Yes, you’re publishing in the midst of crisis

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crisis-logo-CPIWhy should I attend the Crisis Publishing Initiative? I’m not publishing in the midst of crisis.

Really? Are your readers impacted by fears of terrorism? Or are they concerned about the influx of refugees into the country? Do they worry about the increase in violent crimes in their cities or the political turmoil in the country next door? Were they affected by the last flood, earthquake, or typhoon?

Face it. You are publishing in the midst of crisis, whether or not your publication reflects that fact.

Are you helping your readers understand what is really going on? Are you giving them the information they need to respond to the crises around them as Christians? Or are they dependent on solely secular sources for often biased information and angry, strident voices for opinion?

You have a special responsibility as a Christian writer, photographer, blogger, or publisher. You have been given a platform from which you can proclaim the truth and offer the resources Christians need in order to be light and salt in a chaotic and unhappy world.

Your writing and your publication can reflect an awareness of the realities of a broken world and offer hope and a way forward to your readers. If you are doing this already, you are to be congratulated. You are in a worthy minority.

But if you are concerned that your publication has been ignoring the suffering, fear, and ignorance of a large part of your audience or your potential audience, you might want to consider attending the Crisis Publishing Initiative in Sopron, Hungary, Oct. 15-18, 2017. Veteran journalists will share their secrets for getting to the truth in dangerous and chaotic circumstances. You’ll get access to resources to help the church respond to the crises around them. And, you’ll meet and share with other Christians in publishing from around the world.

Does your magazine publish fake news?

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Of course not! We would never do that, you say. Possibly not, if fake news is defined as flagrantly false stories that you know are fiction, but that you present as true. But if your magazine is typical, at some time you have printed a story that you assumed was true, but that actually was not.

There was the Internet story about birth defects that women were convinced were the result of fallout from bombing in a nearby country. Difficult to check out; after all, there was no research on the topic. But the women’s story was dramatic and you wanted to use it.

Perhaps it was a feature that a writer gave you at the last minute when you were on a deadline and didn’t have time to check the writer’s information. Or maybe–horrors!–you never check the “facts” that appear in your publication. If you don’t, you are not alone. In today’s fast-paced news cycle editors at most big newspapers no longer check every spelling, statistic, attribution, date, or detail of the articles that pass through their hands.

As a result, in a 2005 assessment of American daily newspapers, more than 60 percent of local news and news feature stories were found to have errors, according to Scott R. Maier, “Accuracy Matters: A Cross-Market Assessment of Newspaper Error and Credibility.”

Then there’s also the little matter of proof reading, another neglected practice, resulting in the “interior designer” introduced as the “inferior designer” and the musician who is said to be “on drugs” rather than “on drums.”

With the proliferation of honest mistakes and dishonest fake news, the media is suffering a crisis of credibility. We’re all busy and our publications are understaffed. But if we want to rescue what shreds of credibility remain, we need to do a better job of checking our facts to be sure they are based on truth and not fiction. Even little mistakes erode trust–the misspelling of a name or the mistaken identification of a person in a photo.

Christian publications in particular should make every effort to be reliable sources of information that is accurate, true, and honest. After all, readers may surmise that if the facts are not accurate, perhaps the message is not true.

For everybody? Or nobody?

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I cringe when I hear the answer “everybody” in response to the question as to a magazine’s audience. Even worse was the response one novice editor gave: “Everybody in the whole world, saved and unsaved.”

Really? How do you produce a magazine that everyone in every country throughout the world will want to read, regardless of their attitude toward the Christian faith?

In fact, a magazine that is for everyone is actually for no one. Why? An editor producing a magazine for a specific audience will use the language best understood by that audience, as well as the examples and metaphors to which they can relate.

She will pick topics about which that audience cares and wants to read. For Christians, those topics may include daily devotions, how to pray more effectively, or how to share their faith with non-Christian relatives and friends. Non-Christians would not appreciate those topics, but might like to read stories that incorporate elements of the Christian faith or demonstrate the power of God in daily life.

Age makes a difference, too. I was asked to review a new children’s magazine produced by budding young theology students in Romania. I was surprised to see text-heavy theological articles sporting words like “incarnation” and “justification.” While I appreciated their enthusiasm and their desire to communicate the pure Gospel to these middle school children, I had to point out that they might want to use language and concepts easily understood by children. Less text and more illustrations would be more appealing to children than column after column of dense copy.

The editor who doesn’t want to go to the trouble to research the audience in order to determine how best to communicate with the reader is writing only for himself and his magazine will not last long.

On the other hand, the editor who really wishes to communicate will want to know his audience intimately and will make sure his writers understand how best to reach the readers. The magazine’s appearance will attract that specific audience with colors, fonts, illustrations, and page layouts designed to draw in the reader and to communicate the magazine’s message. Then a member of that specific audience who picks up the magazine will look it over and say, “This is my magazine, just for me.”

