That was the takeaway from an interview I did last week with Xavier Bouckaert, CEO of Roularta Media Group, the leading Belgian publisher and parent company of Roularta Printing, the printer of a growing number of UK magazines, for publishers such as the FT, Guardian and Economist.
The interview was for a sponsored article in the upcoming November / December issue of InPublishing magazine (not on the free mailing list? Register here).
In the digital space, digital transformation has been joined by AI transformation and “and it requires a lot of ongoing investment,” he said: “You can’t opt out! If you stop investing, you’re out of the race.”
Even without the new-ish need to invest in AI, the need to compete in a multi-media world has meant Roularta reimagining office spaces to facilitate collaboration between editorial teams and the creation of studios for video and podcast production.
The need to invest spreads to their print operation – Roularta Printing – too. Significant investment has been made in more energy-efficient machinery, modern presses, solar panelling and, as importantly, staff development. With fewer printers around, there is a danger that print skills will be lost, so investment is needed to protect and nurture those skills.
For publishers with print products, investment often comes in the form of management time and attention.
A lot of publishers are so focused on digital / AI transformation that they are not paying enough attention to their print products; the print quality, the paper choices, the layout and what content works best in print.
When I asked Bouckaert how publishers could make print more viable, he noted that “print is not getting the attention it deserves”.
This is a mistake, he says, because “a lot of people still measure the health of a brand by its print offering. When you have an important brand, which is valued by its readers, it’s not a good sign when the text is printed double, the pictures lack definition, the colours run, and the white space comes out grey.”
Roularta Media Group – and Roularta Printing – are investing for the long-term, are you?
(Finally, I hope you will join us on Tuesday for our next webinar – 5 Strategies Publishers Need to Thrive in an AI-Summarised World – which will be presented by AdvantageCS's Philippe van Mastrigt.)
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
