Explaining the very eclectic Smithsonian

'The magazine has long prided itself—and I think correctly—on doing stories that people won’t find anywhere else. But the stories I want to do might resonate more with things that are going on
the world.'

Explaining the very
eclectic Smithsonian

New editor Carey Winfrey on the sum of its parts

By Jamie L. Jones

    It turns out that the old advice given to speechwriters just might work for magazines, too: Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve said.
    Smithsonian magazine never has a problem saying it.
    In an American magazine that simultaneously embraces the Bhutanese yeti and the Italian Renaissance, "it" could be anything. That’s not the magazine's biggest obstacle.
    The real problem is that Smithsonian hasn't been able to sum it up, to explain, especially to advertisers, what it is all about.
    The result is that a magazine that might be called "general interest" or "special interest" has suffered from being filed under "no interest" because no one knows what it is about.
    Ad pages are off in Smithsonian, but not disastrously off. Circulation is holding steady around two million, with a 99 percent subscription rate.
    There’s no crisis at Smithsonian, but the misunderstood magazine runs the risk of accumulating even more dust.
    The news at Smithsonian is that its new editor, Carey Winfrey, thinks he knows what the magazine is about, and he’s ready to say so.
    "You can call it eclectic, you can call it esoteric, you can call it hominy grits, but what we’re about is doing stories in some depth that are beautifully photographed, about subjects that interest people who like to keep up with what’s going on in the world, but who are willing to learn things that they didn’t know they would be interested in," says Winfrey.
    Winfrey defends the magazine’s eclectic reach and traces that eclecticism to magazine founder Ed Thompson, who came from Life magazine and the old-school tradition of general interest magazines.
    While he acknowledges and appreciates those roots, Winfrey also says Smithsonian can hold its own on an increasingly vertical newsstand.
    "It is a special-interest magazine in that it identifies a unique constituency," says Winfrey.
     "Our constituency is one of people for whom learning is a lifelong endeavor in the way that motorcycle-riding is a lifelong endeavor—an avocation."
    Winfrey doesn’t have a problem with esotericism, either, but he would like to make the stories more timely.
    "The magazine has long prided itself—and I think correctly—on doing stories that people won’t find anywhere else. But the stories I want to do might resonate more with things that are going on the world."
    An upcoming primer on genetic engineering is Winfrey’s example: It educates people about something they might have seen in the news, and it fits into the magazine’s tri-cornered range of coverage: science, culture and history.
    The question now is whether the magazine can find and keep its learning-obsessed readers and whether advertisers will buy them as a valid constituency.
    Winfrey takes up the question with a long editor’s to-do list.
    Readers might see more—and possibly shorter—stories. They’ll see new departments, and more book excerpts, dressed-up display copy and catchy photographs.
    But the most noticeable addition so far is cover text. Smithsonian’s practically wordless cover was symptomatic and symbolic of the magazine’s overall ambiguity.
    "I have committed the heresy of putting some very discreet cover lines on the magazine—not because I want readers to have thinner thighs in 30 days, but because it is the editor’s job to get the reader into the magazine," says Winfrey.
   "Pointing readers to stories in the magazine is not only an interesting thing for an editor to do, but an essential part of the job."
   Those cover lines might pick up the pace of single-copy sales.
   Winfrey has said before that the magazine will try to focus on the specifically American cultural experience.
   Now he says that an American magazine need not limit itself to native shores.
    "I sometimes immodestly say that my goal is to make nothing less than the great American magazine—but does that mean that we would never talk about Australian saltwater crocodiles? No."
   Smithsonian publisher Amy Wilkins characterizes the Smithsonian reader as highly educated and affluent.
   The readership is evenly split among its male and female readers. Median reader age is 48.
    Cultural activities and travel are shared interests among readers.
   Ad pages are down 7.9 percent year-to-date, from 462.5 to 426. But ad revenue has grown by 4.9 percent in the same time period.
    Top advertising categories are travel, finance and automotive. Wilkins says she would like to expand its travel advertising—a task greatly complicated by the terrorist attacks.
    As to the magazine’s relationship with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington—another mysterious element—Winfrey compares it to The New Yorker’s relationship with New York City. The chamber of commerce in New York does not publish the magazine, but its readers are somewhat interested in what goes on there.
    Smithsonian is editorially autonomous, but Winfrey says that writers and editors often use and are inspired by its resources. Magazine subscribers become members of the Institution. The two have advertisers and sponsors in common.

-Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life

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