Highlights from the recent MediaGrowth interview with
Kate Hand, EVP, Content and Web at Gardner Business Media
Gardner has 40-plus editors that work on its 10-industry brands including its flagship, Modern Machine Shop. We asked Kate how Gardner has been responding to the many challenges facing editorial teams today.
Issues like:
• Few (if any) editors are capable of performing all the responsibilities expected of editorial staff.
• The personality and skill set that makes someone good at deeply thought-out features isn’t always successful with quippy social media posts.
• Editors are burning out from 70-hour weeks performing tasks they don’t like instead of writing, which is what they enjoy.
• Talented editors are hard to find and easy to lose.
Here is some of what Kate said:
• Gardner has begun to restructure its editorial teams with different tracks and different levels for advancement within each track. Tracks have been formed around Writing Editors, Digital Editors and Production Editors.
- Tracks enable editors to perform in their area of expertise (for example, Digital Editors work with SEO, analytics, social media…and production editors work with layouts…) and assist each other in creating the engaging content that is the foundation of publishing.
- Levels within tracks provide opportunities for advancement and prevent burnout. Movement between tracks is also possible when appropriate.
- Everyone has a dashboard to see how what they have created is doing.
• Finding and hiring mid-level editors is very difficult, so Gardner has hired young talent and created a support and training system to bring them up to speed.
- Kate and her team speak at college writing programs and maintain a pipeline of intern recruits who when hired, work with a mentor-editor.
- Identify people who can write. It is far easier to teach them the industry than how to write. Bloggers and those who write in their off-time hours can be potential candidates.
- Employees are encouraged to recommend their friends and family members for open positions. Employees will not recommend someone that they don’t think will succeed. Candidates don’t want to fail in front of their friends, so they work hard. Employees work to overcome job frustrations rather than quitting after bringing on their friends.
- Kate's team runs a monthly ½-hour “Town Hall” meeting to teach specific micro topics to everyone. Meetings are recorded and become part of a reference archive.
• A couple tips for saving time:
- Republish old content in a multitude of ways. Aim at spending 50% of your time on Evergreen content and 50% on new content.
- When training college grads, train them in the way they are used to learning. Use a syllabus (as colleges do) to communicate expectations and what will be taught.
• After two years of the new structure, Kate says that they still have a lot to work on and toward, but no
one wants to go back to the old structure.
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