Month: May 2015

News, Revenue streams

Innovation at PPA Festival

Mary Hogarth

A great line up of speakers captivated audiences at this year’s PPA Festival. Magazine editors past and present, accredited PPA course tutors, plus a few of their students were among those who turned out to hear a wealth of inspirational presentations.

Kate Readeon, editor of Tatler revealed what really happened behind the scenes on that documentary. While Good Housekeeping’s Lindsay Nicholson and Judith Secombe explained how they turned the brand into a revolutionary start-up business.

Lindsay and Judith demonstrated how, despite to slum in sales across the consumer lifestyle sector, innovation can inject new energy into a brand. Good Housekeeping is still a big household favourite with core brand values that are as strong today as they were at the start in 1922. Continue reading “Innovation at PPA Festival” →

Education

Tales of a graduate conference

Mary Hogarth

When I decided to organise a graduate conference for our final year Magazine Journalism students at Southampton Solent University, the focus was on getting some great industry people and our alumni to share the secrets of their success. That, I thought, would be the main challenge. Apparently not.

With some key names lined up – including Mark Payton, editorial director at Haymarket and Elizabeth Barnett editor of Hampshire Life, along with our most recent alumni – we promoted the event to the students. A tepid response ensued, resulting in more tasters on the student’s social media pages. Clearly getting a good attendance was going to be a major challenge. Continue reading “Tales of a graduate conference” →

Online & social media

Getting online content right

Mary Hogarth

mag-website1

Magazine editors must avoid putting shovelware on their sites and offer readers unique content that promotes not duplicates their title. 

When on Writers’ Forum we first launched on the newsstands in 2000 there were few magazine websites.

By 2006 many titles and newspapers had at least a basic online provision. This was usually a duplication of the issue, updated on a monthly or weekly basis aka shovel ware. Today nearly all publications have a website, which are updated regularly, if not on a daily basis. The bigger players such as IPC, Bauer Media or Hearst have sufficient budget for a dedicated team of web editors and copywriters who constantly update content as events unfold. Continue reading “Getting online content right” →