The Golf Watch

Golfweek unveils new Web site

Always staying ahead of the competition on the technology front, Golfweek just launched its new Web site. 

I've looked around the site quite a bit and it is clearly the most interactive golf news site on the web. 

The Tour blog is much improved (with actual permalinks!) and the multimedia content has a much more dominant presence on the front page.  The site is a little too cluttered for my taste, but I'm sure tweaks will be made in the coming months.

Golfweek Editor Babineau receives promotion

Golfweek Editor Jeff Babineau has been promoted to vice president of Turnstile Publishing Company, the parent company of Golfweek. 

Babineau was a senior writer for the magazine before he was promoted to editor after the firing of Dave Seanor in January, 2008.  Babineau will stay on as editor of the magazine. 

Read a February Q+A we conducted with Babineau here.

Golfweek surpasses competitors in multimedia

Golfweek is continuing to make major strides in their online media department.  The magazine is now content sharing with insidetheropes.com, using ITR's post round interviews for their video section. 

This is another big step for a golf magazine that is light years ahead of the rest of the pack.

Golfweek.com podcasts need higher production value

Now that Golfweek.com has established itself as one of the premiere destinations for web-first content and multimedia (minus those hokey audio slideshows), I found it interesting that the site has recently started to publish a daily podcast.

As an audio production and public radio geek, I have always found podcasts to be especially revealing, and when conducted properly, they can prove to be a much more meaningful medium than video. 

One of the problems with Golfweek's podcasts though is that the sound quality is mediocre at best.  It's clear that the interviews are being done over a phone, which is fine, but the recording comes in soft at times and is unprofessional.  Two words that can improve the podcasts: amplitude and mastering. 

Golfweek has a fine production studio in Orlando for their videos.  They have the opportunity to infiltrate an untapped territory among their counterparts.  They can do better with their podcasts.   

"There are too many courses chasing too few golfers"

Bradley Klein filed a piece in the February 7 edition of Golfweek (not online, sorry) re-capping the 2009 PGA Merchandise Show.  Klein discusses some of the underlying business themes and elaborates on a likely decrease in the number of courses nationwide...

Cyclical fluctuations are nothing new.  But this time, it's not clear whether facility operators are dealing with a temporary decline or a transormation whereby golf simply is less of a priority.  One thing is clear: After years of dramatic build-up in inventory, there are too many courses chasing too few golfers.  Something's got to give, and it's likely to be a number of courses - perhaps as many as 500 over the next two years, compared with 227.5 in the past two years.

Golfweek Editor: Jeff Babineau Q+A Part 2

RS: Jeff Rude wrote a column in the January 24 edition about the demise of golf writers at America's major newspapers. From what I understand, magazines are feeling the pinch, but haven't been hit as hard. Where is Golfweek during this whole economic mess?

Jeff: Certainly we feel the same challenge as everyone else in today’s tough economic times, and we’re being as smart and efficient as we can be. But a tough economy meant it was more important than ever to forge ahead with our redesign; if you’re standing still these days, as many are, somebody is going to pass you by. The fact that fewer and fewer newspapers are going to have staff writers dedicated to following golf is a shame, frankly. Jeff Rude, Jim McCabe and I (and several others) on our staff have worked at newspapers and have many friends that have been impacted by layoffs and buyouts. That said, it’s a situation that helps us in doing what we do at Golfweek. We’re not covering golf tournaments sitting behind a desk half a world away, as many newspapers did at last summer’s British Open. We had five writers and a video crew at Royal Birkdale, we were out watching golf shots in 40 mph winds and rain, and we’re out there talking to players first-hand. To us, it’s all about being authentic. You can’t be very authentic trying to cover golf from an office cubicle somewhere. 

RS: Speaking of the demise of print journalism, Golfweek picked up one of the most respected scribes in Jim McCabe.  It must be a big bonus, especially for those readers from the New England area who read his writing for years in the Globe, to still be able to read his columns.

Jeff: Adding Jim was a great bonus. We’d been talking to him for years. He’s a terrific writer, a great reporter, and one of the most respected journalists covering golf today. To pair him with Jeff Rude gives us more than four decades of combined experience in covering the PGA Tour. Being a New Englander, I know first-hand he had a tremendous following across the entire region, so I hope Jim’s followers continue to read him in the pages of Golfweek and online at golfweek.com, where he contributes a weekly column. 

RS: Golfweek's branding online has always been ahead of the pack. As an editor, what kind of emphasis do you put on Web-first stories? Multimedia?

Jeff: We want to continue to lead on the Web, and do that by offering as much fresh copy as we can. The Web has given us a great vehicle to break news (we used it to be first to inform readers about the LPGA’s English-only proposal last year, for instance). Some publications simply dump all their magazine content onto their site and that’s their “Web site”; I’ve never understood that. Doesn’t that lessen the value of the magazine to those paying for it? We have a half dozen writers on staff who file Web-specific content each week on the PGA, LPGA and European tours (Alistair Tait writes from London), and also offer exclusive Web content on the college and amateur front. We have a Tour Blog that is very popular. And we also offer video features on GolfweekTV (via golfweek.com) such as Jeff Rude’s Hate to be Rude, which is a weekly show depicting some of the biggest names in golf in fun, relaxed interviews, and Lance Ringler’s “Around Campus” college features. There are some staffs that may be bigger in size, but I’d put our staff up against any in terms of productiveness. Of course, I’m a little biased.

