That elusive quality editors and agents search for, but can never fully explain.
They have a long way to go to improve the service, but either they will get there or a new marketplace for high-quality editors or independent publishers will spring up.
With 11.2 billion barrels of oil-equivalent reserves, Kelley Wright, Investment Quality Trends editor, says Chevron is well positioned if crude oil prices, which rose about 75% in 2009 to around $80 a barrel, continue to move higher through 2010.
I thought it disgraced itself, morally and intellectually, in the aftermath of September 11th, and since then has varied wildly in quality as editors came and went.
Affixed to a whiteboard is a checklist of qualities the editors are after: Funny, Informative, Community, Viral/trend, Influential, Relatable.
The essential quality of an editor, he told me, is sympathy.
"PZEV's certainly help improve air quality," said Bill Moore, editor of EV World, an online magazine about electric cars.
He praised Ms. Russell's "refined aesthetic and sound judgment," as well as her hardiness, resilience being as valuable a quality in the editor of a shelter magazine today as an eye for a nicely appointed room.
Mr. Wallace ran a "gentle company," where cost took a back seat to editorial quality, said David Palmer, editor in chief of Reader's Digest's general books until 1998, when Mr. Ryder fired him.
"He had an unmatched talent for recognizing quality," says Executive Editor Monica Bradford.
