A series of staff changes and promotions at Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C., are being made in part to pursue new kinds of paid programming and content creation, aiming to forge partnerships with publishers and media companies. Liz Hottel, who has been the store's director of events and marketing, will take on the newly created position of director of content and media production.
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| Liz Hottel | |
P&P noted that during the last five years, Hottel has shown "creativity and ingenuity in expanding P&P's events programming and, in her new role, plans to devise new content models that can generate additional revenue." She also has developed and will executive produce a weekly hour-long television show for WETA, which will make its debut early next year, and will work with other staff to build a slate of podcasts and enlarge P&P's array of online classes.
"Events will always be the cornerstone of Politics and Prose," Hottel said. "But the current revenue model is no longer sustainable. We're still producing world-class conversations every night, yet there's so much under-utilized content and so more we can do with it. Networks have subscription models. Why don't we? How can we build on our customer trust and wealth of internal talent to create new revenue streams? P&P has always led the way on bookstore programming, and now is the time for us to push forward to create a more flexible, independent content model."
Also at P&P, Brittany Kerfoot, who has been Hottel's deputy for events, will become the new director of events, and Lori Brister, who has managed P&P's website, will take over as the new director of marketing. Heidi Lewis, who has headed P&P's corporate events and sales, will expand her responsibilities to become director of communications and corporate sales.