Upping the Calendar's Cachet

By Jeff Bailey
December 16, 2008 12:58 PM

It’s a toss-away feature of Monday business pages and weekly business journals: the calendar of events, usually a list of economic indicators and corporate earnings reports expected that week. Sometimes, local conventions and meetings also are included. Some editors view it as a space-filler. Some pull a calendar off the wires and trim it to fit. Some ask a news clerk to compile one from a handful of sources. No matter how it was put together, the end result is often the same. Nearly all of the calendars are deadly-dull.

Is there a better way?

I believe there is, and it begins by regarding the weekly calendar – and all standing features, no matter how lowly – as essential opportunities to engage readers; a few dull features, after all, and pretty soon you’ve got a dull section.

As a model, take a look at Fast Company’s section, NOW. (Its online version isn’t nearly as well laid-out or as nicely illustrated as the print version, but you can still read the 15-to-20 quirky items that run each month.)

For starters, the magazine, which has evolved from being one of the late-1990s dot-com chroniclers to being a journal of ideas and innovation, assumes that if you’re all that interested in General Electric’s earnings or the unemployment rate that you already know when they’re being released. A safe bet, I’d say.

When it does delve into predictable calendar items, Fast Company takes them in fun and surprising directions. An item on the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit Nov. 22-23 becomes an excuse to show President George W. Bush in native outfits from past summits. Another on the 82nd Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ignores the holiday to instead tell readers how Macy’s, the company, is performing.

“We try to do a couple of corporate stories,” says Jeff Chu, the senior editor who compiles NOW.

Indeed, NOW is structured as a calendar, but it’s really just a bunch of 100-word items about interesting topics – each of which happens to have some connection to the month. Conventions and conferences. Movie and book releases. Anniversaries.

“The calendar is a device,” says Chu’s boss, Bob Safian, Fast Company’s editor. “The goal in some ways is just to have an entertaining access point in the magazine for shorter items.”

“That’s the take home,” Chu adds. “Look, there’s all this interesting stuff going on in the world.”

So, in November we also learned about the World Toilet Summit and Expo in Macau – nearly half the world lacks one, so toilets are quite a potential growth market. In an item about World Smoke Asia 2008, also in Macau, where cigarette makers hope to figure out how to sell more coffin nails to the Chinese, we learn about Chinese government efforts to stop smoking in public buildings. Not so encouraging for the tobacco companies.

Perhaps you’re saying to yourself now, but my readers aren’t going to jet off to Macau, or even to London or New York, for a conference. True, but neither are they likely to stop by the convention center in your own city for one, unless it’s concerning their industry. But regardless of where the gathering is, if the calendar item is fascinating, your readers might hop online and check out the conference and then follow links to particular businesses or organizations.

“Ninety nine percent of our readers are never going to go to any of these events,” says Chu. “So, how do you make a conference interesting?”

He has three basic approaches. “Pull a nugget of information out of it. Tie it to a broader theme. Or make fun of it.”

A September item about the MTV Video Music Awards was an excuse to look at the big album releases scheduled for the fall, in a fun graphic, and wonder if any might pull the music industry out of its slump. And the October item about the annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (1,600 of them) made me want to read a longer feature on the gathering.

For next February, Chu is determined that an item on roses – for Valentine’s Day – will be surprising.

Chu, 31, who also writes articles for Fast Company, guesses he spends 10-to-15 percent of his time on NOW and that a deputy art director does likewise. NOW takes up 4-to-5 pages per issue. And they have help: interns and freelancers to report and write most of the items and an artist who pulls together a collage of numbers on one topic, Numerology, each month.

Chu spends a lot of time doing “creative Google searches” combining the month in question with terms like convention, conference, anniversary, awards. “It’s not very scientific,” he says. But that’s how he found the 40th anniversary of the film ratings system, which prompted a fun and informative Numerology item. Chu studies other magazines for how they write and display short items – the topic doesn’t matter – and learns little tricks.

OK, now you’re saying to yourself, geez, we just laid off three reporters and a copy editor. Good for Mr. Chu and Fast Company, but we don’t have the horses to produce such a fancy calendar.

Maybe not. But in my experience as a beat reporter I came across lots of interesting little tidbits – and I had the background to quickly give them some context. But many of them grew moldy on my desk because they didn’t rise to the level of a story. The truth is, beat reporters are way ahead of Chu’s interns and freelancers in knowing about interesting conferences, conventions, anniversaries, you name it. And their command of the topic means they can explain the event and probably find a way to crack wise about it, too. Little items can be a nice release valve for reporters accustomed to writing mostly breaking news and longer, serious features.

It’s worth a try. Otherwise, you’re giving readers this. Or this. Or this.
Or this. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

Jeff Bailey, a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times reporter, writes for national business magazines. He lives in Chicago.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism