Wednesday 3rd June: What FIPP learned from two months of hosting webinars

June 03, 2020

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

FIPP, the international media membership network, has long relied on events and conferences for the bulk of its revenue. But the last 10 weeks has seen it pivot rapidly to virtual events, holding one, sometimes two webinars a week.

President and CEO James Hewes has taken to LinkedIn to share the organisation's learnings, from formats to tech, scripting and rehearsing to post-event follow up. The article from James is a nuts and bolts, blow-by-blow guide to getting your webinars right and offers real encouragement to absolute beginners.

"Getting started with virtual events can seem a little daunting at first, but stick with it," says James. "We went from not even having a Zoom account on March 1st to getting well over 1,000 delegates attending our events in the period since."

The Spectator, like so many publishing businesses, signed up for government financing to furlough staff. But, weathering the COVID crisis better than expected due to rising subscription revenues, the magazine is returning the taxpayer funding it received and withdrawing from the furlough scheme immediately.

Seven ways the Wall Street Journal's Audience teams are working to engage readers during the Coronavirus pandemic, both new readers looking for information that they can trust as well as longtime readers. Projects range from reader questionnaires to experiments with poetry and audio.

Several hundred Facebook employees, all currently working from home, set their email out-of-office messages to say they were protesting Facebook's failure to take action against Donald Trump. He posted on the platform suggesting government forces would fire at protesters.

Podcast:

This week Will Gore, Head of Partnerships and Projects at the National Council for the Training of Journalists, tells us about the NCTJ’s role in the Facebook-backed Community News Project. He also speaks about journalism education, trust, the future of local news and shorthand.

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