The editorial planning grid

The editorial planning grid

To creative people on magazines, the term "grid' frequently has a negative --if not threatening--connotation. Art directors, for example, recognize the value of grid layout, but often seem to spend a great deal of their time attempting to break out of it.

Then there is the editorial planning grid--the atlas of upcoming editorial content. To some editors and writers, it triggers an image of rigid planning that cannot be penetrated by fresh thinking.

Unfortunately, it's true that some magazines do suffer gridlock: They're caught in the intersection of content policies decided long ago and the need to create a new planning matrix responsive to new readers and new subject matter.

Nonetheless, no magazine can exist successfully without a planniing grid. As someone once said of democracy, the editorial planning grid may be defined as the worst possible form of government except all others. We need it. The grid's purpose is to ensure balanced subject matter and adequate lead time to bring the magazine's content to the highest possible level of quality. The trick, however, is to keep the grid open and responsive to ideas.

I once knew an editor of a monthly special interest magazine who always had to scramble to complete issues on time. His staff seldom knew what would appear one or two months ahead. If asked about his plans, the editor would reply, "What's the point of my telling you what major articles will appear if a better one comes along? Can the editor of The Times tell you what tomorrow's news will be?'

Of course, he had a point. No editor wants to be committed to planning so rigid that the magazine cannot respond to a major news break. On the other hand, a magazine is not a newspaper reacting daily to events as they occur. Its traditional role is to put events in perspective, to interpret them and to pick out significant trends. If a magazine does break news, it is usually because of a planning process that revealed a need for investigative reporting weeks or months before the article appeared.

A magazine's planning grid, in its simplest form, is a two-dimensional chart in which regular departments and feature topics are crossed with the dates of upcoming issues. Among other things, such a grid prevents duplicative assignments and is a healthy reminder of the lead times needed for photography, art and manuscripts. It shows the publisher what the editors are planning. But it should do far more.

Creating a working tool

An ideal planning grid is a tool to translate the total strategy and wisdom of the editors and publisher into a defined program of action. Thus the upcoming articles for an issue, shown on the grid, are not just a list of assignments due. Rather, the grid itself should be a reflection of a publishing strategy hammered out over a long period of time, with subject matter imaginatively conceived to fulfill that strategy.

The creation of an editorial planning grid for a magazine, therefore, starts with the top line (see illustration). The top line describes the subject areas that are of most concern to readers. A balanced issue of the magazine is one that includes features or departments covering every key area of concern.

Before there can be a grid, however, there must be a consensus on what constitutes an ideal balance of subject matter--a balance that will attract readers. I call these topic areas "hot buttons' of reader responsiveness. These hot buttons can be determined in at least two ways:

Continuing reader research by the magazine over a long period of time--by mailed questionnaires, focus groups, single-copy sales records, et cetera.

Intuitive judgment by the editor derived from talking with the staff and subscribers, from letters to the editor, and from insights about new trends in the magazine's special field of interest.

Not a tally sheet

A planning grid is not a simple device to show that departments and features submitted by editors and writers are included in an issue. Rather, it starts with a description of the subject matter believed or proven to attract the kinds of readers the magazine wants. Then the specific departments and format treatments that achieve that ideal balance are assigned slots for each issue of the magazine.

As an example of how a successful planning grid is constructed, I found myself a few years ago faced with the task of redesigning Golf Magazine. Rather than proceed to still another cosmetic reformatting of the magazine, I first asked the editors to tell me what subject areas were most important to the readers.

Of course, it is well known in golf publishing that instruction--tips for playing the game--far outdistances all other topics of reader interest. As much as 50 percent of a golf magazine can be taken up with instruction. Therefore, to indicate "instruction' on a planning grid as a single hot button would be insufficient. So we divided instruction into many topics--e.g., the drive, sand play, putting, et cetera. The idea was to create a planning grid to ensure that no issue of the magazine would go by without offering a solution to a problem area in every reader's game. Only then did we proceed with a graphic redesign.

Done by design

Golf's planning grid shows that a well-targeted magazine is no accident, but the result of a deliberately conceived strategy to include in every issue topics of proven value to readers. When your magazine's grid reveals that key topics are still unassigned in an upcoming issue, you know you have to do something; at the very least, you must discuss the need to create fresh material.

While the cycle of magazine issues may be relatively frequent--monthly, biweekly or weekly, for example--the cycle of change in the strategy of a planning grid obviously is infrequent, measured possibly in years.

On one hand, the editor must be wary of shifting content strategy. Readers of magazines with healthy subscription renewal records come to expect a certain content. To a degree, they want a predictable magazine, however antipathetic that may seem to editors. An unchanging planning grid will ensure stability and that the promise to the reader is fulfilled.

On the other hand, reading interests change over time, affected by factors such as reader age and changing technology. Declining subscription circulation performance usually is a clue that a magazine should re-examine itself. Is the decline occurring because the content in the existing grid lacks excitement? Or is there a need to re-examine the strategy of a magazine's planning grid itself?

The strategic planning grid should not be confused or integrated with the traditional editorial production grid. The production grid's function is to identify the article, the date copy is due, accompanying art and photography, when the article is due at the typesetter, and so on. It is primarily a tool of the managing editor. The primary tool of the editor is the planning grid.

Although it's impossible to construct a three-dimensional grid on a two-dimensional sheet of paper, the planning grid I've described in this article gives the illusion of working in three dimensions. Hot buttons of reader interest are identified on top; the upcoming issues of the magazine are indicated vertically. Into the boxes so created fall the departments, features, picture essays, how-tos and opinion pieces that fulfill the plan. In this way, format and content are integrated into a system that delivers upcoming issues relevant to a targeted readership.

Table: The right way

In the editorial planning grid above, hot topics to be included in every issue of a hypothetical health magazine are shown across the top. The regular articles, departments and columnist formats that fulfill the strategy of the planning grid are shown in the columns alongside the issues in which they're scheduled to appear.

Table: The wrong way

Two examples of relatively ineffective editorial planning schemata. In the first example (top), the editor has assumed that the most important thing about his planning is to include under preconceived format categories the writers and editors who write for or contribute to the magazine. The second example (bottom) is an improvement in that it attempts to fit already assigned articles to the magazine's format. But without a strategic matrix, it results in a duplication of topics.

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