Siobhan O’Connor is in the enviable position of working for a publication whose mission for its readership seems to mesh perfectly with her own philosophy: Love your whole life.
O’Connor, who was promoted to Executive Editor of Prevention and Prevention.com earlier this month, is also co-author of the book No More Dirty Looks: The Truth about Your Beauty Products—and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics and its companion blog, NoMoreDirtyLooks.com. She also appears on radio shows and TV to discuss health and wellness issues. But despite working in an industry that certainly has its hectic moments, she seems to be in just the right place—one that allows her to achieve the same work/life balance that it’s encouraging among its print and digital audiences.
In an interview with Technology for Publishing last week, O’Connor spoke about the January relaunch of Prevention and Prevention.com, the benefits of integrating print and digital resources, what she’s looking forward to in the year ahead, and what types of skills she thinks are most valuable for aspiring editors.
Tell me about your role at Prevention and the recent changes there.
It’s a very exciting time. We have a new Editorial Director, Anne Alexander, who relaunched the magazine in January with a beautiful new vision for the brand. I work very closely with her, and as of last week, I’m Executive Editor of Prevention.com and Prevention magazine. Before that, I was Deputy Editor of the website, and prior to that, I was Senior Editor of the magazine.
We recently refreshed the website too, though we’d been making changes to Prevention.com for a good six months. Until about a year ago, all of the print stories were migrated online, and there was some original content, but not a ton. I saw this incredible opportunity to help grow a brand that I think resonates really strongly with readers and has a very specific tone—very welcoming, very smart. And there is a scientific rigor that Prevention brings to health reporting that I wasn’t seeing a lot of on other sites. I thought that this was an amazing opportunity to grow the brand to a certain extent but also just let the website be its own editorial “thing.”
We’ve come a long way in the past year in terms of integrating the teams and having a lot more back and forth, but before that, they were completely distinct.
I think that’s a mistake a lot of magazine publishers make. If your website is the digital expression of your brand, I think people on your print staff should be crossing that aisle. I attribute at least some of the success of the site to exactly that.
Prevention.com has experienced some major growth in the past several months, even prior to last month’s site relaunch. What do you attribute that online growth to?
Our strategy has been simple: Create a lot of really good content every single day, with surprising and useful services that the reader will actually use.
We really didn’t change that much on the site. The only thing that we changed was the quality of the writing and the volume of the content.
Even though digital now is my biggest love, I’m a print girl at heart, and so I have it drilled into my brain that content matters more than anything, and that’s what we’ve seen at Prevention.com. We try to find exciting and practical ways to help people, and if people see that and they like it, then they come back for more.
What industry trends are you currently watching?
I am very curious about site personalization. I’m not sold yet on the idea that that’s the direction we need to be going in. I think maybe for a site that’s doing news, it makes sense. For a brand like Prevention, at least right now, people are coming to us in print and in digital for the entire brand, which is just welcoming and positive and aspirational. But I do think it’s an interesting trend.
I also think that community online is really important. One of the beautiful things about the web is that you can track in real time what people are responding to, and then you can sort of course-correct. Also, just hearing directly from our readers is very important.
For a while, we’d had commenting turned off on our site. It wasn’t a philosophical decision; it was a technical decision. One of the first things I wanted to do when I came on board on the site was turn commenting back on. I think that it creates a sort of brand affinity, and also a loyalty. People want to come back to see if anyone had advice for them, or if anyone responded to their comment. It’s great because it ups your impressions and keeps people coming back, but I also think it adds an element of personality and a human feel to the web, which I really respond to and I think is important.
No More Dirty Looks is an example. I wrote that book with my best friend, who is also a journalist, and we thought, “Well, we should probably have a website, because that’s what people who write books do,” but we didn’t think it was actually going to be a living, breathing thing that we would continue for years. It’s a passion project; it’s really just a fun thing we do in our spare time. But it was really cool to just see this thing grow only by word of mouth. Most of our readers were not people who came to us because they read the book; they came to use because they heard about or found the blog. It taught me an important lesson, which is that while similar, print and online are distinct audiences.
How do you juggle all of your responsibilities and still maintain work/life balance?
I work really hard, and, like everyone now, I’m sort of tethered to my phone most of the time, but I also don’t believe in working crazy hours. I do things with people I love several nights a week, I try not to work on the weekends, and I’m physically active.
In publishing, you have weeks when you’re feeling a bit more frayed than others, but for the most part, I take good care of myself outside of work. Work can really take over your life, but—not to sound corny—I feel like when you really love what you’re doing, it doesn’t feel like work. NoMoreDirtyLooks.com is a good example; it doesn’t take that much of my time, it brings me a lot of joy, and it’s a way for me and my best friend to do something together as well. It feels like play to me. And with Prevention, too—I’ve never loved a job as much as the one I have now, and it’s such an amazing team, so while it’s stressful, it’s still a pleasure to go to work every day. I feel very lucky.
Several years ago, I had this epiphany: “You can feel better.” If you care for your health, and you care for your spirit, and you care for your soul, and surround yourself with people that you love, then your life will be better. To me, that’s what health is, and it’s also the Prevention perspective—that health is not the absence of disease; it’s living a whole life and loving your life. I still have crazy days, but it’s definitely what I aspire to. I think it’s the spirit of what we try to do professionally, too.
How did you end up on the path to working in the publishing industry?
My first mentor was a man named Alastair Sutherland, who was the editor of the alternative weekly in Montreal, where I’m from. I had no experience, I hadn’t gone to college yet, and he hired me as an assistant on his editorial team and just spent an incredible amount of time going line by line with me, teaching me things that you cannot learn in school. That kind of experience—you can’t put a price tag on it. He gave me this idea that if you really want to do something and you work really hard at it, you can do it.
Do you have any advice for people who are looking to get started in the publishing and media industry?
I think for many years, there seemed to be this push for people to get hyperspecialized, but for digital roles, generalists are what I kind of look for when I’m hiring people. I’m looking for someone who’s intellectually curious and who’s versatile.
Every person on our team now, even if they’re devoted to beauty, they’re also writing about food, and they’re also doing first-person blogs, they’re also doing essays, and all kinds of different things. I think it’s really important to be nimble and be a team player.
I think taking risks and figuring out what you love and then doing that is pretty smart too.
What are you excited about for 2013?
I’m really excited about the year ahead for Prevention, especially print, because we relaunched the magazine last month. I feel very lucky and excited to be a member of that team and, with our wonderful Editorial Director Anne Alexander, helping bring about the new vision that she has for the magazine and bring it to life—meaning live events, as well as in the pages of the magazine, and of course in all of our digital editions.
Do you have a favorite app?
I really like Fooducate. It’s not a fancy, splashy app, but it’s a really good one. It’s great if you’re on the go and trying to figure out what’s in the food that you’re hoping to eat.
Technology for Publishing’s Women in Media blog highlights the news and achievements of female leaders and role models in the publishing and media industry. Look for our monthly in-depth profiles and interviews of top women to watch. Is there someone you’d like to nominate for an upcoming Q&A? Drop us a note!
Posted by: Gina Barrett