2010 American Magazine Conference Highlights

Keynote: What’s Next for Next Issue Media?

 

Keynote Speaker
Morgan P. Guenther, President and CEO, Next Issue Media

Introduction
Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr., President, Condé Nast

As the conference neared its end, Morgan Guenther of Next Issue Media took the stage to discuss the future of digital, tablet and e-reader magazines.

Robert Sauerberg of Condé Nast (pictured right) provided a short introduction for Guenther. Condé Nast had entered into a joint venture with Hearst Corporation, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc. to form Next Issue Media, a media consortium aimed at helping publishers, advertisers, consumers and tech partners transition into “the e-reading channel.”

“Our experience offering digital versions and extensions of our magazines demonstrates that consumers want [quality experiences on new platforms] and are willing to pay for them,” Sauerberg said.  “And that’s what this is all about. Giving our consumers exactly what they want, as they want it.”

When Guenther took the stage, he began by criticizing the television industry for its initial defensive mindset towards the new digital landscape.  He said that the magazine industry had an “exciting opportunity” to jump on the offensive and increase the size of its "revenue pie” by providing high quality, high engagement content to consumers.

“We’ve got a clear strategic direction to deliver digital content that delights the consumer, supports high value advertising and is available across a universe of connected devices,” said Guenther.

Next Issue Media aims to make this goal feasible by improving device operating system ubiquity (applications that are supported on all devices and platforms), creating a common payment method for digital, print and bundle sales, maintaining an extensive archival library available to subscribers, supplying rich analytics to advertisers, and organizing a digital storefront (akin to an online magazine newsstand).

Guenther said that Next Issue Media is in a strong position to ease the transition into increased digital consumption because its powerful partners bring along built-in subscriber bases, "long-tail" capacity, social technology solutions and a publisher-centric business model.

“So what’s next in Next Issue Media?” asked Guenther.  “As the CEO, I think I can summarize in…three words: Dude, it’s showtime.”

 

Photo credit: Doug Goodman

Auto-Journalism: The Rise of the Machine

Rich Gordon, Professor and Director of Digital Innovation, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (pictured left)

Kristian Hammond, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, and Director, Northwestern University's Center for Innovation in Technology, Media and Journalism (right)

 

Rich Gordon and Kristian Hammond of Northwestern University introduced a collaborative project between the Medill School of Journalism and the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at the 2010 American Magazine Conference.

Gordon recognized that the magazine industry is changing, with the advent of technology.

“We have to lead this change. We can’t just respond to it,” he said. With this in mind, his students are working in cross-functional teams to create machine-generated articles derived from raw content.

“We took a look at college baseball and grabbed online data about the line score, the box score and the play-by-play," Hammond explained. "The machine determined the angle and what the pivotal moments in the game were."

His students are currently working on generating game stories. They created a company, Narrative Science, which continues to expand the range of its work. Narrative Science is just beginning to work on transforming raw data into finance articles. Eventually, they will try to generate real estate, crime and hyper-local articles as well.

Fear not, journalists. Hammond said their goal is not to take over their job, but to create useful tools for writers and help publishers cater to readers.

Hammond discussed other programs in the works, such as Congressional Close-Up, which tracks the voting behavior of House and Senate members as they vote on bills.

Another program, Tell Me More, determines what’s new in the news. Given a story, it uses the content of that story to look for similar stories that have new information, such as additional actors, additional numbers and quotes.

Gordon and Hammond said that as technology evolves, journalism must as well. Now, Gordon said, “the most successful media products let people do things, not just consume them.”

 

Photo credit: Doug Goodman

Keynote Interview: Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey (pictured), interviewed by Susan Casey, Editor-in-Chief, O, The Oprah Magazine

Two weeks into her award-winning show’s final season, Oprah Winfrey sat down at the 2010 American Magazine Conference to discuss her excitement for the launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network, how she feels about being a “brand,” and the deep connection she still feels with her audience after 25 years in the business.

It was a rare moment for Winfrey: for once, she was the one in the interviewee’s chair. She talked about her plans for The Oprah Winfrey Show’s series finale, which is still in the planning phase.  

“It’s going to be a glorious moment when I actually get to take in what I’ve been able to accomplish with my team,” Winfrey said, then joked she also plans to celebrate for a solid week afterward.

OWN launches January 1, 2011. Winfrey told the audience her idea was to create a television network that showed people how to continue “living their best life,” which also happens to be O, The Oprah Magazine's editorial mission.

“I’m looking forward to the opportunity to use this base that I’ve created, with the magazine and with the Oprah show…to expand to 24/7 and 365 the kind of meaningful and mindful television I think people really are interested in seeing but we don’t have available to us now,” Winfrey said.

A major theme of AMC 2010 was how the magazine industry is adapting to e-readers and increased digital reading. Though she was never a big news junkie, when she bought her iPad Winfrey said it made her feel more connected with the world around her. However, she doesn’t think e-readers will replace hard-copy media.

“The iPad isn’t the end of magazines,” Winfrey said. “It’s just an addition to. It’s another way.”

Oprah Winfrey is an individual, but she’s also a brand – something she never intended. “My intension was just to do the work and represent the truth in the work that we did,” she said. Going forward, her mission with OWN is the same as it’s been for all aspects of the Oprah Winfrey brand: to serve the viewer.

“You have to be where the reader is,” Winfrey said. “That means having real connections to them and being able to hear their voices in a way that not only do you connect to them, but they connect to you.”

 

Photo credit: Doug Goodman