MEET MATT ALAGIAH, THE EDITOR MAKING THE MOVE FROM PRINT TO DIGITAL.

Moving from Monocle magazine to the digital publication Its’ nice that, Matt Alagiah, 29, has mastered the move that most journalists fear is inevitable. Graduating from University of Oxford with a BA in English and German, he kick started his career as Associate Editor of Monocle Magazine. But after nearly four years at the magazine, Matt decided to take the leap into the digital realm.

‘I’m still pretty optimistic about the future of print.’ Matt explains to Chloe Weaver, as they discuss keeping up with the ever-changing world of digital publications, how important brand extension is for journalism and the future of print.

How did you handle the transition from digital to print?

The metabolism of an online publication is much quicker as we are publishing at least ten stories a day. With digital, you are your own distributors, dispensing your work to millions of followers through many different platforms.

How does this fast-paced nature effect your working environment?

Great story telling is great story telling whether it is in a magazine or online, but I think it’s the immediacy that effects the environment. With digital you can release a story and within ten minutes, 200 people are looking at it.

Does this make it an exciting time to be a journalist?

Yes and no, opening a new magazine and knowing you’re the first one to touch it is very exciting to me. But online allows you to see results immediately through data, you can see exactly what stories have captivated your audience the most and that is very valuable knowledge.

What advice would you give to any journalists looking to make the move into the digital world?

The skills at the heart of good journalism should always remain the same. But I think a greater understanding of how the digital world works is needed as you are now in charge of your own distribution. As a journalist, you need a good understanding of the channels and how they are feeding the wider echo systems of your brand.

You recently revealed a new look for your website, what was the inspiration behind that?

We hadn’t had a re-design for about seven or eight years, so it was overdue.

Is renovation the key to keeping up with the fast-paced environment?

It’s important to allow adaptability, the digital world moves very quickly so in order to stay relevant it’s best not to paint yourself into a corner.

How exactly do you do that?

With the redesign we have given ourselves a lot of flexibility. The website is modular not a fixed grid, so it allows us to play around with the design in the future if we wanted to, but not changing it so much that it effects our readers or confuses them.

Brand extensions seem to be an important factor for you, working with Dropbox on the #callforcollaboration scheme and a once a month event held in London. Does this allow you to connect with your audience more?

Yes, definitely. Nicer Tuesdays welcomes 400-450 people every month, and it’s a great way of meeting everyone and engaging with them in a much more meaningful way. It really allows us to understand who our audience is.

Does this allow you to stay relevant?

There’s a lot of noise out there in the digital space so it helps to maintain relevancy within our audience. In the digital age you must be across as many different platforms as possible, but meeting people face to face results in a deeper connection.

Printed Pages is your bi-monthly magazine, tell us about it.

We are in the process of redesigning it. The independent print magazine industry is exploding at the minute, so we are keen to lead that trend. We used to focus on the website content for the magazine, but now we’re pivoting to more original content.

What is the reason behind this?

We know our audience love to have someone tangible in print and are more than happy to buy it and take their time reading it, so we want to give them more incentive to buy it.

What do you think the future of print holds?

Most of us are now reading more and more. We spend our lives looking at screens and people are getting tired of it. It’s nice to look at something beautiful that isn’t back lit.