PR-Bridge

I love Fortune magazine. It is a long-time love affair that I routinely share with colleagues, friends, and students. I even create writing assignments around special themed issues, such as “The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business” and “The Leadership Issue” in hopes that my students will begin their own relationship with the magazine.

With the March 3, 2008, issue, however, I am finding much less Fortune to love. The issue weighs in at a paultry 106 pages. More distressing than the lean look is the anemic 35 pages of content I counted. Can there really only be 35 pages of interesting business news in the world today?

I am not disparaging Fortune’s content, but rather the lack of articles. As a matter of fact, I like the recent design changes to make the magazine look better. The layout is fine. But, “where’s the beef?”

Perhaps the answer lies in the overall economic picture. Time-Warner faces tough times. The company recently announced additional cuts to its magazine division, which includes People, Time, Sports Illustrated, and Fortune. Last year, the company shuttered Business 2.0, the technology-focused magazine that somehow survived the dot.com bust, but died in the Web 2.0 revitalized world. Has anyone been able to sufficiently explain that one?

Certainly magazine ads (all advertising, really) are less appealing in a belt-tightening era. Many of the current issue’s advertisers are foreign companies: Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, RBS, etc.

Maybe the digital world is finally nailing the coffin of traditional magazines, as observers have predicted for the last decade or so. I teach pre-professional students, most of whom will make their careers in communications and my guess is that less than 10 percent of them have ever heard of Fortune, much less read it regularly. But, they know every detail of whatever pop culture scandal is current and they all read Perez Hilton. Marc Andreesen, Netscape founder and technology guru, initiated a “New York Times Deathwatch,” calling the company out for being…basically…obsolete in today’s age. [Ironically, reported in the link above by Josh Quittner, Fortune's Executive Editor, who does not seem to get that the same forces that place NYT on a deathwatch do so for Fortune.]

So, take a great, venerable magazine…add a struggling parent, declining readership, younger audiences that would rather watch YouTube videos, and a general economic downturn and you and I get a Fortune on life support.

This after the annual reup for my subscription offered me the “special subscriber rate” of $49.95 a year, when the book is routinely listed on sites across the Web at $29.95! [I must note that Fortune's customer service reps gave me the lower rate when I contacted them about this issue. But imagine how many people they got at $50 a year?]

Please Fortune, you’ve got great writers and a fascinating subject to illuminate. Figure out what gives. Just like any other organization, I believe part of the answer will be to reinvigorate the brand through reputation management and communications.  

Bill Sledzik, a public relations professor at my alma mater, Kent State University, recently posted an ode to his mentors and threw down the gauntlet to others to follow. I earned a Master’s degree in History at Kent, so I did not know Bill, but his blog is one of my favorites. I now count him as a great “virtual” friend…plus he’s a Steelers fan in the heart of Browns country, which makes him a brother of sorts.

My Mentors:

Lawrence S. Kaplan — Dr. Kaplan served as my Master’s thesis advisor at Kent State. I also took two classes of his, one on NATO and the other on Jefferson. I can still hear Dr. Kaplan’s soft New England lilt in my ear and remember his probing insights into the study of history. What I took away from my work with Dr. Kaplan served as the basis for the successes I have had since, particularly now that I am a college teacher: better critical thinking skills, improved writing ability, and an appreciation for his extraordinary kindness.

Anne Beirne — Many, many people have shown me kindness in my life, but none quite as much as Anne. She is a one-of-a-kind person, who brought me into the UpStart/Fleishman family and then into her own family. Anne is a phenomenal writer and served as a role model for just about every aspect of a career in communications. She is like a second mom to me, even though I now live across the country and don’t get to see her or her wonderful family.

Peter Magnani — Peter hired me at Bank of America in San Francisco and then over the next couple years, exerted a significant influence on my thinking about how one should conduct themselves in the corporate world. His engaging leadership, combined with marvelous storytelling and perfect business instincts, enabled those of us who worked for him to excel at our jobs. Peter also introduced me to his mentor — Ron Rhody — one of the founding fathers of public relations, in my opinion. I force students to read one of Rhody’s articles on the importance of communicators in maintaining an organization’s moral compass each semester. Here’s his Arthur W. Page Society Hall of Fame speech.

I’ve had a couple other important mentors, including Sidney R. Snyder, my AP History teacher who guided me to Kent State to study with Dr. Kaplan. His friendship means a great deal to me. Dr. James A. Kehl helped me appreciate and understand history at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Phil Sipiora, my dissertation advisor at the University of South Florida, is a wonderful mentor and guide as I traverse through the world of literature. His knowledge of Fitzgerald and Hemingway opened my eyes to the great authors in an entirely new way.

The School of Mass Communications (informal) golf team members have also mentored me on and off the course: Ken Killebrew, Larry Leslie, and Randy Miller.

I feel lucky to have had so many fantastic mentors in my career. I honor them by paying it forward whenever I can, particularly for my students as they begin their journeys.

I first delivered this top 10 list a couple years ago as a guest speaker at the Florida Public Relations Association — Tampa Chapter meeting. I’m revising it here for your consideration. Feel free to add more and share…

Top 10 Ways to Know You Work in PR

10. You divide your weekends into 15 minute billable chunks

9. You cringe when you hear jargon like “going forward,” “actionable,” “learnings,” and “incentivize”

8. Whenever someone writes you a letter, gives you a card, etc., you immediately begin editing it

7. Every four years, around presidential election time, you throw things at your TV when you hear “spin” for the millionth time

6. You have permanent scars on your tongue from biting it over and over again…whenever a lawyer has “edits” to your copy, an exec wants you to add some “verbiage” to a speech. The list goes on and on

5.  At some point in your career you’ve wondered what class it was as undergrads that journalists got their halos and/or capes

4. Your resume is a “living document”

3.  You’ve started drinking in the morning, explaining to your PR buddies, “Well, it’s got to be 5 pm somewhere in the world”

2. With a numb ear, you wearily hang up after a conference call and immediately say “What an *&((&&^!” (Insert expletive here)

1. You’ve been working in this profession for 10 years and your Mom still doesn’t know what you do