Naming names: When is an editor not an editor?

What does a magazine editor actually do in today’s multimedia world? Is the title—editor—still appropriate, given the varied responsibilities these folks carry on their shoulders? Meredith publishing vice president Jack Griffin doesn’t think so. Griffin recently told Folio: magazine that Meredith now hires “content strategists” rather than editors.

This may be a case of language being a little late in naming change, with editors having long ago taken on more varied, demanding, and complex roles while their titles have remained the same. Editors know their days of “only” managing copy and sending the book off to the printer disappeared with Murphy Brown, if they ever existed at all. Yet the title "editor" has endured. When Meredith advertises, its job listings call for editors, just as it has for nearly 100 years, and it is not likely to change that title. Nevertheless, the reality has vastly changed at Meredith and at publishers across the country.

Here’s some of what today’s editor juggles:

• Working with the publisher to manage the brand, which means presenting to current and potential advertisers and, often, dealing with media requests as varied as being on TV to overseeing special events. This includes some role in developing ancillary products.
• Maintaining the title’s budget, often a 7- or 8-digit responsibility.
• Managing the staff.
• Overseeing the editorial and design production—at all levels—of the magazine and, often, its Web components.
• Creating some content on her own, which may be limited to an editor’s letter, but might also include a feature or two or a blog.

Much, perhaps all, of this is stategic. It is also creative, intuitive, and socially and culturally engaged. That's today's editor.

Last year, the SJMC had a discussion with industry leaders about the future of journalism as part of the Task Force on the Future of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. At our first meeting in September, 2006, Don Peschke, president and founder of August Home Publishing, said that for many years his company thought of itself as a magazine publisher, but he soon realized it is a multimedia company.

Peschke says August Home hires people who are specialists in producing content but also generalists who are adept at thinking of a variety of ways to communicate that information. The challenge of these people is in establishing and understanding the interconnection between all media so that readers, viewers, and listeners can get the information they want the way they want it, he said.

This means that editors are now editors-plus—as those of you whose jobs have grown far beyond a 40- or 50- hour workweek know all too well. Editors still must be well versed in the old-fashioned values of writing and editing within an ethical framework, but they also must have a broad understanding of all media and their audiences.

Peschke said new graduates must specialize in some specific skill—writing, editing, design, Web production—when they start their careers, but as they move into leadership positions, they must become generalists who can see the big multimedia picture.

There are few strictly print editors anymore. Most at least have some Web responsibility—blogging, creating linked content, writing and editing online pieces, developing value-added information. No matter what we call them, editors have to manage a multitude of content types and do so strategically. And creatively, intuitively, and with social and cultural engagement.

Those of us who love words prefer the title “editor,” of course, partly for its graceful simplicity, but also for the legacy it implies. We want those who head today’s magazines to follow in the steps of history's great editors like The New Yorker’s Harold Ross or Glamour's Ruth Whitney.

Titles aside, today’s editors will leave their own unique footprints in the magazine history books— most likely a mass of varied tango-like steps, representative of the media complexity that requires them to dance lively just to keep up. No matter what they are called.