TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

2 Sept 2016 · 2 min

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2:14

TJ Walker argues that celebrity guest editors at magazines are a gimmick that insults professional editors. He uses Barack Obama's Wired editorship as an example, noting celebrities typically contribute playlists instead of doing real editorial work, and the whole thing serves as mutual publicity rather than reader value.

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President Barack Obama will be guest editing Wired magazine. Now, you see this from time to time where some celebrity in a different field is asked to edit a magazine. Bono is editing Time magazine, things like that. I have to confess, I always thought that as a bit of a gimmick, it sort of demeans the hard work of going into being a great editor. Editors, great ones, work 60, 80 hours a week. Many of them, they have learned their craft decades after decades of hard work. And to say someone, no matter how talented in another field, instantly has the same skill, I think demeans the process of it. It always strikes me as a bit of a gimmick. Is this something that Obama's enemies are going to use to attack him? I doubt it. There's too many other things going on. It's a side trivial issue. Being president is a pretty time consuming job. It would be one thing if President Obama were going to guest host a talk radio or TV segment for a half an hour or an hour, that would be plausible. But guest editing an entire magazine? I have no doubt that the President has good taste when it comes to some aspects of technology, modern communication, music, other things. And asking his opinions. Magazine wanted him to list what's on his podcast that is interesting and in fact he's done that. His playlist. Excuse me, his playlist for music, that's interesting. But editing a whole magazine, all they're really doing is asking him for ideas of what he thinks might be interesting or it's something kicked down to the staff level. I think it's a bit of a gimmick. I don't applaud media organizations doing that, but hey, here we are talking about Wired magazine. It's a great publicity hook for the media outlet, that it's a nice publicity hook for the politician or the celebrity. I don't think readers, viewers, listeners, media consumers are really receiving any benefit from it.