Achy, Breaky Hearts

Madison Magazine contributing writer Maggie Ginsberg-Schutz blogged for a year, retired last month, then pulled a Favre last night and posted a blog at the behest of somebody named Amanda, who told her a web-zine named BlogNosh was featuring some of her oldies but goodies. I'm glad she's back honing her craft because she's one of the most gifted writers I've ever worked with and if we're lucky she's got, like, a hundred more years of journalism ahead of her.

I told Mags that while I'm delighted she's blogging again, I take issue with her lumping magazines in with the following comment:

"I keep reading about the death of newspapers, of magazines, of my field, the drying up, the washing out. My gut tells me there is something to this online community, this forum, that maybe my future lies not in the traditional journalism, but in a hybrid of sorts."

Magazines and magazine readership are fine, dammit!--and especially with younger readers: Madison Magazine boasts more people in the 18-34 age demographic than ever. Take that, all you advertisers flocking to the web!

Unfortunately, some of the same can't be said for newspapers, though the recent Editor & Publisher report that readership hasn't declined much at all since 2006 was a bright spot in an otherwise dark and dismal landscape. So bright that I blogged on about it two entries back.

But if you're like me and rooting for newspapers—and the journalists they're shedding like a dog's fur come fall—you'll appreciate this effort by the Columbia Journalism Review to capture the voices of the veteran reporters who've been downsized. Imagine how difficult it must be for those affected to see their lives, their livelihoods, and their loyalties change in an instant.

I forwarded the posts to some of my colleagues who've taken The Cap Times buyout or who've left their newspaper jobs of their own accord after seeing the writing on the newsroom wall. I hope they'll contribute. I'll keep checking the CJR posts—they're running one a day right now—in the hopes that I'll see a familiar byline. Madison's chapter in this ever-evolving book has gained national attention and our struggles need to continue to be told.

If I were writing a chapter in the story the nut graph would go something like this: Amid the age of Internet, wonderful, talented writers who happen to also be trained professionals are being asked to stop covering the news of our communities and our world. If they won't, who will? That's my biggest fear. Who will be fair and balanced? Who will accurately, ethically and with integrity report the news? Who will want to major in journalism and populate the news outlets left standing after all this said and done? Where's my next Maggie?

Fortunately, she's out there. I put an ad for writers on Craigslist and since have been inundated with strong resumes and interesting, well-written clips. (Mostly.) But that's only one leg of the stool that supports and sustains the good publications that will still have these talented folks. Citizen-consumers have to purchase and subscribe, and businesses have to advertise. And if a newspaper isn't the news, weather and information vehicle that we want to invest in anymore—though I hope it's not—then we have to choose something else.

I agree with Maggie that journalism's future will be a "hybrid of sorts." I'm just not smart enough to figure out what that will be. Whatever we end up with, we need those people that have little to do at the moment except pour their hearts out to CJR. I have faith, though. Journalists became journalists because they are curious, adventurous and enterprising. Look at The Politico. A couple of guys (and a very rich businessman) voluntarily left The Washington Post to start the Washington-centric website that, according to Wikipedia, "is rumored to get 14 million hits a day."

Oh, and it publishes a NEWSPAPER three days a week when Congress is in session, too. How novel. A newspaper.

Oh, the Irony

You have to slog through my last blog to appreciate the news that Editor & Publisher is upping its digital ante. They haven't given up on their print edition (yet), but they'll publish a duplicate electronic version for "multiple distribution channels." Though still subscriber-only, the new format will allow readers more access points, like cell phones and search engines. Sounds like more betting on the come and probably a smart move for an old codger like E&P, which began publishing in 1884. That's NOT a typo.

Here's the Press Release:

Editor&Publisher magazine to offer its first Electronic Edition via a partnership with Pressmart Media

New York, N.Y.; July 14th, 2008 -
Editor & Publisher magazine (www.editorandpublisher.com) today signed an agreement with Pressmart Media Ltd. (www.pressmart.net) to provide a digital, same-as-print electronic edition of the newspaper publishing industry’s leading trade publication.

