Tis the season for strategic planning, which, in the world of publishing, can mean only one thing: Reader surveys!
By the time you read this, you’ve likely already been invited to fill out CBC’s reader demographic survey (cbcmagazine.com/survey). Soon behind will be our annual editorial survey. So, what’s the difference?
The reader demographic study helps current and potential advertisers determine if CBC’s audience is a good fit for their products and services. We ask readers to reveal everything from bare census-like facts, such as gender, age, and number of children, to more targeted characteristics, such as what type of day-trips you plan on taking in the next year.
In-between are several questions that focus on employment. It’s important for advertisers to know what industry you represent and where you’re at on the company ladder. We also try to get a grasp on how often you partake in networking and corporate events, which have been bread-and-butter topics in CBC since the magazine made its debut nearly four years ago. And new this year are several queries specific to your CBC tendencies, such as how you receive the magazine. That’s worth asking these days, considering we’re now available at 10 retail outlets — a major coup the last 12 months.
As much as Jackie Van Meter, our ad sales director, wants to see the answers to these demographic questions, I’m just as eager to learn what exactly you want to read about on the pages of CBC. That’s the intent of our editorial survey. Some of its questions are similar to the demographic survey. For instance, we ask what industries you want to read about. That is especially important to CBC, considering every issue of the magazine is dedicated to a theme, such as education this month. We also solicit your opinion on specific sections of the magazine. Which departments do you prefer? Which ones don’t float your boat? What are we missing?
A question on the minds of several readers last year centered on whether CBC was getting away from its networking and corporate event planning coverage. We weren’t. But at the same time, we weren’t packaging it effectively. Hence, we solved the problem by creating our Centerpoint section in 2010.
With that in mind, we can’t stress enough that you, as a CBC reader, dictate content. At the end of the editorial survey (as well as almost every survey we present), we ask for interesting and untold story ideas. We also ask you to suggest networking groups you want to read about. We’d like to think we listened to you last year. As we plan for our 11 issues in 2011, we’re all ears once again.

Every article in the June issue of CBC was written well before the Boston Celtics eliminated the Cavaliers in the NBA playoffs. Every article, that is, except the one you’re reading right now.

As is often the case during the production of monthly magazines, editors and publishers save their own columns for last. There’s always something else to do. For instance, I had to write the cover story for this issue, one in which I indirectly praise the Cavs and LeBron James while lauding the work of a Cleveland State professor who is trying to cure cancer.

Yeah, go figure: I somehow juxtaposed good chemistry and the Cavaliers.

As a lifelong Clevelander — one who was 7 months old in December of 1964, when the Browns garnered the city’s last major sports title — you would think I would have known better than to look ahead.

My initial intent was to dedicate this space to the Northeast Ohioans who constantly complain about our weather, which, bizarre as it may seem, I happen to like. I can’t imagine how boring the clear, blue sky would be if it greeted us every day. Likewise, I can imagine how brown my lawn would be.

So, while praising the rain and snow and clouds, I was going to whine about the weather whiners and tell them to suck it up.

Now, of course, we can all thank the Wine and Gold for taking our minds off of rainy Mondays in May and everything else that supposedly makes us such a miserable place to live.

I learned a long time ago, thanks to The Drive, The Fumble, and The Shot, among other sports-related disasters, not to give my heart to sports teams, particularly those hailing from Cleveland. But as I write this, less than 24 hours after the fact, my soul does hurt for the city and its people.

Most of us deserve better, if only because of our dedication and perseverance. Championships do play a role in a region’s collective psyche, which happened to be the theme of our April cover story on Cavs owner Dan Gilbert.

I’m not sure what Gilbert does next. I’m not sure what any of us do next in terms of being sports fans.

The forecast is bleak. And even I can’t see the bright side of that.