You know it’s time to redesign, but you’re not sure how to begin. What’s different in your readership? Your college’s or university’s expectations? Your own visions? Whether you’re looking for a complete overhaul or a refresh, this workshop will help you understand the mission, the changing audience, and the various phases of a comprehensive magazine redesign. Workshop speakers Alison Bennie and Kelly McMurray are magazine veterans with many publications between them. We will listen and share our own experiences with various redesigns. Our workshop will be an engaging, open discussion about goals, vision, and barriers. We’ll showcase before-and-after examples, discuss editorial plans, branding, administrative buy-in, internal roles, and examine case studies. At the end of this workshop, you’ll have a framework set up for your own publication’s redesign.

Join your conference chairs to kick off the 2024 Editors Forum.

Shaping the visual direction of long-form print and digital stories can be a daunting task. We will discuss how we assign photography, select images from a large group, how we pace those images across the pages of a story, and how we use design creatively to help visualize the story subject.

Solutions Journalism was born out of the idea that there is deep value in mainstream media surfacing responses to social problems and covering them with the same rigor and insight required in covering the problem itself. The work of the Solutions Insights Lab (SIL) is not journalism — it is targeted research — and supports storytelling and social change more broadly, by identifying and interrogating what’s working and what’s not in a sector or field. It is grounded in research, interviews and conversations in the hopes of advancing problem-solving knowledge. Ambika will take the audience through the What's Working: Solving the World's Most Pressing Problems portal, and how it takes people and organization's stories through the arc of response, evidence, insight and limitations. Using these four pillars of solutions journalism, organizations can refine their story of social change and catalyze a myriad of outcomes. What does it mean to use insights to build on innovation and impact within your organization and with your sector?

How the rhythms of great writing can be found everywhere, from fiction and poetry to A-1 features, obits, even the daily weather reports. Lessons from 30 years in journalism on how to sharpen your writing, reporting and editing skills.

What do you do when weeks from your ship date your men’s basketball team wins their fifth national championship in 25 years? You need to make the most of a major moment. But you can’t plan ahead for something like that — obviously you would jinx it. Our tiny UConn Magazine team of a dedicated editor/publisher and art director and part-time photographer and associate editor seized the moment. With days to spare we scrapped our issue’s anchor feature and speedily created a brand new one from scratch, one worthy of the moment and including an essay by legendary NCAA commentator Jim Nantz. We did the same with our intended cover. And then we created four more covers. Five covers for five championships. A big response to a big moment. We will discuss how we conceived of, sold, funded, created, printed, distributed, and promoted (oh yeah there’s merch!) this distinct and triumphant 5-covers for 5-wins feat.

We'd like to take you through two case studies — the effort to bring the print edition of Middlebury Magazine back to life, after a near-death experience during the pandemic, and the redemption of USF Magazine, after its print issue was nearly lost on the budget chopping block. There will be time for everyone's questions, too.

Congrats! You’ve published another terrific news or feature story online. But if you have bigger ambitions for supporting your institution’s communications goals, that article’s journey has just started. Through daily coordination between editorial and media relations staff about stories in the pipeline, the University of Maryland has made its news site, Maryland Today, the primary tool for amplifying news across campus and beyond. We’ll show how we promote Maryland Today stories in at least a dozen other internal channels (magazines! e-newsletters! social media!) to appeal to different stakeholders—and inspire you to identify new outlets for your content. Plus, we’ll talk about successful strategies for luring media coverage by making your news site worth their visits, riding the wave of the news cycle and pushing out your most relevant and interesting experts.

In this presentation, we'll explore the world of video storytelling and its unique advantages for higher education magazine and print editors. We'll dive into the strengths of video in conveying emotion through visuals and audio, showcase various video formats and styles, and discuss strategies for repurposing existing print content into compelling video and audio experiences. Additionally, we'll cover the concept of building a content engine by repurposing long-form video content into short-form pieces and provide insights on working effectively with videographers to create engaging and impactful video content.

As creative writers, editors and supervisors, we all must give and receive feedback on collaborative projects, from magazines to brochures to donor letters. Feedback and iteration are the engines that turn your work from good to great. But too often our feedback lands on deaf ears, is misunderstood, or worst of all, results in hurt feelings and mistrust among colleagues. In this interactive presentation, learn 18 great tips on how to give and how to receive feedback on a creative project. You’ll learn the art of scaling your feedback based on deadlines, how to critique respectfully and how active listening and gratitude can improve your collaborative critiques.