In an excellent product management case study, Sarah Ebner of the FT writes about the development of its fashion newsletter, which has become the most opened newsletter in its stable. Ebner has a newsletter pitch document to ensure that the propositions are well thought out, and the FT did market research to ensure there was demand for it. She also went through her launch strategy, which made sure that the newsletter enjoyed healthy growth. It’s a solid playbook.

The Business of Fashion

In the twelve months since it launched, the Fashion Matters newsletter has become the FT’s most opened newsletter and was named ‘Newsletter of the Year’. Sarah Ebner looks at the reasons behind its success.

www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/the-business-of-fashion-22433?utm_source=substack

In another practical piece, Peter Bale reviews how The Independent measures engagement. It allows them to give every user a score, and it is relatively easy to calculate. As Peter says, the metric allows the news site to measure both the propensity to register and subscribe while also optimising advertising yield.

The Independent’s “engagement score” guides its content strategy

The Independent in London has an “engagement score” using what it calls APV: active days, premium article mix, and volume.

www.inma.org/blogs/newsroom-initiative/post.cfm/the-independent-s-engagement-score-guides-its-content-strategy

As a business school graduate, this brought back memories of the strategic management course. The Fix has an excellent rundown of major management frameworks such as PEST, Porter’s Five Forces and value-chain analysis and also a quick overview of resource-based view analysis and how to apply them to media management.

Don’t know where it all goes? Use these tools to analyse the prospects of a media project - The Fix

It’s easy to lose track of long-term goals when doing routine errands. Here are the tools to envisage the big picture.

thefix.media/2023/9/12/dont-know-where-it-all-goes-use-these-tools-to-analyse-the-prospects-of-a-media-project

Blogs are your SEO superpower

If you want to rank, get yourself a blog, it appears…

onemanandhisblog.com/2023/10/get-ahead-get-a-blog

As publishers block AI web crawlers, Direqt is building AI chatbots for the media industry | TechCrunch

A number of news and media publishers are already blocking AI web crawlers from accessing their sites, worried about the impact on traffic when all their

techcrunch.com/2023/10/25/as-publishers-block-ai-web-crawlers-direqt-is-building-ai-chatbots-for-the-media-industry

Ken Doctor has long been an important contributor to the conversation around local news sustainability, and this interview adds to his contributions to this complex effort. He says:

I think the issue he highlights is around scale. Yes, there isn’t any local, digital start-up operating at a scale that will replace the newspapers in those communities, but there are interesting start-ups that are starting to put together new models. Most of them remind me of Clay Christensen’s model of disruptive innovation. They are low-scale, low-cost operations that usually begin with a newsletter and move up the value chain from there.

In the US, philanthropic launch money is there, but he says that it will take time to rebuild the lost journalism capacity that was once there.

On the Lookout for Local News

Veteran journalist Ken Doctor had been analyzing “Newsonomics” for many years when he jumped back into the game to launch a new local digital news outlet, Lookout Santa Cruz, which debuted in 2020. With the Santa Cruz Sentinel having been taken over and downsized by the Alden Global Capital-controlled Media News Group, Doctor declared that Lookout was entering a news desert, which rankled some journalists in town.

localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/posts/2023/10/26/ken-doctor-lookout-santa-cruz-q-and-a

Just as there is a lot to learn from the FT’s newsletter playbook, for those working in the verification space, there are a lot of lessons in this post. The first is to be sceptical and curious. I did verification work for more than a decade work when I was doing some consulting with Al Jazeera, and we used online research and technical means, such as looking at the EXIF data. Now, the verification methods are much more sophisticated because the techniques for misinformation disinformation are much more sophisticated.

One of the stories making the rounds this week was how The Messenger was starting to circle the drain. It was launched by The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein, but for anyone working in digital media over the past decade, the entire premise sounded very unlikely to work. The audience development goals and plans were grounded in the market more than a decade ago in which social media could deliver tremendous scale. The editorial strategy and poor management alienated staff almost immediately. This comes from Techdirt so expect it to be full of snark.

‘The Messenger’ Speed Runs The U.S. Journalism Implosion Cycle Thanks To Incompetent Billionaires And ‘Both Sides’ Clickbait Gibberish

Earlier this year a new journalism outlet named “The Messenger” launched to great fanfare. The brainchild of former The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein, the new news empire launched with $…

www.techdirt.com/2023/10/26/the-messenger-speed-runs-the-u-s-journalism-implosion-cycle-thanks-to-incompetent-billionaires-and-both-sides-clickbait-gibberish

AI this week: Gannett accused of using AI to generate reviews, more AI coming to Facebook

Unionised workers at Gannett’s review site have accused the parent company of using AI to generate reviews after they walked off the job on a busy shopping day earlier this year. It now looks like the reviews came from a marketing agency, which has been used by both Gannett and McClatchy. But the question still remains of whether the marketing firm used AI to generate these really quite poor quality reviews.

I am seeing AI everywhere. We use Hubspot at work to send out our newsletter, and they have AI writing tools included. They aren’t too bad, and I have been using it to root out some bad writing habits that have developed over time.

Meta is bringing AI tools to profile pics and post writing. Is this like the moment when calculators became widespread and students started using them in math classes? Something to ponder on the weekend.

Facebook Experiments with Generative AI Profile Pictures and In-Stream Post Assistance

New AI features, coming to a Facebook feed near you.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/facebook-experiments-with-generative-ai-profile-pictures-and-in-stream-post/697977

Ian Betteridge, he of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, has some very timely advice for publishers on how they can handle the end of SEO (see below for why this is important). Google is constantly tweaking its algorithms, and the third major update this year has hit some news site hard. Ian is taking a long view and offering up some solid advice on how to manage not just the collapse of SEO but the arrival of SGE - search generartive experience - in which search becomes the destination and the infinite source of answers. It might be good for users and lazy students, but it could be incredibly damaging for publishers.

