Q: How does an editor go about creating and maintaining audience trust?
A: For the B2B engineering sector, where I work, the rules are simple and never change. Only one person in the room matters: the reader. Editors must understand their readers’ working day. What are the pain points, past, present and, most importantly, future. Then get out into the market boots-on-the-ground and hands-on style. Hunt down the news surrounding the innovative solutions to those pain points. Discuss these solutions with domain experts, preferably face-to-face. Ask questions readers want answers to. Ask questions marketing managers and PR agencies don’t dare ask. Where possible, do this on-site, at exhibitions, at press conferences, on Zooms, all captured and shared in video and audio format. Then deliver the findings across all available channels. Do enough of this and it’s almost impossible not to be trusted.
Q: How has the role of editor changed in the past twenty years?
A: I can actually let you have a 40-year timeline. I remember the day I joined this industry. As a cub reporter, my editor’s words still ring in my ears: “Here are the keys to your company car. Here is your company charge card. Go into the world and bring me back the most interesting, useful and exclusive articles your readers could ever wish to read. Keep doing that and you will have a wonderful career ahead of you.”
Sadly, technical innovation scuppered that trajectory.
The best way I can describe the intervening 40 years is being boiled like a frog. Every month a new idea, technology, process, channel etc places a new demand on editors. Editors are typically resourceful, hardworking people who tend to accept these tasks without question. However, we have reached a breaking point. When I read the job specification of todays’ editors, I tend to chuckle. For many roles, I don’t believe there is a single person on the planet with the required depth and breadth of skills. I’ve kept a list of distinct ‘things I do as an editor’ and it’s now over 100 lines. Then there is team size. I started in a team of five working on a single title. Now, I edit three titles alone.
The good news is that a new team has arrived to solve all this and release editors to do what they do best. They are experts. They work round the clock. They work at lightning speed. They are AI agents.
Q: What are the key characteristics of a successful editor?
A: Editors need to: love their markets; connect to everyone; read everything; be everywhere; ask easy / difficult questions; listen to answers; make the complex simple; be boots-on-the-ground; aggregate insights; see into the future. I could go on.
Beyond all that, it’s also useful to smile, work hard, meet deadlines, be able to write a few words and look OK on camera.
Over 40 years, I don’t think I have ever met an editor I didn’t enjoy spending time with. However, they are all different. Some are workaholics, others laidback. Some are geeks, others technophobes. Some prefer a notepad, others code their own apps. It’s this diversity that makes every magazine different. The nature of the editor is what makes the title.
Q: Does the traditional church / state divide between ‘editorial’ and ‘commercial’ still apply?
A: Magazines are not charities although I fear too many people think they are. In markets where advertising and sponsorship are in abundance, there is a sufficiently large ‘delta T’ between income and expenditure for editorial departments to essentially operate independently within their budgets. Once this delta T tightens, the editorial department becomes strained.
On this point, an interesting line has just been crossed. There is much social media chatter by PR and marketing companies regarding trust and earned media. What earned media really means is high value coverage paid for by someone else. Likewise, the person adding most value to trust based content, the editor, is typically the least financially rewarded.
The problem is simply supply and demand. The volume of trust editors can project is limited. Thus, if agencies and their clients ‘go for gold’ on trust based earned media, many companies will be left ‘crying in their beer’.
The good news is, solutions are on their way. Firstly, my business is publishing an editorial covenant which explains how editorial staff maintain their reader focus and integrity while simultaneously being financially rewarded for the work they do. This will be publicly available and I welcome people to challenge it openly on social media so it can be refined for the good of all.
Secondly, the concept of paid, earned and owned media is now too restrictive. New categories of media are required that rebalance integrity and revenue. I will be announcing just such a thing shortly.
Q: To what extent should editors use AI?
A: Understandably, many people’s interaction with AI is ChatGPT or the like. I class this as a tool which I primarily use myself for exploring concepts and basic research. The ‘real’ AI is out of view to most people in the form of agents. Unlike tools, agents can be classed as team members. My honest opinion is that without AI agents by their side, there is a real danger that editors will be swept aside by the exponential productivity enhancements of those editors who become part of these virtual teams.
Designing, building and deploying my own AI agent team has been the most liberating event of my career. By outsourcing every non or low value task to an agent, I can finally return to the heart of the editorial process, being amongst my readers and contributors, while simultaneously increasing my output.
As a fun point, I am now the only human in a 16-person team, where the other 15 people are agents. I didn’t think I would be saying that 12 months ago.
The golden rule is to build a firewall between the agents and tasks considered as trust signals.
Q: What can B2B editors learn from B2C editors and vice versa?
A: I’m going to skip on this as across by career I’ve never worked for a B2C magazine. My best guess is that the roles are identical. The only difference being that B2C editors are partially paid via the cover price.
Q: What’s in the pipeline from Intelligent Flatplan?
A: The Intelligent Flatplan has been serving the publishing industry for over 20-years. What our customers want is a ‘steady hand on the tiller’ which is our focus. However, two decades of experience developing software for publishing workflows has triggered a project into the role of AI agents in future, novel publishing processes.
This parallel project has reached production prototype and moves to real-world test this week. I’ve been tracking AI in this sector for three years, working with it for two and developing agents for six months.
Looking at the trajectory, 2026 is a pivotal year. Publishers will need to decide whether to embrace or reject AI. Embracing it might mean writing new business plans and abandoning sunk costs. Rejecting it might be even more expensive.
I’ve placed my bet and time will tell.
About us
Intelligent Flatplan gives every member of a publishing team a real-time view of their issues as they pass through the production process.
There are plenty of ways to flatplan a magazine or newspaper: pencil and paper, spreadsheet, InDesign file or even a word processor document. Each is valid but has its pain points including version control, security, shareability, inflexibility, permissions, human error and more. Digital flatplanning is designed to resolve all these limitations in a simple, affordable, easy to use way. Digital flatplans provide a ‘single point of truth’ throughout the production process, foster a collaborative working environment and encourage efficient teamwork.
Web: www.intelligentflatplan.com
Email: michelle.barrett@intelligentflatplan.com
Tel: 07801 813 226
