WORLD magazine’s parent organization recently announced a multi-year strategy to transform WORLD from a print and web magazine into a comprehensive news organization that will move aggressively into the space vacated by retreating news organizations and onto new digital platforms.

“WORLD’s readers have enabled us already to more than double our news-gathering capabilities in the past year or two,” said Kevin Martin, CEO of God’s World Publications *(GWP), *WORLD’s parent organization. “But we need to expand both the breadth and the depth of our coverage to fill the news void with reporting from a biblical worldview. And we need to be able to deliver our reporting and analysis in a lot of different ways, not just in a magazine.”

WORLD’s publisher Nick Eicher has been leading the organization’s transformation. Under Eicher’s direction, WORLD recently unveiled its first digital apps for the iPad. Since January 2010, Eicher has produced WORLD’s daily radio/audio newscast, This is News. The two-and-a-half-minute spot is carried by nearly 200 radio stations around the country, and is heard in a podcast format by thousands of people every day.

In August, WORLD took another significant step into radio with the launch of The WORLD and Everything in It. This two-hour weekly news program was developed in partnership with Salem Communications, the nation’s largest Christian radio station owner.

WORLD is also launching a new web-based production for college students. The new site, worldoncampus.com, will use content produced by WORLD magazine, but it will also produce original content. WORLD’s associate publisher Warren WORLD’s Smith led the WORLD on Campus development team. It is being introduced on approximately 100 Christian college campuses this fall.

The vastly expanded reach of WORLD’s coverage and the new delivery platforms create new journalistic challenges. “We are no longer just producing content for a magazine that comes out every two weeks,” Eicher said. “We are producing news on a daily—even on an hourly—basis. As we increase the development and delivery or our reporting, we need to rethink the ways we gather, write, fact-check, and edit the news.”

That’s where Dr. Marvin Olasky comes in. Under Olasky’s leadership as editor-in-chief, WORLD has developed a cadre of Christian journalists who have significantly and steadily increased the quality of the content. “When Marvin joined WORLD, it was a good magazine. He helped make it great,” Eicher said. “We want him to do that with our expanded offerings as well.”

WORLD magazine is the nation’s most widely read Christian news magazine. WORLD maintains staff writers in Washington, New York, and other key U.S. cities, and has a network of correspondents around the world.

—Warren Smith

Warren Cole Smith is associate publisher of WORLD.

The WORLD and Everything In It

Anchored by WORLD magazine publisher Nick Eicher and veteran radio producer Joseph Slife, The World and Everything in It premiered Sat., Aug. 6, from 10 a.m. to noon Eastern on the Salem Radio Network (SRN). It is currently carried by about 50 radio stations around the country. WORLD executives hope to have the program on about 75 stations by year-end. The new program covers national and international news, music and the arts, technology, religion, science breakthroughs and other headline-making stories in a fast-paced two-hour package designed for news talk stations as well as other formats.

Eicher said the program will “be an exciting melding of broadcast technology and production values with the deep reporting skills and in-depth, solid research that has earned WORLD magazine its reputation as one of the most respected names in American journalism. We’re excited to partner with Salem for what promises to be a spectacularly produced, conservative alternative to NPR’s All Things Considered.”

The World And Everything in It will feature reports by popular commentator Marvin Olasky, WORLD magazine associate publisher Warren Cole Smith and over a dozen other regular contributors. SRN News White House correspondent Greg Clugston, SRN News U.S. Senate correspondent Linda Kenyon and other Salem Radio Network staffers will also contribute to The World and Everything In It.

“We hope that this is not the final step, but merely a next step for us,” said host Nick Eicher. “Our long-term goal is to have a robust, daily radio presence in major markets around the country that will be conservative alternative to National Public Radio.”