The International News Media Association (INMA) has outlined its plans for 2021 and set out priority initiatives. INMA will run three topical initiatives this year aimed at lifting the knowledge base around subjects and connecting to professional communities around those subjects.
Here are some of the highlights of those subjects:
Subscriptions: INMA aims at benchmarking and securing subscription gains of the Covid year. It will help members find new avenues of growth for members by moving focus from heavy to light readers, reinventing news experiences, and getting smarter with pricing by growing beyond our consumer business with group subscriptions and partnerships.
Product: INMA’s new product initiative led aims to spotlight issues such as product design methodologies and structures, measurement and KPIs, prototyping and experimenting, and more.
Data: INMA will publicly announce a third initiative focused on what it calls “smart data” — tying data initiatives to business objectives and incorporating a data-first culture. It will focus on the practical applications of data to engage audiences, grow reader revenue, and reinvent advertising in the post-Covid era.
Two other initiatives also are on INMA’s 2021 agenda:
Digital Platform Initiative: INMA believes that what is happening at the regulatory level with the big tech platforms will have a profound impact on the news industry. Along with new contributors experienced in regulatory reform, INMA said it aims to distill and decode these developments in what will undoubtedly be a pivotal year on this front.
Media groups: INMA also aims to promote the role of media groups — notably central services across properties and titles — in the year ahead. This will manifest itself in its Global Media Awards competition and blogs.
Training and development
INMA will return to physical conferences in 2022 when full health and safety can be assured. Yet it feels its virtual entrepreneurialism in the past year will pay dividends for members in 2021. Meanwhile, INMA is working with the Facebook Journalism Project and the Google News Initiative on data- and subscription-related projects that will yield town halls later in 2021 for INMA members and the broader news industry.
Webinars
In a span of three years, INMA went from producing zero Webinars to 73. Much of last year was Covid-related and just-in-time for its members. A lot of what was created and scaled is now going to be a part of the “new normal” of INMA membership experience, it said.
INMA has outlined its webinar plans for this year:
Global Webinars: The best-case studies and the occasional newsmakers are featured in its global webinars. Roughly, INMA will do three of these per month.
Meet-ups: Each of its three initiatives — Readers First, Product, and Smart Data — will conduct 60- to 90-minute meet-ups bi-monthly. These are multi-speaker, interactive meet-ups that include audience participation.
South Asia Webinars: INMA community in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka is supporting monthly webinars: South Asians talking with South Asians about South Asian matters. These are trending toward a mix of strategic and case study and are held monthly.
Latin America Webinars: INMA’s Spanish-language Webinars aimed at Latin American publishers have evolved into practical, case study approaches surfacing the best among our members in the region. These are being held monthly.
French-speakers Webinars: INMA tested a Webinar for French-speakers worldwide last year, and it was such a success that it aims to expand this to quarterly webinars this year.
In total, that would be up to 80 webinars produced live by INMA — and then recorded and archived for you at your leisure. As a bonus, each presentation is also archived by INMA for your 24/7 review.
