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UK magazine circulations down 6% on average in turbulent 2020 — www.pressgazette.co.uk

UK magazine circulation fell by an average of 6% year-on-year in 2020, according to the latest ABC figures. But that doesn't really tell the full story: some titles suffered from the collapse of newsstand sales crushed by retail lockdowns and travel bans; while others soared on stay-at-home subscription growth.

Frees like the Evening Standard's ES took a hammering, pausing publication for six months. Newsstand weeklies Heat and Closer were both off by about 40%. In stark contrast, home-school friendly The Week Junior was up almost 40%.

Chris Duncan, Bauer Media UK’s CEO, points out in the Press Gazette piece that these figures “cover a period of extraordinary disruption” for both readers and retailers. And it is definitely difficult to roll out the tried and tested 'steady decline of print' narrative that the average ABC release sparks.

PS. The ABCs are pretty complex these days. The 6% average represents as mix of print and digital-edition numbers, full and half year figures for some titles and overseas counts where relevant.

Vox Media drives display revenues with first-party data — digiday.com

Venture-backed Vox Media launched its first-party data solution, Forte, at the end of 2019. There are probably better times to launch a new product than the beginning of a global economic shutdown, but 2020 wasn't half bad - Forte drove “nearly half” of Vox Media’s display ad revenue in 2020.

James Wildman on how Hearst is monetising trusted relationships — www.inpublishing.co.uk

James Wildman, CEO of Hearst in the UK and self-described 'perennial optimist', says there's never been a better time to work in publishing. I'm sure we could debate that one for a quite some time (see today's lead story). However, Hearst's focus on innovating new revenue streams off the back of deep reader engagements is absolutely spot on.

Why publishers are going big on bookazines — edition.cnn.com

We talked about why bookazine's are such a big thing in this week's podcast and decided publishers love them because they're an opportunity to repurpose archive content and readers love them because they play to their passions. We also decided 'bookazine' is the worst portmanteau in publishing.

This week's podcast:

Director of the Reuters Institute Rasmus Kleis Nielsen on why we get news subscriptions wrong — voices.media

This week Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, tells us where newspapers are going wrong in their subscription marketing, why there’s no easy solution to the need for internal change in newsrooms, and why Nordic countries outperform when it comes to the membership mentality.

Help us keep the (ring) lights on — ko-fi.com

We’re perilously close to covering our running costs thanks to the generous donations of our contributors. If you feel you can chuck us a couple of quid to reach our target, we’d be eternally grateful. We promise not to spend too much of it on coffee.