John Evans, doing it the Networked Magazine way

An Interview by Thord Daniel Hedengren

Syntagma Media is the blog network that is in the middle of re-branding itself as a Network Magazine. If you’re a regular reader of blogosphere news organs such as The Blog Herald, then you’ve probably read about Syntagmas’ plans. Either in actual news posts, or from the boss man himself; John Evans.

So why are Syntagma skipping the blog network term, and flirting with print magazine terminology? Will this make it easier for them to brand and focus their content, perhaps even getting it to attract a much wider scope of readers.

Let’s see what John has to say, shall we?

First of all, you changed the rainbow header that has become such a telling Syntagma sign. What were the reactions?
Generally, very good. Nobody has yet asked for the old one back, which is always a good sign. It was a year old anyway and needed refreshing in the light of our future plans.

While we’re on the topic, how important do you think layout is for a blog to succeed? The Syntagma blogs are more or less modified versions of the classic Kubrick theme for Wordpress, correct?
That’s true, Thord, and that was deliberate. Syntagma Media is a one-man business at present which means I have limited time for maintenance and rejigging designs. Also I’m not a coder, although I’ve learnt to navigate around the Wordpress code, so I wanted something straightforward and basic as a platform.

The design element comes in the ornamentation: graphic blocks that make up the headers and parts of the sidebar. I like bright splashes of color against lots of white space and that’s our style. It’s what people are used to from the print world, particularly in magazines, and that’s what they get from us.

I’ve often thought of bringing in a designer and had lots of offers, some for free. But, while I admire the information architecture of some of the best of them - Pearson, Rundle, Bleikamp etc. - I don’t always go with the graphical and design elements produced. So I’ve had to import my own ideas and improve my skills in the process.

Clive Allen now does most of the new headers which gives a different tone to some of them. We’re gradually developing a style of our own and jacking up the quality of presentation. It would have been easy to buy all that in at the beginning, but you can spend a lot of money, while not arriving at what you want. And I’m a frugal sort.

We did it the hard way and learned a lot in the process. Our portal pages will be different, though.

While I applaud your choice to take it into your own hands, don’t you feel that being attached to such a neutral layout profile as the Kubrick template hurts the Syntagma brand a bit?
That will change over time, and I’m currently looking at variations on Chris Pearson’s Cutline Wordpress theme. But it’s no good showing all the design elements before you’ve got the infrastructure worked out. It’s a long process developing all this, and I don’t want to show our hand too soon.

You’ve preached (well, sorta) about your Network Magazine concept for quite some time now. When will we see it?
It’s basically in place. The first three Network (strictly: Networked) Magazines now have names and inventory assigned to them.

They are: Allusionz (Arts & Philosophies); LifeTimes (Lifestyles & Celebrities); and 21st-century Phi (Sciences & Future Technologies).

The portal pages have yet to appear, so they’re not showing up in their full glory yet. It’s taking a lot of work to get them right. It would be nice to have them all up for Christmas, but I’m not promising that. January is the outer limit for that to happen.

In February, we’ll be launching three more Network Magazines: on Mind, Body, Spirit; Finance & Investment; and, if we can get something akin to Autoblog together, an Automotive mag too.

And you’ll base all this on blogs in your present network?
Partly, but we’ll need another 50 to 60 websites to make up the whole. That means roughly doubling up on what we’ve got.

50+ blogs make up your network, and as I understand it you plan to divide them in three different “magazine channels”. Still, that’s a lot of blogs per channel, how will you cope with the content flow?
We currently have 14 authors working for Syntagma Media (this number varies a bit, but is growing strongly upwards). I’m finding it harder and harder to create the time to post on my own sites (still around 9), so that’s another problem to be solved.

In terms of content flow, it just keeps coming. We’ll use an “anchor” system on the portals - essentially an editor who’ll choose a list of best current posts from each magazine and put up the headlines and extracts on the portal. This, in my view, is better than the technological “river of news” type of presentation which is so denatured. We might even have Guest Anchors, with photos, choosing the posts daily to add a human touch.

As for numbers of sites per magazine, I think 20 to 30 are ideal. We’re aiming for 20 right now, but that’s a moveable feast. Twenty sites per mag is a manageable number and will give depth to the content presence.