Ian is right that publishers need to prepare for this future becasue it isn’t that far away. I am in violent agreement that publishers need to focus on direct relationships and not just traffic. Research is full of data points that show that building up a loyal audience that has developed a habit of coming directly to your site is really the way forward. You can achieve that through newsletters, podcasts and apps, with their powerful push notifications. Leaning into newsletters still makes heaps of sense, and I also agree that AI-generated content will not save publishers from the coming collapse of search. AI can help surface content that is more relevant to individual users, and that can help build that loyalty and habit. But that is an entirely different use case. Read on, there is a lot in his post.

SEO will be over for publishers. You need to adapt.

Position one for a query is no longer close to enough

ianbetteridge.substack.com/p/seo-will-be-over-for-publishers-you

Oh, that is why your traffic from search has dropped. It’s another data point in the theme of this year, which is the end of the Platform Era. This isn’t a huge structural change but simply the every so often algorithm update that whacks traffic from search. It really is just an extension of what Google has been doing. The key issues are really around ‘helpful content’, and I think that this is part of their ongoing cat-and-mouse game with content farms that churn out low-grade content. And I wonder if this will work to keep them from surfacing too much low-grade, AI-mass-produced garbage. One can hope. The moral of this story is that helpful, original content wins..

Half of top newsbrands see fall in search visibility after latest Google core update

Google's October core algorithm update had a bigger impact on news publishers’ search visibility than earlier updates in 2023, data suggests.

pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/google-core-update-news-search-october-2023

Off the back of news that the New York Times is considering raising its subscription price, Thomas Baekdal looks at when publishers should consider hiking their rates. The simple answer is when you have a mature business and not before. I think that subscription businesses like the New York Times and Netflix, which Thomas also references, are more than just mature businesses, they are - in the words of the Reuters Institute Digital News report, the winners who take most in the subscription economy. Others do not enjoy the same pricing power. But that is effectively what Thomas is saying.

Should you raise your subscription price?

Raising your prices can be done after you have past your initial growth, not before.

baekdal.com/newsletter/should-you-raise-your-subscription-price

This one goes in my bookmarks because measuring impact is one of those challenging goals that many publishers have. It’s important to motivating their staff, and for the increasing number of publishers that get some of their money from foundations and other sources of philanthropy, measuring impact is an important.

The new tool helping outlets measure the impact of investigative journalism I European Journalism Observatory - EJO

Columbia University explores how a new tool can gauge the effect of investigative reporting on journalists, policies and societies.

en.ejo.ch/ethics-quality/the-new-tool-helping-outlets-measure-the-impact-of-investigative-journalism

This is an interestig move from a major group in the US that has been a powerful incubator for local indie news publishers. They are not going to become a funder but rather help their members to fundraise. It’s super smart, exactly what I expect from their leader Chris Krewson.

LION Publishers aims to “help members raise money for themselves” — and to decrease its reliance on a couple big funders

"While we recognize our members need more funding, we've decided that’s not our role as a membership association."

www.niemanlab.org/2023/10/lion-publishers-aims-to-help-members-raise-money-for-themselves-and-to-decrease-its-reliance-on-a-couple-big-funders

The Manchester Mill, a newsletter-first publisher in the UK, is expanding. It is another example of why the humble newsletter is the MVP of local news start-ups these days.

A new local publishing model is giving regional titles the wake-up call they need

Our local news outlets should be a source of enrichment, and of pride in where we live

inews.co.uk/opinion/new-local-publishing-model-giving-regional-titles-wake-up-call-they-need-2704193

This move by podcast shop Wondery fascinates me on a couple of points. Some podcasters have found tremendous success on YouTube so the lines are blurring between audio and video. For Wondery now to launch podcasts on a FAST (Free Ad-supported Streaming TV) platform - Amazon’s Freevee - seems to lean into this trend. We’ll see how successful it is.

Wondery launches three podcast FAST channels on Amazon Freevee

Wondery is putting its podcasts into three free, ad-supported streaming TV channels on Freevee, also owned by its parent company Amazon, in a bid to reach a new audience for their podcast shows.

digiday.com/media/wondery-launches-three-podcast-fast-channels-on-amazon-freevee

EX-Twitter’s ‘bot tax’ will fackfire and X as a rebranding exercise has failed

Musk has been obsessed with bots on Twitter since before he bought it, and while it makes sense to try to reduce them, a good piece on The Conversation explains why the new USD1 fee won’t help the company with revenue and won’t reduce the issue with bots. One suggestion Steven Vass, The Conversation’s business and economics editor, has is to increase human moderation. But Musk blew up the moderation and safety teams at Twitter so it’s unlikely he will be open to that suggestion.

X/Twitter: imposing a US$1 bot tax on new customers will only make the platform's problems worse

It’s a year since Elon Musk took charge of Twitter. His plan for charging new customers looks like another mis-step.

theconversation.com/x-twitter-imposing-a-us-1-bot-tax-on-new-customers-will-only-make-the-platforms-problems-worse-216193

And while Musk hoped to turn the page with Twitter by rebranding it with his favourite brand - X - this seems only to have hastened its decline.

New Report Suggests X Usage is Declining Amid Various App Changes

New data from Apptopia suggests that Twitter's name change to X has not resonated with audiences.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-report-suggests-x-usage-declining-amid-various-changes-app/697409

The platform era is over. The statement has so much supporting evidence that the idea is now beyond dispute. A decade ago, a lot of energy was focused on how to use social media algorithms to send torrents of traffic to your site. But let’s be honest, it wasn’t that this led to a healthy, revenue-positive business. It just juiced the traffic to both legacy sites and a raft of businesses targeting Millennial audiences of various stripes. The digital media start-ups often had rocket boosters in the form of VC funding, and many of them were never revenue-positive. The entire strategy was to become the media empires of the 21st Century, but like so much in media in the 21st Century, this was really a roll-up play. You got big and bought up the smaller, often weaker competitors.

