Insurance Post says goodbye to print: an era ends but the story carries on

The curtain comes down on a 182 year publishing story this month as Insurance Post publishes its final print edition. While new editor Emma Ann Hughes sets out a bright digital future for this historic title, it is hard not to feel a moment a sadness that we will not see Post in print again.

It is a story that started in July 1840, a few months after the introduction of the Penny Post – and it is a story of innovation. Post Magazine, as it was known for most of its history, was the first magazine in the world distributed by post. That spirit of innovation is now carrying it into the digital age.

I look back to my period as editor and then editor-in-chief in the 1980s and 1990s with great fondness. In those pre-internet days Post Magazine broke the big news stories of the week for the insurance market when it hit the desks and the newsstands in major insurance centres every Thursday morning. Many weeks saw us publish 80-page plus issues, often with accompanying supplements on special topics.

Press day was Tuesday and it was often stressful, frequently dragging on well into the evening as every deadline was stretched to get the latest news in. Phone calls to and from the printers waiting for sign off became ever more agitated as the minutes ticked away. Now publishing is instant with a continuous flow of news appearing on websites. For journalists this produces new stresses but it does not entirely replace the camaraderie and excitement of press day.

A large part of each weekly issue was the recruitment section, packed with job adverts. For many people, this was the first section they turned to every week. It was also the first section to change as the digital age dawned in the 1990s. When job advertising started to go online we knew the commercial dynamics of publishing a weekly industry magazine were changing for ever. Post moved quickly to defend its revenues by launching InsuranceJobs.com but it was revenue lost to the print edition.

As news went online, the inevitable decision was taken in the last decade to take Post monthly and change its title from Post Magazine to Insurance Post, an acknowledgement that it was now more than just a print brand and would one day perhaps only be a digital publication.

The Covid pandemic hastened that transition. It flipped many companies overnight into remote operating and we all know the return to offices has been slow and the world of work has changed for ever. I met some contacts for lunch in the Brokers Wine Bar in Leadenhall Market one Friday a couple of weeks ago. Meeting people for lunch seems an old-fashioned concept to some people but imagine my surprise when I was told that it closed at 3pm on a Friday. Of course, Thursday is the new Friday in the City now.

That just underlines how much the world of work has changed. Faced with a rapidly diminishing number of firms that want to order print editions of Post for their offices, the publishers have decided that the production resources required to produce a print edition can be better deployed on enhancing the digital proposition.

While that all makes sense, it is hard not to feel a few pangs of regret, some would say nostalgia.

There are some things that will be lost, and not just the rhythm of the journalists’ week. There is a physical and visual pleasure of handling and reading print. There is a serendipity of browsing through a print publication and something unexpected catching your eye that is hard to replicate online, especially as algorithms always insist on pointing you to similar content. You also lose a sense of history. Pick up a copy of Post Magazine from a 180 years ago and you get a glimpse of commercial life in Victorian England. Pick up a copy from 100 years ago and you get a genuine sociological insight into how a major industry and the people who worked in it were recovering from the ravages of the First World War. That cannot easily be replicated digitally where you search for specific content with intellectual blinkers on.

To balance that there are many advantages of creating and distributing content digitally that will continue to multiply.

The curtain may have come down on one act in the story of Post but that story goes on, as it does for many other long-standing business publications.