From Print to Digital: Taking Your Magazine Online-Recording

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Video Summary

Jen Lennon, Director of Content Strategy at Kent State University, details their transition from a costly biannual print magazine to a fully digital monthly publication. Budget cuts and rising print costs prompted the shift, alongside the desire to engage an increasingly digital audience and expand reach beyond alumni to students, faculty, and staff. Initially, a hybrid model with limited print runs proved labor-intensive and inefficient. <br /><br />The digital magazine, hosted on a redesigned Drupal website with templated layouts, embraces multimedia-rich storytelling — including videos, audio playlists, and animated poems — elevating engagement and allowing for deeper narrative approaches not possible in print. Four feature stories are published monthly, plus class notes organized by decade, with alumni submissions managed through the advancement office. The new format supports flexible publishing schedules and accessible, mobile-friendly design.<br /><br />Key challenges include competing for digital attention, overcoming alumni resistance to losing print editions, and maintaining production discipline amid creative brainstorming. Analytics reveal alumni are the core engaged audience, institutional stories perform best, and student-focused content least. Social media engagement remains low but is a growth area.<br /><br />Jen collaborates closely with internal photo, video, web, and social media teams to build and produce content mostly in-house, supported by leadership buy-in. The digital model offers measurable engagement metrics—such as time on page and click rates—helping demonstrate ROI. The team is cautious to avoid simply replicating PDFs online, emphasizing unique digital storytelling tailored to the medium.<br /><br />Jen recommends mobile-first design, integrated multimedia, and planned content strategies while cautioning against overwhelming launches and neglecting accessibility. The project fosters cross-divisional collaboration and represents a strategic opportunity to innovate storytelling despite reduced print budgets.

Keywords

digital magazine

content strategy

multimedia storytelling

mobile-friendly design

audience engagement

budget cuts

alumni relations

Drupal website

cross-divisional collaboration

measurable metrics