By Jennifer Howard
May 2013
Colorado Springs, CO – Critical training on magazine publishing at your fingertips will soon be a reality for Christian magazine staff worldwide. Magazine Training International (MTI) today unveiled a new online training logo and announced a new Internet-based effort to meet the training needs of Christian magazine publishers in the Developing World.
The new MTIOnline program will give publishers access to more frequent and varied training options than have been possible with the on-site events, which are generally limited to once or twice a year and to a specific region. Because on-site training opportunities are limited, many Christian publishers have not been able to receive needed training. Online training bridges the gap, allowing publishers from around the world access to helpful instruction regardless of physical location, financial situation, inability to obtain a visa, or time restraints.
Beginning June 25, 2013, MTI will offer quarterly Webinars on current issues in magazine publishing. David Renard, a partner with mediaIDEAS, will speak on "Digital Magazine Trends and Business Models" in the Webinar this month. Renard served as a trainer in the Digital Magazine Publishing Seminar in India last year, and is a renowned speaker on the topic of digital publishing.
The Webinars will be presented live with limited registration. Participants in the live session will have an opportunity to ask questions of the presenter. Each Webinar will also be recorded and made available on-demand.
A second prong of the online training program is instructor-led, four-week online courses. In an effort to offer increasingly interactive and timely training, MTI will begin full online courses in early fall. The courses will allow participants to interact one-on-one with a professional editor, publisher, or designer who can help answer their questions, and provide a forum to exchange ideas among themselves. The course will also include assignments graded by the trainer or evaluated by peers, forums for discussion, quizzes, and a certificate on completion.
In addition to the newly added Webinars and online courses, MTIOnline includes ongoing eBooks and video training sessions.
Last year, MTI began to offer free eBooks and videos and since then has provided 15 free 30-to-50-page eBooks excerpted from manuals on magazine editing, management, writing, and design, and 13 one-hour video sessions from DVD courses on management and design. Every two weeks an eBook or video if offered free of charge. Some 420 people from over 60 countries have taken advantage of these free resources. The eBooks and videos are made available through Facebook and MTI’s Web site.
Publishing professionals worldwide have expressed excitement about the new program.
"A lot of the publications, like ours, are quite small and don’t really count on a lot of finances," says Sherrin Skerman, editor of Girls4God magazine in Australia. "It has been a dream of ours for so long to go to one of your conferences but we just can’t afford it. I’m so excited about this. I can see it being so useful and helping so many people. I think it is just fantastic."
MTI will continue to offer on-site conferences. The next training program will take place in Tiruvalla, India, November, 2014, when MTI will offer two six-day publishing courses.
More information is available at http://www.magazinetraining. com/ and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ MagazineTrainingInternational.