The New York Times is a bit late to the party in writing about this, and I think that they focus on the news industry because it is the anxiety that grips their staff (and shouldn’t). Publishers like the Times began building direct relationships with audiences more than a decade ago with their metered paywall. It’s worked brilliantly, and you could argue that they are now one of the winners of the digital media era, much more so than BuzzFeed, which shuttered its news division because of the brand dissonance between news and aggregating what obsessed the internet on any given day for social media audiences and a lack of a business model for that content.

Not that the collapse of social media traffic and search to a lesser extent doesn’t have negative consequences for the Times and other reader revenue-driven businesses. They need to think about new methods of audience acquisition, but at least they have a solid business that they can build on.

Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry

News organizations are scrambling to adjust to the latest rift in the long-fractious relationship between publishers and tech platforms.

www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/technology/news-social-media-traffic.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

It brings me little joy to highlight not just this story but the wider trend of digital media properties that were built to cater to Millennial women are in trouble. The pioneering feminist site Jezebel is up for sale. Axios highlights how this is part of a larger trend and lists all of the other sites and media properties in that space that are suffering as well.

I especially note the decline of The Skimm, which is a really smart newsletter property that I used to highlight in presentations seven or eight years ago. I think they missed an inflection point around that time. Honestly, they were Axios before it was launched - smart brevity.

However, the end of the platform doesn’t mean that this will end the pain for local news operations. Despite moving out of the newsroom in 2019 and to a media-adjacent software company in 2022, my roots are in local news, and I still think about how to solve its problems. I think that we are seeing a new on-ramp for local news micro-start-ups: the humble newsletter. It has become the MVP - minimum viable product - for a local news startup. More than social, more than a site, having a newsletter is the core MVP for someone looking to create a new, local news outlet.

However, I also like to see new policy solutions to the problem. Washington DC - where I lived on and off for almost eight years - is doing something novel: It is creating a fund that will allow its residents to support the local news outlet of their choice. It will be interesting to see how they define a local news outlet and how they will enforce the use of the vouchers, but it is interesting.

And if newsletters are the MVP, we see successful newsletter operators looking for what comes next. The folks at Inbox Collective highlight ways in which newsletters writers are adding products that extend the connection that they have with audiences with private, premium communities on Slack or Discord. As someone who worked in community media and then bringing community to larger media brands, I find this trend fascinating. It’s not a fast or easy play but for established media creators and brands, it can be an extension to deepen the relationship and hopefully increase revenue.

Come For the Newsletter, Stay For the Discord: Why Some Newsletters Have Private Communities for Their Subscribers. | Inbox Collective

Building a community through Discord or Slack could be a way to deepen engagement with readers and drive additional revenue. But it comes with a lot of work — and some potential headaches.

inboxcollective.com/why-some-newsletters-have-private-communities-for-their-subscribers

This is a great story from journalism.co.uk on how a Zimbabwean journalist grew to understand the business side of journalism and has been able to achieve successful digital transformation. I like the piece because it applies not only to large media businesses but can be applied at just about any scale.

'News companies need survival strategies and culture change'

Guthrie Munyuki, a Zimbabwean editor-in-chief with a three-decade career, says taking a leadership course helped him embrace digital strategies and boost company revenue by 20 per cent

www.journalism.co.uk/news/-news-companies-need-survival-strategies-and-culture-change-/s2/a1080656

And from the US, we have a few examples of how local news entrepreneurs are launching new ventures. I think that small-scale local news outlets will serve a lot of communities where the major chains and groups have retreated.

The New Bedford Light and The Newton Beacon are just part of a new wave of local news in Massachusetts

"People in Massachusetts once had more journalism available; they’ve lost more, they have grieved more; they have hungered for what they had. So, they now have been quick to embrace a rebirth of journalism that matters."

www.niemanlab.org/2023/10/the-new-bedford-light-and-the-newton-beacon-are-just-part-of-a-new-wave-of-local-news-in-massachusetts

I know that there are a lot of people out there trying to get ahead in media, and these five steps are solid. I will highlight one of the five skills because it took me a while to appreciate the power of soft skills. When you’re starting in media, you are rewarded for your hard skills, but you won’t rise through the ranks by mastering those hard skills alone. And for a lot of people, that’s OK. However, if you want to rise to management, you also need to master soft skills.

Navigating the pros and cons of AI in editorial organisations

A thoughtful piece to reflect on during the weekend. Of the insights, managing and navigating trade-offs is one that really resonates with me. There are rarely perfect solutions in life, and it’s important to measure, weight and consider the pros and cons of any decision.

What's the Business Value of AI? A Systems Engineer's Take

Systems Engineering for Amplification and Value Across four decades, I have worked as a systems engineer in the information technology (IT) industry

gigaom.com/2023/10/20/whats-the-business-value-of-ai-a-systems-engineers-take

From the theoretical and managerial to the tangible, The Fix looks at how newsrooms are developing AI guidelines. When I was a journalist and then editorial leader, I often said that I was a traditional journalist who used cutting-edge digital tools. That meant that my decisions were always grounded in core journalistic values. They provided me with principles to assess the trade-offs of new technologies in my work.

