The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Stephen Orr, Better Homes and Gardens New Editor-in-Chief
Better Homes and Gardens: The Mother Of All Consumer Magazines Prepares For Its Next Century Under New Leadership
“Magazines to me are not the thing that people carry around in their purse or under their arm as much as they used to, but the magazine to me is a quieter activity; it’s a less hectic information experience. It’s not like going through your Twitter feed or your Instagram feed where things are coming at you from every space. It’s a highly-curated space in time that you have for yourself. Before I even came here, I thought to myself, what is the BH&G reader doing and how is he or she looking at the magazine and I think it’s like a me-time moment where he or she has a moment during the day when things are quiet, kids are in bed or there’s a quiet space in the day and she’s going to sit for a while and look through her favorite magazine. We want to be that magazine.” Stephen Orr
Better Homes and Gardens was born in 1922 and in seven years will celebrate its 100th birthday. It is the largest paid consumer magazine in the country with 7.6 million in circulation (mainly subs) and 40 million readers.Commanding a ship that large is a huge responsibility, but Stephen Orr is the man to do it. Combining both his art and editorial skills; he could easily be just what the doctor prescribed for the magazine as it moves into its next century. Stephen was Executive Editor of Condé Nast Traveler, and has more than 25 years of experience in content creation and design leadership across many of the media industry’s most recognizable brands.Throughout his career, he has been very successful at developing brands across multiple channels. Prior to Condé Nast Traveler, Stephen was a VP/Editorial Director for the Martha Stewart Living brand, where he created multi-channel content with a special focus on style, food, and gardening as well as licensed product development. He has also held senior content creation leadership positions at multi-platform brands such as House & Garden, Domino, Gourmet, Bon Appétit, and Epicurious. Early in his career he held senior design positions at The New York Times Magazine, W, and WWD. He is a man both experienced and passionate about the world of magazines.I spoke with Stephen recently and we talked about this passion of his for magazines and for people. In fact, he believes wholeheartedly that magazines are people and Mr. Magazine™would have to agree with him on that. He loves the opinions and ideas of his staff and thrives on their energy and creative talent, which he feels overflows into the brand and makes it even more content-engaging and reflective of what BH&G’s audience expects from their favorite magazine.With a few new surprises coming up down the pike from Stephen’s own creative energy and talent, the largest consumer magazine in the country can sail confidently into its 100-year-old berth, knowing that around the corner is the beginning of the next centennial which promises to be even better than the first.And now without further ado, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Better Homes and Garden’s new Editor-In-Chief, Stephen Orr.But first, the sound-bites:
On his feelings when he was offered the job of editor-in-chief at Better Homes and Gardens: Certainly, it was an honor. I had been working in magazines for 25+ years and I had worked at a lot of different titles, but I had never worked at Meredith before. Meredith is a very disciplined company, which I really respect. They did a lot of interviews; I met a lot of different people during the process. It was a long interview process and I was really happy when I finally got the offer.On whether the thought ever crossed his mind that he was moving from “class” to “mass” by joining a title that had 40 million in readership from specialized titles that had a more targeted audience: I think some of my other experiences that I’ve had helped with that. For instance, I’d say two places in particular; Domino Magazine, even though that was a Condè Nast Magazine and had a very elevated level of shopping. The original idea of Domino, and I was there in the early days until it shuttered, was to bring an accessibility to design and a feeling of how to combine kind of cheap-and-cheerful and this mix of high and low, and also point out to people when they should spend a little extra money on something, while giving them tips on ways to save money at the same time. And I also think Martha Stewart where I once worked was like that. Martha is the empress of bringing a level of knowledge and visual sense to a mass market audience. That’s what Martha has done so well for the American consumer.On his multifaceted career as a journalist/designer/editor and how he plans to bring those personas into play at Better Homes and Gardens: I think one of my strengths is, if I can say it about myself; I’m half visual and I’m half words. For half of my career I was an art director and a graphic designer and then the other half so far has been more of an editor with words and a writer. So, I definitely have those two sides of my brain and I think a magazine like Better Homes and Gardens, and in fact most magazines these days, unless you’re speaking of The New Yorker or something like that, are visually-driven. We only have the readers’ attention for such a brief span of time, so I think that my career as an art director does allow me to see things very visually.On the February issue, which will be the first totally original issue under his guidance, and the changes readers can expect: We’ve been feeding new things into the magazine; it’s been sort of a development over time. I’ve been here since July, so when I arrived they already had October’s issue basically done; I just did a few tweaks and changes, but not much; we didn’t shoot anything new. The only thing new there was my editor’s letter and in it I wanted to make a statement, so my editor’s letters will all be shot