The September / October issue of InPublishing magazine was published last week. Here are some of my takeaways from it:
- The national press: It was a pretty brutal place to work in the nineties and noughties. As former Sun Editor David Yelland said: “I would have sold my own grandmother for most of my newspaper career.”
- Artificial intelligence: AI will radically change everything, in the wider society and global economy. It’s academic whether that’s for better or worse because it’s unstoppable.
- Corporate values: B2B publisher Faversham House’s three core values are: we are ambitious, creative and we care. For them, ‘care’ isn’t a woolly value — it also relates to the professionalism they apply to everything they do.
- Digital subs: Scaling digital subscriptions is mission critical for Immediate Media, so they are focused on setting stretch targets to turn anonymous customers to known, driving a big uptick in top of funnel demand, and improving conversion at all touch points to significantly increase yield, retention and profitability.
- Data: Having great content and data alone is not enough — knowing how it adds value to your customers’ working lives is all-important.
- Publishing strategy: As the industry continues to fragment into brand-specific strategies, there are no illusions about there being any “silver bullets” or that a “one-size-fits all” approach can ever work again.
- Online Safety Act: Many elements of the legislation have potential benefit for journalists, but the slow rollout by Ofcom of some of the act’s key provisions means that journalists are yet to see the full benefits.
- Events: You need to set clear budgets and manage costs ruthlessly. Poorly managed events can rack up colossal bills very quickly.
- TikTok: Posts must get straight to the point. The Which? social media team estimates they have three seconds to convince the audience a video is worth their time.
- Organic growth: It’s not one thing that changes a business but lots of small things that over time make the real difference.
- Constructive journalism: The CoJo movement is gaining traction as journalists, media academics and even hard-bitten publishers look to offer an alternative to tempt back ‘news avoiders’.
- High street location: Having a direct link with your community means you’re kept connected, but it also means you’re accountable and accessible.
- All eyes on the States: By any criteria, short of Putin using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and despite the horrific conflict there and in the Middle East, in media terms, the US election represents the biggest, most critical global story of all.
- Learning lessons: The downside of getting rid of some of the older executives in favour of younger, more dynamic (and cheaper!) young heads is that there is now very little corporate memory of the longer-term past.
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.