Honoring two who stayed the course

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Do you have staying power? Some 20, 30, or 40 years from now, will people look back at your career in publishing and see a faithful communicator who skillfully and consistently carried out the ministry to which he had been entrusted by God?

Two such faithful communicators were honored recently for their decades of service in Christian publishing.

KennethTaylorPhotoThe Evangelical Christian Publishers Association posthumously honored writer/publisher Ken Taylor, author of The Living Bible and founder of Tyndale House Publishers, when they announced the Kenneth N. Taylor Lifetime Achievement Award at an Industry Awards Celebration May 3. According to ECPA Executive Director Stan Jantz, the award was “established to recognize a Christian publishing leader who exemplifies a lifetime of achievement through initiatives and programs that have spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

Les_StobbeTwo weeks later, the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Institute presented a Lifetime Achievement Award to Les Stobbe, whose career in Christian publishing to date has spanned 60 years. Over the years, Stobbe has served as a writer/author/journalist, magazine editor, bookstore buyer and supervisor, book publisher, educator, CEO, trainer, and literary agent. He continues to serve as a writer, literary agent, and workshop leader.

Not everyone is recognized with a lifetime achievement award as they come to the end of their career in Christian publishing. But there is One who does recognize the years of faithful service. And his “Well done, good and faithful servant” is all the recognition we need.

Consumers “like” magazines best

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Is the magazine medium doomed to extinction as some media pundits predict? Not according to a brand audience report published in April by MPA-The Association of Magazine Media (MPA). ‘Magazine media brands continue to deliver meaningful growth across platforms, engaging consumers in all formats, including social media.,” the report declared.

American magazine brands were growing at a 7.6 percent increase each year, they reported. And, they were engaging their readers across a variety of social media platforms with remarkable results. According to data collected by MPA’s Social Flow platform, “likes” and “followers” of social media totaled 900 million at the end of the first quarter, a 4 percent increase over the previous quarter

In fact, both television and magazine data show that the top 10 magazines reach nearly twice as many people on social media as the top 10 television programs. According to data from Shareablee, magazines generate more social engagement than TV, radio, online media, and newspapers.

“Consumers of all ages have deep and passionate relationships with magazine media,” says MPA CEO Linda Thomas Brooks. Readers engage with magazines on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

While MPA collects data primarily from secular magazines, Christian magazines can find encouragement in the data. Certainly some magazines struggle and over the last five or six years a number of prominent American magazines have closed their print operations and switched to digital format. Many of these are engaging their readers through social media more than ever before

In fact, the global digital magazine market is projected to grow from 14 percent in 2015 to 35 percent in 2020, according to   Business Wire in London. The bold prediction is based on analysis by Technavio, a technology research company. The company explains that the growth of the global digital magazine publishing market is predicated on the increased penetration of the Internet and extensive use of mobile devices.

The lesson for Christian magazines? If you’re publishing the kind of content people want to read and if you’re engaging them across a variety of social media platforms, you have significant potential to grow your audience.

 

Publishers look to Facebook to increase audience engagement

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Screen Shot 2016-04-25 at 2.45.34 PM.pngBy Friday morning last week 30,389 people had been talking about Dabira, a magazine that has been in existence only a short time. How is it possible that so many people were talking about a Nigerian Christian magazine? Dabira Editor Lara Odebiyi discovered long ago how a Facebook page for her magazine could impact and influence current and potential readers of her magazine. With nearly 6,000 likes, Dabira’s Facebook page has the potential to engage tens of thousands of people.

Publishers have come to recognize the value of Facebook engagement in reaching and responding to their current and potential readers. Facebook defines the engagement rate as the percentage of people who saw a post and reacted to it, sharing, clicking, or commenting on it. Page administrators can view the engagement rate for each post and to see certain limited demographic statistics on those who “like” the page.

In order to reach more people and to increase engagement, Facebook suggests using Page Insights to learn how the audience is engaging with the posts. The Post Types section will allow you to see the kinds of posts that have the highest average reach and engagement.. You can use this information to create more of the types of posts that your audience wants to see

You can also increase engagement by:

* Offering useful content, rather than simply filling up the columns with your own advertising and promotions.

* Asking questions your readers would want to answer. Get a conversation going to increase response.

* Host contests. Use Facebook’s Events Page feature for an attractive and efficient way to organize your contest and receive feedback.

* Offering conference registration. If your magazine is planning a conference, make it possible for people to link to your registration form from Facebook.

* Posting on the days and at the times when your users are on Facebook looking for content. This information is available in your Page Insights.

* Using Facebook apps to add extra features to your page, including RSS feeds,; quizzes, and contact forms.

* Posting videos. Videos get more attention than any other type of post. They can be quite short and don’t have to be professional quality. Interview authors, record readers’ comments about the magazine or topics covered by the magazine. Share appropriate videos from other Facebook users.

* Using pictures with your written posts to grab readers’ attention.

When you’re busy producing a magazine, keeping up a Facebook page can seem like simply another burdensome job. Yet a magazine, with its rich content and articulate authors, has more resources to work with than most other businesses and is ideal for generating Facebook engagement.

