Jessica Patterson

Over the last month, media consumption patterns have peaked. Traffic to news media websites has skyrocketed, and television viewing has increased, according to comScore. Gaming platforms all over the world have seen a spike in traffic with record numbers of players, according to Entertainment Weekly and a Verizon report. And increasing numbers of consumers are turning to radio, a recent Nielsen survey found. “Americans are already spending almost 12 hours each day with media, and that time could grow by 60 per cent among those who stay indoors,” according to Nielsen.

After three years of ground-breaking work, Time launched its immersive VR project, The March in late February, which brings Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech and the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, to virtual life.

With rapid changes happening hourly in countries around the world, magazine media companies have also had to shift abruptly in response to the coronavirus outbreak —  putting workflows online, allowing employees to work remotely, and pulling down paywalls. 

Over the past couple of weeks, magazine media offices and newsrooms around the world have followed public health guidelines and sent their staff home to work online because of the global coronavirus pandemic. But, what does remote work mean for magazine media companies, and how can we address the challenges?

Magazine media companies are becoming more intricately focused on human capital as we move in to a new decade. As a result of continuous change on the media landscape, companies are looking for talent with diverse skillsets to work with new processes, new technology and on new products.

A FIPP article from October 2019 discussed the rise in strategists, chief people herders, ninjas, rockstars and viral meme makers. These changes in role titles are reflective of the shifts in the industry. As the media industry changes, people are also changing their skillsets to remain competitive. Here, FIPP members Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith Corporation, Editorial Perfil, Mondadori and The River Group list the definitive skills to survive in the media industry in 2020 and beyond.

Last week, Canadian rock band Arkells asked fans to support their local media by purchasing a year-long subscription, in exchange for exclusive swag.

In the six months since Zuri Rice, SVP and Head of Video Development and Content Strategy for Hearst Originals at Hearst Magazines, came on board, there has been a flurry of video development for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, and the focus is now on YouTube.

Associated Media Publishing is a private company in South Africa that has been in operation for 38 years. Being a family business has allowed the company to be more agile, more innovative, CEO Julia Raphaely outlined in a presentation on November 14, at the FIPP World Media Congress in Las Vegas. 

Data privacy was a hot topic of discussion at the FIPP World Media Congress, held 12-14 November, 2019 at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. The panel included Ting Cai, Partner Director of Product and Technology at Microsoft, Brigitte Gwyn, EVP Government Affairs at MPA, and Jean-Paul Schmetz, Founder and CEO of Cliqz, a division of Burda, and was moderated by Martha Stone Williams, the CEO of World Newsmedia Network. Panellists discussed the state of privacy on the internet, policy measures around the world, and outlined the top three things magazine media can do to bolster their privacy practices.