In the news: Publishers are exploring how to create engaging, meaningful virtual event experiences for attendees.

The pandemic has forced publication event planning into the digital realm. There are certainly advantages: lower overhead, fewer logistical headaches that typically come with on-location event planning, and greatly reduced, if not eliminated, travel costs. But there are downsides as well. “In general, virtual events are boring,” Kayleigh Barber of Digiday.com writes. “At least that’s the sentiment bubbling up from both attendees and advertisers eight months after the pivot to virtual due to coronavirus crisis inexorably changed the events business.”

This is a big problem for publishers, who are exploring ways to keep events engaging in a socially distant world. “To reignite the spark of excitement that experiential is meant to offer, some publishers have begun testing the limits of hybrid events,” says Barber, noting that many attendees find Zoom events to be lackluster substitutes for in-person experiences. “[They are] continually staring at a screen without the participatory elements or sensory moments that provide connection to the speakers and to the audience or the feeling of doing something out of the norm of the day-to-day.” Read more bit.ly/2VLWexE” target=“blank”>here.

Also Notable

Hearst Enhances Print Titles

Hearst Magazines has launched Premium Print, reports NewsandTech.com this week. The article says that, according to Hearst, Premium Print is “an initiative that includes a multimillion-dollar investment across its portfolio of more than 25 brands to further strengthen its position in the marketplace and enhance the quality of its print products.” The enhancements to the publisher’s print products come amid other changes, including new paywall and membership modalities. Read more bit.ly/36QoHJ0” target=“blank”>here.

Condé Nast Explores Revenue Streams Condé Nast is looking at new ways to generate revenue from its products, reports Anna Nicolaou in a November 20 piece in the Financial Times. CEO Roger Lynch is shaking things up to compensate for pandemic-related shortfalls. Nicolaou reports that Lynch is “investing about 10 per cent of the company’s revenues into technology and content to boost online subscriptions and ecommerce, while pushing into nascent business lines such as movie and TV licensing for its writing ... to make money from its treasured brands, apart from selling print adverts in its magazines -- an industry that is in structural decline.” Read the complete article here.

Health Check: How Are Magazines Faring in the Pandemic?

Earlier this month, Kali Hays of Women’s Wear Daily assessed how the magazine industry, both digital and print, are faring these days. As one might expect, some magazines are doing better than others. Summing up the state of things, Hays writes: “Nearly 40 percent of magazines that publish on at least a quarterly basis have seen their audiences decline so far this year, according to updated data from the Alliance for Audited Media.... That’s on top of a major pullback in advertising this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the related contraction of the global economy.” Read more here.

A Push to Classify Social Media as Publishers

In a recent Editor & Publisher piece, TAPInto.net CEO/publisher Michael Shapiro makes a case for reclassifying social media sites as publishers under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Currently, social media sites are shielded from liability for user-generated content, but Shapiro argues that it’s time for this to change. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle agree; Shapiro notes that “Democrats believe that platforms aren’t doing enough to moderate disinformation and hate speech, while Republicans are arguing that platforms are censoring conservative perspectives.” So while the current arrangement is beneficial to the social media companies themselves, allowing them to proliferate unchecked as new sources, that arrangement is a threat to democracy, says Shapiro. “Without a framework for more effective moderation,” he says, “Americans are getting an increasingly steady diet of disinformation and misinformation that is given credibility by its spread on social media. This is having a deleterious effect on American civic life and is leading to increased polarization.” Read more here.

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The art of developing specific, concrete objectives and key results (OKRs) that will enable individual departments to work toward common goals.

By William Dunkerley

For over 100 years a respected association's magazine appeared in print. This year it went online only, precipitated by a drop in revenue. A B2B publication covering a transportation specialty had to let almost all its staff go for lack of advertising. Meanwhile an outdoor recreation monthly was enjoying an upswing in reader and advertiser demand. In today's Covid environment, social distancing in the great outdoors has achieved new popularity.

These are examples, for better or for worse, of how the pandemic has impacted magazine publishing.

Those publishers acted fast to adjust their operations to very unexpected circumstances.

