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Topic: Trade Publications
| Author | Message |
| Rocky Mountain Writer | Posted – 5/21/2008 11:39:17 AM | show profile I'm considering taking a job with a trade publication and am in the negotiations as we speak. I'm brand new to genre, but I've worked for over 2 decades at newspapers and consumer pubs. There aren't many jobs in my area, so I'm ambivalent about accepting this position so far outside my comfort level. The problem is, I've noticed that the editorial is very advertiser-centered and not really hard hitting or beneficial to its subscriber base. Are trade magazines nothing more than fluff for its advertisers? What benefit would an audience get from that? |
| DQ102 | Posted – 5/21/2008 1:32:15 PM | show profile Some trades are fluff for advertisers...just like so many consumer magazines are. But trade magazines in general get a bad rap. There really are some great trades like Variety, Billboard and Ad Age as well as lesser-known publications that focus on not-so-sexy areas like beverages and tile. If you are uncomfortable with the editorial quality of this particular trade, maybe you shouldn't work there. But don't rule out trades. Expand your search. Are there other, more reputable trades in your area? Maybe you can land a job with one of those publications. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 5/21/2008 4:01:20 PM | show profile It varies widely depending on the magazine. Some trades will write complimentary articles about advertisers and not do anything to upset anyone in the industry. Others are hard-hitting and investigative. Fluff trades might work for a lot of readers. People in the industry might look at them merely because they're the only trade that covers their industry, and they get value from industry news even if it's all rose-colored. The important thing is to realize that whatever approach a particular trade magazine takes isn't going to change. So if you're interviewing at a trade that writes fluff, don't think you're going to come in and start doing investigative pieces about the industry. The magazine will want you to continue to produce fluff. If you're fine with that, cool. If you're not, be wary. -- Are trade magazines nothing more than fluff for its advertisers? What benefit would an audience get from that?-- |
| WritingEd | Posted – 5/21/2008 4:35:40 PM | show profile Keep in mind that a lot of people do pick up industry trade magazines and WANT to look at the ads, unlike with consumer mags where you might happen to notice but not turn to the pub for the purpose of seeing the ads. If the industry is somewhat interesting to you, your experience at the pub may not be so bad. But as someone else said, don't expect to start doing investigative pieces. Still, if you're high enough up on the masthead you may be able to put your mark on it by taking the editorial up a few notches. There are plenty of ways to include advertisers and write about their products and services without doing a total fluff piece -- for instance, if you have to product a feature covering widgets twice a year because that's who's advertising, see if you can find an interesting, fresh angle not directly about people using widgets and being happy with them, but about something that will benefit the reader, such as how to find the right widget or how to avoid making mistakes when using a widget. Or -- a look at what widgets of the future may be like. |
| Rocky Mountain Writer | Posted – 5/21/2008 5:33:32 PM | show profile Thank you all. I'm probably not going to take the job. There are three publications dedicated to this industry, but all seem to regurgitate the same bland editorial about advertisers and its CEOs. Boring. Not surprising, all three publications, I've discovered, are owned by advertisers (a fact I uncovered after much digging). It sounds more like a cheap advertising vehicle for its home products while disguising itself as an industry advocate. The mission statement of the B2B that I was considering does not reflect in its publication. It's sort of like having a publication for helping coffee shop owners run their businesses (made up of course), but only featuring stories about the companies that produce coffee for them (the advertisers/owners). While coffee is important, it is only one piece of the equation. No funky tips on how to capture business, how to cut costs on coffee cups, or any of the hundreds of other things also important to keep coffee shops solvent. It would be better named Journal of Coffee rather than Coffee Shop Daily Digest. Most concerning is, the market lacks a publication dedicated to helping these coffee shop owners, but those who have tried have been locked out of the market by the advertisers. Thanks for the advice. |
| HyancinthGirl | Posted – 5/22/2008 1:00:08 AM | show profile RMW, I'd stay away from trade publications if you're not into kissing butt and making nice with the people who pay the bills. Rarely do b2b's out the people who feed them, even if that person is the scum of the earth or doing something illegal. Speaking from experience, I've been asked to lose or bury stories and sacrifice integrity as to not lose an advertiser. You may have to check your morals at the door. I did it for years and the dam broke one day over something little. What you described is extreme, but not necessarily uncommon. I'd move on. Good luck. |
| dribbledrive1 | Posted – 5/22/2008 1:30:28 AM | show profile Well, a lot of trade publications don't make any pretense that they have any goal other than to make the maxiimum amount of money, unlike some consumer pubs and newspapers who want to entertain or inform. --The mission statement of the B2B that I was considering does not reflect in its publication. It's sort of like having a publication for helping coffee shop owners run their businesses (made up of course), but only featuring stories about the companies that produce coffee for them (the advertisers/owners). While coffee is important, it is only one piece of the equation. No funky tips on how to capture business, how to cut costs on coffee cups, or any of the hundreds of other things also important to keep coffee shops solvent. It would be better named Journal of Coffee rather than Coffee Shop Daily Digest. Most concerning is, the market lacks a publication dedicated to helping these coffee shop owners, but those who have tried have been locked out of the market by the advertisers. -- |
