To flourish, a magazine must fit its era precisely. Throughout my career as a magazine editor, I've worked to ensure that the magazines under my care grew and changed with the times. Listening to readers and keeping a close eye on the relative success of various types of articles are both, of course, key to keeping a magazine vital. There is, however, another vital element: the editorial team.

The editorial leader of a successful magazine must acquire, nurture, listen to, and inspire a team of editors, writers, technology experts, and artists who are not only skilled in their fields but who are also reminded to continually recalibrate those skills to satisfy their magazine's readership.

To be sure, successful magazine craft requires a broad range of skills, from seductive information presentation to a keen sense of visual rhythm and pacing. However, successful editorial leadership also requires creating a team atmosphere and ensuring that the editorial team remains tuned to their readership and nimble in their responses to that readership's needs and desires.

Since I began my editorial career in 1989, I've worked to be that type of editorial leader.

MACUSER

Although I had previously written for magazines, my first editorial position was in 1989 when I joined the staff of MacUser. During my eight years with that Ziff-Davis publication I played many roles, eventually holding the position of executive editor for the three years before MacUser was subsumed into IDG's Macworld after its October 1997 issue.

When I joined MacUser, product evaluation and testing were at the core of its mission. In the late 80s and early 90s, product quality was highly variable and the number of vendors was much higher than it is today - one of my first articles, for example, tested and rated 101 hard drives from dozens of vendors.

I soon became director of MacUser Labs, working with a team of between 10 and 20 product testers and editors. Under my direction, our team developed tests that approximated real-world use, chose product sets for testing, ran tests under rigorous and carefully monitored guidelines, and delivered test results to writers and editors. Those results were then crafted into articles that both explained the technologies involved and made clear recommendations of top products.

At that time, readers were far more interested in "under the hood" explanations of underlying technology than they are today, so I produced a monthly series of one or more "How It Works" graphical elements that delved into the what, why, and how of peripherals such as laser and inkjet printers, optical drives, hard drives, and the like. I also inaugurated a monthly column entitled Future Tech, which focused on up-and-coming technology, and which soon expanded to MacUser's website. The spirit of Future Tech lived on in a column I wrote for Mac|Life, Deep Tech, until I discontinued that effort after that magazine's March 2008 issue.

In the mid-90s, as overall product quality improved and I became MacUser's executive editor, our editorial team began to focus more on product usage, with an increased number of articles, for example, about how best to use Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, and other popular applications. We did, however, continue comprehensive product evaluations when readers' needs required - the last issue of MacUser, for example, featured an article for which I rigorously tested a total of 70 Macs and Mac "clones."

MACADDICT

After the demise of MacUser during the dark days (for Apple's Macintosh) of 1997, I formed a small writing and consultation group called Smartpeople. One of my earliest clients was Macworld, for whom I thrice produced and hosted a series of on-stage interviews with industry luminaries called Macworld Live, which was held at the then-twice-yearly Macworld Expo. From Smartpeople I went on to Productopia, which I describe in this site's Websites & Podcasts section.

After a brief stint at Imagine Publishing (later to be renamed Future US) creating the website for one of their magazines (also described in Websites & Podcasts) and being laid off in a major company-wide restructuring in February 2001, I rejoined that company in June 2001 as editor in chief of MacAddict, a position I held until I resigned in December 2006.

Before I joined MacAddict, what had once been a fresh and highly successful magazine after its 1996 launch had become stale. Sales were off, the latest editorial staff hadn't coalesced as a team, and the magazine's style was tired. When I interviewed for the position, Imagine's editorial director tossed a copy of a recent issue onto the table between us and asked, "What I want to know is, can you fix this?" Over the next year, I did.

But I didn't do it alone. My first goal was to turn a group of talented individuals into a talented team. Through individual and group meetings, multi-editor assignments, collaborative brainstorming, and other team-reinforcing techniques, the MacAddict editorial team united behind our next effort: to revitalize a tired magazine.

After a carefully plotted procedure of revamping the magazine to reflect the needs and desires of contemporary readers, we launched a fully redesigned MacAddict in June of 2002. Since Apple's design aesthetic was ascendant, we purposefully made MacAddict look as if Apple products "belonged" on its pages. Since Apple's success was growing, we abandoned the old MacAddict's defensiveness and anti-"peecee" stance. Since our readership was maturing, we jettisoned the old MacAddict's juvenile humor and polished the new MacAddict's wit. We also focused our energies even more heavily on helping our readers "get the most from their Mac."

The results were immediate. Sales increased dramatically, and although we did alienate some readers who missed the scrappiness of the old MacAddict, many more welcomed the changes, and many new readers discovered us. The years of 2002 through 2005 were good for MacAddict.

In mid-2006 it was time for another change. The Mac-owning demographic was trending younger and had been joined by a new iPod-owning set. Stylishness and contemporary fashion were rapidly overtaking technological depth on the reader's radar. We needed to reposition MacAddict yet again, so much so that we decided to rebrand it - and so Mac|Life was born.

As we worked on refining the Mac|Life soul and style, our team soon came to the conclusion that the new magazine needed a youthful, style- and fashion-focused outlook that matched the aspirations of its target readership. It also became apparent to me that I was not the right person to provide Mac|Life with its editorial leadership - I have never been interested in fashion (although I'm deeply interested in design), and I greatly prefer a discussion of microprocessor architecture to a comparative evaluation of faux-leather iPod cases. New blood was needed to make Mac|Life a success.

I resigned as MacAddict's editor in chief when our team put to bed that magazine's final issue of January 2007.