Please go away - magazine editors should get out more to learn what is going on in their industry - Editorial

John Mack Carter says the most important thing an editor does is go to lunch (see our roundtable discussion on page 41), meaning, of course, lunch with someone influential in the field your magazine serves. And he's not alone. Back in 1947, newspaperman and cynic H.L. Mencken offered some similar advice. "No editorial writer ought to be permitted to sit in an editorial room for month after month and year after year, contemplating his umbilicus," said Mencken. "He ought to go out and meet people," Mencken argued. " ... don't let him sit in the office and become a professor. Don't let him read other papers too much. And above all, don't let him swallow the propaganda that is all over the place."

Fifty years later, Mencken's pontifications (taken from the book A Gang of Pecksniffs by Theo Lippman Jr.) are as relevant to magazine publishers as they were to the newspapermen of his era. In a world of constant deadlines, budget meetings, continual e-mails and countless other distractions, getting out from behind that desk can be downright daunting. But the dangers of isolation are even more serious. Restaurant Business editor Peter Romeo shares Mencken's distaste for editors who become passive, who take a reactive posture instead of taking initiative. "What people feed you is not necessarily reflective of what's going on out there," says Romeo. "When we travel, it's expected of us to go and see restaurants in the area, both fastfood and fine dining," he says. "Otherwise, all of a sudden you have someone else telling you what the problems in the industry are. You're getting spun." Nancy Novogrod, editor in chief of Travel & Leisure, says that field trips are "essential, because they're always educational. I'm seeing new hotels or experiencing new restaurants, meeting people who are having a significant impact on the world of travel." And among those significant players are advertisers. Novogrod says the benefits of communicating with advertisers are as significant as communicating with any other audience. "I prepare myself for those meetings better than usual," she explains.

Of course, rubbing elbows with your readership is one thing when you're the editor of Travel & Leisure or Restaurant Business. But what about the editor of a magazine like Waste Age, for example? "We make a point, as often as we can, of visiting landfills, resource recovery facilities and waste-to-energy plants and talking to the mechanics and the truck drivers," says editor in chief John Aquino. "In fact, our senior editor, Mike Malloy, just came back from Philadelphia where he spent time riding on the back of a garbage truck just to get into a conversation with these people." Aquino summarizes, "If the purpose of a trade magazine is to help people do their jobs better, then you have to understand their jobs."

And what about the executive editor of a magazine about magazine publishing (that's me)? If you'll excuse me, I'm going to lunch.

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