with an iPhone; the first one was a bit of a mix, but eventually they all will be shot with an iPhone. I wanted to immediately telegraph to people that these are new days here at Better Homes and Gardens; we are a print magazine, but we’re alsoBHG.com and we have our social media channels and I interact with our readers over all of those different ways, so I’m not a hidden editor-in-chief; I want to be connected with our readers, especially through our social media.On whether he heard any media or reader feedback about the fact that once again a man was editor of Better Homes and Gardens, mainly a women’s magazine: I haven’t heard anything about the fact that here’s a man doing this job at all. I think women are very accepting of men in roles where we talk to them about different things. I don’t know if women care as much whether it’s a man or a woman telling them about home décor or cooking or flower arranging, as long as people seem to know what they’re talking about.On how important the printed Better Homes and Gardens is to him: It’s all of equal importance. We talk about Omni-channel consumers, and that’s something we were discussing in a recent presentation. We have about 50 million readers, if you look at the whole audience, print and digital. It’s a gigantic number of people, and we want to appeal to them on whatever platform they’re on. And this is the way it is today with all of us; we consume information in the way that we find most convenient for us. So, magazines to me are not the thing that people carry around in their purse or under their arm as much as they used to, but the magazine to me is a quieter activity; it’s a less hectic information experience. It’s not like going through your Twitter feed or your Instagram feed where things are coming at you from every space.On if we are talking seven years from now, on the 100th anniversary of the magazine, will the readers say it’s still they’re same Better Homes and Gardens or something totally different: No, I want them to say it’s still theirs. I was saying in a meeting the other day; we get letters where people get upset if we give them a story that doesn’t particularly pertain to them; I mean, they do feel like it’s their magazine, but it’s hard with that many readers to hit a chord with every single person. And so I do hope the readers will realize that sometimes there might be a story that’s more kid-focused and they might be empty-nesters, so they might just glance at it and keep moving. But we’re trying to offer a wide range of stories so that the majority of every issue is appealing to our established audience as well as a new audience.On the biggest challenge that he’s faced since becoming editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens and how he overcame it: There have been more perceptual challenges, I think. Maybe perceived challenges would be a better way to describe it, ones that I thought I might have. I felt like maybe I would encounter people who were set in their ways and resistant to new ideas or change, and I have to say that what I have encountered has been the exact opposite of that perception. I had never been to Iowa before in my life and coming here I found that people are categorically open to new ideas and change. And they’re eager for something new.On anything else he’d like to add: People might have a hard time understanding my living in Des Moines after living in New York City for so long, and people might have a hard time understanding, like you said, my coming from Condè Nast and now working at a gigantic, more mass general interest magazine, but I think what’s most exciting about working in media is it never stops changing. And I always tell people if you don’t like change, don’t work in media. (Laughs)On what motivates him to get out of bed in the mornings: What I like is when I come to the office in the mornings, the office is humming and people are going at full-tilt. I tend to come in slightly later than they do and stay later. That gives me a nice time at the end of the day to catch up on emails and read proofs and do the more concentrated work, because with a large staff like this we do a lot of meetings during the day, so the schedule is working great for me.On what keeps him up at night: I don’t have stress like I’ve had with other jobs. What I have isn’t stress. I guess with the responsibility of this title, I do think about the people here a lot. I’m a very people-focused editor-in-chief, so I would say that I spend time not worrying or stressing, but I spend time thinking about the people I work with and I spend time thinking about how they can be the best at their jobs.And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™conversation with Stephen Orr, Editor-In-Chief, Better Homes and Gardens Magazine.Samir Husni: Congratulations on being named editor-in-chief of the largest paid consumer magazine in the country.Stephen Orr: Thank you.Samir Husni: When you received the offer to take over at the helm of the mother of all consumer magazines, Better Homes and Gardens; what were your feelings at the time?Stephen Orr: Certainly, it was an honor. I had been working in magazines for 25+ years and I had worked at a lot of different titles, but I had never worked at Meredith before. Meredith is a very disciplined company, which I really respect. They did a lot of interviews; I met a lot of different people during the process. It was a long interview process and I was really happy when I finally got the offer.It was a real honor because I knew they didn’t take this job lightly. Their management and the executive team here know that this is their flagship brand, so they didn’t take anything about this job lightly.Samir Husni: From all of these other titles that you’d been working with which were technically very specialized magazines to Better Homes and Gardens which has a big, mass 40 million-audience readership; did you at any given moment throughout that long interview process feel like you were moving from “class” to “mass?”
