Hill's Side

It’s time to celebrate! With this Spring 2006 issue of Johns Hopkins Nursing, the eighth in our publication history, we mark three years of a magazine you have welcomed and applauded and to which many of you contribute news, notes, and stories.

During the past three years, we’ve learned from you that Johns Hopkins Nursing serves its readers in a variety of ways. For many of us, it’s the link to our alma mater and to news of our classmates; for others, it’s news of the successes and accomplishments of Johns Hopkins nursing and Johns Hopkins nurses. And for some, it’s the best advertisement, the best marketing piece we have to tell prospective friends, students, and stakeholders what the phrase “Johns Hopkins Nursing” is all about.

You, the reader, have told us what you like—and what you don’t like—about the magazine and what you want to see in future issues. Last year—because we had heard from many of you that the news was “old” by the time the magazine brought it to you—we joined forces with the Johns Hopkins Nurses’ Alumni Association and agreed to publish a third issue each year. Watch your mailbox: You now receive more timely news with issues in March, July, and November.

Just recently we asked for more of your input and nearly 300 of you responded to our first-ever readership survey. The results are now being compiled. A sneak preview of the data shows that most of you give us very high marks on appearance, readability, timeliness of articles, and journalistic quality, and that the news sections about the school, the hospital, and alumni are your favorites. We’ll share more details of the compiled results in the Summer 2006 issue. And, in future issues, we’ll be responding to your ideas for new content and design additions and changes (we’ll be particularly sensitive to those about how hard it is to read black type on dark backgrounds!).

Throughout this publishing experience, and because we so frequently hear from you that you want us to keep to our current standards of publication excellence, we have worked to carefully balance the challenges of maintaining those standards with the reality of controlling escalating costs. As paper, production, and printing costs creep—and sometimes leap—upward, we have searched for methods to maintain the high caliber editorial content, the exciting graphic and design quality, and the rich “look and feel” so many of you remarked on and applauded in your responses to our survey. In the following pages you will see one solution to today’s publishing challenges: Advertising.

We found that we can offset approximately one-third of the cost of each issue by having some pages devoted to advertising, yet still maintain all the editorial content—news of the school and hospital nurses, nursing features, the Vigilando section, and “Church [Home] Notes”—and our outstanding graphics and production quality.

In the most recent issues, we experimented with the addition of a few pages of advertising. First we established criteria for advertising to ensure none would feature products offensive to our readership. Then we reviewed our peer publications within the university and throughout the nursing world. Finally, we launched our first tentative outreach to vendors and friends who might wish to add their marketing messages to our popular publishing endeavor. The response was overwhelming. Within weeks, we sold out of available advertising pages and in this issue will begin to meet our goal of maintaining publications excellence while realizing cost savings.

We hope you enjoy this first issue in the fourth year of our exciting publishing adventure and welcome those who have chosen to join us as much appreciated advertisers and friends of Johns Hopkins Nursing.

Martha N. Hill, PhD, RN ’64, FAAN
Dean