In the magazine business, summer is the time of strategy sessions, when we crank up the AC, seal ourselves in our offices and take a step back to look at the big picture and to chart our course for the next year—and beyond.
At NU, the month of August is when we plan our editorial calendars for the following year, dusting off our crystal balls to see what will be the hot issues in December of 2012: Coverage for second homes on Mars? Not yet. Coverage for space tourism? A definite maybe. Who wins the election in November? We wouldn't want to spoil it for you.
Summer is also when the editorial side of the masthead gets together with our friends on the business side to discuss where we'd like the magazine to be a year from now, two years, five years.
As you might guess, if you've followed at all the interesting times in which the media sector currently lives, a lot of our conversation centers around what should be the proper role for a print newsweekly two years into the second decade of the 21st Century.
The ultimate subject of these talks, of course, is you, the reader of NU (and participant at our webinars, attendee at our events, listener of our podcasts, retweeter of our tweets and viewer of our videos): How do you want to get your business-critical information, and how do we best allocate our content menu to give you a meal both nutritious and tasty?
Naturally, we conduct reader surveys, and we're speaking with many of you all the time on the phone, in person (and on Facebook). But here's an open invitation to the entire readership/viewership to tell us how we can serve you best. It's the most-opportune time for your voice to be heard: We're at the forge for the next few weeks, so strike while the iron is hot and you can truly help us shape the form of the publication going forward.
Are there types of content you want more of or less of? Should NU, for example, have Claims stories in every issue? Technology? Workers' Comp?
How are you managing your news diet these days? Is your consumption completely electronic and dependent on the web, RSS feeds and e-newsletters? Or do you welcome a roundup in print of the week's top stories?
What about the length of our feature stories? Too long? Too short? Do you want more and bigger photographs and graphics? Or are you a text junkie?
If you spend any time in the back pages of our print magazine—or in the blog area of PropertyCasualty360.com—you know we warmly welcome contributions from our audience (kudos to Burns & Wilcox and law firm Duane Morris for their meaty columns in this issue—who knew NU would ever publish the “F” word?).
Well, you're all experts in something (and many of you are stars in multiple subjects). So if we gave you the tools to quickly and easily share information with us—and, more important, with each other—would you rush to use them, whether to share a new solution you've discovered or to inform the community of your promotion—or to ask your peers for their perspective on a problem?
These aren't rhetorical questions—they're ones, in all frankness, we're wrestling with as the summer starts its inevitable fade into fall. NU is your pub—so join in the dialogue about what it should be in 2012.
Bryant Rousseau
Editor in Chief
201-526-2329/[email protected]
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