Stephen Orr: I think some of my other experiences that I’ve had helped with that. For instance, I’d say two places in particular; Domino Magazine, even though that was a Condè Nast magazine and had a very elevated level of shopping.The original idea of Domino, and I was there in the early days until it shuttered, was to bring an accessibility to design and a feeling of how to combine kind of cheap-and-cheerful and this mix of high and low, and also point out to people when they should spend a little extra money on something, while giving them tips on ways to save money at the same time. So, Domino Magazine was very much like that.And I also think Martha Stewart where I once worked was like that. Martha is the empress of bringing a level of knowledge and visual sense to a mass market audience. That’s what Martha has done so well for the American consumer. And she educates people.When I think of working at Domino and Martha Stewart Living; I think I learned a lot of those lessons here too, because we’re always talking to a huge range of people.Samir Husni: From following your career and looking at what you’ve done; you yourself are a multiplatform journalist/designer/editor. You’ve worked in design and editing positions. How are you going to bring this multifaceted Stephen Orr to Better Homes and Gardens?Stephen Orr: That’s a nice question. I work in both Des Moines and New York City, but primarily in Des Moines, and we have a very talented staff of people here. And they’ve been making a beautiful magazine for years. So, when I came in, I didn’t say: out with the old and in with the new. I wanted to build on what we had that’s really great and make it even better.I think one of my strengths is, if I can say it about myself; I’m half visual and I’m half words. For half of my career I was an art director and a graphic designer and then the other half so far has been more of an editor with words and a writer. So, I definitely have those two sides of my brain and I think a magazine like Better Homes and Gardens, and in fact most magazines these days, unless you’re speaking of The New Yorker or something like that, are visually-driven. We only have the readers’ attention for such a brief span of time, so I think that my career as an art director does allow me to see things very visually.We talk about things very visually and for me it’s how do we create engagement with the reader in the print page, but also how do we engage our reader at BHG.com and also our social media channels. All of those things have equal importance to me and with our staff and our editors we’re constantly talking about social media and how to get the word out about BHG and how to attract new readers, while we have our loyal audience base; we want to keep them really happy as well. That, to me, is the real challenge.Samir Husni: It’s my understanding that February will be the first completely original issue under your leadership. Can you tell me a little about the changes you’ll be unveiling with that issue?Stephen Orr: We’ve been feeding new things into the magazine; it’s been sort of a development over time. I’ve been here since July, so when I arrived they already had October’s issue basically done; I just did a few tweaks and changes, but not much; we didn’t shoot anything new.The only thing new there was my editor’s letter and in it I wanted to make a statement, so my editor’s letters will all be shot with an iPhone; the first one was a bit of a mix, but eventually they all will be shot with an iPhone. I wanted to immediately telegraph to people that these are new days here at Better Homes and Gardens; we are a print magazine, but we’re also BHG.com and we have our social media channels and I interact with our readers over all of those different ways, so I’m not a hidden editor-in-chief; I want to be connected with our readers, especially through our social media.One of our art director’s takes her iPhone and shoots my editor’s letter and then we pick up shots from either my Instagram or our staff’s Instagram’s. If it’s a food issue, we’ll have me with Nancy Hopkins, our food editor, and then we’ll have some shots from her Instagram and then another food editor’s Instagram.People have had a very good response to it, even the editor’s letter. I think they find it very personable and they like how casual it is; it doesn’t feel staged like some do, which is why I we did it that way; I felt kind of uncomfortable just having a shot of me in a suit and tie, all posed and everything. I wanted it to show how as editors we lead the life. So for us, that was one of the first things that changed.And then we’ve kind of loosened things up. One of the things that we’re trying to do at Better Homes and Gardens is try to loosen up the presentation a little bit, with more color and people. We’re trying to show people kind of an elevated version of real life and the best life can be in an accessible version.And then we’re also trying to weave together some other themes: acknowledging that women have jobs at the same time that they’re trying to make a nice home that people work, but also have a home life. We’re trying to talk to new types of readers; we’re looking at young entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of all ages and home-based businesses.
