The July / August issue of InPublishing magazine was published last week. Here are some of my takeaways from it, one from each article:
- Proud to be second: For a weekly like the Observer, being a second read and a place where people come to make sense of the news is a good place to be, rather than forever chasing breaking news. (H/t Rich Furness)
- Reaching the under 35s: Publishers need to make it super-easy for their editorial teams to create multi-media content, as Immediate Media has done with its new state-of-the-art test kitchen. (H/t Lily Barclay)
- Paying interns: By limiting entry to the publishing industry to those who can afford to house and feed themselves while they work for nothing to gain the experience they need for a compelling CV, we are creating invisible barriers for those without access to the bank of mum and dad. (H/t Sue Brooks)
- AI ethics: Using AI to create images that we normally would have contracted a human photographer to take might stick in the craw, but using it in place of photographs that haven’t been taken yet because the subject doesn’t yet exist… that’s excusable. (H/t Dickon Ross)
- Customer service: Great customer service builds the brand, poor customer service damages it – just look at Trustpilot to see what happens when publishers get customer service wrong, by for instance, making it nigh-on impossible to either cancel or speak to someone. (H/t Adam Sherman)
- Medical publishing: When publishing includes patients, it becomes more than a vehicle for transmitting research. It becomes a mechanism for shaping it, challenging it, and ensuring it lands where it matters. It helps bridge the gap between evidence and empathy, and creates space for more equitable and inclusive conversations. (H/t Emma Doble)
- Bumper issues: Publish lots of them! Readers lap them up, happily paying more for an extra 16 pages, while publishers share the benefit with retailers seeing higher RSV and enhancements to the bottom line. (H/t Jon Bickley)
- Being there: For local media, it’s all about showing up, reporting the council meetings, the weekend sports matches and every significant local event one can think of – from summer galas to Remembrance Sunday parades. (H/t Robbie Scott)
- The power of the community # 1: For many publishing brands, the most consistently underrated attribute of success is its utility for a community. (H/t Douglas McCabe)
- The power of the community # 2: The big opportunity for magazine publishers moving forward lies in building and mobilising tribes by cutting through with the right content at the right time, understanding and engaging people. (H/t Jane Bruton)
- The platform challenge: Platforms are looking to keep more traffic within their owned and operated environments, linking out only when absolutely necessary – and the roll out of generative AI search interfaces will only make it tougher for publishers to get attention. (H/t Nic Newman)
- Content strategies: News consumption is driven not just by a desire to stay informed, but by a range of emotional, practical, and intellectual needs. People don’t just want to know what’s happening; they want to understand why it matters, how it affects them, and what they can do about it. (H/t FT Strategies / Phil Clark)
- Uncertain times: The mood of the media world in 2025 is looking very different from last year. There is a clear sense that the industry is at a “moment in time”, wobbling on a tightrope between real opportunity and uncontrollable disaster, with executive burnout, over-hasty decision-making and a lack of leadership, direction and resolve being much more widespread than a year ago. (H/t Jim Bilton)
If you want to read the full issue, then please register here. Once you’ve completed your registration, you’ll be provided with a link to the digital edition.
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
