PRWeek: What has changed?
IAN MACRAE: We made a decision to concentrate on news coverage on the Disability Now website. The ‘newspaper’ will become an attractive new A4 format magazine. A ‘monthly newspaper’ was a bit of an oxymoron.
PRWeek: Explain the redesigned sections.
IM: The new design, created by Engage Group, is bright, colourful and contemporary. The front-end will contain news-based stories, the back will focus on lifestyle. It will be underpinned by the lives, experiences and concerns of disabled people.
PRWeek: Who are you targeting?
IM: Disability Now will now be unequivocally for disabled people. Others will find it interesting and entertaining, but the core readership will be disabled people.
PRWeek: Give some examples of what gets in.
IM: Stories about the lives of disabled people, instances of discrimination and the continuing battle for equality, choices and rights. Also stuff about how we live as disabled people, such as shopping for clothes or finding accessible technology, and the more personal aspects of people’s lives such as relationships and parenting.
PRWeek: What will not get in?
IM: Anything that presents disabled people either as deeply tragic or astonishing ‘super-crips’. So nobody taking their guide dog backwards up Everest while singing selections from Oklahoma! for cash!
PRWeek: How can PROs make your life easier?
IM: Bone up on the challenges faced by disabled people – be aware that it’s not the fact that someone is blind or uses a wheelchair that disables us, but the fact that information and buildings are not made accessible to us. Also, get stories, pitches or photo opportunities for the web in early.
PRWeek: Best way for PROs to get in contact?
IM: Email myself, deputy editor John Pring or news editor Katharine Quarmby.
Email ian.macrae@scope.org.uk
T 020 7619 7323
Press day Middle of the month
