A final question Bill Sweetland needed to answer to complete his critque of the slick corporate magazine was about the writing, and the headlines. He had already talked a lot about the writing. So:

Let me say a few words about your headlines: They are not very good.

Look at the headlines in the Spring 2009 issue, starting from the front of the magazine:

Voices for change

A fresh approach to learning

Looking to the future (Groan! The staple of editors at a loss for words)

From the CEO

Fit for life

My life

Good deeds

Shortcuts

You can do better than this. In truth, many of your headlines are lifeless because there is literally nothing in the story worth a real headline, for example, the three stories about learning and strategy, “Voices for change,” “A fresh approach to learning,” and “Looking at the future.” The solution: Write a story in which you include some fresh fact or idea that begs for a snappy, short, readable headline.

And then Bill wound up the critique with a barrage of good questions, a bevy of difficult truths and host of hard-to-digest bits of advice.

What are the chances you could persuade executives to allow you to do more with the publication? Could you get an executive-employee dialogue going in the publication about company issues? Could you do stories on company topics? More stories about individual employees, stories that inspire their fellow workers to think more about their jobs? Is the phrase “social media” mere foul language to your bosses?

There is no substitute for good-quality, long, thoughtful stories about your huge corporation and all of its departments, its “silos,” its business initiatives and processes, its flawed structures and workflows, its misunderstandings and business triumphs, its departmental jealousies and remedies for this, its industry, its competition, its plans for expansion, its long-term goals or strategy. Every part of the subjects I’ve just mentioned is just as exciting as, or more exciting than, stories about what individual employees do with their free time. I know that that will be hard for you to believe, but give it a chance.

Stay away from general stories that lack a male or female hero. Concentrate on making the company better by writing about it as a business, and cut back drastically on the stories about employees having interesting fun, and, for that matter, stop writing so much about workers doing good for their communities. And don’t forget always that your job is to make your gigantic corporation explicable to and understandable by your own employees. That is far more important to employees than making them feel good about themselves or making them proud of the charity work they do, and in the end, such an attitude is far less condescending.

Tune in tomorrow when I share the editor's response to Bill's broadside—and a good argument for the usefulness of the unreasonable critic.

Another question the Ragan Recognition Awards posed had to do with design. The editor of the gorgeous employee magazine must have thought he at least had Bill Sweetland here. Not so fast.

I am only telling you what you already know when I say that your magazine is put together beautifully. But mere elegance and good taste and restraint can wear on the nerves intolerably, unless there is also an abundance of ideas, passion for work, solid content, and even a deep tinge of convention-upsetting, mold-breaking content to boot in the printed words. Beware of looking too good! I mean this.

Passion for the company's work! That is what is missing in your design as well as in your news articles, Mr. R., and until you get this in the publication you will be spinning your wheels, no matter how much praise you get from Senior VPs who don’t know any better telling you that your magazine must feature the “human side of our employees.” Until you concentrate on the idea or ideas you want to get across to employees about the business they’re in, your magazine will lack that idiosyncrasy, that spark that sets it apart from the standard corporate print offering.

Tomorrow, Sweetland turns to the headlines. Duck.

After telling the editor of the sophisticated, slick corporate magazine how unsatisfying his articles are (see yesterday's post), Bill Sweetland attempted a diagnosis:

Perhaps the problem lies in the summary of the publication that you provided to us at Ragan when you sent your entry in. In that statement, you spoke of one of your editorial goals:

“Managing word counts (e/g., so pages do not become overcrowded)."

Mr. R., in your case this natural part of an editor’s duties has become a hampering obsession. I can’t tell you how strongly I disagree with your “philosophy.” You should give every story the exact number of words it needs, no more and no less. The second you decide to relegate the meaning and significance of a story to a place behind the look of the pages of your publication, you lose any chance of truly reaching and changing employees’ minds, to say nothing of inspiring them to think differently about their work.

And this story, “Looking to the Future,” exemplifies this unfortunate editorial bias in favor of the spare, elegant, minimalist corporate look as against going on at length for the sake of explaining complex ideas fully. Despite what you may think, Mr. R., your goal as editor should NOT be to raise readership to 90% for every issue of the publication. No!

Your goal ought to be to appeal to the minds of the 15 to 20% of employees who read, think, and lead the non-reading, non-reflecting other 80-85% of the workforce. Your articles ought to make this minority of doers and leaders think and reflect more about their jobs and the direction of the company. Almost every article ought to make the People Who Count at the Company think wider, deeper, and farther afield about the business you’re in.

Get rid of the Biz-Lite reporting approach you favor now in the comparatively few articles you write about what employees do at work, and substitute full, detailed, frank, idea-filled reporting about complex business issues and problems, written through the eyes of one or two interesting employee personalities. Make your articles much longer, and don’t worry so obsessively about “Managing word counts.” If it is a boss of yours who believes he or she has editorial insight superior to yours in this matter, tell him or her that Bill Sweetland at Ragan KNOWS better and brought you to book convincingly on this very point.

Meet me back here tomorrow, when we'll learn how Mrs. Lincoln enjoyed the decor at Ford's Theatre.