Is it a surprise to hear that I don’t love every piece that we publish?

The phone call came when I was washing dishes. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t my most professional self.

“I didn’t really like that article last week,” the woman on the other end said. “The tone was too adoring. So unprofessional. And I was waiting for some big revelation, some kind of major insight, but it never came.”

“I hear that,” I said. “It was a different style. Some people really enjoy it, but I didn’t love it either.”

“You didn’t like it?” she said. “So why is it in the magazine?”

Is it a surprise to hear that I don’t love every piece that we publish? The way I see it, this magazine is made for our readers — a big, varied, and opinionated crowd with lots of varied likes and dislikes. It’s not meant to be a reflection of my personal taste, I don’t have to agree with every premise of every piece we publish, and it’s okay if some styles don’t resonate with me.

While we aim for a Mishpacha mark — a certain polish and presentation, hopefully a standard of quality and integrity — on everything we publish, we don’t want to produce a monolith. Mishpacha’s strength has always been that it provides something for everyone, serving up a mix of tones, voices, styles, and formats. We try to include the lyrical and emotional pieces along with the hard-hitting and analytical, the eye candy along with the immersive long-reads, the entertaining, the informative, the inspirational. And that means our own personal tastes shouldn’t be the sole arbiter of what goes in and what stays out.

A few months ago, I had a long, passionate dialogue with a writer about a certain style of fiction. I really appreciated her conclusion, because it spoke of the same awareness. “This is not something I love to read and not a style I see myself writing,” she said, “but I want the magazine to have it because I know there are readers who love it.”

I

have a theory that our editors get tired of material slightly before our readers do — possibly because we see the pieces in so many incarnations: as a raw pitch, then a rough draft, post-edit, post-proof… Whatever the reason, if we get the feeling that a column has worn out its welcome, chances are good our readers will start feeling that way soon after.

Several years ago, a few of us agreed that a certain column was getting stale, and we starting discussing an exit plan and replacement. Then a funny thing happened: We just happened to do a readers’ survey, and we discovered that our readers ranked this particular column as one of the most popular pieces in the package. We realized we hadn’t read the room. (Needless to say, we adjusted our plans and kept the column going.)

That was an important lesson for us. While you need to trust your instincts in this job, you also need humility. You have to recognize that your tastes are your own — valid but also limited — and other people have their legitimate tastes too. You might find a piece too light or too long-winded, too sappy or too wonky — but you have to listen to the readers and find out what they think, too.

Because one person’s fluff is another’s chicken soup; it can be exactly the dose of inspiration they need. You deride that at your own peril.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 861)