It's Tuesday: The Data is Right There! Issue #62
Think back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stores were closing, the world was shutting down. Offices emptied out, airports and transit systems became ghost towns. Out of this emptiness, the Pandemic Publishing Roundtable was founded. I teamed up with fellow magazine consultant Linda Ruth and we invited futurist and magazine specialist Bo Sacks, the publisher of the Old Farmer’s Almanac, Sherin Pierce, Mr. Magazine himself, Dr. Samir Husni and Gemma Peckham, the founder of Rova and Oh Reader magazines to join us in what started off as weekly Zoom calls to talk all things magazines.
Part of rationale for these initial meet ups was simple sanity. Do you remember the isolation we experienced in those early days? This connection turned into a desire for some education. The pandemic gave us an opportunity to learn new things and rethink what a magazine publisher could do to flourish in this changing economy.
Now that the world has opened up, we don’t have the opportunity to meet as much. Although the Pandemic has faded, it’s not completely over and now, of course, we have Monkey Pox to worry about. But we still meet as regularly as possible, sometimes just the six of us. Other times, we invite someone who we think can teach us something we’d never thought about before.
A few weeks back, we invited industry veterans Malcolm Netburn, Luke Magerko and Matt Lindsay, the CEO of Mather Economics to come and talk with us about the incredibly interesting work they are doing with their deep dives into publisher data. Click below to read the summary of our discussion on the BoSacks.com website.
1___The Pandemic Publishing Roundtable: Mather Economics takes a deep dive into the data.
Publishers Pandemic Roundtable: The Data is in: The Industry Will Be All Right — www.bosacks.com A couple of weeks ago, Joe Berger, Samir Husni, Sherin Pierce, Bo Sacks, and I met with the Mather Economics Group – CEO Matt Lindsay, Advisory Board Member ...
There was so much I loved about this roundtable discussion. But the thing that engaged me the most was the passion that Malcolm Netburn brought to the discussion. Right out of the gate he made three points that every publisher should consider every day:
Stop relying on other platforms as channels to communicate with your audience. Build and monetize your own.
Stop bashing print.
Positioning a magazine as a premium product is a terrible idea.
Got it? OK, then. Go read the rest. It was a fantastic hour.
2___The New Yorker Festival returns as a live event
The 'New Yorker' Festival Returns To NYC As Live Event 09/07/2022 — www.mediapost.com The 'New Yorker' Festival Returns To NYC As Live Event - 09/07/2022
Ideally, the rationale behind this shouldn't need a lot of discussion. Live events were something many magazine publishers were investing in prior to the pandemic. Obviously, COVID-19 threw a big wrench into those projects.
That they're coming back is important to the ability of publishers to continue to grow their audiences, increase their visibility, and, of course, their revenue.
3___No delays in the Twitter case for Elon Musk
Judge: Musk can use Twitter whistleblower but not delay case | AP News — apnews.com Elon Musk will be able to include new evidence from a Twitter whistleblower as he fights to get out of his $44 billion deal to buy the social media company, but Musk won't be able to delay a high-stakes October trial over the dispute, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Look, I get it. Elon Musk, his Tesla automobiles, his Space X rocket program, the satellites and solar panels are sign posts to the future. Unfortunately, he's also a ridiculous sh*t poster on Twitter and it's pretty unclear what he was thinking when he proposed to buy it for only $44 billion.
I like the idea of quickly proceeding with the case. From experience, business vs. business lawsuits always seem to drag on forever and the only people who benefit from it are the $500/hour lawyers. So let's get this into court and get a ruling one way or the other.
Then maybe Mr. Musk can get back to building cars and rocket ships and spend a little less time on social media.
4___No, it's not that Prince William
Mistaken identity: Prince William magazine inundated with messages for royal family - WTOP News — wtop.com Prince William Living Magazine’s publisher says the publication received numerous condolences following Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
Local News for Prince William County & Manassas | Prince William Living — princewilliamliving.com Get all of your community, lifestyle and local news for Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park with Prince William Living magazine.
This is an LOL moment for sure. For the life of me, I can't figure out why anyone would think that the real Prince William of the House of Windsor would spend one minute reading email from random Americans.
But as an SEO win for a regional magazine? All I can say is "Huzzah!"
5___Chicago Public Library picks "Maus" for "One Book, One Chicago"
Art Spiegelman’s ‘Maus’ is the latest One Book, One Chicago title. It feels like a provocation. – Chicago Tribune — www.chicagotribune.com The Chicago Public Library has picked the classic graphic novel about the Holocaust just nine months after a school board in Tennessee voted to remove “Maus” from schools.
Shall we file this under: "Further reasons not to mess with librarians, part 987?"
Book banning does not work. Teachers hate them. Libraries and librarians hate them. If the people who undertake these foolish enterprises think that they can sneak these bans in, they should think again.
Life has taught me that Rule #1 is: "Don't mess with people you don't understand." In other words, do your homework. Book banners don't do their homework because they're afraid to read anything that challenges them. They don't understand book lovers. They mess with us at their peril.
And For Your Moment of Magazine Zen...
Hey, did you realize the end of the third quarter is approaching? You can tell it's here not by the pretty multi-colored leaves on the trees outside your window, but by all the activity down in the accounting office. The C-Suite folks are rallying for EOY projections and they had better be good! That's why the money folk look so stressed out.
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