Fipp May 6, 2019 Niche magazines sat in the spotlight in a panel discussion at MagNet, Magazines Canada's annual conference for the magazine media community April 24-25 in Toronto, to discuss the trials and challenges they faced, and how they've overcome. Panelists gave insight into their own publications' issues and the solutions they've used to find success. Burnt Roti Sharan Dhaliwal, editor-in-chief of Burnt Roti, a South Asian lifestyle magazine, started her title in March 2016, followed by an online presence a month later, as a space for South Asians to have conversations where they couldn't elsewhere. Dhaliwal explained that she started the magazine because

En Gadget May 2, 2019 A month ago, I received a big, hefty magazine in the mail. It included stories such as a guide on where to go in Buenos Aires, a feature on tiny houses, and a deep dive into the history of African-American jockeys. The magazine was part travel, part lifestyle and part interior design; which are all topics I gravitate toward. What's more, the stories were well-written, the photographs were beautiful and the graphic design was on point. There was just one weird thing about it: It was published by Airbnb. Airbnb Magazine launched in May 2017 in collaboration with Hearst,

Mr. Magazine April 26, 2019 Magazines offer busy readers a shortcut to quality, says Linda Thomas Brooks, President and CEO of MPA: The Association of Magazine Media at the first session of Samir Husni’s ACT 9 at the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi. When trust in other sources of information is going down, trust in magazine media is going up. Credible sustainable journalism becomes more important every day. Brooks began with a story about a new business dedicated to creating fake vacations to enhance social media presence. Twitter and FB had to close fake accounts set up to divide our

What's New In Publishing April 19, 2019 Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), a 200-year-old Swiss news publisher, is betting big on newsletters to drive paid subscriptions. It has seen considerable success with niche newsletters, achieving significantly higher than average email open rates, and has effectively used reader data to increase conversions by 80%. Currently, NZZ has 156,000 subscribers and grew by 4% in 2018, according to Digiday. The publisher now plans to reach 200,000 subscribers by 2022 (almost 30% growth in paid readership) and newsletters are going to play a crucial role in its strategy. That may prove to be an effective strategy because newsletters, as

What's New In Publishing April 16, 2019 FIPP, in collaboration with UPM Communication Papers, recently released a whitepaper, The Future of Media. It looks into the value print adds, and how it fits into the wider publishing ecosystem. The whitepaper states that “despite the emergence of digital channels, print continues to thrive.” It explores strategies of publishers around the world who continue to put print at the heart of their offerings. For many publishers, the question is not ‘print or digital?’ It is ‘What role does print play in the print, digital and experiential – a mix that allows us to maximize audience engagement, cross-selling

The Atlantic By Andrew Ferguson - April 10, 2019 Sometime this winter, I performed an experiment: I decided to subscribe to home delivery of a daily newspaper. I am so pleased by the success of this experiment that I can no longer remember why I undertook it, although through my daze of self-satisfaction I am pretty sure that money was involved. A promotional offer probably arrived in the mail—the postal mail, I mean—that was as insanely cheap as I am. Succumbing to a printed come-on delivered by a flesh-and-blood letter carrier to subscribe to a real newspaper-on-newsprint gave my experiment the feel

Fipp By Jon Watkins - March 28, 2019 In an increasingly complex publishing world, where audience engagement relies upon a mix of print, digital and experiential offerings, research and audience insight are more important than ever. That research was in evidence at the recent FIPP & UPM Insight Awards, an annual event which highlights research-driven pieces of work that have enabled publishers to materially improve their business. And what was strikingly apparent from this year’s winning entries, was the prominent role still played by print publishing among the many successful multi-platform strategies delivering great audience engagement and success. Take this year’s overall winner, for example –

By Joe Pulizzi - March 19, 2019 Are you getting tired of the whole ‘Print Is Dead’ movement? I sure am…and have been for quite some time. Heck, Google alone will give you 484,000 results for the phrase. No content distribution type ever really dies though. It only changes. Vinyl albums are seeing a resurgence. And almost 700 million printed books were sold last year. That’s 100 million more than in 2012 (according to Statista). Radio? Even with Sirius XM, Spotify and Apple, radio continues to survive. But are print magazines dead? Not by a long shot. Different? Absolutely. Computer hardware manufacturer Raspberry Pi recently purchased two

Digital Context Next By Mark Glasser - March 21, 2019 The drip, drip, drip of ideas to regulate tech companies continues. And when it comes to privacy, even the tech giants realize that regulation is coming and want to help craft those regulations. But 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren went even further, calling for the breakup of large technology companies with her Medium manifesto and a #BreakUpBigTech hashtag. Her idea in a nutshell is to make any company with a marketplace of goods or ideas and $25 billion in revenues into a “platform utility” that cannot participate in the marketplace with its own goods or

Dead Tree Edition March 24, 2019 Pigeonholes. That’s the trouble with print advertising these days. Pigeonholes. Judging from reader feedback, I apparently hit a nerve recently in a Publishing Executivearticle by stating that many magazine-media advertising reps don’t seem to know how to sell print ads these days. Younger sales reps were hired for their digital knowledge, but their clients are increasingly asking for multimedia proposals that include print. And some of the print veterans haven’t adjusted to the age of targeted marketing. (Some commenters noted that the issue arises in selling any kind of print-based marketing.) Choice A or Choice B When mass media dominated, brands that wanted