In the summer of each year, in planning for the next year, we editors come up with some story ideas that we put on what we call the editorial calendar, which goes into the magazine’s media and promotion package, which goes to our potential advertisers. They may find a subject planned for a particular issue for the next year and are enticed to run an accompanying advertisement. This process allows them to budget ahead. This is part of what makes the trade magazine world turn. We prefer of course for companies to run advertisements in every issue, because the constant exposure to our readership is better for them, and obviously better for us. But we appreciate all advertisements, whether a company runs one advertisement or six during the course of the year.
The coming-up-with-the-story ideas is the challenging part. Our editorial subject for this issue, for example, which we decided upon more than a year ago, as it reads on the editorial calendar, is “The State of Industrial Wood Pellets.” Which is not quite as broad as “The State of the Universe,” but within the wood energy industry comes pretty close.
Actually every one of our issues hits on the state of industrial wood pellets by reporting on project announcements and developments, or with a full blown article on a specific plant that has just started up and been visited by one of our editors. Heck, our last issue had a marathon-length but extremely informative article on the economics of co-firing with pellets and coal in existing U.S. coal plants. Each issue also incudes the latest equipment technologies that are introduced to the industrial wood pellet industry.
From Left: Rich Donnell, Editor-in-Chief; Jay Donnell, Associate Editor; Dan Shell, Western Editor; Jessica Johnson, Associate Editor; David Abbott, Senior Associate Editor; David (DK) Knight, Co-Publisher/Executive Editor
But industrial wood pellets is just one piece of this magazine. We do the same for domestic heating wood pellets, biomass power generation, woody biomass procurement and harvesting.
So when we sit down and decide which specific topic should be listed on the editorial calendar for each issue, we realize there’s going to be a lot more in that issue than just that one topic. But we still have to find one to lead the way so to speak. It’s just how things have always been done in our field.
Then there’s the immediate challenge we confront after we list “The State of Industrial Wood Pellets.” Which is, what specifically are we going to write about with regard to the state of industrial wood pellets? Since we’ve listed it on the editorial calendar, it needs to have a different twist than what we normally write about as to the state of industrial wood pellets in every other issue.
We decided, as you’ll read beginning on page 14, to focus on international markets for industrial wood pellets—which countries are buying in, which countries are running into infrastructure and policy roadblocks, and what the experts are saying about how much industrial wood pellet production is happening now and will happen down the road. How will that anticipated production be impacted by regulations and standards? What organizations or associations are forming abroad in response to these developments? Certainly in our own backyard the U.S. Industrial Pellet Assn. (USIPA) was quick to the task in its formation and effectiveness. Its executive director, Seth Ginther, was interviewed for our article.
So you see, we have to be forecasters ourselves, when we list a subject on an editorial calendar up to a year in advance. We don’t always get it right. But frankly with “The State of Industrial Wood Pellets” we were playing it pretty safe.