Big changes ahead

IN THE PREVIOUS CEO NOTES, I hinted that changes were coming to this column and that those changes would be part of a bigger picture. Here are two big changes that you’ll see in the next few months:

First, this summer we will introduce WORLD’s daily newspaper via a digital app. We’ll share more about this new product later, but what’s important to know now is that it’s part of your subscription. All current subscribers will have access—and you’ll definitely want to use it.

Second, WORLD Magazine will become a hefty monthly rather than a thinner biweekly. We’ve been kicking this idea around for nearly four years, and now conditions seem perfectly timed to make the change. Our plan is to redeploy the print magazine in a way that fills a wide-open space in the news marketplace: With your support, we are doubling down on reportage-driven coverage that explores God’s world in depth and detail.

We’ve already expanded the magazine’s reporting and built out a staff of accomplished long-form writers. Even at that, though, our biweekly page limit doesn’t allow us to really dig into a topic and provide you with what executive editor Lynn Vincent calls “360-degree coverage.” Our plan for a monthly vastly increases the number of pages we can devote to long-form reporting. This will enable us to explore multiple angles, allowing us to create reporting “packages” that include both a main and secondary story, supported by maps, graphics, timelines, explainers, and sidebars.

In addition, we will substantially increase our news coverage in each issue, adding pages to Dispatches and devoting additional pages to beats like politics, education, and religious liberty. Finally, WORLD readers are readers, and for that reason we’ll enhance and add book-review pages.

All of those are things you asked for in our most recent reader survey. We have designed a magazine that delivers what you’ve told us is important and also continues to deliver on the commitment we’ve made to you over and over: more reporting, and more sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth.

July will be our first big monthly magazine—and we aim to have it in your mailbox before July 1. We’ll be sharing more about the monthly magazine and the daily newspaper in coming weeks.