Dabira and many other magazines have already discovered the value of Facebook and are using it to their advantage. If your magazine hasn’t yet set goals for your Facebook page and generated a plan for increasing your engagement, it may be time to take a new look at this potentially important tool in your tool box.

Fresh out of ideas for Facebook posts? Check out this  blog post on MagazineTraining.com for a list of suggestions.

MTI trainers earn top honors at EPA convention

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EPA-Logo-Final-2013-RGB-300x150Seven MTI trainers hold key positions in 11 Christian publications singled out for awards this month at the annual convention of the Evangelical Press Association.

Awards of Excellence, the highest honor, went to Leadership Journal, edited by Marshall Shelley; Christianity Today and Christianity Today Online, edited by Mark Galli; and ManagingYourChurch.com, edited by Matthew Branaugh. ManagingYourChurch.com also won an award of merit in another category.

Other publications in the group led by Branaugh which won awards of merit include Church Law & Tax Report, ChurchLawAndTax.com, and Church Finance Today, with Chris Lutes.

Awards of Merit also went to Outreach, edited by James Long and readmybeacon.com, a campus publication of Palm Beach Atlantic University with advisor Dr. Michael Ray Smith

Two awards of merit in design went to EFCA Today and Worldwide Challenge, publications designed by Greg Breeding’s Journey Group

Together, the seven MTI trainers honored this year taught 10 MTI training events in eight countries and over the last three years led one online course and four Webinars.

 

For information on other awards presented at the convention: https://www.evangelicalpress.com/2016-awards-of-excellence/

In the print vs. digital battle teenagers deliver a surprise

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Teenagers grew up with computers and spend hours each week on electronic media. So, naturally, they prefer e-books to paper, right? Wrong, say researchers in multiple countries. Print is considerably more popular than e-books among readers 16-24 in Great Britain, according to a survey carried out last year for The Bookseller Children’s Conference.

Out of 1,000 respondents aged 16-24, 64 percent said they preferred print books, while only 16 percent said they preferred e-books. Twenty percent didn’t have a preference.

The findings are not unique to England, according to Naomi Baron, linguistics professor at American University, who surveyed more than 300 university students from Japan, Germany, Slovakia, and the U.S. She found that 92 percent preferred to do serious reading in paper books, rather than e-readers, computers, phones, or tablets.

Reading in print actually may be a better option for students, according to a Norwegian study reported in ScienceNordic.com. A study of 10th graders completed early this year showed that comprehension is better when reading texts in print versus on a computer screen.

Researchers theorize that the experience of relating to a book physically produces a mental map of the entire text, something readers don’t experience with an e-book where they can see only a page or two at a time.

Paper also seems to communicate more to the emotions than a screen does, according to tests conducted by researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada. Their test results seem to indicate a connection between sensory perception and involvement in the text.

The results may be different for magazines and newspapers, since the research targeted only book reading. However, the research results are dramatic enough to give even periodical publishers a reason to question the automatic conclusion that because they grew up in the digital age young people naturally prefer digital to print media. It’s something to think about.

Out of the Classroom and into the World: MTI trainer’s students experience real-world reporting

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Dr. Michael Ray Smith

Dr. Michael Ray Smith is a journalism professor and campus newspaper advisor at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Dr. Michael Ray Smith’s journalism students are having the time of their lives. Smith, who is a trainer with Magazine Training International (MTI) and a member of MTI’s Board of Directors, is also a journalism professor and campus newspaper advisor at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida.

The student journalists are excited because they are reporting not only on school and student concerns, but on America’s wild national politics, attending press conferences and interviewing supporters. Along the way, they are gaining valuable real-world experience and bylines not only in the school paper, but in a local daily newspaper, as well.

Students have also covered West Palm Beach events and city government, as well as church and ministry issues.

“Our program is deliberately focused on getting student journalists reporting off campus,” Smith said. “It helps students to get a realistic experience of working in news.”

Smith has written for major U.S. newspapers and has led journalism programs in universities across the nation. He taught a writing course for Magazine Training International in Manila in 2009. He has written a number of books, including “The ABC List of Feature Ideas” available on MTI’s website. His most recent book is “7 Days to a Byline That Pays.”

Print vs. digital—religious publishers buck the trend

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With digital publishing on the upswing, one would expect religious publishers to be seeing big increases in eBook sales, while print sales decrease. In fact, when it comes to paperback books the opposite is the case in America, according to a report from the Association of American Publishers (AAP).

In the first quarter of 2013, eBook sales were down 0.6 percent compared to the same period last year, AAP reported. Hardcover books were down even more, declining 7 percent. On the other hand, paperback sales rose nearly 4 percent. Despite this, overall religious book sales were down 2 percent compared to the first quarter of 2012.

What does this mean? Possibly that religious readers still prefer to hold the book in their hand, but given the state of the economy are not willing to shell out for the hard cover version.