We’re also looking at trying to show a new type of BHG reader, but at the same time one of the things that’s very important to me is to highlight Better Homes and Gardens’ heritage because I believe if you run away from what you are; you’re denying what’s been accomplished over these almost 100 years, and the authority that Better Homes and Gardens has.For instance, we’re doing a story on our own test kitchen to show people that we have all of these amazing resources here that sometimes get hidden just because they’ve been around the magazine for so long. Sometimes people forget how special they are because they’ve just always been there. But there are treasures here. We have an amazing test garden and test kitchen full of amazingly knowledgeable people and I want to bring that knowledge into the pages.Samir Husni: I don’t know if you know this, but my magazine program here at the University of Mississippi was started by Meredith and Better Homes and Gardens.Stephen Orr: That’s amazing. Meredith has so many deep community roots in so many places and that’s why it’s such a wonderful company. I’ve worked at Condè Nast primarily; I’ve also worked at The New York Times and other places, but you know, I love the culture of Meredith.There are a lot of values at Meredith that I think we’re trying to show in the pages of Better Homes and Gardens. It’s has a very democratic appeal to a wide range of people and I think I understand that because I’ve lived in New York before being in Des Moines and New York now. I lived in New York for nearly 30 years, but before that I was raised in West Texas, so I really understand how it is to be brought up in the middle of the country and the values there.Samir Husni: I love your ideas about the test gardens and test kitchen; I’ve seen them all and they’re amazing. I’ve often thought they should be written about.Stephen Orr: Yes, there’s so much to do with it. We’re going to have regular features on the test kitchen and test gardens, whether they’re specific lessons or other things. Before I came, I don’t know how often there was a regular meeting, but now I have regular meetings with our head test gardener and she comes and tells us seasonally what’s interesting and she’s working on what plants she’s obsessed with. She’s on the front lines of gardening, doing her thing there. I planted 1,000 bulbs this weekend myself, but I don’t have the time to garden every day with my job, as much as I’d like to.Samir Husni: When I received the note that you’d been appointed editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens, I was taken back to almost 30 years ago when David Jordan was editor-in-chief of the magazine. Was there any response from the media or from readers about the fact that a man was now editor-in-chief of mainly a women’s magazine? When the first woman was hired as editor-in-chief, there were a lot of stories reflecting the sentiment that finally women’s magazines were getting women editors.Stephen Orr: I haven’t heard anything about the fact that here’s a man doing this job at all. I think women are very accepting of men in roles where we talk to them about different things. I don’t know if women care as much whether it’s a man or a woman telling them about home décor or cooking or flower arranging, as long as people seem to know what they’re talking about.Obviously, I’m not the only authority here, so for me when it comes to family and what a woman really thinks about something, I never tell women what they think, I always ask people who work with me, my executive editor or one of my other editors. I’ll ask then what do they think about something as a mom with young kids; what do you think we should do. From a health standpoint, Amy Brightfield will tell me what she does as a mom.We have so many great experts here and I’m a very collaborative non-hierarchical kind of editor-in-chief, so we have a lot of talks and meetings. We’re all getting to know each other and I just want the communication to flow. That’s where I think the reader will feel that this is a team effort; it really is not just about me. It’s a team effort with people who have all kinds of expertise.Samir Husni: You’ve emphasized the fact that you have print, BHG.com and all of your social media channels; how are you going to strike this balance between the 7.6 million subscriber/newsstand-based audiences and the website? How important is the printed Better Homes and Gardens to you?Stephen Orr: It’s all of equal importance. We talk about Omni-channel consumers, and that’s something we were discussing in a recent presentation. We have about 50 million readers, if you look at the whole audience, print and digital. It’s a gigantic number of people, and we want to appeal to them on whatever platform they’re on. And this is the way it is today with all of us; we consume information in the way that we find most convenient for us.Increasingly for people, it’s on their phones. We all go everywhere and we see people on their phones all of the time. You don’t see people flipping through magazines