How Entrepreneur magazine changed its cover

Jason Feifer, the editor of Entrepreneur magazine, writes about how the magazine went through the process of changing its cover.

Feifer writes, “Why am I, the editor in chief, writing the cover lines?

”Cover lines’ is magazine parlance for the headlines you see on a magazine cover. Every magazine where I’ve worked developed cover lines differently. At one, for example, editors were invited to stand around a wall of layouts and toss out ideas. At another, it was a closed-door session with one or two top deputies. But the end was always the same: The editor-in-chief made the final decision, and that’s what went to print.

“When I took this job, I mindlessly followed suit. I’d workshop ideas with fellow editors and the president of our company, but ultimately I was the guy writing the lines. Had I become editor-in-chief anywhere else, I might have never questioned that process. But at this magazine, I’m inspired every day by the people we write about. Entrepreneurs live in what LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman calls ‘permanent beta’ — a state of constant reinvention, of never settling. They get comfortable asking themselves uncomfortable questions. And so, I aspire to do that in my own job, too. Which gets us back to Why am I, the editor-in-chief, writing the cover lines?

“To answer that, I must make some uncomfortable admissions. To start, my job is to oversee editorial, but the cover, if we’re being honest, is not a piece of editorial. It’s a piece of marketing; its purpose is to sell the magazine. But I don’t have a background in marketing. I have no idea how to write marketing copy! And that means I’m quite possibly the exact wrong guy for this task.”

Read more here.