We are now all facing unexpected circumstances of some sort. Organizational designs and procedures that were created or that evolved in earlier times may not be optimal to deal with the current or future milieu. For this reason alone it is important for magazine publishers to look inward at the management roles in their companies.

In the last two issues of STRAT, I've reviewed for readers the methodology of objectives and key results, or OKRs. OKRs provide a framework for examining the underlying constellation of structures and procedures that guide your business. OKRs lead you to set goals concretely, to thoughtfully create the means and practices for achieving them, and to track the outcomes for management control.

Why Your Organization Needs OKR

I know some publishers who believe they can do all that without the formality of the OKR platform. Maybe they can. One publisher wrote to us saying that OKRs may be appropriate for big media conglomerates, but they’re not needed for smaller operations.

It's true that OKRs are used even by the likes of Google and Amazon. But the principles behind OKRs, by whatever name, are very important to how your company will fare in today's environment.

So I recommend going through the OKR process to ensure everything you are doing follows a well-thought-out plan that is responsive to actual circumstances. It will also give you assurance that you are producing the results necessary to achieve your organizational objectives.

In the September issue we presented a sample OKR statement for a magazine publishing company as a whole. The next step is to similarly produce OKRs for the company's leader (often titled the publisher).

The Publisher OKR

Some of the organization's OKRs will be delegated to department heads -- editorial and advertising, for example. Those OKRs should later be worked out in consort with the respective department heads.

Other OKRs will fall on the shoulders of the publisher directly. If there is a member of your board who is assigned to monitor your performance, or some other board member who is of key importance, it would be prudent to involve that person in developing the publisher's OKRs.

Communication across the organization is an important top function. The publisher is essentially an orchestra leader for the various departments. Establish a well-articulated objective for that, then define the key results you want to achieve in that regard. These desired results should be quantifiable.

You can start with how often you will hold staff meetings. But don't stop there. You can achieve a result for the number of meetings. But the meetings themselves may not be productive. Devise a metric related to that. For instance, you could have attendees anonymously rate each meeting in terms of their satisfaction with it and their sense of whether it accomplished anything. Rate the meeting yourself and compare your rating with those of the attendees. The results could be enlightening.

Positioning of your publications in the markets they serve is another important function. Market conditions are subject to abrupt changes in today's world. Therefore it is vital to keep your hand on the pulse. Set an objective for your market position, then enumerate quantitative key results.

External communication often is a function in which the publisher plays a major role. In whatever field you publish or whatever geographic area is your focus, you may be an important figure. You may be regarded as an expert, or even a celebrity. This should entail more than playing the role of a big shot. Develop objectives that allow external communication to benefit your organization, then come up with specific key results and metrics.

It often falls upon the publisher to intervene in problems that arise within the organization. Based on past experience, are there examples of recurring needs? Create an objective that takes those needs into account. Enumerate key results and attendant metrics.

Crafting Meaningful OKR Statements

Throughout this process, it is important to create practical OKR statements. Too often I've seen publishers create other documents that play little practical role. For instance, many companies, not just publishers, put great effort into creating mission statements. Too often the result is a well-polished document that sounds impressive but has little practical value.

Likewise are job descriptions that are written to sound prestigious but don't reflect what the job actually entails. They just sit in a hiring manager’s desk drawer.

In contrast, OKR statements, if they are to have real value, must be practical, working documents. In today's environment, OKRs should be reassessed and tweaked on a quarterly basis, or in response to significant events.

Once you have the top job sufficiently OKRed, it is time to look at the various departments.

In this case it is vital to work in partnership with each department head. Examine the organization's OKRs together, then brainstorm how each department’s work will contribute to achieving the key results. In the end you should arrive at a mutually acceptable set of objectives and measurable key results for the department.

William Dunkerley is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.

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During this time of crisis, we stand ready to answer any specific questions our readers may have, time permitting. You can contact us at:

crisis-help@stratnewsletter.com

When the national health crisis subsides, publishers unfortunately should not expect to easily resume business as usual. Economists are predicting tough times ahead. In addition, the impact of the crisis may well result in different expectations of us on the part of our audiences. STRAT will provide a series of articles to help you all through the period of recovery and readjustment.