From headlines to algorithms: how newsrooms are approaching creating AI guidelines - The Fix

A study examined the evolving role of guidelines in newsrooms, an ongoing effort to balance innovation and ethics.

thefix.media/2023/10/20/from-headlines-to-algorithms-how-newsrooms-are-approaching-creating-ai-guidelines

This week in Twitter: New subscription plans coming

Musk has always said that he wants to build Twitter into a super-app. Here is the problem with what he is doing with his new subscription plans: He’s trying to charge for activities in the app that have been free up to this point such as commenting, bookmarking and posting. And subscription products shouldn’t be used to manage abuse on a platform - Musk’s obsession with bots. He should use some of that technical brilliance that his fanboys constantly talk about. Sure, it’s just a $1 annual fee, but it feels like a really bad, desperate way to fight bots.

X, formerly Twitter, rolls out US$1 annual fee for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines

Platform owned by Elon Musk says subscription trial is aimed at combating bots on the service

www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/18/x-twitter-1-dollar-annual-subscription-fee-new-users-elon-musk-new-zealand-nz-philippines

The response has been uniformly negative. It’s a bad idea along with a lot of the other bad ideas. Musk definitely seems to be living the Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things”. He has succeeded in breaking a social media brand. That much is sure. /

X’s $1 Fee Initiative is Likely to Further Erode the Relevance of the Platform

X's new paywall project could see fewer users signing-up to use the app.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/xs-1-fee-initiative-is-likely-to-further-erode-the-relevance-of-the-platf/697099

Jagran is an innovative Indian publisher that has used new technology and change management to drive its business. As part of a Google News Initiative-funded project, they rolled out new data tools that helped their entire organisation make more informed decisions that drove higher levels of content engagement. And now, they are leveraging AI to accelerate their progress. It is an excellent example of how AI can be used responsibly and effective to drive editorial success.

Jagran New Media deploys AI for user targeting, sees unparalleled engagement

A solid digital mindset backed by innovation and adoption has enabled Jagran New Media to learn, evolve, and respond efficiently as AI has become more important in the digital landscape.

www.inma.org/blogs/digital-strategies/post.cfm/jagran-new-media-deploys-ai-for-user-targeting-sees-unparalleled-engagement

A really interesting overview of how local broadcasters in the US are driving revenue with new OTT streaming services. One local TV group in the US went from zero in 2019 to 25% of its digital revenue by 2022. And again, AI is playing a role. It is really undeniable that AI is playing a huge role in media operations.

How to develop a sales and content strategy for streaming

In this LMA Fest recap, we hear from broadcast and platform leaders about how news organizations are capitalizing on tremendous growth in streaming revenue and audience.

localmedia.org/2023/10/how-to-develop-a-sales-and-content-strategy-for-streaming

This outdoor ad campaign by Guardian Australia reminds me of my days at the BBC. In 2005, we had a write-once publish to six platforms CMS that delivered headlines to video billboards in mainline train stations such as London’s Victoria station. It is really stunning what that kind of presence can deliver.

Guardian Australia drives traffic with engaging headlines

Guardian Australia, a digital-only brand, wanted to reach new audiences so it placed news headlines on outdoor billboards and video screens to drive engagement.

www.inma.org/blogs/ideas/post.cfm/guardian-australia-drives-traffic-with-engaging-headlines

This piece struck me because I was just having a conversation today with a member of the team at the Blue Engine Collaborative about the challenges of local journalism, particularly on the revenue side. The News Revenue Hub advocates a free-to-all, no paywall method that works to build trust between local news providers and their audiences so that readers become members. One point I will very much agree with them is that it requires experimentation. You need to try things and learn what works, and those learnings then need to be scaled up across the organisation.

Breaking down walls: How News Revenue Hub supports community-funded journalism

I’ve sat through my fair share of publishing industry conferences, congresses, and fireside chats. The number of times I had to endure CEOs, CCOs, CTOs,

mediamakersmeet.com/breaking-down-walls-how-news-revenue-hub-supports-community-funded-journalism

This week in platforms

Ok, this quote grabbed me. Ben Smith, one of the founders of Semafor, talks about the changes at EX-Twitter. And the quote in the headline isn’t the only one colourfully describing the social media landscape now: “social media is now like walking through a nuclear wasteland searching for radioactive nuggets.” Read this. It’s fun, entertaining and bracing. But this is the most important point in the entire piece: “If you keep costs very low, yes. You can make money and build a traffic-based media business. But everything has to be very cheap. So you can’t do journalism.”

Ben Smith, journalist: ‘On Twitter/X, we’re only left with depraved journalists and politicians yelling at each other’

The reporter has firsthand experience with the changes of the last 20 years on the border between technology and information. He now recounts the rise and fall of viral content in a new book

english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2023-10-15/ben-smith-journalist-on-twitterx-were-only-left-with-depraved-journalists-and-politicians-yelling-at-each-other.html

There are still wealthy investors who will buy a title like The Telegraph in an effort to influence politics and society.

Telegraph auction poses litmus test for value of newspapers in digital age

While falling sales suggest the demise of print, the industry has proved adaptable and remains attractive to media barons

www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/14/telegraph-auction-poses-litmus-test-for-value-of-newspapers-in-digital-age

Watching the battle between the platforms and news outlets, especially smaller ones, in Canada, has been heart breaking. Facebook turned off the spigot all the way, and for so many outlets, their traffic has taken a major hit. Now publishers are aligning themselves with the platforms in an effort to reverse their traffic losses.

Canada news industry body backs Google's concerns about online news law

A Canadian news industry body on Thursday lent support to some of Google's concerns about a new law that aims to make large internet companies share advertising revenue with news publishers in the country.

www.reuters.com/technology/canada-news-industry-body-backs-googles-concerns-about-online-news-law-2023-10-12

Speaking of how platforms can throttle traffic, this report outlines how EX-Twitter under Musk is engaging in anti-competitive censorship by limiting links not only to news publishers but also rival apps. If Twitter had that much market power left, it would be hauled into court. But Musk is driving his clown car into the ditch so it just doesn’t matter anymore.