In a joint statement E&P Publisher Chas McKeown said “the Pressmart state-of-the-art solution will provide our readership access to Editor & Publisher on multiple digital distribution channels including eEditions; Podcasts; Mobile devices and eArchives.”

“We are very excited by E&P’s choice of Pressmart as their new media delivery partner. E&P had a choice of vendors and chose Pressmart’s best-of-breed solution,” commented Myles M. Fuchs, President of Pressmart Media Ltd.

About Editor&Publisher
Editor & Publisher is the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates.

Based in New York City, the magazine dates back to 1884, when The Journalist, a weekly, was founded. E&P was launched in 1901 and merged with The Journalist in 1907. E&P later acquired Newspaperdom, a trade journal for the newspaper industry that started in 1892. In 1927, E&P merged with another trade paper, The Fourth Estate. In January 2004, E&P switched from weekly to monthly publication, while revamping its Web site to offer more breaking news and content on a daily basis.

E&P Online (www.editorandpublisher.com) offers breaking news free to all visitors in our Top Stories section. Each week, selected proprietary stories from E&P staff are made available free to all visitors, but the majority of our analysis, industry news, features, columns, and trends are restricted to E&P subscribers.

About Pressmart
Pressmart ( www.pressmart.net ) is a New Media Delivery Partner of leading newspapers and magazines, delivering same-as-print content on multiple distribution channels including the Web (as a print-replica ePaper edition), Mobile, RSS, Podcasts, Blogs, Social Networking Sites, Article Directories, Search Engines and eArchives. Pressmart has digitized over 400 years’ worth of newspapers, magazines and journals.

Media Contacts:
E&P: Chas McKeown – (646) 654-5120
Pressmart: Myles M. Fuchs – (949) 395-7560

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What's Black and White and STILL Read All Over?

Almost three months ago, I grabbed my last edition of The Capital Times out of the company mailbox before heading home for the day. About the same time, I switched my laptop's homepage from the default to Madison.com/tct, ready to embrace the newspaper’s pioneering foray into cyberspace.

I don’t log on at home as much as I thought I would—the kid, the dogs and summer in Madison all conspire to keep me away from the computer. It seems the evening newspaper ritual I had hoped to continue in cyberspace is instead lost to the hands of time.

I keep up with the Wednesday edition and Thursday’s 77 Square, both of which appear in my driveway once a week tucked inside the Wisconsin State Journal. But I know it’s only a fraction of TCT news, information and opinion I should absorb as a citizen and a journalist. How ironic it feels to be so unplugged, so disconnected from a news source that’s now—in theory at least—so connected to the world over the Internet.

According to a recent poll, I’m not the only newspaper reader whose habits haven’t changed much in the last two years, despite the doom-and-gloom reports that readership is plummeting. This week Editor & Publisher reported that 62 percent of respondents to a Readership Institute poll said they’ve never logged onto their local paper’s website. And like me, only 14 percent said they’ve visited in the last seven to 30 days.

“Readers are more engaged with the print newspaper than newspaper Web site,” the article stated.

But here’s the quote that nearly knocked me off my big, red office chair: “…[R]eading customers aren’t deserting newspapers at anything approaching the rate that advertising customers are.”

Madison Magazine associate publisher Mike Kornemann, who was with Capital Newspapers (which owns both The Cap Times and the Wisconsin State Journal) for many years, tells me advertisers are too infatuated with the younger demographic into the wild, wild web. Another irony here, as Mike points out, is that since newspapers have always done poorly with the younger demographic, why would they be anymore likely to find Next Gen online when they don't think what newspapers print is relevant to their lives just yet?

Kids don’t start looking for news in any large numbers until they turn into grownups with jobs and families and decide it’s time to put down roots. That’s when trusted, reliable news and information about their communities, their countries and their world starts to register. That’s when they become newspaper consumers.

I’m beginning to think newspapers should stop chasing their tails and start to refocus on the loyal, engaged readers (and consumers: Helloooo, affluent, retiring baby boomers!) they apparently still court. If you like the Readership Institute’s study, readership has only declined an teency-weency bit since the group’s last report in 2006.

