Exhibit City News, the 19-year-old newspaper covering the meeting, convention and tradeshow industries, has announced that it will be changing the format of its newspaper starting with the May 2012 issue. ECN also announced that changes are being made to the website, www.ExhibitCityNews.com, to help streamline and organize news content.
“We have been steadily improving our editorial content over the last year,” said Jeff Adcox, editor. “We believe these new changes are going to help highlight those enhancements.”
Perhaps the biggest change to the print edition of Exhibit City News will be the new size, which will closely resemble a magazine format and will be much more portable and easy to read.
“Many of our readers are constantly traveling or navigating the show floor, so we wanted to deliver the news in a format that is more user-friendly for the industry,” said Adcox.
Switching Exhibit City News into a new, magazine-style format will also open opportunities for sponsorships of featured components,
such as Tradeshow History, Convention Center Snapshots, or even the monthly Feature Focus sections.
And since the size of the overall publication is changing, the size of advertisements must adjust to fit in the new format as well.
“Our new sizes are going to be very easy to work with, and most of the new sizes are similar to the old sizes,” said Judy Kackley, advertising coordinator for ECN. “A quarter page advertisement will still be a quarter page. There will just be some minor changes that need to be made.”
To further emphasize ECN’s new inclination toward organization and readability, the current website, www.ExhibitCityNews.com, will be undergoing a few adjustments as well.
“Each month, we publish nearly 100 items on the Web,” said Adcox. “We need to make sure our readers have a chance to see everything that interests them.”
Changes to the Website include adding a Top Five stories module for each section, condensing topic categories, updating the Classified Ads and testimonials, and including social media information, such as links to ECN’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr on each page.
“Before, there were categories and sections stretched across the site, which made it very confusing for readers to get information on a particular subject,” said Devanny Novak, assistant editor. “With these new changes, a reader can go to the Homepage, and if they decide they want to read about exhibit design, for example, we have a specific section dedicated just to that.”
Although Exhibit City News is updating and upgrading, the affect to content, as well as readership, will be purely positive. Both print and online subscriptions will still be handled with the same care and attention they have had for the last 19 years.
“We have been further developing Exhibit City News’ paper and website into a real-time news delivery service,” said Don Svehla, publisher. “With these changes, we can concentrate on publishing in-depth articles about the different segments of the industry, which is what’s really important to the tradeshow community.”
