Some takeaways from our March / April issue

The March / April issue of InPublishing magazine was mailed out last week. Here are some of my takeaways from it:

1. The police not talking to journalists leaves a dangerous vacuum that’s quickly filled by conspiracy theorists and social media, as was witnessed in the Nicola Bulley case.
2. The key to success with TikTok videos (unlike YouTube) is producing much more lo-fi, snappy content that feels accessible.
3. Good journalism is all about telling people things they might not want to hear, but which they need to know.
4. In a world where the media is under so much pressure to take sides, we should prize and defend impartiality harder than ever.
5. Publishers are rarely short of ideas – what many of them lack is the editorial resource to bring those ideas to life. PA Media can provide whatever extra resource is needed. (Sponsored)
6. Marketers work with clunky tech stacks and imperfect data every day. The best thing to do is, explore your toolkit, identify what you can do rather than what you can’t do and get testing.
7. With Private Eye, there’s no display to talk of, just three column text and small headlines. The pictures are similarly stingy while some of the cartoons test aging eyesight. But nearly a quarter of a million people don’t seem to care. Every fortnight, they pay for quality content that they can’t get anywhere else.
8. When embarking on a major departmental restructure, clarity and consistency of messaging is key. It is vital to align messages and be clear about the purpose and goals.
9. Travel is notorious for having travel brochures filled with 2.4 white straight families on holiday and that’s just not representative of modern Britain. Now, when TTG runs a piece about honeymoons or weddings, it won’t just cover straight couples. Nor will it just put gay couples in an LGBT feature.
10. According to AOP research, a fifth of publishers admitted to not having a joined-up internal strategy in place around audience data.
11. Design may not be high on most editors’ priority list, but the way we look needs to keep evolving as our appearance can become outdated very quickly.
12. Statistics show that consumer brand preferences are driven by an alignment of their values and the brands’ purpose and that is why HELLO! will continue to amplify women’s health issues and provide its readers with trusted information.
13. M&A used to be thought of as the domain of larger companies but is now seen by many smaller operations as a realistic route to revenue growth and to building the broader capabilities of the business.

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.