New Reports Show That X Continues to Restrict Links to Rival Apps and News Publishers

Part of Elon Musk's plan seems to be geared around locking users into the X ecosystem.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-reports-show-that-x-continues-to-restrict-links-to-rival-apps-and-news/696725

This was something that caught me a bit by surprise. Of all of the platforms, I find myself spending more time on LinkedIn these days. But the cuts show how soft the ad economy is right now and how much it is impacting media.

LinkedIn’s Announces More Job Cuts, as Ad Revenue Growth Continues to Decline

The impacted roles are primarily within its engineering department.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedins-announces-more-job-cuts-as-ad-revenue-growth-continues-to-decli/6967

Retention is one of the major themes for publishers this year. In a report launched at the beginning of the year, Minna Technologies and FT Strategies found that among 50 subscription businesses, 68% said retention was their top priority. It’s why the Media Collective - Pugpig (where I work), Manifesto Growth Architects, InDigital Marketing and Piano - decided to take a closer look at retention. With Laura Graham of Manifesto Growth Architects, Jonny Kaldor, our CEO and co-founder at Pugpig, James Kember, Pugpig’s digital growth consultant and I spent a lot of hours putting the report together.

What we found is that publishers are thinking about engagement loops rather than unidirectional conversion funnels. Whether a user is unknown, registered, subscribed or lapsed, they are prioritising retention efforts on maintaining a relationship with all members of their audiences regardless of their level of engagement. For this reason, we reframed retention as an issue of relationship management rather than churn management. It is about establishing a relationship with the right users and realising that saving at all costs - usually with discounted offers - runs the risk of depressing ARPU.

Media Collective Report: Focus on relationships to increase retention

A new report from Pugpig and the Media Collective highlights how publishers can increase retention and revenue, even for lightly engaged audiences.

www.pugpig.com/2023/10/13/media-collective-report-says-publishers-need-to-focus-retention-efforts-on-relationships-not-churn

In the Retention Economics report, one of our key findings was that once a user became known through registration publishers found that they could market a number of other products to them. It meant that publishers could generate revenue from non-subscribers by marketing events, e-commerce and a range of other offerings to them.

With pandemic restrictions ending, events are roaring back, especially for “professional publishers” such as Axios, Bloomberg and Semafor. After a soft start to the year with major publishers pushing back their tentpole events, events have come roaring back for these publishers. Axios had set a goal of earning $10m a year in event revenue, and they have made that already in the third quarter.

They said that it wasn’t about the volume of events but rather making sure that the right people, influential and powerful, were in the room. They also use the events to create digital content that runs in podcasts or video content after the events.

Media Briefing: How Axios, Bloomberg and Semafor grew their events revenue in 2023

Professional publishers took different paths to growth within their events businesses this year.

digiday.com/media/media-briefing-how-axios-bloomberg-and-semafor-grew-their-events-revenue-in-2023/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss

What is the future of podcasts?

Podcasts seem to be on a bumpy trajectory right now. Major podcast producers are cutting staff and cutting back on output. We are definitely in a period of transition. As The Guardian points out, one new trend about podcasts is about hosting them in front of a live audience, creating an event that can be distributed electronically afterward.

The Guardian view on podcasts: intimate conversation is now going to the masses | Editorial

Editorial: A media disruptor that started life as a source of bespoke entertainment has found its way back into the communal space through live performance

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/13/the-guardian-view-on-podcasts-intimate-conversation-is-now-going-to-the-masses

And The Economist is finding that podcasts are working well both free ones that add to their audience but are now creating podcasts just for their paying subscribers.

How paid podcasts fit into The Economist's subscription strategy - Digital Content Next

The Economist is a media brand that has led the way in subscription-based access to its content. But when it was reported by Axios last month that the media company...

digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2023/10/12/how-paid-podcasts-fit-into-the-economist-subscription-strategy/?utm_source=pocket_saves

The largest public radio station in the US, WNYC, recently laid off 6% of their staff and cut back on podcasts. Specialist digital-to-broadcast or digital-only podcasts are being cut back. Instead, broadcast-to-podcast appears to be the new model. This is a pretty major shift, and it looks like live events and the big footprint of broadcast is going to be used to amplify podcasts rather than niche podcast creation.

Death, Sex, and the future of WNYC podcasts

If it’s not on the radio, it’s not going to be a podcast.

www.theverge.com/2023/10/11/23913556/death-sex-money-wnyc-npr-podcast-radiolab

The Athletic recently shuttered their local sports podcasts, and as media analyst Simon Owens says, there are few examples of local podcast success. “They often don't have enough scale to attract national advertisers, and most local businesses aren't sophisticated enough in their ad buying to target podcast listeners.”

I remember how challenging it was to make a local podcast work when I worked in public radio in the US, and it got harder over the four years I worked there. Podcasting had become much more competitive, and launching a new podcast in this crowded space became more challenging.

Can local podcasts become profitable?

PLUS: How Michael Lewis became a nonfiction juggernaut

simonowens.substack.com/p/can-local-podcasts-become-profitable

Bundling has become one of the major subscription growth strategies of 2023. Whether it is bundling local newspapers in Norway or the New York Times all access bundle, these multi-product bundles are proving popular, and multi-product users have higher loyalty.

Bundling up: the secret to subscriber success

Top news organisations are strengthening their subscription bundles by focusing on convenience, value for money and variety of choice

www.journalism.co.uk/news/bundling-up-the-secret-to-subscriber-success/s2/a1078040

The Washington Post announced that it was offering voluntary buyouts to about 240 positions this week. Their projections both in terms of traffic, advertising and subscription had been overly optimistic, Washington Post interim CEO Patty Stonesifer said. The paper is on track to lose $100m this year, and its subscribers numbers are down.

