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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