Live conferences and events for all industries, including news publishing, are the year's highlights for guests, speakers and the industry organizations that hold them. They are essential for networking, renewing old acquaintances, forging new ones, promoting professional development, and sharing new ideas and trends.
Although many organizations in the news publishing industry have been able to conduct successful virtual conferences during the COVID pandemic, people are seeking simple human interactions again. As a result, many news industry organizations have scheduled their first gatherings for the remainder of 2021.
Two events scheduled are a collaboration between Editor & Publisher and the 360 Media Alliance who have partnered to host conferences (E&P/360 Media Alliance News Publishing Business Summit) in St. Louis on Sept. 16 and 17 and Baltimore on Oct. 14 and 15.
The primary theme of both conferences is to share ideas with publishers to increase their readership and maximize revenues applicable to any size company and market. Sessions and panel discussions will present additional insights on how to reduce expenses, the value of becoming a nonprofit organization, which public notice platform makes sense, carrier or mail distribution, reducing print days, increasing digital readership, unique revenue streams, and how to overcome unique legal challenges of the publishing business.
"There is certainly a pent-up demand in the industry for many of us to meet with others again," said Mike Blinder, publisher of Editor & Publisher. Blinder will conduct a half-day training session for advertising managers and their teams to dive deeper into the sales methods necessary to penetrate local markets and look at advertisers' resiliency.
“We purposely scheduled two separate conferences as the best way to protect guests, speakers and others, but the feedback we’ve received indicates most everyone wants in-person events,” said John Newby, founder of 360 Media. “Most publishers are not restricting their employees’ travel. While we may welcome multiple attendees from the same company, expect a decent crowd as most guests can travel by car since they will be only a few hours from the closest conference location.”
According to Newby, with just one person from a newspaper or a few from an entire chain publication attending these events, that should help keep guests safe. In addition, despite news stories about the high level of Missourians contracting the delta variant, Newby said its spread is significantly less in St. Louis County, which has higher vaccination rates than rural counties.
He also indicated that his organization has no current plans to move the two conferences to virtual-only events. Still, he is closely following the CDC's recommendations, which may require some adjustments. E&P and the 360 Media Alliance have created a special section for guests who want more space between themselves and others at the conference sites.
More information is available at: http://www.EditorandPublisher.com/Summit
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