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Editorial and Sales: A Tentative Alliance?

Posted on Saturday, July 29, 2017 at 1:02 PM

In the news: How one digital media company is redefining traditional interdepartmental relationships.

Bauer Xcel Media US, which oversees online operations for various magazine brands including InTouch Weekly and Woman's World, is bending traditional media dynamics to maximize profitability. The company, writes Mike Shields of BusinessInsider.com, "encourages its editorial and sales teams to share intel." This tearing down of longstanding interdepartmental walls establishes could threaten an editorial team's independence in choosing what to cover and how to cover it.

But, as Shields notes, magazine brands continue to struggle with profitability, and a collegial atmosphere between editorial and sales could help editors home in on content that will pay off in the long run. At Bauer Xcel Media, this approach is changing the way their editors work and expanding their skill sets. Shields writes, "Each piece of content gets a 'monetization score' which editors and sales teams use to judge whether an article or video or photo is likely to pay out. Editors are also well versed in how platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP are resonating with readers, and paying advertisers."

Read the full article here.

Also Notable

Magazine Editor Confessions

On Thursday, Lucia Moses of Digiday.com published confessions of a magazine editor, headlined. "'It's a mix of fear, frustration,'" reads the headline. The article is a Q&A with an anonymous magazine editor about struggles at an anonymous magazine brand. The interview hits hard right out of the gate as the editor reports, "The fear is that one day it's just going to end, and you put out good work every day and someone three floors up might decide to sell off your title. I don't think the management really knows what it's doing." Read the full interview here.

Measuring Reader Attention

Last week, the staff at Folio: published an infographic showing where readers are directing their attention. The graphic highlights what readers are consuming and how editors and publishers are engaging them. Citing Statista, the first frame of the graphic tells us that readers spend 15 minutes per day reading magazines next year (down 3 minutes from 2010). Farther down, another frame tells us that 37 percent of marketers "plan to add messaging apps as a distribution channel in the next year." See the full graphic here.

More Changes at Time Inc.

Time Inc. continues in its trajectory away from print and toward digital. Tanya Dua of BusinessInsider.com reports that the publisher is looking to sell three magazine brands: Coastal Living, Sunset, and Golf. Dua also shares a sample internal memo similar to what leadership sends out when an asset goes up for sale. Read the article here.

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