Motor Sport Magazine: Building a More Scalable Digital Publishing Operation
See how Motor Sport Magazine simplified the production behind its growing digital output, creating a more scalable way to publish across multiple channels.
For publishers, every new digital channel creates another opportunity to reach readers and get more value from the content they already create.
But supporting a growing number of destinations can also mean more formats, technology and production processes sitting behind the same content.
For smaller publishing teams in particular, the challenge is how to keep expanding that output without adding the same level of complexity behind the scenes.
Growing beyond print
Founded in 1924, Motor Sport has spent more than a century building its reputation for authoritative, independent motor racing journalism. Over time, its publishing footprint has expanded well beyond print, with its content now reaching readers across Apple News, a native app, its website and numerous digital-edition platforms.
As the number of destinations grew, content was handled and prepared differently for each one, with separate production paths and a lot of manual work.
Those processes also required ongoing input from Motor Sport’s editorial team. For a lean publishing team, that meant the same people pulled into production tasks were also focused on interviewing drivers, reporting from racetracks and producing journalism across print and digital.
And because much of Motor Sport’s content comes together close to the on-sale date, those additional steps and handovers were happening within an already compressed production window.
As Motor Sport’s digital output grew, supporting more destinations through separate production paths, manual steps and ongoing editorial input became increasingly difficult to scale.
The production challenge for multi-channel publishers
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Motor Sport’s experience reflects a broader challenge for publishers managing content across multiple digital destinations.
A bigger opportunity
Motor Sport initially came to VMG with a much narrower brief around Apple News.
Looking more closely at how that content was being produced revealed an opportunity beyond a single channel.
Rather than improving one part of the process in isolation, Motor Sport and VMG began rethinking how the work was done, building a more connected workflow around the content the magazine was already creating.
Apple News+
The print-to-Apple News+ process was rebuilt, with VMG taking the existing magazine content and preparing it for Apple News+, including the editorial and production work needed to make it work for the platform.
Native App
The magazine content is also prepared for Motor Sport’s native app as part of the same workflow, taking into account the app’s specific requirements.
Website
For its website, VMG developed a semi-automated workflow that converts Motor Sport’s print files while the issue is also being prepared for Apple News. Most publishers receive a direct feed from VMG’s conversion platform, but Motor Sport’s tight editorial schedule required a different approach to work within its more condensed production window.
As part of that process, VMG supports the editorial workflow by sourcing relevant videos and related articles, creating image alt text, and enriching and styling the content for the website.
Digital editions
VMG also prepares Motor Sport’s replica digital editions for distribution, taking the approved issue files through to delivery across multiple digital newsstand platforms.
Throughout, Motor Sport’s team remains in control of what’s published, with review and approval built into the process, while VMG handles the preparation and delivery required for each destination.
Together, these changes have significantly simplified the production process behind Motor Sport’s digital output, reducing the manual handling, separate steps and back-and-forth that previously sat between the magazine content and each destination. For a lean editorial team working to tight publication windows, that creates a much more efficient way to support a growing number of outputs.
“Working with VMG has allowed us to simplify a process that was becoming increasingly complex as our digital output grew. We invest heavily in the journalism and content we produce, so it’s important that we maximise its value and make it available to readers across the different platforms they use. The model we’ve built with VMG means we can expand that reach without having to build separate internal production processes for every channel. It also frees up our teams to focus more of their time on the journalism, audience growth and new opportunities that will help us continue to grow Motor Sport.”
— Zamir Walimohamed, Head of Digital, Marketing & Subscriptions
A model built to grow
As new publishing requirements and opportunities emerge, Motor Sport can bring them into the model without building a new production process for every new output.
Web-to-Apple News article conversion has since been incorporated into the workflow, allowing content published on Motor Sport’s website to be prepared for Apple News as part of the wider operation.
It also gives Motor Sport greater scope to extend the value of its archive by creating special-interest publications for Apple News+ from existing content, with VMG sourcing and assembling relevant material for the team to review and approve.
A more scalable way to think about multi-channel publishing
Digital platforms will continue to change. New opportunities to reach readers will emerge, and existing channels will keep evolving.
For publishers, getting content onto another platform is only part of the challenge. The production model behind it also needs to support a growing number of channels and opportunities without adding another layer of complexity each time.
Motor Sport now has a publishing model designed to accommodate different requirements as its publishing footprint evolves, rather than a series of separate processes built around individual outputs.
That gives Motor Sport a stronger foundation to keep expanding how and where it publishes its content, while allowing its team to stay focused on what has built the publication’s reputation for more than a century: authoritative, independent motor racing journalism.
