The Importance and Influence of Editors in the Wine Industry

Posted by Tom Wark on Apr 14, 2011

If you have never had the benefit of working with an editor, it might not be perfectly clear that they do far more than check for spelling and grammar errors. The fact is, editing is a creative process that requires the ability to choose among many options. There is a very special form of editing that wine industry professionals need to appreciate: the ability to choose which stories to highlight.

This skill is most obviously on display among the various "wine news aggregation services" that are available to wine industry professionals.

The first thing I turn to in the morning, or first thing I wait for depending upon the time I arrive in front of my computer, are the various news aggregation emails that come my way. Each is a collection of wine related news stories that editors create. The combinations of news stories and links that show up in these emails tell you a lot about he perspective of the sender. That perspective becomes clear after you peruse these news aggregation emails for a while.

It's also important to note how influential many of these news aggregation emails have become. Depending on the size of the readership of these emails, specific news stories can take on greater importance in the industry simply because they are highlighted in front of so many eyes.

WINE BUSINESS MONTHLY'S DAILY NEWS LINKS
This daily email from Wine Business Monthly comes out early in the day (someone over there is getting up early). It usually highlights about 10 wine related news stories and three or four wine-related blog posts. There is a real emphasis in this email on regulatory issues, indicators of the health of the wine marketplace, consumer trends and links to wine stories thawt show up in important general news media outlets. The blog posts highlighted here tend to those that focus on business related matters, rather than consumer-directed quotes. This is a must read email for me every day. SIGN UP FOR THE EMAIL.

WINE INDUSTRY INSIGHT'S DAILY NEWS FETCH
Produced and sent daily by Lew Perdue of the Wine Industry Insight service, this email is much less focused than the Wine Business Monthly news aggregation email, but includes more links that are categorized by Top News, Public Companies & Investing, Health, Water, Around the States, Online Tech and Social Media, Around the Globe, Not Just for the Trade, Appointments and Announcements. Perdue lumps traditional news sources with blogs, rather than separating them. The email usually hits my in box around mid morning. SIGN UP HERE.

BENSON ENEWS MONITOR
Benson Marketing, a PR and Marketing firm in Napa and New York sends out an afternoon email to subscribers that aggregate a variety of news stories, many of which are much more consumer oriented than the previous two news aggregation services. Many of the consumer-oriented stories that are linked to tend to be the most important consumer wine news that has been published that day by critical news outlets such as the New York Times, SF Chronicle, Washington Post, etc. It's an excellent service. SIGN UP HERE.

There are other wine-related news aggregation services that various editors create on a daily basis and I welcome folks to identify them in the comments section of this blog post. I note these three services because they are the ones I most rely upon to be enlightened.

What's important to note about all of these services is that they require a good editor to look over all the possible stories that could be highlighted then choose those they believe most consequential, depending on their view of the world and the industry. And keep in mind too that these three services, because they have done such a good job at pointing readers to important news items, have become very influential.