Understanding the Print-based Media Industries
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Hello and welcome to my slideshow. Today, I will be talking about aspects of the magazine industry in depth. I will cover organisational structures and job roles, working practices and employment contracts, financial issues and current market trends and legal, ethical and professional obligations that are available in the print-based media industry. Let’s go ahead and get started.
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Print based media industries uses physically printed media in forms of magazines to reach consumers, business customers and prospects. Let’s first cover organisational structures and job roles.
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There are multiple job roles available ranging different sections such as editorial jobs, design jobs, sales jobs, online positions as well as other positions.
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Lets begin with the editorial job roles available. A magazine is all based on the quality and content they produce. It needs to be well researched, clearly written and perfectly edited before they are printed. This doesn't change even if the articles are opinion columns, investigative pieces or even the latest celebrity gossip, they all require a strong team of writers, clear attentive editors and fact-checkers in order for the article to reach its maximum strength The roles available are the following:
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Editor-in-Chief: This is the top editorial role at a magazine industry also known as the executive editor. They are responsible for overseeing the vision for the publication as well as managing the entire staff team.
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Managing Editor: This is the position which is in charge of managing the schedule for publications, deadlines and other staff members. They also oversee the editorial calendar and assigns articles.
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Editor: There are variants of levels of editors in a publications. This includes assistant editors, associate editors and executive editors. They all have different levels when it comes to their responsibility involving both writing and editing. Some of them oversee specific departments such as sports editors or fashion editors. They also check the text for the use of proper spelling and grammar.
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Writers: Generally, magazine industries use staff members and freelance writers for this role. They usually have all types of writing styles and editorial voices which is why they were hired at publications.
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Fact-checkers Magazine industries need to insure that all information released are accurate therefore, there are fact checkers who check all the information and statistics in the articles before they are published. Depending on the industry, this would either be one of the editor's duties or an individual role.
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Next, let's move onto design jobs, another important category in the magazine industry besides the articles would be how it looks. They want to be able to engage and sell their magazines correctly. This is done through its front covers, content pages and article pages in order to correctly interest the right target readers of the magazine. This is why they need a design group which includes the following members:
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Graphic Designer: Graphic designers are in charge of working on specific components or articles for the magazine. Usually, you would find a team of designers who together work on one single publication.
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Art Director: This role is in charge and responsible for the overall visual style of the magazine. Together with the editors, they determine the best way to present the content on the pages or screens and usually, they oversee a team of designers to the task.
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Graphic Designer: Graphic designers are in charge of working on specific components or articles for the magazine. Usually, you would find a team of designers who together work on one single publication.
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Photo Editor/researcher: Researchers, magazine photo and picture editors are responsible for choosing the right type of artworks and images needed in the publication's articles. They either choose to buy images or commission their original work. They can buy images from agencies, photographers or even individual artists.
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Moving on, the sales job category. In order for magazines to gain its highest revenue and profit, companies would have to sell advertisements, which keeps them in business. Most magazines actually gain profit through their cover price and advertising. Depending on the magazines, they all have different rates for running advertisements through either online or in print. There are two sales jobs in magazine publishing:
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Ad Sales Manager: Ad sales manages help to set advertising strategies for the publications. They also oversee the team of sales agents ensuring they are correctly doing their tasks.
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Ad Sales Agent: Advertising sale agents role is to spend time trying to find people who need to advertise their business. This is mainly done through media spaces mostly over the phone.
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And then the online positions. Most magazines not only publish a print of their magazine, but also post an online edition of their publication. Even though most of the attention is diverted to the print, online versions also matter a lot in today's society. This therefore requires a team of online positions which would be:
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Web Editor: Web Editors main role is to oversee all the content that is going to be on the web version of the magazine publication. They manage a team of bloggers as well as adapting the printed content into one viewable on the internet.
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Bloggers: A bloggers role would be equivalent to one of the staff writers role. The only difference besides one being online would be that they have more frequent deadlines due to the shorter amount of articles they need to cater for.
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Social Media Manager: The last position would be the social media manager. This team is in charge of managing different social media platforms a publication has such as Instagram or Twitter as a few to mention. They help to promote the publication through publishing a range of content and graphics.
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There are also multiple other jobs available as they are also required in order to make sure the organisation is tidy, on schedule and organized. These include the following job roles:
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Production Manager: Production managers main role is to set out the industries production schedule. Along with this, they need to ensure all departments meet the deadlines in order for them to be printed on time and in circulation.
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Circulation Director: This type of director works on increasing and maintaining the publications subscriber base. This means all their work is mainly focused on their marketing strategies.
