Case study: How The Week successfully created a children’s media property amid the pandemic

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Recently, we offered an inside look at exactly how The Week launched its new children's media property, The Week Junior, in the midst of a global pandemic.

Get a taste of that case study below and subscribe to Digiday+ to gain full access to these unique behind-the-scenes guides.

Case Study: How The Week successfully created a children’s media property amid the pandemic

By Sara Jerde

The Week, the weekly news magazine, had offered a children’s publication, called The Week Junior, for years in the U.K. After months of planning, the teams aligned on audiences and messaging to bring it to the United States and they arrived at a final release date: Spring 2020.

But then the pandemic hit and suddenly The Week Junior — like all print publications — needed an immediate overhaul.

“We ripped it up three days before the deadline,” said Andrea Barbalich, editor-in-chief of The Week Junior. “We had promised to bring the news of the world to children and we knew that we had to tackle the coronavirus pandemic head on.”

She was joined on the Digiday Publishing Summit LIVE's virtual stage by The Week CEO Kerin O’Connor who walked us through how they, and the team, managed to successfully create a new publication in an unprecedented year. Here’s what they told us.

Establish an eye-catching format for youngsters
Leadership had to consider how it would apply — as O’Connor called it — the parent publication’s “old fashioned” layout to still entice the 8 to 14 year-old targeted audience for the junior version.

“We were extremely research-driven, we were extremely open to new ideas. We were extremely open to thinking about how this product would resonate when it would get used,” O’Connor said.