that much; you see people on their phones.So, magazines to me are not the thing that people carry around in their purse or under their arm as much as they used to, but the magazine to me is a quieter activity; it’s a less hectic information experience. It’s not like going through your Twitter feed or your Instagram feed where things are coming at you from every space. It’s a highly-curated space in time that you have for yourself. Before I even came here, I thought to myself, what is the BHG reader doing and how is he or she looking at the magazine and I think it’s like a me-time moment where he or she has a moment during the day when things are quiet, kids are in bed or there’s a quiet space in the day and she’s going to sit for a while and look through her favorite magazine. We want to be that magazine.It’s interesting that we get a lot of letters that say that and the other day we actually got a wonderful phone call from a woman, I believe in Tennessee, and she just talked about that she’d been going through some family trouble, health problems with relatives or something, she didn’t go into details, but she just left us a long phone message that was forwarded to me. She said that she loved Better Homes and Gardens and she was so excited by the new direction and she wanted to call and tell me that, because she’d walked in the door from a challenging week and she sat down with her magazine and she said it was almost like a healing moment for her, to sit there and look at all the beautiful images and flip through it at her own pace.And that’s what I think we offer as a printed magazine. But we also offer people engagement on social media, which we’re trying to continually improve, and also quick and easy solutions and tips that they might encounter through their Facebook feeds and on BHG.com and videos. We all live in this multifaceted information world and I don’t think one aspect is better than another. I’m grateful that the printed page is still there for people because I do think that it offers them a respite during the day.Samir Husni: If I’m talking with you seven years from now and you’re launching the Centennial edition, the 100th anniversary issue of Better Homes and Gardens; do you think the readers who have been with the magazine for 20 or 30 years and the new readers too, will say wow, it’s still my same Better Homes and Gardens or they’ll see a drastically different magazine?Stephen Orr: No, I want them to say it’s still theirs. I was saying in a meeting the other day; we get letters where people get upset if we give them a story that doesn’t particularly pertain to them; I mean, they do feel like it’s their magazine, but it’s hard with that many readers to hit a chord with every single person. And so I do hope the readers will realize that sometimes there might be a story that’s more kid-focused and they might be empty-nesters, so they might just glance at it and keep moving.But we’re trying to offer a wide range of stories so that the majority of every issue is appealing to our established audience as well as a new audience. I’ve worked at magazines before where they kind of discounted their existing audience and were rushing after a new audience and I didn’t want to do that here. I am very conscious of the fact that I want our magazine to appeal to people of all ages, of multi-generations; I’m a GNX, but barely. I’m on the cusp of Baby-Boomer.I’m not a millennial at all, but I have the millennial mindset; I really follow what millennials are doing. I’m the type of person who is on their phone and Instagram all of the time. I read my news off of Twitter a lot, both in-depth news and looking through to primary news sources. I also get inspiration from Twitter and people who are doing interesting things. I get a lot of inspiration from Pinterest and Instagram every day. And so that’s how I get my information, but also when one of my favorite magazines comes through the door, I stop and I read that magazine.I feel like I exist at the point where people that are older than me are less computer native in many ways and people younger than me are more computer native and information-technology native. And I feel very much at my age and my experience level, and how I started working with computers in college, I feel I’m very much a good representative of both groups. I’m neither too much of one nor not enough of the other. And I want to try and be that divining rod or whatever phrase might be used, to try and speak to all of the different audiences that we have.And I feel like people in this day and age, especially marketers, put people into these groups and talk about how different we all are; I tend to focus more on how similar we are.Samir Husni: I think your role at your age; you’re the two-lane bridge that connects both sides of the spectrum. I’m a little bit older than you and having grown up during the print platform and having adapted to the digital platform; to me that’s more powerful than just being a digital native or a print native.Stephen Orr: I’m very happy with my position. I’m