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Administrative Assistant: These assistants are key when it comes to carrying out regular daily tasks, keeping everything on track. In order to reach this role, you would have to work your way up to a point where you gain all this responsibilities.
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Now that we have covered the available job roles, let's move onto the basic working practices that print-based media industries follow.
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First thing that has to be arranged would be a date of publication in order to create a schedule for the crew and also so the general public are aware of when the magazines release date takes place. Usually after deciding this planned out time, they create a schedule which you would have to aim to stick to in order to make sure the publication is out on time. The plan includes information on the production process and when each stage is set to occur.
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After this, it's essential for the production of the magazine to stick to all the scheduled times and dates in order to assure the quality of the manufacture is of a high standard without being rushed last minute. In case something goes wrong or something has to be re-done or is late, there is always a Plan B to the production else without that structure, it wouldn't be completed on time.
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After this, it comes to the editorial and budgetary decisions. The editorial team will decide what topics will be covered on the front page of the magazine along with coming up with new stories, illustrations, articles and even photographs which will be featured in the magazine. After this, budgetary decisions are made in order to ensure they have enough money to create the best magazine possible. Usually the key here is to use as little money as possible.
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The next stage would be the content acquisition process. This is one of the most important steps of the whole process because without content, they would not be allowed to publish their magazine. You have two options of collecting content for the magazine which would be either through house staff writers or external writers who are commissioned to write on specific topics which re-handed out to them. After this step, they give it all the content to the graphics and artwork department. Here they determine which illustrations and pictures should be added. These are usually designed by a computer program. When it comes to research handed in from journalists or reporters, these call all be done through internet databases. Meetings would also be arranged with interviewees.
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After all that is arranged, it is given to the sub-editing team. The sub-editing team focuses on one major thing; quality control. Usually, bigger organisation teams would be big enough to have sub-editors which help take part in the construction of the magazine. When it comes to smaller organisations, they would only have one editor which would be in charge of checking accuracy of all facts and articles, making sure words are spelt correctly along with grammar and punctuation, checking that it follows a specific house style and working on the page layout.
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The page layout team specializes on checking and sorting out the layout of the Magazine. They check, typeset and layout various of magazine pages making sure it comes together as a whole. In order to do this, you would have to use Powerful Desktop Publishing (DTP) programs such as Pagemaker or InDesign in order to complete the task. This is also the stage where adverts from a range of advertisers are placed into the magazine.
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After this comes the task of proofreading which the editorial department prints out a hard copy for. They check out the layout as well as everything else in order to make sure the draft is perfect enough for destitution. If any mistakes are spotted, they are quickly changed on the DTP file. This process will repeat until every member is satisfied that there are no mistakes left.
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After the proofreading stage of the entire magazine, it is then sent to the printer and last minute checked that everything needed to be there is there. Before printing thousands of copies, they print a few back to the company in order to make sure the organisation is happy and fully satisfied of the printing quality. This is when they are given the go ahead to print the copies. the last stage of the process of production would be the distribution of the product. From the warehouse, the magazines are then distributed and sold to the public.
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Right moving on, we have multiple types of contracts. Magazine industries, being a media industry always has flexible and constantly changing contracts unlike more traditional jobs. I will talk about the most common contracts which can be found in the media industry which are as followed:
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Full-time, permanent
In a full-time permanent contract, you are expected to work on a full-time basis which would usually be around 39 hours per week. You would also be eligible for company benefits. Depending on the industry, this would include pensions, sick pay, maternity/paternity leave and holiday pay.
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Part-time, permanent
Just like the full-time permanent contract, you would have a set amount of hours per week however, only a fraction of a full-time contract. You will have the same benefits but on a reduced basis due to the fewer working hours.
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Fixed-term and freelance
The similarity to both of these contracts would be how they are both temporary for a specific period of time. A fixed-term contract may still entitle you to company benefits depending if its outlined however, a freelance worker would be responsible for making their own arrangements on the terms of pensions, holidays, sick pay and other allowances.
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Shift work
These job sets you to a certain time period of the day. This could be 8am-4pm or even 9pm-5am. Shifts could either be during the day or night used in places that need 24 hours activity such as broadcasting.
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Office hours
Mainly for administrative, marketing sales and office-based roles, they are usually in the UK Monday to Friday from 9am-5pm.
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Irregular & anti-social hours pay
In the magazine industry, production work especially on location can be irregular as it could either involve working really early in the morning or very late at night. This contract is practically like overtime as you get paid extra money on top of your normal wage for working unsociable hours, better known as overtime from the normal contracted duties.
