2020: New Decade, New Plans?
Posted on Thursday, January 30, 2020 at 12:05 AM
What publishers have in store for their publications in the coming
year.
By William Dunkerley
We asked a sampling
of readers to tell what plans they'll be rolling out for this start of a
new decade. Here's what they told us:
--Deborah Lockridge,
editor-in-chief, Heavy Duty Trucking: "My biggest goals for 2020
are addressing productivity issues, including coordinating assignments
better with related brands at our company. We have just launched our
first podcast, HDT Talks Trucking, which is our big 'attempt at
something new' this year."
--Dave Fusaro, editor-in-chief, Food
Processing magazine: "Our most important goal is maintaining a
respectable print presence -- because that is the mothership, the source
of most content regardless of medium, the wide-angle look into our
industry category (food and beverage manufacturing) that maintains our
position as thought leaders in that market. It's proactive, not
reactive; the physical reminder of the brand that is pushed out monthly
to 70,000 people. Our value and utility to advertisers starts with that.
As to new year: We are producing videos, both stand-alone instructive
ones on our predetermined schedule ('what is high-pressure
pasteurization?') and ones briefly describing the contents of a written
story (embedded videos)."
--Donald Tepper, editor, PT in
Motion: "Our parent association is rebranding -- a new logo, a new
look, and a mission to make all elements of the association resemble the
brand for a more unified look. This includes our state associations as
well as groups within the association that represent members with
particular skills or interests. It also means adopting a more coherent
look for everything the association puts out . . . and that includes its
magazine. As a result, we are going through a major redesign and rebrand
as well as a name change. Our goal, therefore, is to accomplish the
rebranding, renaming, and redesign of the magazine, thereby meeting the
objectives of the association and better serving our readers. Now, we'll
be shifting our content somewhat to put more emphasis on
association-related products and services. Many of those are already in
existence, but some are just being developed. This involves some agility
-- we've already modified our editorial calendar to better align with
the association's modified schedule -- as well as some creativity in
presenting the information to our readers."
--Paul Fanlund,
editor and publisher, Cap Times: "My primary goal for 2020 as
editor is to improve our journalism by doing more investigative and
enterprise work. It is vital that we do more local journalism of that
type. My job as publisher is about driving paid memberships, and we are
quite advanced in hosting events (see Cap Times Idea Fest at http://bit.ly/3aPSiCi)."
Does
Everybody Have Plans?
Note that there is a question mark in
the title of this article. Why is it there? The reason is that many
editors declined to disclose what their plans are for 2020.
We
just heard above from several editors who readily shared with us. From
their comments we see a lot of willingness to adapt what they are doing
to the changing circumstances that permeate the editorial business these
days. They express continued concern for good content. And three out of
four have ventured into some form of audiovisual content creation.
That
represents a large change from last year when we asked editors to share
their plans. Then editors were much more forthcoming. We reported on
twenty editorial plans in particular.
But there was one large
difference in the nature of the responses. Digital was the predominent
theme in the dawn of 2019. Many editors had big plans for digital. That
changed this year. No more big digital schemes.
We asked a few
observers to speculate on the shift from 2019 to 2020. Why have so few
agreed to share now? And why has a robust digital agenda disappeared
from the scene?
Here are the theories we heard regarding the
difference:
--Too busy to plan.
--Too busy to describe 2020
plans.
--Last year's digital plans embarassingly went bust.
--Distraction
by the Washington political turmoil.
--Uncertainty in the election
year economic picture.
--Got the secret sauce for digital success and
are keeping it secret.
--Things are changing too quickly.
--Just
don't know what to do next.
Do you have any insights into this?
Whether it's from experience at your own publication or your best guess
about things elsewhere, please let us know. Use the comment link below
this article. Anonymity is okay. We won't publish any of the comments
unless we check with you first. Primarily we'll use the input to guide
our ever-emerging 2020 plans at Editors Only. Finding ways to
best serve readers is a priority here. We believe that adaptibility to
changing circumstances, reader needs, and interests is important to all
publications, even EO!
William Dunkerley is principal
of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.
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