Advertisers panic, and all of a sudden it’s a foregone conclusion that technology has won the arm-wrestling match over how we consume our news?

I don’t buy it.

Like to Hike

It’s hard to keep up with a weekly blog when you take seven days of vacation. I didn’t post last week and I hope I don’t fall down on the job again for a while. Catholic guilt is never far from my conscience.

If you read my last entry, you know I spent time in the northwoods, where the lakes dot the landscape like fresh drops of deep-blue paint. I’ve spent nearly every summer of my life there, yet each time I return I am in awe. As far as the eye can see, evergreens stand tall and stoic around these glacial kettles, resolved to be there for as long as Mother Nature will have them. It’s hard to come back after a respite up north.

Several miles before we reached the cottage on this particular trip, a big black bear came lumbering out of the forest and across the road in front of us. I hadn’t seen one in more than fifteen years. The next day we heard there were more bears—and bear sightings—than in years past. Like my fear of flying, my bear anxiety got the best of me and I only ventured out once to hike my favorite trail on earth. Environmental and science writer—and Madison Magazine contributor—John Morgan included Fallison Lake Nature Trail in his tote-along guidebook 50 Hikes in Wisconsin (The Countryman Press and Backcountry Guides, $17.95), which he co-wrote with his wife, Ellen. John and Ellen compare the trail to a movie set, and describes a lake that “shimmers like black glass.” He’s right on both counts.

Like pocketknives and bug spray, the Morgans book is a nature trek essential. It heightens the adventure, and even gives advice on how not to encounter a bear! Sounds counterintuitive, but making noise while I hike and smelling like sun block and insect repellent are two of his suggestions, both of which I will do from now on.

Winter, spring, summer or fall, Fallison is achingly beautiful. I’ve heard coyotes howling in the spring, seen beavers damming the creek in summer, crushed leaves under my feet in fall, and trekked through new-fallen snow in winter. When I read John’s chapter on this magical place, I felt better gushing about it and bringing new visitors to hike it every chance I get. I’m not crazy—it IS the most majestic places on earth!

Back home, I used 50 Hikes for some trails in and around Madison. In addition to digestible and descriptive prose, John and Ellen did a really nice job with charts, maps, directions, and safety recommendations (like how to keep the bears away!).

A few weeks ago 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles (Menasha Ridge Press, $16.95) showed up in my mailbox. I knew about the Madison-area trail guide by Kevin Revolinski because the publisher had sent my a galley and asked me to write a review for the back cover. Since I’ll probably never have the patience to author a book of my own, I was honored and excited to be asked. I called the book “spectacularly comprehensive, well organized and fun to read.” I was truly impressed, and now, flipping through the actual book a few months later, I’m amazed at the level of detail Revolinski, who lives in Madison, provides for each of the hikes he recommends.

I especially like the way he organizes the hikes. The table of contents lists them by city and county, but a few pages later he also breaks them out by all sorts of measurements: length, best maintained, good for kids or bird-watching, dogs or wheelchairs. The hike descriptions are accurate down to the bat houses, benches, and where the mosquitoes are particularly bad.

If you’re my kind of hiker, you’ll be looking for a place to grab a bite or a cold one after your adventure. Fortunately, Revolinski’s got that covered, too. At the end of each chapter, he recommends “nearby activities.” For Cherokee Marsh just a mile or so from my house, the book recommends taking in a Mallards baseball game while you’re in the neighborhood. I can taste the veggie burger and Mallards Ale already.

The Art of Vacation

When you’re on vacation, even the mundane daily chores don’t feel quite as taxing. Whoever piles the last piece of laundry on the top of the basket throws a load in the washer. If you hear the dryer buzz you fold the clothes while you catch the tail end of the movie. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches take twice the time—and twice the fun—to assemble, and dishes get done in an assembly line formation. Save for the family member who volunteered to cook that night, everybody pitches in until the last pan is dry and the stove is clean enough for pancakes and eggs the next morning.

