As much as I love reading praise of my own work, I spent some time exploring the other stories Dale calls attention to on his blog. My favorite find among the many gems was a piece by former Major Leaguer Doug Glanville for the Pennsylvania Gazette. The story chronicles Glanville’s attempts to find concentration as a hitter by “going blank” in his thinking. It also winds its way into his personal life and identity in a very moving way. Well worth your time, especially if you’re a baseball fan.

I first encountered Glanville’s writing last year in a New York Times op-ed he did about former NFL star Steve McNair’s tragic death. Without glossing over McNair’s mistakes or sounding like an ungrateful multimillionaire, Glanville offered insight into the struggles of a retired athlete. I’ve been a sports fan my entire life, but he raised questions and issues that had never crossed my mind, and he did so with unexpected grace and intelligence. Glanville makes me proud to be a fan of both baseball and journalism.
Photo by Flickr user Pete Prodoehl

This sweet old man and his model of the UT Tower may not be a strategic priority, but they make a great story.

As managing editor of a higher education alumni magazine and news blog, I spend a lot of time thinking about story ideas. What are those brilliant topics/people/photographs/insights that will get readers excited, teach them something new or make them grateful they’re still in contact with the school?

Our editorial team goes round and round on what angle to take, the point of the story, the appropriate tone. Many of these stories require hours of research, interviews, reporting, editing and art direction.

And even after all that care and hard work, sometimes the story falls flat. No one reads it. Or they read it and think it’s a waste of time.

And then there are those “stories” that unfold like this:

1. An alumnus who graduated loooong ago writes you a letter and includes a printed photograph. The letter explains that the alumnus, now retired, finally achieved his dream of carving a model of a beloved university symbol, and he thought you’d like to see a photo of it.
2. You think it’s a sweet letter and photo, and your editorial pace has slowed down for the summer, so you decide to post it. (First of course you have to scan the photo.)
3. You quietly post it on a Friday and send one tweet about it.
4. It quickly becomes one of the most-read stories of the week and earns 4 comments.
5. The UT Facebook page posts the item and gets 260 Likes and 61 adoration-filled comments.

Sweet old man with school spirit: 1. Fancy story planning: 0.

Lesson learned? If you’re lucky enough to work for an organization that has millions of devoted followers, don’t forget to nurture that spirit and loyalty, even if it means you’re not doing a Big Important Story. And if you don’t have millions of devoted followers, what kinds of stories can you tell  to create some?

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Thanks to this phenomenon called the Internet (I think it’s gonna be big), I also oversee the publication of our magazine online. Since it’s nearly all the same content and we’ve already completed the editing and proofreading, it should be no sweat to get the thing online, right?

Wrong. Not having a web team devoted solely to the magazine, it was always a scramble. But for our most recent issue, we changed gears and used the WordPress blogging platform to host and publish the magazine.

I’m happy to say we’re thrilled with the result. I know a lot of print magazine editors are struggling with how to publish online, so I decided to chronicle our process here. This isn’t meant to be an all-encompassing explanation of WordPress-hosted magazines, but simply a case study of our experience. Hopefully it’s helpful to others facing similar issues.

Where We Started

First, a look at how our magazine Web presence has evolved:

1998 – No images, single column of text

1999 – Thumbnail images, departments sidebar

2006 – Larger images, all content on front page

These sites were perfectly fine, and could even be considered somewhat advanced, given that many university magazines aren’t online at all or only exist on the web in PDF format. But there were key factors that just weren’t working.

Old Model

Dependent on web team
I’m not a web person, so our web team had to do all the work to create static html pages. But since they weren’t familiar with each issue’s content, I had to do extra work to specify what I wanted for every aspect of every page: urls, tagging, keywords, descriptions, title tags, photo selection, etc. Also, the magazine site was not a priority for them, so the whole process lacked a certain enthusiasm on both sides.

Time-intensive
All of that coding and creation of pages was tedious work, and it had to happen twice a year. Then, once the pages were up, I had to go in and proofread everything all over again. Going back and forth with a web designer over every typo, broken link, forgotten title tag or awkward formatting was a massive time-suck.

Little connection to print version, not very visual
The old version didn’t feel like an online magazine, and, except for a small image of our flag at the top of the page, didn’t feel like our magazine.

Lack of flexibility
Because it was such a laborious process, once the magazine was up, we just left it alone. No one bothered to think about ways to update it more regularly, because it just didn’t seem like a good use of time.

No reader engagement
Did you love or hate that article? Do you have some insight that might shed more light on the topic? Too bad, keep it to yourself. Our old model had no way for users to leave instant feedback and comments.

New Model

Using WordPress to host our magazine content radically changed both the publishing process and the final product.

2009 – Large images, modules highlighting each department, multimedia elements

We’re in control
Uploading content to a WordPress blog requires very little technical know-how. Because it creates pages for me, I was able to upload all the content myself and in a more timely manner. And the web team got to be free of a project they didn’t want. 

Very visual, more magaziney
We chose the Branford template, which was designed specifically for online magazines. Big images, customizable accent colors and a sidebar to serve as the table of contents. Now it looks like a magazine and the overall impression is more closely connected to the look and feel of the print version.

Easy updates and search engine optimization
We only publish the print version twice a year, but we’d like the online magazine to include more dynamic content. With the WordPress platform acting as a CMS, it’s a snap to post new content or make adjustments to existing articles.

And the WordPress SEO tools help our articles turn up higher in search results. Search engines have accounted for more than a quarter of our site visits, and readers have found us using more than 800 different keywords. Hello, new audience!

Built-in templates, tools and and add-ons
Because there are thousands of WordPress templates–also called themes–available (many for free, including the one we used), you can create a snazzy site without starting from scratch. And if you think of a feature you want, either on the back end (like spam protection) or the front end (like a tag cloud), there’s probably a simple plug-in you can install to make it happen. Reinvention of the wheel not necessary.

Interactive
The built-in commenting feature makes it easy for readers to respond to content. Ok, so we’ve only had seven comments so far, but that’s seven more than we’ve ever had before!

So that takes care of some of the strategy and explanation of why we used WordPress. Now how on earth does it work, and what if I don’t know anything about technology? Read Part II, where I answer some FAQs about skill level, time, cost and other factors. It’s also got a list of other online magazines using WordPress and some links to help find a theme for your WordPress magazine.