| WordyBird | Posted – 5/22/2008 2:25:14 AM | show profile Great commentary here. All I have to add is that six months of worrying about what advertisers would think and taking a back seat to the ad sales staff was all I could take, myself. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 5/22/2008 2:26:35 AM | show profile | email poster Lots of good input above. It's very true that they often really read the ads in trades -- the ads become more like content in some ways. I will tell you that just because the content was obviously flabby and congratulatory in the past doesn't mean there isn't room for more sophisticated trade content. However, it depends on what position you're coming in at. If they tell you they want you to come in and do better as a star writer (and yes, I've been hired to do that) or reconfigure flagging material, then you have something of a mandate. But as mentioned above, you won't take them from industry-oriented helpful material to hard-hitting investigative. The biggest problem for some people is they want the job, they want the money, but they don't want to write about toilet seats or come up with punny leads for pieces about ceramic tile. It offends their sensibilities. No one will ever read it except tile manufacturers, for one thing. I had a friend who had a great job with a good trade mag in the retail industry but lost it due to layoffs. He then took a job at another trade, but found himself doing a lot of repetitive little notices instead of real articles. He's really looking right now. |
| HyancinthGirl | Posted – 5/22/2008 7:51:44 AM | show profile WordyBirdy, I hear that! The b2b I managed became so bad that the advertising staff were actually given carte blanche to assign articles to my staff writers and make promises in their ad contracts that editorial would appear every/every other issue. It starts casually then became a slippery slope. When I brought up integrity and ethics, I was told that without ad revenue, there is no magazine, and I will do what I am told to make sure that the advertisers were happy. I wrote a company profile/cover feature on the same company, which was tettering on bankruptcy, 3 times within 13 issues. The CEO was being investigated for embezzlement and fraud, a fact we knew after profile #2. When the third profile had come out, 5 of the senior staff were convicted and the company closed its doors overnight, exactly when the issue was mailing to readers. |
| sophiesMOM | Posted – 5/22/2008 8:31:05 AM | show profile i agree with all the comments here. i worked at a very reputable tech trade for almost 10 years, and focused on breaking news and investigative stories. as others here have noted, it depends on the magazine. good for you for uncovering that the mag was actually OWNED by an advertiser. if that's not a red flag, i don't know what is! good luck. |
| WordyBird | Posted – 5/22/2008 12:44:32 PM | show profile "WordyBirdy, I hear that! The b2b I managed became so bad that the advertising staff were actually given carte blanche to assign articles to my staff writers and make promises in their ad contracts that editorial would appear every/every other issue. " Yikes, HyacinthGirl! That's pretty bad. At my place, I saw that certain assignments were made specificially so that ad reps could then send out the raw copy of my articles as part of their sales pitches. Kind of the reverse of what you experienced, but when the stories were assigned to me, I was not told the reps were going to do that. I was under the impression the ad reps were going to use them as background to make a kind of editorial calendar for their pitches, just so they would know what was coming down the pike and plan accordingly. "We have coverage of this kind of product coming up and..." as it were. In the next content meeting, one of them thanked me for sending my article along, and said, "Yeah, I sent it over to So-and-So Potential Advertiser and they're going to advertise. Could you send along your piece on Something Else? We might want to get them in the book, too." Ick. |
| DQ102 | Posted – 5/22/2008 4:26:42 PM | show profile Hi Rocky Mountain Writer. Good for you for doing some digging and finding out about the advertisers owning the publications. Now that I know that, I would encourage you to look elsewhere. There are solid trades out there with good reputations, so don't lower your standards. You won't be happy. |
| Mirage | Posted – 5/22/2008 4:51:01 PM | show profile HyacinthGirl You're in NJ, right? We may have worked for the same sleazy trade. :-) I had a similar experience, and quit after barely a year. Frankly, I was surprised that I made it as long as I did with all the liberties the sales team took with editorial. |
| fake.it.til.you.make.it | Posted – 5/22/2008 11:39:10 PM | show profile I once worked for a small niche publication. I couldn't move forward on a particular products spread in each issue until our sales rep had gotten all her advertising ready so that she knew which ones to include in the products page. (Sometimes, if someone paid for a huge ad, they'd get included 2X in the magazine or something.) This always ended up in not getting the information until we were close to shipping and I was expected to work my magic and get all of the information and images, etc. in a matter of a few days all because the sales person didn't have her sht together. I got chewed out once by a person I wrote a profile on (who I had to interview via e-mail) because I didn't include a short phrase he had typed in the article. I even told him that I can't guarantee everything will be published due to editing. It was only a 250-word article. We also refrained from writing on certain topics in a certain way so as not to upset the advertisers. I kept finding myself saying, "Are we a magazine or the PR department for our advertisers?" I left rather quickly... |
| RockinRonD | Posted – 5/23/2008 10:50:26 AM | show profile | email poster Made in the Trade All of the above comments speak the truth for the most part with regard to trade publications. I actually got my first job out of journalism school at a trade publication for the apparel industry. At the time (late 70's), it was a daily newspaper that was as legitimate and credible as any daily consumer paper I've worked at. And I actually did real reporting and learned a great deal about business and writing on deadline. I even had a great editor who had journalistic ethics and standards. Now that same paper is a weekly and a mere ghost of itself, though graphically it's much more interesting (especially to advertisers). Sadly, most trade publications have become less credible and fair and balanced real reporting is less a priority or doctrine. Best to pick and choose carefully if you go this route, though it appears you've already done your homework well. |
| spacedesign | Posted – 5/23/2008 8:52:01 PM | show profile | email poster One of the biggest and best stories I ever did was for a trade. In fact it was for one of the most respected trade in my industry. I didn't then nor do I now see that that particular trade pub was an "advertorialist" rag, though interestingly enough one of its siblings is. That sibling, of course, is a products magazine. As far as taking the job, consider the economy's gonna worsen before it improves. Best of luck! ------ http://senseofplacewriter.blogspot.com/ |