In our northwoods cottage, the kitchen is command central. It’s the first room you enter, where the crowds gather and disperse. It’s where you’ll always find a bottle of sun block or bug spray, where you stack the books, magazines and movies you’ll enjoy, and where you make the grocery list (Don’t forget the marshmallows!). On a top shelf next to the pantry is where the cookbooks live. Some come and go with the vacationer—a favorite recipe you didn’t have time to copy before you left home. The rest are donated to the cottage because the recipes inside have summer vacation written all over them.

The first one that found a permanent home up north is appropriately titled, The Northwoods Cottage Cookbook, by Isthmus food critic Jerry Minnich. Fine writer and friend John Motoviloff reviewed it in Madison Magazine a few years back, and when I saw it at the Wisconsin Historical Museum a short time later, I bought it for our cottage. Imagine my surprise when I turned to the page that dedicated the book to friends of mine on Plum Lake. Turns out many of Minnich’s fondest northwoods memories—and well-worn recipes—were from time spent in Sayner, Wisconsin, my family’s summer home for the last six generations. Now that I know Jerry and I have shared some of the very same breathtaking lake views and calls of the loons, I have to say he’s spot on when he insists that cooking at the cottage be hearty and tasty but shouldn’t turn into a production. Why? Because a northwoods sunset waits for no one, not even the cook.

Another reason the recipes should be short and straightforward is that when you stay at a summer cottage, the person who starts the meal isn’t necessarily the same person who finishes it. This happened just the other day and provides the perfect example.

Husband and brother-in-law bring home a basket full of perch for dinner. Husband cleans and filets them and then excitedly heads back out to the boat muttering something about needing a few more fish to feed the whole family. Since time apparently flies when you’re fishing (always seems to me like it stands still), dinnertime rolls around and husband hasn’t returned with the rest of the day’s catch, not to mention his mother's fish-fry recipe he keeps tucked inside his noggin.

As luck would have it, I’d brought a new cookbook to add to the kitchen shelf called Apple Betty & Sloppy Joe, a delightful collection of childhood stories and recipes by four sisters who grew up in Oshkosh and vacationed in the northwoods. The book was out on the kitchen counter because I was in charge of the potato dish and found a simple recipe for the mashed variety: butter, hot milk, salt, done. By the time I’d changed out of my bathing suit and headed downstairs my sister had already scrubbed and dropped a dozen red potatoes into the pot to boil. I’d finish the dish while she tended to the kids. Meanwhile the bro-in-law steps in to fry the fish with another breezy recipe from Apple Betty for pan-fried trout. Flour, salt, pepper, beaten eggs (his addition), done.

By the time husband comes in off the water (without anything more to fry, I should add), a delicious dinner is on the table and the sun is just setting behind the pine trees across the lake. A toast to Apple Betty and the Sanvidge sisters on a meal well done.

I tried one other recipe during my week’s vacation, this one from another fun new book called Wisconsin Cheese: A Cookbook and Guide to the Cheeses of Wisconsin, by Martin Hintz and Pam Percy. Admittedly, I’m a lousy cook, so I chose an appetizer I knew would be hard to screw up—and one the kids could help with if they weren’t off reading in the hammock or learning to water ski. Cube as many pieces of cheddar, brick, Colby, and Muenster as you like, drown them in beaten eggs, then roll them in breadcrumbs and fry. Turns out French-fried Wisconsin Cheese tastes a lot like a bite-size grilled cheese sandwich—greasy and good. The book is definitely a keeper—there's lots more simple recipes I’m dying to try, like the “Inside Out” Grilled Cheese with Red Onion Jam. Be still (quite literally) my heart.

Whatever I decide to cook up, it’ll have to wait ’til next year. My new cottage cookbooks are resting on the kitchen shelf at the lake—sigh—waiting for my northwoods summer vacation to come around again.

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.

The New American Girl

For Christmas in 1979, my parents gave me the best present in the whole world, My Book About Me by Dr. Seuss and Roy McKie. The big, yellow hardback—a veritable tome by my childlike standards—contained the most complete and unabridged encyclopedia of my eight-year-old life.

