By Victor Maze
In today’s noisy marketplace, it is difficult to make your business stand out from the crowd. Consumers are bombarded countless times a day with choices about how to spend their money and time. Thanks to modern technology, advertisements and sales pitches come flying at us from every direction; oversized billboards, pinging emails and texts, slick TV commercials, and flashing web videos all compete for our constant attention.
It isn’t enough to offer a quality product and rely on its merits to sell itself to the public. Today, all businesses, from small mom-and-pop operations to major corporations, must learn to tell stories and build relationships with their customers. Branding is no longer just about having a sharp logo or witty tagline; people want to support brands that make them feel good about themselves and the world. Whether that means choosing a product because it makes them look cool or because the company that produces it gives back to a particular charity, today’s consumers use their dollars to make statements about themselves and their values.
As a business leader, this is a lot to live up to, and the pressure can feel overwhelming. But what if I told you there is a group of people who have been breaking through the noise to have their messages heard for decades? And that, taking it a step further, these marketing geniuses have created brands that people not only respect and trust but also develop relationships with?
If you think these visionaries sound like leadership unicorns who couldn’t possibly exist in the real world, think again. They are real, alive, and walking among us. They are magazine editors.
Wait a second, aren’t magazines dead?
Although magazine brands that successfully adapted to the digital age continue to thrive, there is no denying that many of the world’s most well-known publications have stopped producing or reduced the frequency of their print editions.
Broadly speaking, declines in print advertising began during the Great Recession, which started at the end of 2007—the same year that Apple launched the iPhone. These two events and their aftermath created a double whammy for magazine publishing, as layoffs became more frequent and continued for the next decade and beyond. But all those unemployed editors had to go somewhere. Instead of heading back into a media bubble that had fewer jobs to offer, many of them took their skills and infiltrated the halls of corporate America, finding new homes in the content and marketing departments of companies ranging from Netflix to Nike.
And the need for their skills never went away. If anything, the demand has only increased, as all brands—from shiny tech start-ups to centuries-old banking institutions—seek new and authentic ways to connect with consumers. It’s not an easy thing to do, but for editors, it comes naturally. With some forethought and practice, you too can adopt these skills in your own business.
5 Ways to be Curious Like an Editor
One of those key skills is curiosity. As trained journalists, editors know how to harness their natural curiosity to create a stronger story—and a better product:
1. Editors never stop asking “How?” and “Why?” Stories don’t come to writers fully baked and ready to print. They usually start out as a nagging question, as a general thought about how things might be, or as a suspicion that there is more than meets the eye going on in business, politics, sports, the arts—you name it. The journalist’s curiosity—and that of their editor—is what gives the story its initial premise, getting more fleshed out as the journalist starts down a trail, talking to people, following up on leads, and repeatedly, over and over, asking the same two questions: “How?” and “Why?”
Childlike curiosity about everything in life can lead to great discoveries, both in journalism and in business. In her Harvard Business Review article, “The Business Case for Curiosity,” Francesca Gino gives the example of Edwin Land, who invented the Polaroid camera after his young daughter was impatient to see a photo he had just snapped. When he explained that the film had to be processed, she wondered aloud, “Why do we have to wait for the picture?”
In business, digging into the why may be the fastest way to get to the underlying cause, but it is also a natural response for the best reporters and editors, who always strive to answer readers’ questions before they have them.
2. Editors listen. Sometimes in conversations—and often in business meetings—many of us “half listen,” while using the other half of our attention to think about the next point we want to make. As a result, it’s easy to miss a key piece of information, which may lead to errors down the road. Even in the moment, this inattention could result in a missed opportunity, either to ask a clarifying question or to formulate a next-level idea that sprouts from a seed someone else planted.
Good journalists know there is no point asking a question if you aren’t going to listen to the response. In some ways, they are like therapists, asking open-ended questions and not being afraid to sit through a stretch of silence as the other person takes a moment to respond. When you give your subject a chance to elaborate on a topic in their own way, at their own pace, unexpected answers will often surface, taking the story in a new direction. Leaders in any industry can also be well served by following this approach, whether with their current customers, their target customers, or even their employees.
