The Media March

When circulation director (and blogger) Kent Palmer plops the latest issue of Madison Magazine down on my desk one Thursday a month, I’m often so engrossed in the production of the next issue that I hardly even notice. We publish as early as we can so distributors have time to make the switch at newsstands, and to give our advertisers time for their ads to soak into the local consumers’ consciousness. (Our ads sure are pretty—and they get results.)

The July issue dropped onto my desk and into subscribers’ mailboxes June 19. The Best of Madison cover is drop-dead gorgeous. We used what we call a “type attack,” where words instead of pictures visualize the cover story. The typeset is an Arts and Crafts style closely associated with Frank Lloyd Wright, whose architectural footprints are all over Madison and its surroundings.

The man responsible for such an appealing look is art director Tim Burton, who has taken home enough design awards in the last few years that national magazine industry professionals and experts are taking notice (You can’t have him! He’s happy here!). Yet even with a beautiful cover and—if I do say so myself—great content that I’m excited to share with readers, when the magazine went thunk! on my desk yesterday I stopped typing and stared at it wistfully. No. Wait. Stop! There’s eleven more days in June!

I’ve been at the magazine for eight years. That’s damn-near a hundred magazines I’ve helped produce. And while I love each and every one of them like one of my kids (the birthing process is often as painful), I have to admit that June 2008 is my favorite. Despite the daunting economic challenges, our incredibly talented and hardworking sales staff sold enough ad space so that we could spread our wings and take flight as a city magazine.

Like we do every month we covered every topic our readers expect, from politics to food to home, from health to travel to arts and entertainment. We also elbowed enough white space to publish a long-form narrative on the decades-old controversy over primate research at our world-class university. It was the longest and meatiest article I’ve ever edited, and I loved every second of it. As difficult as the topic is to digest—monkeys are dying in our attempts to save human lives—it’s critical that we think about these issues. Madisonians are smart but it doesn’t mean we’re always an enlightened bunch. We need this kind of journalism—and more, not less of it.

That’s why I’m so happy the magazine is spilling out onto the Internet these days, joining our dailies and weeklies in the fight—and it is a scrappy, ugly fight—to keep journalism alive and relevant. Just imagine what it would be like if Isthmus wasn’t watchdogging city government? What if the State Journal lost the strength and the will to take the state legislature to the mat on its excessive use of power? What if The Cap Times could no longer represent the progressive voice our city is both revered and reviled for?

John Roach exercises this privileged freedom of expression in the blogosphere for the first time this week, talking about these very issues and how the digital age might affect us. All I can say is, Watch out, Paul Soglin and Waxing America, our candid, passionate back-page columnist is now wielding his own mighty keyboard and will be waxing the heck out of Madison and beyond. I’m kidding. It’s remarkably important that our former mayor is blogging to the issues. These are heady times.

I know the media will persevere. I’ll get another chance to publish the kind of journalism that drills down into people’s psyches. And since we archive all of our content online I no longer have to worry about losing a story as good as primate research to the march of time.

Likewise, my incredibly talented colleagues will find their footing in the digital age. We’re journalists because we like to challenge authority, to hold people and institutions accountable, and to do it with accuracy, integrity and often, good humor. If we continue to do our jobs and do them well, citizens will continue to value what we do. They’ll keep consuming our products, and the marketplace will follow.

Onward. Or is it … Onlineward.