Page after page of meticulously filled in blanks confessed my love for Oscar Mayer wieners, and reported the number of steps from my door to the first tree. Judging from the sketch of a bird I named “George” on page 45, I was wise not to choose “artist” from the exhaustive list of future occupations a few pages later. There are lots of ways to boost a kids’ self-confidence—sports, drama, praise of a job well done. And for generations Dr. Seuss has been doing his part, too—in my case giving the youngest of three girls permission to explore her surroundings on her own terms.

A few years ago, I was browsing in a Madison bookstore and stumbled upon a copy of My Book About Me. The idea that I could watch my daughter examine the carefree days of her youthful existence in the exact same way I had done thirty years earlier sent shivers of joy up my spine. I snatched up three copies (I was a little overzealous) and hid them away in a closet.

My seven-year-old’s last day of first grade is today, and I’m hoping My Book About Me will be the perfect graduation present. Chloe has finally reached the age of self-examination (I had no idea it happened so soon), drawing contrasts and comparisons to the world around her. She has discovered that when she’s annoyed she rolls her eyes just like her dad, and just like her mom she hates going to bed for fear she’ll miss out on all the action. While I find myself amused by a lot it, some of it’s starting to terrify me. She’s slowly beginning to wonder how others perceive her, like whether Braeden thinks she’s “girl-cute,” or what the school kids will say if they see her underwear while she’s hanging from the monkey bars in a skirt.

The self-examination that will soon develop into self-consciousness is the reason My Book About Me will be but one of several books on my young one’s summer reading list. There’s a new generation of reading material, much of it divided by gender, which builds on Dr. Seuss’s genius. The American Girl series has grown into a wonderful treasury of advice and activity-driven learning that celebrates girls with books that encourage them to “follow your inner star.”

If you don’t hang around little girls much, here’s a brief bio on American Girl. The Middleton-based company is famous for its line of historical dolls with accompanying biographies. They make Barbie and Lil’ Bratz look downright barbaric. Founded in 1986, Madison educator and entrepreneur Pleasant Rowland made a fortune when she sold the operation to Mattel in 1998. (The $205 million her husband Jerry Frautschi earned from the sale of the stock in the company paid for Overture Center).

One of several American Girl titles due out this September is Food & You. It teaches girls the building blocks of good health and nutrition in a fun and engaging way, promoting independent thinking and exploration as opposed to boring information overload. The book uses thought-provoking quizzes, Q&As and easy-to-digest language to tackle everything from the food pyramid to feeling fat.

Because we now know we establish our relationships with food from the day we latch on to breastfeed or take our first bottle, Food & You teaches girls to think about the kind of eaters they are. If you horse down more Happy Meals than dad’s home cooking, you need to make some changes in your eating style. “Whew! You’re a busy girl,” the book declares. “Try to make time for at least one sit-down meal a day.” A “Special Diets” chapter takes a Dear Abby approach to problem solving by dishing out advice on living with food allergies, being a vegetarian or being just plain picky.

I’m thinking the book might come in handy for Chloe and me during the vulnerable times in her life when there’ll be as much “acting out” as “acting in,” where feelings of low self-esteem and negative body image can so easily manifest themselves in eating disorders, from obesity or dieting to—Lord help me—starving herself or binging and purging.

I think Chloe’s really going to like My Book About Me. I hope she’ll spend less time in front of the computer and more time counting the steps from her mailbox to the first store. Meanwhile, I’m on a mission to spoon-feed her American Girl books like Food & You, Dance! (also due out this fall)—even Coconut’s Letter-Writing Kit (maybe encourage her to take up writing like her mom!). We’re already making our way through Just Mom & Me, with fun activities like guessing each other’s favorite things and coupons for spending time together.

I know books alone won’t save her from a lot of the hardships that lie ahead. I just hope they’ll reinforce the words of wisdom she hears a lot from me these days, the same words her grandma said to me: “Head up, shoulders back, and remember who you are.”