happy that I love print and I love books and magazines and I love the visual appeal of those things and I also love digital. I love being online.But like most people and maybe younger people don’t feel this way, I actually look for ways to not be online. So a magazine is a way for me not to have to be connected. I don’t have to be connected all of the time; I’m the kind of person who might say, OK – I’m putting my phone in the drawer and I’m going outside. And that’s why I love gardening, because I can go outside and if I bring my phone with me, it’s too expensive to replace should I drop it…(Laughs)Samir Husni: What has been the biggest challenge that you’ve had to face since you became editor-in-chief of Better Homes and Gardens and how did you overcome it?Stephen Orr: There have been more perceptual challenges, I think. Maybe perceived challenges would be a better way to describe it, ones that I thought I might have. I felt like maybe I would encounter people who were set in their ways and resistant to new ideas or change, and I have to say that what I have encountered has been the exact opposite of that perception.I had never been to Iowa before in my life and coming here I found that people are categorically open to new ideas and change. And they’re eager for something new. So, the wide range of people that I’m working with here on a day-to-day basis are open to change and everybody is willing to try something new; people are quick to get onboard.They really know what they’re about and I value their expertise, because for me I don’t want to come in as a change agent and not listen to the people who have been doing it for a long time. I always want to hear: why did we do it that way and when did we last change it and what was the reaction? I don’t just blithely discard the past. For me it’s a combination of the past and the future. I’m a dual person; I love both.But I don’t think I’ve encountered any enormous challenges. The things that I wondered might be challenges turned out not to be problems. The Meredith Corporation has been very supportive. We had a presentation a couple of weeks ago where they saw some of the ideas for some of the changes and they couldn’t have been happier and more supportive.Samir Husni: Is there anything else you’d like to add?Stephen Orr: People might have a hard time understanding my living in Des Moines after living in New York City for so long, and people might have a hard time understanding, like you said, my coming from Condè Nast and now working at a gigantic, more mass general interest magazine, but I think what’s most exciting about working in media is it never stops changing. And I always tell people if you don’t like change, don’t work in media. (Laughs)Our world, because of technology and everything that’s happening, everything changes all of the time. And I think as editors our job is to be nimble. People overuse that word, but it’s such a nice word to think about because it implies that you’re able to skate over the surface and keep nimbly moving no matter what to make it all work. And I think that’s’ what’s exciting about what we’re doing in this day and age with media. The changes, even though they’re challenges, are what offer the most excitement.Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings, especially now that you’re out of the City and in the Midwest? Does farm life get you out of bed any earlier these days? (Laughs)Stephen Orr: (Laughs too) It does. They work on an earlier schedule and that took some getting used to. But there’s no commute here. In my last job, my commute was an hour. And that was killing me, an hour each way. Now my commute is five minutes, so I don’t have much to complain about.What I like is when I come to the office in the mornings, the office is humming and people are going at full-tilt. I tend to come in slightly later than they do and stay later. That gives me a nice time at the end of the day to catch up on emails and read proofs and do the more concentrated work, because with a large staff like this we do a lot of meetings during the day, so the schedule is working great for me.Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?Stephen Orr: I don’t have stress like I’ve had with other jobs. What I have isn’t stress. I guess with the responsibility of this title, I do think about the people here a lot. I’m a very people-focused editor-in-chief, so I would say that I spend time not worrying or stressing, but I spend time thinking about the people I work with and I spend time thinking about how they can be the best at their jobs.So, that’s basically it. I’m just thinking about the people I work with a lot. I hope that doesn’t sound insincere, but that’s what I believe. I believe magazines are people and so for me all of the people that we work with here at Better Homes and Gardens are all friends, including digital and social media and our special issues. It’s thinking about everybody’s strengths and how to get everybody super-excited about making this product over all its platforms.Samir Husni: Thank you.