Inbox: Washington Post is reducing its workforce by approximately 240 positions

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin)
Oct 10, 2023

News circles were abuzz last week with more data on the extent of the collapse of referrals to their sites from social media. As Axios points out, this is a trend that has been playing out over the last few years, which only leaves publishers with a question of what to do next.

I can attest that there has been tension in audience development. Some social media advocates have continued to push for more off-platform activity as a goal unto itself. While others (including me with some important caveats) have said that off-platform needs to be put in the context of overall editorial and business goals. The most important thing with respect to social media is that it needs to be in the service of broader goals for a publisher such as converting unknown users to know. To achieve that, you can use off-platform audience development to build awareness organically and then use paid campaigns to build subscribers to your newsletters or podcasts.

Building direct relationships with audiences is a strategy that is working. We have multiple examples of how precarious renting audiences on social media has been from the social-media-driven publishers such as BuzzFeed or Mic or large traditional publishers such as Reach in the UK. The FT, the New York Times and the Independent in the UK have all been successful in building direct relationships with audiences, and the Indy isn’t achieving success through a focus on paying subscribers. These strategies of converting unknown users to known and building up subscription businesses have built more resilient businesses. I agree with Axios when they write: “The over-reliance on social media traffic kept news publishers from focusing on building stronger consumer products of their own.”

Publishers reckon with declining Facebook referral traffic as the platform pulls away from news

Publishers are still feeling the effects of a change Facebook made in May that caused a steep decline in referral traffic. Nearly four months later, publishers aren’t sure when — or if — that traffic will come back.

digiday.com/media/publishers-reckon-with-declining-facebook-referral-traffic-as-the-platform-pulls-away-from-news

Social media traffic to top news sites craters

Why it matters: Website business models that depended on clicks from social media are now broken.

www.axios.com/2023/10/03/social-media-traffic-news-sites-decrease

And for many publishers, a focus on consumer social media networks have caused them to overlook networks like LinkedIn for certain kinds of content. My overall view is that the volume that networks like Facebook used to drive to publishers left them to pursue relatively simplistic social media strategies

Why is 20-year-old Linkedin now 'cool? We've not changed, says editor-in-chief

Linkedin’s editor-in-chief, Daniel Roth, on how the platform is prioritising and promoting news in its 20th year.

pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/linkedins-newsroom

Can local podcasts be successful?

I have shared a number of posts over the past year that call into question the podcast strategies for a range of companies including audio streaming giant Spotify. I’m going to highlight this first story which covers a meeting at New York Public Radio, which recently cut two podcasts. This is the reality:



Having moved on from US regional public media in April 2022, I must admit that the coverage of this meeting sounded very familiar.

That is the overall issue, but candid comments from New York Public Radio CEO LaFontaine Oliver also speak to a culture in US public media that might not be as audience or product-focused as necessary. “Oliver also bemoaned the fact that he felt that the podcast division was far too invested in creating podcasts the newsroom wanted to hear, and not what New Yorkers wanted to hear,” Rivlin-Nadler wrote. Ouch.

New York Public Radio Fires 20 Staff as High-Paid Executives Refuse to Cut Their Six-Figure Salaries - Hell Gate

"It is not a good use of any of our time, looking in the rearview mirror and trying to figure out where we should place blame," New York Public Radio's CEO told staff on Friday.

hellgatenyc.com/nypr-layoffs

But US public media aren’t the only local podcasts that are struggling to gain reaction. Media analyst Simon Owen highlights how The Athletic has shuttered most of its local podcasts. As someone who is producing a lot of this research for our customers at Pugpig, I wonder what audience - both size and characteristics - are required for a successful podcast. I don’t have the answer right now, but I know that in the work that I’m doing right now knowing which question to ask is the most important first step.

Can local podcasts become profitable?

PLUS: How Michael Lewis became a nonfiction juggernaut

open.substack.com/pub/simonowens/p/can-local-podcasts-become-profitable?r=1u7ee&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

My day job is focused on mobile in a way that it hasn’t been through most of my career, but I have always tended to think of mobile in a very expensive way. And texting - good ‘ole SMS - is a powerful tool because of its low cost and ubiquity. This piece from the Reynolds Journalism Institute has a step-by-step process on how to use AirTable, Twillio and the Forminator WordPress plugin to allow community sports supporters to submit game results. They have developed the process with low or no-cost tools so that local news outlets can replicate it. So much of my career has been about coming up with systems like this so, of course, I love it!

How to use our texting system to bring in content from your community – RJI

Learn how the newsroom, community and technology comes together

rjionline.org/news/how-to-use-our-texting-system-to-bring-in-content-from-your-community

Continuing the theme of local, mobile community journalism, Better News has a case study with the Charlotte Observer on how their mobile newsroom has worked to engage “historically underrepresented communities”. Of the takeaways, a few stand out for me. As a former library board member, I see that they have partnered with local libraries, which I think can be an excellent way to connect with the community. Partners are so important as both entry points into communities and also as ways to amplify your coverage. One partnership that I started but wasn’t able to carry on as much as I wanted was with our local schools. Young journalists had lost their printed student newspapers so having an opportunity to highlight them in the newspaper was a way for them to get the experience and exposure that they wanted. I think local networks are critical to renewing local communities that have suffered from underinvestment and disruption. I saw the power of engagement events when I was a local news editor. It helps build relationships, and one the favourite parts of my job was being out in the community. And my own example shows why it’s important to retain these connections that you build. You can quickly lose credibility with the community if you drop in and then leave without a trace.

