An editorial chief has won a promotion which will see her oversee a regional publisher’s portfolio of county magazine.
Archant has appointed creative director Liz Nice, pictured, to the role of head of content for its county magazines after 18 months working on its East Anglian Resident titles.
The move to the newly created role will see all editors of the county magazine portfolio, described by the company as “a jewel in Archant’s crown”, report into her.
Liz, a former managing editor of the East Anglian Daily Times and Ipswich Star, will in turn report directly to chief content officer Matt Kelly.
In a message to staff, Matt said: “The county magazines are a jewel in Archant’s crown and we want us all to be energetic and ambitious as we set about making them clear market leaders based on their editorial quality and our strategic focus on subscriptions.
“We know times are very tough but that is exactly why we want to make sure we get through this with a stronger portfolio of titles, whose content and design are peerless.”
The role will see Liz work closely with the county magazine editors, as well as the company’s design team, to “build on the editorial quality of our titles”.
She will also work with Archant’s commercial team “to ensure everything we do both lifts our magazine’s quality and their commercial potential”.
Matt added: “Liz has great experience in both newspapers and consumer magazines and has done terrific work on the East Anglian Resident magazines in the past 18 months, as well as completely overhauling the newspaper feature pages.
“She won this role against very impressive competition from both inside and outside Archant and we’d like to thank all of you who applied for the job internally – your ideas will form part of our next steps.
“In parallel, our group head of audience, Emily Hewett, will manage the magazine digital team. This small team is working ferociously hard and dealing with numerous requests, both commercial and editorial.
“A fresh look at how they operate and what their goals should be is long overdue. We are committed to helping Emily and the digital team in producing a coherent and commercially compelling digital strategy.
“The next few months are going to be challenging but exciting and we hope these changes will produce some very visible wins for us as a portfolio. “
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To be fair, Archants county magazines do look good.
The content is relevant to the demographic and county in question, the columnists are well respected and entertaining, there’s always good use of professional photography,and the design and overall look of the magazines is of the very highest quality and up there with the best looking lifestyle magazines around.
With that in mind it’s a wonder Archant don’t roll those basics out across their newspaper titles too, it’s obviously a winning formula.
Nice one! ( pun intended)
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Phillip, The frustrating thing is we all know being specific to the territory and completely relevant to the reader is the key, it’s what the small independents do so well, but look what we’ve ended up with in our local dailies,both online and in paper, the complete opposite!
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If the “overhauling” of the newspaper features pages is anything to go by I think there are some changes ahead for the magazines.
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Newspaper editors should take note of what the glossies do then as the content going in our dailies and posted online is, sorry to say, beyond dreadful.
Magazines buyers know they’re getting quality content,well packaged and presented and are happy to pay to get it ,with those buyers come advertisers willing to pay good money to engage with those people, their potential customers ,It’s that simple
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There was a post about subscriptions but it looks like it’s been taken down?
I believe subscriptions may well be the most effective way to go post crisis.
Archants county magazines appear to be improving all the time and must be picking up sales and advertisers as a result, if so this will be something the company will be keen to capitalise on by aiming to tie in as many pre ordered magazine subscribers as possible and makes sense.
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@Whistler
Subscriptions do make sense for magazines but as we tend to “buy with our eyes” the strength and quality of a strong stand out cover design is instrumental in tempting the casual buyer to pick one up.There’s a danger not seeing copies in racks or by the tills could result in potential losses.
It’s highly likely there would be more casual sales lost than subscriptions signed up, unless the plan is to have a mix as is the case now. If so I’m confused by the quote about the “strategic focus on subscriptions”
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I’m confused
How can a publisher produce really good looking monthly magazines,yet allow the daily and weekly newspapers in the group to be so poor?
I accept they’re separate divisions with different staff but surely the same standards of quality, design and relevance of the content ( and adverts) ought to apply to everything right across the company?
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@Taverham
You can put The New European alongside the magazines. That isn’t meant as a slur on TNE, HTFP moderators, but these are all reasonably-budgeted publications which have thought put into how they look and getting the right balance of columnists. So TNE commissions Will Self, which can’t come cheap, whereas the EDP and EN are reduced to appealing for reader submissions. There’s enough of these type of ‘Modern life is rubbish’ opinions available online without encouraging any more.
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@OneTimeSub
I wouldn’t put The New European paper in the same group as the monthly lifestyle magazines,I see that as a limited interest ‘hobby’ publication which plays to different rules and stands outside the restrictions and constraints of other titles though I do take your point.
I’m talking about consistent standards of quality,relevance,engaging content and strong visual appeal which should be a basic requirement right across the publishing division, not just for the magazines.
It works well for them and is presumably profitable so why would you settle for less in newspapers and online?
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@Taverham
Don’t disagree with you at all; the original point is that the company’s flagship daily newspapers are being run in a completely different – and some would say illogical – way to its more recent start-ups and acquisitions. It makes no financial or business sense whatsoever. The EDP, for example, used to have a budget to send a dedicated political editor to the party conferences; that sort of thinking is now limited to TNE.
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I totally agree with your point about budgets for things such as political reporters @OneTime Sub ( incidentally,why isn’t content by TNE columnists shared across newspapers ?) however,understandably they’ve had to cut back on the non essentials, the problem with that is who determines who or what is non essential?
Look around at the ridiculous number of commercial directors and sales directors who incur high costs yet produce nothing of value.Then consider the costs to keep those non essential positions going, surely those costs could be better utilised elsewhere on resources which are productive and actually add value and improve the quality o the end product.
The magazines are strong and look good,my point is why not demand the same high standards across the entire company’s portfolio?
Good looking,well written and relevant products which appeal to the market they’re aimed at bring paying customers,yet for some reason it appears acceptable for inferior and sub standard papers and online content to be allowed to be published, why?
And the EDP and EN “flagship titles”?
Those were the days my friend….
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Magazines “…whose content and design are peerless.” I agree and this is a big part of why they’re popular in their counties,sell so well and, I assume,achieve decent advertising rates
then there’s the daily papers……..
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Are the Archant Life magazines available to subscribers in digital format?
Although people enjoy the tactile aspect of having a glossy magazine to hand or around the house I would think there would be a market for an online version particularly in the current climate if there’s not already a digital version available.
They look visually stylish and appealing and the editorial pages lend themselves to being viewed on a tablet or portable device.
Subscriptions to a digital edition might be an opportunity to reach a new market too maybe?
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