|
Monday, March 10, 2008
This is an excerpt from Chapter Six of the Most Intriguing & Top Selling Magazine Cover's book. To purchase:
We asked consumer executives to tell us about their favorite magazine cover and why.
We received an overwhelming response. Here are their stories.
Magazine: Campus Technology
 Publisher: 1105 Media
Cover Story: “The Time Is Now: On the heels of Katrina, it’s time to get a top-light disaster recovery plan into place. Here’s how to catch up,” November 2005
Writer: Dian Schaffhauser (freelance)
Editors: Katherine Grayson, EIC, Mary Grush, editor, Claudia Linh, managing editor, Geoffrey H. Fletcher, editor-at-large
Art Director: Scott Rovin
Publisher: Wendy LaDuke
While most Campus Technology features (speaking to lead technologists on US campuses) cover the implementation of technology from a “people, process and tools” perspective, this story was a compelling read for technologist and layperson alike because of the very human aspects of the story. It highlighted the impossible challenges and choices Louisiana campus officials faced, post Katrina, and so was an example of the dramatic difference technology can make (or could have made) not just in daily campus life, but during the most trying, even desperate, times.
Especially valuable was coverage of the intelligent “workarounds” campus administrators devised, in order to cope when technology was utterly or all but disabled. In many cases, it was practical, on-the-fly (more like on-the-run) thinking that saved precious data, or, more important, helped the campus community to share or push information to its members and the community at large. These workarounds are forming the basis of the future planning (IT, telecom, and otherwise) that, hopefully, will enable not just Gulf Coast schools, but all US schools and many US communities, to better function and communicate before, during, and after a disaster, and to improve vital data protection and recovery efforts.
Magazine: Directors & Boards
 Publisher: Directors & Boards Publishing
Cover Story: “What the ‘Last Tycoon’ Tells Us about Leadership,” 2nd quarter 2006
Writer: Joseph L. Badaracco Jr., professor of ethics at Harvard Business School
Editor: James Kristie
Art Director: Bill Cooke
Photo from AP Wide World
Favorite cover story comes from the Second Quarter 2006 issue, a distinctive and unusual article on leadership, a mainstay topic of Directors & Boards. In a singular treatment, the author plumbed the life of Monroe Stahr, the hard-charging movie mogul protagonist in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1939 novel, “The Last Tycoon,” to address challenges faced by contemporary business executives who want to become leaders — i.e., Do you care intensely enough about your work? Do you feel personally accountable? Are you willing to pay the price?
And since the Monroe Stahr character is based on the legendary Hollywood studio executive Irving Thalberg, we scoured photo archives to come up with the steely image of Thalberg used on the cover. The b&w picture was extensively photoshopped to highlight the old-time desk and office background as well as the subject himself, and richly tinted to convey the class and power of this leader. The iconic cover image was undoubtedly unique among business journals and magazines in 2006.
Features Archives
|