6 takeaways from The Charlotte Observer’s mobile newsrooms - Better News

A mobile newsroom offers authentic and organic opportunities to connect with historically underrepresented communities and report on them.

betternews.org/6-takeaways-from-the-charlotte-observers-mobile-newsrooms

An interesting overview that could be said of any technology adoption process. It requires leaders who are able to cross boundaries in your organisation and understand the needs of both internal stakeholders as well as your audiences. Working as a digitally-oriented journalist, I often said that I used cutting-edge tools but remained rooted in traditional journalism values, and this piece explains how your business strategy and editorial values shouldn’t change. You need to remain committed to your North Star goals. AI will affect how you achieve those goals not the goals themselves. And one last thing, data was important and will only become even more so in the age of AI.

Who is your company’s Head of AI Transformation?

As part of Mx3’s Collectif, in which we feature the work of our partners (see more here), Matt D'Cruz of Martin Tripp Associates outlines

mediamakersmeet.com/who-is-your-companys-head-of-ai-transformation

On our old Macs, my wife Suw said that she knew when she had landed on a news website because the fans would spin up due to the heaviness of the sites. They were overloaded with trackers and ad tech, and this review by the Press Gazette adds some data to what we experienced.

(Note, using Ghostery during some training I was doing several years ago, I once showed an Indian ad ops person how I could track each of 111 trackers that they had on their site. His jaw dropped.)

New analysis suggests ads are hitting site performance on leading UK news sites

Site performance check: New ranking of UK's most popular news websites according to site speed analysis by Baytree.

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/how-ads-are-hitting-site-performance-on-leading-uk-news-sites

I recently was having a discussion on the News Product Alliance Slack with a person who was gathering data and anecdotes about what it required to launch a successful podcast. The editorial employee was adamant that a quality podcast would cut through and become successful with no marketing or audience development strategy. Almost everyone who weighed in had data and examples of why this wasn’t true.

Competition for attention and money in the podcast industry is only increasing, and here is another data point as Malcom Gladwell’s podcast company lays off half of its staff and replaces Gladwell as president.

Pushkin Industries lays off one-third of employees

Founder Malcolm Gladwell to be replaced as company president by Gretta Cohn

www.podpod.com/article/1839276/pushkin-industries-lays-off-one-third-employees

DAUs and new users are down at Threads, and Meta is seeking new ways to re-engage people after a promising start. (I’ve started rotating days to use the new social media platforms. It’s Wednesday today, which is BlueSky day!)

Meta’s Reportedly Exploring New Options to Reignite Interest in Threads

Can Threads capitalize on the opportunity sparked by Musk's reformation of Twitter?

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/metas-reportedly-exploring-new-options-to-reignite-interest-in-threads/695551

How much will individual contributors make for allowing their content to be used to train AIs? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How much can artists make from generative AI? Vendors won't say | TechCrunch

Companies commercializing generative AI are being cagey about how much, exactly, they're paying contributors to their models' training datasets.

techcrunch.com/2023/09/30/how-much-can-artists-make-from-generative-ai-vendors-wont-say

This is interesting. The Telegraph is up for sale, and Germany’s Axel Springer is interested in buying it.

Bild publisher Axel Springer eyes Telegraph auction

German company registers interest with Goldman Sachs ahead of Telegraph Media Group auction

www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/01/bild-publisher-axel-springer-eyes-telegraph-auction

One of my favourite media management quotes is from Jim Brady who said that when it comes to building a sustainable business, there are no silver bullets only shrapnel. The first two items in the newsletter today reinforce that both from a strategic view and also from a practical view at the Financial Times. Anita Zielana outlines a great process with three short case studies from independent media from around the world for diversiying revenue streams. One case study that leaped out at me was URL Media, which is a network of BIPOC (US acronym for Black, Indigenous, and people of color) media outlets. They provide support services to this network including audience development, recruiting and philanthropic funding development. All of the examples speak to the creativity that is needed to make a modern media business thrive.

I also like the onion principle of revenue diversification, which recommends that publishers focus on core existing revenue streams and build out from there. This helps a publisher leverage existing capabilities to grow from a solid base.

Why a diversified revenue portfolio is the best sustainability insurance for media organizations – RJI

rjionline.org/news/why-a-diversified-revenue-portfolio-is-the-best-sustainability-insurance-for-media-organizations

The FT is a good example of so many solid management techniques - from their North Star framework to their embrace of data. And this has meant a diversified set of revenue streams that mean solid results.

Online subs, events and advertising fuel FT revenue boost for 2022 to £458m

Globally the FT Group grew revenues by 5% in 2022 according to unaudited accounts.

pressgazette.co.uk/media_business/financial-times-revenue-profit-2022

In this week’s Pugpig Media Bulletin, we covered a new report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that added some qualitative data to their quantitative data on subsciption trends. While the cost of living crisis (inflation) was the top reason that people cancelled their subscriptions (especially in the UK), the second biggest reason is that people didn’t perceive value from the subscriptions. They simply didn’t develop a habit of using it. The importance of good subscriber onboarding and building habits with new subscribers immediately is a theme that we touch on often at Pugpig Consulting.

Reuters Institute: Cost, failure to develop habit driving subs to cancel - Pugpig

We review the range of ways that apps can contribute to higher average revenue per user including acquiring new paying users.

www.pugpig.com/2023/09/29/reuters-institute-finds-price-and-failure-to-find-value-driving-subscription-cancellations

This week in Google: Shifts in podcast distribution and giving publishers a choice on LLM training

Podcasting is in transition right now, with podcast publishers and distributors making changes. Google has announced that it will retire its podcast app next year and point users to YouTube Music. Users have long been using YouTube to listen to or even watch podcasts so this leans into audience behaviour.

Google Podcasts to shut down in 2024 with listeners migrated to YouTube Music | TechCrunch

Google announced this morning it will be shutting down its Google Podcasts app later in 2024 as part of its broader transition to move its streaming

techcrunch.com/2023/09/26/google-podcasts-to-shut-down-in-2024-with-listeners-migrated-to-youtube-music

Digital publishing professionals in my social media feeds were noting that Google had released a tool that allows them to block their sites from being scraped from generative AI.