Click here to read part one.

Golfweek Editor: Jeff Babineau Q+A Part 1

Golfweek Editor Jeff Babineau was nice enough to take some time to answer a number of questions about the re-design of Golfweek, the demise of the newspaper golf writer, the importance of web-first stories and a number of other topics. 

I will post Part 2 later tonight.

Enjoy.

Richard
Editor, The Golf Watch

RS: Jeff, congratulations on the new design of Golfweek.  The magazine has a much more stylish look.  Redesigns can take a very long time--when did you guys start planning this?

Jeff: The idea was presented last spring, not long after a high-ranking golf executive referred to Golfweek as a “golf trade publication,” and we really got started in late summer, with director of design Jason Lusk leading the way. We’re quite proud of our roots – the magazine is close to 35 years old – but wanted to promote a message that Golfweek has evolved into a consumer magazine. The move to be more mainstream in size and make our appearance more fresh and modern breaks from our roots as a trade and helps us tell that story. It hopefully will help attract new readers to the publication, too. 

RS: You have already published four issues with the new design. What kind of response have you gotten from readers?

Jeff: We’ve been very pleased and encouraged by the feedback we have received, as a large majority of readers who have weighed in tell us they like the new look. It hasn’t been unanimously positive, and that’s fine. We knew going in that not everybody embraces change. I mean, what do you say to somebody who tells you they loved the magazine the way it was? But overall, people have been very positive about the new appearance and what we’re doing. We devoted 20-plus pages of our Jan. 31 issue to putting (Golfweek’s Putting Issue), which was something we’d never done so extensively, and the response we’ve heard back has been outstanding. 

RS: The magazine has a new trim size. Does this save money on printing costs?

Jeff: We’re expecting our new size to save us some money on print costs, yes. But it’s still a bit of an unknown how much we’ll actually save. Going to a smaller trim size means the need for more editorial pages if we continue to do all the things we do (our first redesigned magazine of 2009, for example, had 10 more edit pages than our 2008 opener in the bigger size). Also, part of taking on the project was hiring a great firm to do it, and so we made a significant investment by retaining Garcia Media (which has helped oversee redesigns at The Wall Street Journal, Crain’s New York and many other fine publications). In the end, a more mainstream print size gives us more options on where we print and also should save time on the delivery end, so hopefully our readers are getting the magazine into their hands quicker than ever. 

RS: Now that your magazine has a similar physical appearance to the other major golf newsweekly, how do you feel Golfweek is able to differentiate itself content-wise?

Jeff: The difference is in all the things we do. We preach quality plus quantity. We put together a chart of what we do vs. our two weekly competitors, and we’re confident we do a great deal more. We have The Forecaddie, a popular feature which expanded from one page to three or four pages. We’re running The Golf Life, a section of the magazine devoted to golf destinations and lifestyle, every other week. We run at least two columns a week. We have competition coverage not only from all the pro tours, but from amateur, college and junior events. We have our own rankings, both for pro and amateur players, as well as top-100 courses (and best state by state). We cover business. We cover architecture. Our reader represents a good player (on average a single-digit handicapper), and we run instruction aimed at the better player (not the same old “Fix Your Slice” stuff.) We ran an instruction piece early in 2008 showing readers the drills Lorena Ochoa uses to work on her game. Pretty strong. And we also offer more scores and stats than people are getting anywhere else. That’s a pretty comprehensive package.

Click here to read part two.

Coincidence or advertising ploy? You be the judge...

Golfweek hyping their re-design above (first appeared on Golfweek.com around the new year). 

Golf World advertisement below (appeared in January 19 edition of magazine)...

 

Golfweek unveils new design

Back in December, Golfweek sent out a press release and ran advertisements on its Web site announcing a new design for its magazine.  Advertising execs hyped it as "the dawn of a new era."  This description initially seemed a little over the top to me, but after receiving my January 17 copy of Golfweek, it wasn't that far off.

Golfweek has trimmed down the actual size of their magazine, creating a more visually appealing and easier to handle publication.  There is no sign in the first issue of a shortage in content.  In fact, more space has been allotted to The Forecaddie and The Scoreboard. 

As reported by Sal Johnson late last year, Jim Mccabe's first column appeared in this issue.  I also noticed that Alex Miceli received a promotion from contributing writer to senior writer. 

My only concern about the new design is that it is now similar in size to Golf World, its primary competition.  When placing the magazines side-by-side, it's hard to differentiate between the two.

Nevertheless, the changes are stylish and pretty cutting-edge.  They should be valuable in appealing to a younger audience.

"The dawn of a new era"

More posts will be coming tonight, but in the meantime, it looks like Golfweek will be introducing a new design beginning January 17.  They recently added a top banner ad on their site that indicates the "dawn of a new era."