SPLIT
James Evelegh draws on some insights from the July/August issue of InPublishing magazine.
The July/August issue of InPublishing magazine came out this week. Here are some of my takeaways:
- News: PR managers should take it easy when trying to win over editors. “I’m so excited to be contacting you to let you know…” is not a good way to start your email. I mean, are they really? Are they really?
- Diversification of income: At Good Housekeeping, we believed that there were women who would spend more money if a product was designed so that they could buy it.
- Submarine Marketing: It’s important to go out and fail. You don’t just learn from success. Failure sucks, but it can be a learning experience – take the value from it and use it for the next endeavor.
- News Deserts: Hyperlocal websites can fill a gap in news provision. However, in disadvantaged areas this gap is not sufficiently filled, which can lead to a democratic deficit.
- Credibility: Sections of the national press have been discredited by their uncritical support of Brexit and Boris Johnson, and their subsequent equally strong support for Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
- Front design: A magazine cover is not a collection of parts pasted into a template. It is a whole, a single unit. This means that the words must be written with the images in mind.
- Journalism: Those who take their time achieve better results. And at the very least, journalists have time to talk to experts and people on the ground and hopefully pay visits.
- Data publication: A unified platform that is scalable, future-proof and flexible is a prerequisite. No matter how well you understand your customers’ needs, if the technology and database structure you use makes it difficult to query and manipulate the data and bring new products to market that meet those needs, you will see significantly worse results.
- New product development: You need to truly understand your value proposition and not allow the urge to get to market quickly to cause you to skip concept and prototype development.
- Encouraging signs: The most encouraging development in today’s media landscape is the return of entrepreneurship in journalism – a spirit of origin where editors and business partners define communities and intuit (and track) what is of use to and benefits those communities.
- Fighting adblockers: If your users respect your content and trust you enough to remove their ad blockers, then make sure they have a good experience with ads!
- Acceptance of AI: There is widespread mistrust among the public about how AI could be used in content creation, especially for “hard” news topics like politics or war. For behind-the-scenes tasks, such as transcribing interviews or summarizing materials for research, the use of AI is more welcome; it serves to support journalists rather than replace them.
- AI guardrails: By establishing ethical guardrails, teams can move forward with confidence, knowing the parameters within which they operate.
- Portfolio management: Each brand in a publisher’s portfolio can have very different dynamics and business models. Managing this diversity while applying best practices and achieving economies of scale across the company is a real challenge for many companies.
If you would like to read the full issue, please register here. After completing registration, you will receive a link to the digital edition.
James Evelegh’s regular column can be found in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.
