Frankly you can hurl fancy buzzwords at me all day long, but myself stick to the old fashioned dictum which is that the content is king. Good, memorable stuff is what keeps people buying your mag because whenever they’re walking past a stand or shop there’s a chance they’ll recall a good/funny/interesting write-up and buy your mag on the strength of a thought. Some will even subscribe if convinced enough.

A ‘your letters’ section never did any harm either. People love the notion of getting some ramble they dreamed up into a popular mag; same goes for answering their letters and e-mails if they pose a question or grant an idea to staff. This responsiveness means more than some vacuous or thinly-disguised promoting tweet.

Oh and the graph at the bottom reminds me of The Day Today with Chris Morris. Sounds like PTC need lessons in avoiding oblique rubbish themselves eh?

Half that conference looks to resemble A-Level Business Studies; the hard part is having the talent behind you, because real talent is scarce. You can’t polish a turd; any mediocre or crap businessperson will slip up no matter how many of these ‘industry forums’ they attend. Oh and poor writers often stay that way, either being too lazy/awful/stupid to improve – that this dry rot hangs around so much in papers and mags is another thing to take on board.

- Pete