About

[In Plain Sight] is the personal blog of Michael Turro… it exists solely for the purpose of providing me (mturro) with a space to work through random thoughts and ideas generally regarding the future of the magazine industry, publishing in general, technology, culture, media and sometimes politics. This site also serves the purpose of putting my life out in the open (thus the name). It lets me get out in front of my digital identity and gives me some sort of control over what I look like through the prism of a Google search.

In my professional life I am the Director of Publishing Technologies for M. Shanken Communications, publisher of Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, Food Arts, Market Watch and Impact magazines. (By the way: All writings, opinions and comments are entirely my own and DO NOT represent M. Shanken Communications or its publications in any way, shape or form.)

In my personal life I am a father, husband, son, son-in-law, brother, uncle, friend, and neighbor to a small group of individuals who take residence in the hills of North Jersey and other more remote areas of the country.

—STOP READING NOW IF YOU ARE ALREADY BORED—

A random fact about me that might give you a more full picture of who I am and what I believe: I walked away from my Master of Arts Degree in Literature with only six credits left to complete.  After reading Marshall McLuhan I decided that I needed to get out of the academic trap… I needed to explore the real and practical effects of media.

So I got a job with a magazine publisher (or as they now like to refer to themselves - a media company) and dove into learning how magazines actually get made.  I became a production aficionado.

I was extraordinarily lucky to get into the business at a time when the computer - the Mac really - was transforming the printing and publishing world.  I grew up on Apple so the Mac was natural to me - I was well versed in its culture, its excentricities, and it’s application as a creative tool.  This understanding gave me a leg up on people who had been in the business for decades, people who had (perhaps jokingly) claimed to set type in hot metal, people who looked at the Mac with scorn.

All in all I am happy I walked away from academics and found real life waiting for me in the media and publishing worlds.  I’m not sure I could see myself being happy teaching Mellville and Emerson and Thoreau to college kids.  Not that there is anything wrong with that… I come from a family of teachers - I’m even married to one… it’s just that it never felt like a fit for me.  I need to be confronted with market level uncertainty… I love to (here I will paraphrase Nassim Nicholas Taleb) work from real life back to books, not from books to real life.