The March / April issue of InPublishing magazine has just been published. Here are some of my takeaways from it, one from each article:
- Tackling misinformation: There is a growing body of people who won’t believe anything they don’t already believe themselves. (H/t Stuart Ramsay / Ray Snoddy)
- Life after journalism: Ex-journalists make good therapists, because they’re good at listening! You have to be able to listen to your subject to get the best out of them, as well as asking the right questions. And that’s what therapists do too. You have to be interested in people. (H/t Dickon Ross)
- DE&I: Reversing course on DE&I is antithetical to the priority publishers are placing on expanding and retaining audiences. Internal diversity filters through to diverse content and, eventually, audience growth. Conversely, internal homogeneity leads to homogenous content and audience stagnation. (H/t Richard Reeves / Ridhi Radia)
- Work not play: Social video journalists having ‘scroll time’ is as essential as a reporter being on the wires. (H/t Alex Goldsmith)
- An editor’s maxim: The best edition is always the next one. The last one wasn’t good enough so make the next one better. (H/t Paul McNamee)
- Filling the vacuum: Without background police briefings to the accredited press, as was the case with the disappearance of Nicola Bulley, wild rumours and disinformation start to spread on social media. The lack of proper briefings creates a vacuum and, as every editor knows, vacuums get filled. (H/t Dawn Alford)
- Advice for foreign correspondents: Don’t just show up in a new country. Read and do your homework before you go. Sweeping generalisations and mischaracterisations can anger local groups and make all journalists targets of annoyance or worse. The best stories bring nuance to a situation; ideas for these pieces tend to come about after a lot of reading and talking to people on the ground. (H/t David Trilling / Alan Geere)
- Data collection: Data is real-life customers, not just numbers. It can be a common strategy within media companies to collect as much data as possible, but publishers should ask ‘why’ first. Be strict and set governance for your data practices; less can be more, quality over quantity. (H/t Rosa Sherwood in our ‘Subscriber Retention Special’)
- Plain English: When commissioning articles, the rule of thumb is that anybody should be able to understand it. Use the “pub test” to root out jargon: how would you tell your friends about it? Would they understand it? Don’t use language that makes people feel stupid or left out. (H/t Catherine de Lange)
- Being unique: The majority of news executives believe that future success lies in being more distinctive, even if that means losing some overall reach. (H/t Nic Newman)
- AI adoption: The priority for many media companies is to move from pockets of high-performance experimentation in AI to broader adoption. (H/t Ana Jakimovska / Phil Clark)
- Clean data: Invest in making your data and systems as clean, connected, and computable as possible. This will yield bigger benefits from AI and in all other areas of computing too. (H/t Ian Mulvany)
- Being ready for the next big thing: Preparedness is a state of mind and a discipline. It is not negative; it is essential for survival. And the positive flipside is that it will inevitably surface opportunities and beneficial pivots. (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.
(Finally, registration is now open for our next webinar – ‘Subscriber Retention Special - Q&A’ – on 12 May.)
You can catch James Evelegh’s regular column in the InPubWeekly newsletter, which you can register to receive here.
