Rotary Editors meet in Evanston

The one clear takeaway from the World Magazine Press Editors biennial meet was the need for all the 33 regional magazines to adopt a more uniform look and feel, particularly on the magazine covers.

Editors and Editorial board members from various regional magazines came together for the meet at the Rotary International Headquarters in Evanston where they exchanged notes, shared best practices and did some brainstorming on the road ahead.

In his videographed message, RI President Ian Riseley said, “Having a regular magazine on Rotary issues is important for our 1.2 million plus members around the world. As we mandate that Rotarians pay for the magazine, it is important to maintain a high standard and give value for money.”

Congratulating the regional editors for “the quality of magazines that you all bring out”, he said that he reviews most of the regional magazines every month “and I believe, as do most Rotarians, that the standard has improved significantly over the years.” Of course for the magazines published in languages other than English, he just looked at the pictures “but even those pictures are of superior quality”.

Riseley said that quality magazines also served the purpose of representing Rotary to the non-Rotary world and ensuring “we have an excellent public image and a well-regarded brand”.

I review most of the regional magazines every month and I believe, as do most Rotarians, that the standard has improved significantly over the years.
— RI President Ian Riseley

Over the years, the number of magazines had expanded “and I understand that more than half the members now receive a magazine that is specific to their region. That makes our magazines even more relevant to our membership.”

Much of the discussion at the conference was on the possibility of digital taking over from print in the coming years, but there were strong voices in support of print, including from John Bernaden, RI Communications Committee Vice-Chair, and moderator of the conference, who said that last year alone 700 new print magazines were started in North America alone. A friend of his had started a magazine two years ago just outside Chicago; “it goes to multi-­million dollar homes, but he told me I don’t think people read it. It’s a coffee table magazine and a status symbol because if you have this magazine people think you are in the data base of the wealthy!”

Addressing the editors, RI General Secretary John Hewko said Rotary had 33 magazines printed in 22 languages in 130 countries and reached 700,000 Rotarians. He urged the editors to make the content of the magazine “so innovative, compelling and of a high quality that even though the subscription is mandatory, members should willingly and gladly buy the magazine.”

One of the important issues magazines should address was flexibility in club meetings. Even though the CoL had allowed such flexibility, many Rotary clubs did not really understand the concept of flexibility or how it worked in practice. As the RI President’s rep, he had visited many places where clubs thought that flexibility meant saving cost by reducing the number of meetings! Others had no idea what they should do to embrace flexibility.

But on the other hand, many clubs were adopting innovative approaches in embracing flexibility but this was not really known to everybody so the magazines should strive to write about clubs that had really introduced the flexi component in their club meetings.

The onus was on the magazines to educate Rotarians that there is no “Rotary police” watching what they do in their club meetings or how they do it, as long as the clubs continue to grow and make a difference to their communities. It would be a good idea to choose model clubs in different countries that best demonstrated the flexibility concept and write about them. Such models could be replicated by other clubs, said Hewko.

Brad Howard, RI Communications Committee Chair and co-moderator of the conference, said the regional magazines were the “primary voice” of what Rotary does across the world. For that a brand is very essential and the communications department had started “our brand exercise and went into the marketplace for a basic understanding of our brand essence.” The result was the ‘people of action’ campaign, “which is our core essence and fundamentally what we really are.” But RI depended hugely on the regional magazines to tell both Rotarians and non-Rotarians “who we are and what we do”.

The regional magazines were “an extraordinary network” which had an opportunity to come up with innovative content. And since the subscription to a Rotary magazine was mandatory, its quality levels should be maintained at a high level.

David Alexander, Chief Communications Officer, addressed the primary focus points of the seminar: improve quality and messaging, build a holistic approach to communication, define and use tools to keep our readers close, collaborate, and continue to move in the direction of providing a communications tool that that Rotarians need and value.