When one study asked executives what they would do to solve an organizational crisis stemming from both financial and cultural issues, most leaders said they would take immediate action to stop financial bleeding, while introducing initiatives to refresh the culture; only a handful suggested they would ask questions first, before imposing their ideas on others. In her Harvard Business Review article, Francesca Gino notes: “Management books commonly encourage leaders assuming new positions to communicate their vision from the start rather than ask employees how they can be most helpful. It’s bad advice.”
3. Editors don’t take things at face value. For many years, there was an assumption that what you read in a reputable newspaper or magazine was the unvarnished truth, unless you were reading an editorialized article, which was clearly labeled as an opinion piece. Although the rise of the internet and social media has brought about many positive changes, with the proliferation of millions of new voices, it can now be harder to separate truth from unsubstantiated “facts” or opinion.
That’s where skepticism comes into play. Reporters have long been the watchdogs of society, and being somewhat skeptical of any “facts” presented to them is ultimately the best way to ensure accuracy and avoid their own implicit bias, while also holding those in power accountable for the statements that they make.
In his Forbes article “How to Use Skepticism to Lead More Innovatively (Without Being a Jerk),” writer and entrepreneur Shane Snow says that the best leaders tend to be “Skeptical Optimists,” who question all information and assumptions that are presented to them, while still assuming that the best is possible. The people who model this counterintuitive blend of two seemingly opposite personality traits often doubt the status quo and ask the paradigm-shifting questions needed to make monumental changes. In this group, Snow puts a number of professionals, including the world’s top innovators, inventors, and—not surprisingly—journalists.
4. Editors are always looking to improve. By definition, the job of an editor is to improve writing and storytelling at every phase of the process. When a writer pitches the idea for a story, an experienced editor will often “Yes, and …” the original pitch, accepting the writer’s premise and next-leveling it with a new angle or twist—and for good reason.
Good editors anticipate any questions, concerns, or objections a reader may have and address them head-on. The status quo is not good enough; copy can always be improved by asking a few more questions or clarifying certain points. To have an editor read a 500-word story and ask a writer to answer 10 new questions—but still keep the story at that word count—requires further writing and editing gymnastics to trim the fat. It isn’t easy, but this process of adding more pertinent info while removing the unnecessary bits makes for the most satisfying (and efficient) storytelling.
The concept of taking someone’s pitch and asking questions to improve on it can lead to a much better final product, no matter the industry. At Pixar, writers and directors are trained to do this through a variation on the “Yes, and …” technique that they call “plussing,” which allows these creatives to build on one another’s ideas in a positive way that doesn’t completely discount the original concept. Instead of rejecting a sketch of the Toy Story character Woody, a director might soften a critique by saying, “I like Woody’s eyes, and what if we …?” This line of creative inquiry invites someone else to jump in with another “plus,” encouraging active listening and respect for others’ ideas, while fostering creativity.
5. Editors’ curiosity helps them spot trends. Good writers and editors aren’t just listening when they ask someone a question in an interview; they are always listening, reading, and watching to see what people are talking about. At the same time, frequent contact with a wide range of experts on the topics they cover allows editors to see what common threads keep coming up, which could lead to spotting the next big trend.
The funny thing about trends is that, once they are pointed out, they become obvious, something anyone might have noticed all along. For that reason, successful trendspotting is not just about seeing the trend but about what you do with that realization. Good editors are skilled at recognizing patterns in the world around them and writing about how these patterns may constitute a broader movement in society.
Editors know how to look for patterns in the fields they cover and in our culture at large, using both data and empirical evidence to spot—and even name—trends that others might miss.
#LeadLikeAnEditor
#EditorsMaketheBestHires
— excerpted with edits from Lead Like an Editor (Be Amazed Media, December 2024) by Victor Maze. You can buy your copy at LeadLikeAnEditor.com.
Where Are The Editorial Jobs?