MinOnline :: Min Magazine :: Hottest Reinventions

Hottest Reinventions
Jeremy Greenfield & Courtney Barnes

Comments |

Print |

Email |

Archives |

Del.icio.us |

Digg |

RSS

Woman's Day

Publisher: Hachette Filipacchi
Frequency: Monthly
New Concept: A renovated partner Web site that offers interactive features to encourage a relationship between the viewer and content
Target Audience: Women, age 18-54

Questions with Woman's Day editor-in-chief: Jane Chesnutt

â‘ What do you consider the single most important achievement your magazine has accomplished?
Finding an important, relevant niche for a woman’s service magazine. We rebranded this year under the tagline “Live Well Every Day.” Putting a special emphasis on health, which has long been a strong point for us. In the process, we also streamlined our structure. The result is that while WD still stands for its traditional values and continues to offer a wide range of superior information, it now also has a sharpened focus and point of view.

â‘¡ What was the most important hurdle you overcame?
There really wasn’t one. The concept was such a natural one for us that everything came together very easily.

â‘¢ What was the biggest pleasant surprise?
I don’t think we ever get over the awe we feel at the power of the magazine and just how strongly readers identify with it. On a grand scale, we’ve been able to do things like help start the women’s heart health movement, which just keeps gaining momentum. But the best is probably how we touch readers’ lives in very specific ways—we know that because they tell us.

â‘£ What is the biggest challenge you are facing today?
The information universe is rapidly expanding, and our challenge is to continuously provide fresh content beyond the magazine—for the Web site, weekly e-newsletters, mobile club and our soon-to-launch mobile Web site.

â‘¤ Describe your magazine as a human being.
She’s busy, nice and very, very smart about how she lives her life. She’s a sponge for ideas, from super-quick recipes to health tips to time management advice. She’s the kind of woman who reads nutrition labels, doesn’t put off making a doctor’s appointment when she’s got a funny symptom, and makes cupcakes for new neighbors. She shops at the mall, but also online. Family is hugely important to her, and so is her own self-fulfillment. The Woman’s Day reader truly tries to “Live Well Every Day.”

â‘¥ What advice do you offer to someone wanting to reinvent a magazine?
Too much to offer here.

â‘¦ Finish this sentence: In 2011, your magazine will be….
...A fully integrated part of our reader’s day, accessible in many platforms.

Time

Publisher: Time, Inc.
Frequency: Weekly
New Concept: The overhaul includes four new sections, a smaller cover logo and more short news items
Target Audience: Anyone who can read

Questions with Time managing editor: Richard Stengel

â‘ What do you consider the most important achievement your magazine has accomplished in today’s marketplace?
The magazine has a new look and structure. Every issue of TIME tells a larger story about the world we live in, and we wanted to create a design that would best present that story. It's part of a series of changes, beginning with the shift this past January of getting the magazine to you before the weekend, that we are making to create a TIME that is more meaningful and more forward looking.

â‘¡ What was the biggest pleasant surprise?
Even as we modernize the design, we are also harking back to our roots. In thinking about the redesign, we looked at issues of TIME going all the way back to 1926. We've tried to take the DNA of TIME and adapt it to the 21st century. Over the past few months, we've been evolving toward our new look, and our hope is that it feels both new and classic. We are also further integrating TIME and TIME.com by adding contextual links in many stories that will help you locate sources, related blogs and columns on the site. And, we've inaugurated a political blog on TIME.com called "Swampland," where our Washington correspondents weigh in daily on what's going on in the nation's capital.

â‘¢ What is the biggest challenge you are facing today?
In his 1941 essay "The American Century," TIME co-founder Henry Luce wrote that Americans "are faced with great decisions." As a nation and as a people, we are once again faced with consequential decisions. From the war in Iraq to the most wide-open presidential race in generations to how we educate our children for the 21st century, we will make decisions in the next few years that will affect all of us for many years to come. TIME's job is to outline the choices ahead and help you make those decisions.

â‘£ What advice do you offer to someone wanting to reinvent a magazine?
Every redesign is a beginning, not an end.

IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF MIN MAGAZINE

SEARCH PREVIOUS ISSUES

Post a Comment