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Salaried
Salaried contracts are set annual wages which are broken down into monthly payments. If for example your salary was advertised as £12,000 this means you would get £1,000 per month as it's divided into 12.
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On completion
With this contract, you are assigned an outlined task to do to a specific set standard and when you complete it, you will be paid the amount stated. These roles are usually set for more creative or technical aspects of the industry.
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Voluntary
This contract is an unpaid activity which is usually done to increase knowledge, make new friends, boost and expand your social network and overall better your social skills around a fully functioning magazine industry, which later on is great within a CV.
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Alright so here are the financial issues and current market trends print-media based industries are fully aware of.
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Circulation and Subscriptions
Buying your favorite magazines from a newsstand would let the profit from that sale straight to the magazine however, this is a single copy sale. There is very little profit in this type of sale once you include the price of how much it took to make the magazine, transportation and the general commissioning needed to be paid in order to give the magazine space to sell the magazine. Far more money is made though subscripts since their product goes directly to the consumer. This means that the magazine can cut out at-least one of the intermediaries which after selling a huge mass of magazines can save the company a lot of money. The advantage of subscriptions would also be how they can renew your magazine whenever its due as well as advertise any other magazines they may produce if they think it would interest you.
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Classified Advertising
Classified advertising is found always at the back of the pages. Magazines sell want ads by the word or the line. In popular magazines, these can be quite expensive to publish due to their larger circulation. Also for moderate magazines with a much smaller circulation, they also request large prices if they want to target a specific area or group of people. Let's say for example, a magazine based on life in New York would get a good price for want ads if they mostly target New York since they know that the people would likely take advantage of the product when they read about it.
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There are quite a lot of different ways to expand magazine publishing from events to building a brand around a membership model. Research pays dividends when creating or changing a business model. An individual approach is also crucial. What works for one publisher will surely fail for another, so first invest in research then evaluate the data and consider the impact of change on your current audience.
There are six tactics which can help to minimise poor cash flow and achieve sustainability:
But what you would also need to take into consideration would be who your target audience is.This can be done by simply determining who is most likely or wants or needs what you have to offer. If you identify your target audience, you would know how much demand is out there for your product. You also would be able to set up a marketing campaign that 'speaks to' the right people just by using the right tone and language which suits them better.
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1. Create a customer profile
Usually, your target audience would share similar characteristics and interests. In order to identify your audience to put together a customer profile, you need a detailed description of your target demographic which should include the following:
Are they mainly found in the millennial age bracket? Or are they more often middle-aged or seniors? You need to identify this as different age groups will respond differently to how your product is designed and marketed.
Both of their needs and goals are often strikingly different. If your magazine fails to address these differences, you could end up attracting few people from both genders.
If you get an idea of how much income your customer has, it can massively help with the magazine marketing strategies. If your target audience have a low-income, they may be more attracted towards products that could help them save money. If your target audience has high-income, they may be more attracted towards magazines that stresses about luxury and exclusivity.
Broadly speaking, people from the urban residents are usually more different from those who live in rural areas. Where people live and their surrounding communities can hugely impact their purchasing preferences.
Other points which you may want to take into consideration would be: Marital Status, Occupation/Industry, Families with or without children, Ethnic Groups, Hobbies and Interests.
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2. Conduct Market Research
You can learn about your target audience through primary and secondary market research. Primary research involves learning about customer buying habits through direct contact, such as:
Give out surveys to either existing or potential magazine customers either through paper, email or web based survey apps such as Survey Monkey.
Talk to people you trust or who would be interested in buying your magazines. Interview them to get their opinions.
Get feedback from a small group of people who could be interested in the genre of your magazine and fit your customer profile through group discussions or Q&A sessions.
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Now that that's established, we lastly needs to understand legal, ethical and professional obligations in the print-based media studies.
There are multiple acts of parliament implemented in order to make sure they follow their obligations. For example, the obscene publications act 1959 applies to television and covers material which is obscene, whether it is in a person's possession or it is published or broadcast. The definition of obscene is "likely to deprave and corrupt" the audience for which it is intended and includes not only sexually explicit material but material relating to violence and drug taking. This offence is more likely to apply to research material than material actually transmitted because of the stricter tests relating to harm and offence under the Communications Act 2003 and the Ofcom Broadcasting Code.'' Another example would be the data protection act created in 1998. The Data Protection Act 1998 (c 29) was a United Kingdom Act of Parliament designed to protect personal data stored on computers or in an organised paper filing system. Under the DPA 1998, individuals had legal rights to control information about themselves.