Purchasing Magazine should hire Geraint John as Editor-in-Chief
Rather than rant about yet another article from Purchasing.com that had me foaming at the mouth, I thought that, for a change, I'd offer Purchasing some constructive feedback and free advice. Hire Geraint John as Editor-in-Chief. For the past few years, I had tremendous respect for two supply management publications that consistently delivered high quality supply management content month-in and month-out. One is the Supply Chain Management Review, which has Robert Rudzki as one of its lead bloggers. The other is CPO Agenda, at which Geraint was Editor-in-Chief until May 2009.
To be honest, I used to think that Purchasing was a good magazine. But then again, 5 years ago, Doug Smock, who co-wrote the book (Straight to the Bottom Line), used to be the Editor-in-Chief. And ever since he left, as far as I'm concerned, it's been a slow and steady decline for Purchasing Magazine. We've gone from creme brulee telling us What Supply Chain Management Is and that we need to Think Like a CPO to gruel that tells us that spend analysis is good, but expensive and that it is good to be a tweeting Twit. Sure you can live on gruel, but after eating creme brulee, do you really want to?
That's why I'm recommending Geraint John for Editor in Chief. He did great work at CPO Agenda, has what it takes to return Purchasing to the glory days they experienced back when Doug Smock was in charge, and, to the best of my knowledge, isn't attached to any publications. If Purchasing really wants to reach Purchasing 3.0, they're going to need someone like him running the show. They might have good editors, but, as we've seen, good editors only make a great publication under great leadership. Time to bring some back. (Otherwise, I would bet that Purchasing can continue to kiss its web-traffic goodbye, as I predict that such traffic will continue to migrate to blogs like Metal Miner, Transformation Leadership, Supply Chain Matters, and Sourcing Innovation as long as Purchasing maintains the status quo.)
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are solely the opinions of the doctor. Furthermore, Geraint John had no prior knowledge of this post or the doctor's opinions.
Categories: rants,Miscellaneous
Tags: Geraint John Purchasing.com Rant
No, I didn't forget Spend Matters. Unlike the blogs I mentioned, it has already attracted a large slice of Purchasing's traffic. Today on:
Alexa - Spend Matters: 205,433 Purchasing: 159,646
Quantcast - Spend Matters: 175,342 Purchasing: 94,349
Compete - Spend Matters: up 97.74% Purchasing: up 52.06%
And, on more than one occasion over the past 6 months, Spend Matters has overtaken Purchasing on multiple traffic ranking sites.
Michael,
Thanks for the mention and stats. Geraint is a great guy and an excellent editor. I don't think we'll ever get him crossing the Atlantic to commute to work, though. In my view, Purchasing is going to need to react not what to Geraint formally did @ CPO Agenda, but Procurement Leaders, as they ramp up operations in N/A and go for the same print advertising dollars (in addition to online and events). Purchasing either stays catering to a buyer/manager level audience as a primary core with existing content or they adopt a more CPO Agenda / Procurement Leaders type voice to go up market to higher levels of the procurement/operations/finance org. Or maybe they do both. I also like the move to social networking leveraging the readership. That's got potential.
Just my 2 cents,
Jason
Jason:
Why would Geraint have to cross the Atlantic? If Purchasing wants to stay relevant, it has to go global. Purchasing can open up a UK office, hire Geraint over there, and then use modern technology (video conferencing, internet workspaces, etc.) to allow him to control the global content operation.
As you pointed out, Procurement Leaders is going global, and they are quickly rising to the quality, and focus, of CPO Agenda. With the increasing sophistication of the Procurement marketplace, Procurement Leaders is in good shape to make a run for the #1 spot in the relatively near future. In my view, Purchasing has to either shape-up, or it will be shipped-out by a (much) better publication.
I don't know if that means changing the audience, borrowing from the ISM model and trying to cater to a split audience (Inside Supply Management vs. eSide Supply Management), or getting truly social in its operations and delivery, but I do know one thing. If I ever get another e-mail like the following, it will be too soon (names and companies removed to protect the innocent):
"Right On is your observation of Purchasing.com/Magazine. Editorial would call us with sales pitches and how it could 'promote' us with featured articles in return for our advertising dollars. It was a cheesy experience."
or
"We tried to write something but the editor chucked it out ... apparently because we weren't an advertiser"
Not only should copy quality be top notch, and its ultimate source irrelevant, but copy should be completely separate from advertising. Otherwise, you're nothing more than a cheesy pay-to-play operation, like too many "analyst" operations have become in recent years. And that's something I think we've both ranted about too much already.