So less is more on the portal pages then. Still, having editors for the various magazines, as well as authors for the blogs, it’s becoming a pretty big organization? Will you recruit for it or how does the business model look for the magazines in particular?
Not necessarily. There’ll be lots of features on the page and some advertising. The editing tasks will be quite light and will mainly be done centrally as they are now.

As I said, you’ve pushed the Network Magazine concept, almost like a re-branding campaign. You’ve previously stated that this is due to the general publics’ uncertainty with blogs networks as a concept, could you tell us a bit about the difficulties that brought this re-branding on?
Ever since I started a “blog network” I was aware that the skills of print journalism and writing, especially magazine publishing, were missing from the concept. The tech was great, the business case well developed - thanks to Jason Calacanis’ Weblogs Inc. - and there was a large and growing audience. But it was undeveloped on the content side.

As an author and former publisher I found the content side was often primitive - with some notable exceptions, of course. And the lack of editing on blogs resulted in poor copy and bad logical flow more often than not.

This is largely because blogs are seen as immediate, ephemeral and “democratic”. The “wisdom of the crowd” is deemed to be more important than the wisdom of the individual. What this has produced, of course, is a form of digital Maoism, where the assumed Will of the Collective in “social networks” supersedes everything else. As a natural conservative (small “c”) I find that terrifying.

I have my own version of meritocracy, which I call Superdemocracy. It assumes there are natural geniuses at all levels of decisionmaking, and the best outcomes are achieved when decisions are taken at the point of maximum competence. The so-called wisdom of the crowd is, in fact, the will of the most energized egos imposed on the rest.

There had to be a space where less transient material could be assembled and lightly edited - largely by careful authors themselves but with some oversight - and presented attractively in a kind of digital magazine format.

I took the distributed blog network as the base idea and added some print-type “plugins” to create something better. After all, internet material stays around a long time, probably longer than most print magazine articles. It behoves us to treat it with some respect and have a view to its longevity and usefulness.

I must say, so far, this notion has met with glazed expressions from the geeks who dominate the blogosphere, and not a little aggressive snarling from the Neanderthals whose brains are set in fixed patterns and who have swallowed whole the Marxoid model of the internet.

For me, the content is all - which means the quality of writing and subject matter. All else is subordinate to that, although good presentation is vital.

We aim for a mix of websites. Some will have short, punchy pieces on relevant topics, others, longer essay-type articles on traditional subjects like, history, art, spirituality, etc.

Magazines need to be varied, interesting and never dull. That is especially true online.

There are many other aspects of Syntagma Media I could write about, but for those you’ll have to wait for the book I’m writing about it, due out next year.

Wow… Strong words there, sure to piss somebody off. I definitely agree with you regarding web content being around longer, with caches and all it even outlives most actual sites, while the print magazine ends up in the dumpster when the new issue is out. So you feel the current blog networks have automated themselves too much, perhaps?
I find them a bit dull. They’re all the same with gadgets, celebs, crafts, TV shows and the rest. We have some of these too, but we’ve given them a different slant, aiming a bit more upmarket. We also want to make ours simpler, so that readers from outside the blogosphere can navigate with ease around them.

You obviously have a strong idea of where Syntagma is going, and how you want to evolve. What about all the struggling bloggers out there, perhaps talented but still just a small fish in the sea. What should they do and where should they turn when the 9rules leaf is hovering like a badge of True Quality in the blogospheres’ eyes?
Well, 9rules is a blog grouping rather than what we think of as a blog network. The problem is, the term blog network is so woolly, no-one quite knows what it is. At least a Network Magazine is comprehensible to all, even if they don’t quite get the idea of a multi-domain online publication.

So far we’ve rarely recruited - except for a few ads on the Problogger JobBoard. Normally it’s by invitation, or one day someone really good turns up out of the blue and strikes an immediate chord.

Where are we going? My objective is that Syntagma Media should be a magnet for retail advertising. Our alliance with people on the retail consultancy side gives us some forward momentum. But there’s a way to go yet. All publications are a continual work in progress.

Finally, can’t wait for the book. Especially the ending.
The beginning is good too. ;

I’d like to thank John for taking the time for this interview. You should follow his evolving blog-network-soon-to-be-magazine over at Syntagma Media. Lots of opinions, reactions to the blogosphere, and other interesting stuff there.

This Interview was published on November 7, 2006 at 12:05 pm • Did you like it? Subscribe!
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