Hire a journalist - or a specialist? - magazine editor selection - Editorial

If you publish a specialized magazine, a generalist may still be your best choice. But help the writer learn your field.

You run a specialized magazine. You need to fill an important editorial slot. What sort of talent do you look for?

You want someone who can understand your specialized field, be it pig farming, restaurant management or electronic design. You also want someone who is a dogged reporter, an intelligent interviewer, a creative thinker and a compelling writer. The problem is that all this seldom comes in the same package. You may get lucky. But usually you must hire someone who you believe is far from perfect for the job.

In simplest terms, the hiring choice often boils down to the old question: Shall I hire a specialist or a journalist?

A specialist starts out with an understanding of the field, and that can lead to articles of great substance for your readers--if he or she can present facts and ideas in understandable form. A journalist starts out with the ability to report and communicate--but may fail to understand key facts and ideas.

The choice need not be that stark. A journalist may have prior experience in your field or a related one. A specialist may have already shown both ability and interest in communicating.

Sometimes the choice is simple. If you need an editor for a how-to format for electronics engineers, hire an electronics engineer--one who is a good thinker and able to write decent English--and make it work. Don't expect a journalist to master a complex technical area, or even to want to do so.

Your readers probably won't get all the clarity, color, succinctness and pace that they would expect from a more general magazine. But neither do they need to be seduced into reading. If the article contains new information or insights about something readers need to know as part of their jobs, they will fight their way through it. They will value accuracy and insight far more than a pleasant reading experience.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you need an editor for a news format, even in a technical field, you will usually be better off with a journalist. Reporting and news writing are specialties themselves, and today's competitive standards are high. Chances are you don't have the staff resources to teach these specialties on the job, even to a willing student.

Recognize, though, that a journalist without a background in the technology or industry he or she is covering will rarely achieve the depth or capture all the nuances that readers knowledgeable in that field would appreciate. With too little background, the nonspecialized journalist often runs out of questions too soon or misinterprets some of the answers he gets.

The result can be naivete and even a loss of accuracy--not necessarily wrong facts, but key omissions, poor emphasis and misleading juxtapositions. Fortunately, many specialist readers have learned to make allowances for a news format and to value the perspective brought to the topic by someone with a broader view of the world.

Most trade magazines do not fall at the extreme ends of the news-to-high-tech spectrum. And for most magazines, it makes sense to keep an open mind about the education and work background of a prospective staffer. Much more important than a staffer's starting fund of specialized knowledge are intelligence and motivation.

Take a magazine on restaurant management, for example. Managing a restaurant successfully is no easy task. You have to understand staffing, food preparation, purchasing, inventory, interior design, pricing, promotion, human relations and more. Still, none of this is rocket science. If your prospective staffer has run a restaurant, or even worked in a restaurant, that's a big plus. But an intelligent, motivated journalist can be up and running strong for you within a few months.

True, many journalists do not want to specialize. They take jobs on specialized magazines with the mental reservation that it's only until they find something more interesting.

On the other hand, some journalists who may have come to you from hunger get hooked and become stars. Editorial staffs in the trade magazine business are loaded with people who majored in journalism or English--not to mention psychology, philosophy and a host of other liberal arts fields--and who are both involved with and effective in their jobs.

If you hire a generalist, though, be prepared to help him or her learn your field. The single most important thing you can do should be done well before your first neophyte arrives. Structure, on paper, your field of coverage.

Nothing is more conducive to learning a field than seeing its conceptual structure. A veteran editor in the field of engineering design knows that "plastics" include thermoplastic types and thermosetting types, and that thermoplastic types include polystyrene, polyvinyl, polypropylene, etc., and that polyvinyl plastics include rigids, castables, and so forth. Imagine, though, how confusing this array must be to a beginner.

The "structure" you should provide to your beginner is essentially a group of lists or outlines. These show the relationships among the significant topics of your field. They offer a framework on which the beginner can hang the bits and pieces of information he or she picks up.

Just as important, such an outline presents the field's key vocabulary. When a beginner has learned this vocabulary, he or she is well on the way to rewarding interviews.

Other ways to help your nonspecialized beginners:

* Have shelves full of reference books. Most staffs find it impractical to maintain a real library. No matter. The good people you hire will dig out from jumbled shelves what they need.

* Tell your new staffers about the "teachers" in your field. Every specialized field contains people who enjoy teaching people, including journalists, about their business.

* When you listen to an article proposal, consider not only its intrinsic value but also its potential as a training device. Try to accept a proposal that, even if not an A-1 grabber, will put your staffer next to teachers or other key sources, or into new areas of coverage.

* Give your new hire extra time on early projects so he or she can arrange face-to-face interviews. The staffer will benefit from understanding the environment in which sources work, and will develop relationships that will make future phone interviews more productive.

You may notice that I have said nothing about handling the other kind of hire, the specialist. That's largely because, in my experience, it is almost impossible, on the job, to teach a poor writer to be a good one.

In hiring a specialist, assume that what you see in the screening process is what you're going to live with. Look for evidence that he or she presents material in a logical order, has a reasonable grasp of how to use sentences and paragraphs, and is careful in the use of words. Chances are that someone with those skills can produce copy that you or the copy desk can understand--and thus can edit or rewrite into readable form.

John B. Campbell, a magazine editorial consultant, edited two industrial magazines, was a senior editor at Business Week, and was editorial director of Hearst Business Publishing.

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