Like a lot of you, we are going through a number of strategy changes at tED magazine. Decisions that you are making today are obsolete by tomorrow because new information is available. The same thing is happening to us.
For what is now the second month in a row, tED magazine will only be available online, which means I did not send it to our printer and have not mailed to our more than 22,000 subscribers. I know that sounds crazy, but with nearly all of our subscribers working from home, it remains in the best interest of everyone to have us send the magazine to you through the internet instead of having it delivered to an office you have not visited in months. You wouldn’t see any of our stories, which we have adjusted to reflect the current COVID-19 situation. The June issue also features this year’s NAED Trailblazer Award winner as the cover story.
I honestly don’t know when tED magazine readers will be returning to the office. I talked with a number of CEOs, President, Vice-Presidents, and branch managers about a return to “normal” over the past few weeks, and I am getting a wide variety of answers. They are all saying the safety of their employees is most important, and they don’t want to take any risks. They are also saying many employees may work from a remote location on a permanent basis. At this point, I can’t tell you if we will be printing and mailing the July issue of tED magazine either. I am keeping in touch with our readers and will assess if enough are coming back to the office to justify printing the July issue. Like I said, decisions that I made earlier today are probably going to change by tomorrow morning. I am holding off on making any decisions on more issues of tED remaining digital-only.
Either way, my job is to deliver news to you, no matter where you are. And we are even more deeply committed to doing that than ever before. If that means mailing a physical magazine, great. If it means a digital issue to your home, great again. We have changed our subscription form to make it easier for you to receive the digital edition. By clicking this link, you only have to fill out your name, company, e-mail address, primary business, and job title, and you will be signed up for a free digital subscription. With the subscription, one time a month you will receive a notice that the digital edition for tED magazine is available for you to read. We won’t send any additional emails to you, and we won’t share your information with any other businesses or organizations.
We also remain incredibly strong online and with our e-newsletters. Both our lightED and tedmag.com websites have shown an increase in readers and pageviews over the past two months, and our e-newsletters all still have between 55-62% open rates. We know we are providing essential news online every day, and we also know distributors are looking to us more than anyone else to provide it.
As always, I hope that you will reach out to me directly if you have questions about tED and our strategies as we move forward. We are committed to the journalism that made us the 2019 Magazine of the Year, and we are equally committed to making sure all of our readers are getting the best information available. You can call me directly at my desk at 314-812-5311 or email me at scosta@naed.org
Thanks for reading this slightly lengthy note and take care of yourself.