will have to happen; either online channels will have to take on many of the characteristics of print (owned by companies with addresses, paying full price for content and charging full price for advertising, subscribing to standards of accuracy and accountability), or we will see a revitalization of interest in print in the not-too-distant future. Even in the first scenario, an online channel that becomes a respected and profitable content provider (still waiting for that one) will likely decide to offer a print edition to deepen its penetration in its market — a perfect reversal of what is going on now. Print as we know it will only truly become irrelevant when electronic document readers become so cheap as to be nearly disposable, which may not be that far off. Even in this case, print will not so much have gone away as morphed into another form. Instead of receiving a new magazine each month, you will simply update the one you have with this month's content.
I wish the Canadian trade media would see the wisdom in keeping a clear separation between editoral and advertising, and I wish Canada's industrial supply marketers would see it, as well. Some do, but most view their task as being to obtain as much "free" (nothing is, it's just a question of who pays) editoral coverage as possible. If they really took the big view, they would have exactly the opposite approach. The role of editorial is to engage the audience and deliver its interested eyes to the advertisers. People sense, instantly, attempts to manipulate them into buying something. Decades of infomercials have trained us well. When people are looking to buy something, they don't mind having to sift through a sandbox full of empty platitudes, half-truths and red herrings to arrive at the message; that is all part of the time-honoured game, established around the same time as the invention of make-up. However, when people are looking to be informed, they intensely resent ulterior motives skewing the information. When they sense the attempted manipulation (and they do), they view the content a very different way, if they keep paying attention at all. Trade magazine editors are often teased that no one reads what they write anyway. This is probably true in many cases, often because the editorial was not written by the editor but instead placed by an advertiser and written by his PR agency. I know people read what I wrote at Wood Industry and Coverings because I got calls every time I made a mistake. Those magazines deliver the eyes of the industry to their pages whether the reader is already shopping for something or not. That's the magic of media, people look and get the advertising message even when they aren't ready to buy. That's why media with respected, engaging content can create demand rather than just fulfill the demand that is already there. And that is why marketers, who are supposed to be creating demand for a living, should want people to read honest, reliable, impartial, informative editorial instead of advertising in disguise.
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