Google Will Enable Web Admins To Block Systems from Scraping Sites for AI Training

This will likely become a requirement for all generative AI projects.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/google-block-systems-from-scraping-sites-for-AI/695123

I am highlighting this expansion of a local news provider in the US because it provides a great playbook of community-centered engagement and design. They have held house parties and other community meetings that not only gives people a voice in their future direction but also builds relationships between the publisher and community.

From the CEO: San José Spotlight is expanding its reach - San José Spotlight

Nearly a year ago we started exploring what an expansion of San José Spotlight could look like—five years after launching the publication that’s become a national leader among nonprofit newsrooms. We hear almost daily from readers who hope our impactful journalism can serve other South Bay cities. While our commitment to our hometown of San...

sanjosespotlight.com/from-the-ceo-san-jose-spotlight-is-expanding-its-reach

In one of the first battles in the rising AI economy, Hollywood writers have largely achieved their aims. It sets a good standard on how workers can respond to AI, but it is a question whether other workers that will be affected by AI such as marketers and journalists will have the same bargaining power.

The writers strike is over; here's how AI negotiations shook out | TechCrunch

After almost five months, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has reached an agreement with Hollywood studios to end the writers strike. Starting

techcrunch.com/2023/09/26/writers-strike-over-ai

Social Media: Canadian journalism students and nonprofit outets suffer in battle with platforms

Canada passed a bill earlier this year that required digital platforms like Google and Meta to negotiate with news publishers on payments for their content. Meta decided to block all Canadian news content rather than comply with the leigislation. Critics of the legislation said that any benefit from it would flow to major publishers but leave small publishers out. And now small publishers such as student and nonprofit community outlets are cataloguing the impact of the legislation on their efforts to reach audiences. “It’s having an outsized effect on small publishers. Gizmodo spoke to half a dozen student journalists and station managers who say the ban on news links, intended to hurt big-name publishers, has instead hamstrung their vital ability to fundraise, recruit volunteers, or engage in community outreach.”

Meta's Canadian News Blackout Is Crushing Student Journalists

Student publications and nonprofit community outlets are caught up in a drawn-out battle between the Canadian government, big-name publishers, and Meta.

gizmodo.com/facebook-instagram-canada-news-student-journalist-meta-1850835646

One of the dangers of AI was that it could be used to quickly and cheaply generate disinformation and scams. Social platforms are rushing to develop new rules to manage this tsunami of dangerous content. It’s going to battle of attrition between the platforms, the propagandists and the grifters.

As More AI Bots Infiltrate Social Platforms, Each Is Developing New Rules To Keep Up

AI bots are becoming more prominent, peddling scams and spam on social networks.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/more-ai-bots-infiltrate-social-platforms-each-developing-new-rules/694686

Friday and Saturday, I got to catch up with two friends in the industry, Greg Piechota of INMA and Damon Kiesow, the Knight Chair in Journalism Innovation at the University of Missouri. Greg and I talked about a lot of things including the cost of developing an app for a news organisation and where apps sit in the conversion funnel for publishers. I came away thinking that the presumption of app development being pricey might be due to the high cost of in-house development. And I would have said that before I joined Pugpig because I’ve always been more on the buy side of the buy versus build discussion. We also talked about the business models that support local journalism. I’m more sceptical of advertising-supporting models than Greg is. I’m definitely a reader revenue convert. I say convert because I thought that digital advertising would provide more revenue than it has. And it still can, but the real revenue is in direct sales and not programmatic or network ad sales. However, the real issue might not be down to advertising-supported models versus reader-revenue supported models but rather those newspaper groups that are solely focused on local and those like Gannett and Reach that try to balance the demands of local and national publishing.

Damon and I talked about a lot of things including what Press Forward means for US local news, but one of the topics that really interested me was a research idea that he had. When thinking about the future of local journalism, there is a question about what services can be shared and what services are best locally controlled and executed. Large newspaper groups like Gannett (Gatehouse before it) and Reach have centralised a lot of services to try to reduce costs in the face of declining revenues. It’s a very typical business strategy, but if it was the answer, both groups would be performing better than they are. Although Damon appreciates that it runs counter to conventional wisdom, it is worth thinking about what services make economic and operational sense to centralise. Centralised and regionalised reporting has been a mixed bag to be sure, but I also would argue that centralised direct sales has failed to deliver. The local relationships that both reporters and ad sales staff have are core to the business. Back-end services can definitely be centralised, although when I was at Gannett in 2014-2015 the HR function was so centralised that HR partners had to cover multiple states. It really is a good question, and we both thought that the first step was convincing people that it was a reasonable question to ask. To be honest, it is the kind of industry research that needs to happen, and I wouldn’t mind doing it (if I wasn’t already busy with my day job).

Speaking of Reach, as someone who consulted with Reach on Engagement for a couple of years (2016-early 2018), I still have a soft spot for them because their teams were so dedicated and innovative. They have needed a strategic pivot because their current strategy simply isn’t working, and I welcome the fact that they are trying to diversify their revenue from advertising and platform-driven volume. Here is a bit of straight talk that I hope my friends don’t mind. The first challenge with these paid-for products will be to convince customers that they are worth paying for. Some of their brands have lost a lot of equity in their communities.

Reach reader revenue trials: Premium apps, paid-for newsletters and ad-free Express

Reader revenue: Reach is trying out an ad-free offering on the Express, metered apps on the MEN and Liverpool Echo, and paid-for newsletters.

pressgazette.co.uk/paywalls/reach-reader-revenue-experiments-premium-apps-newsletters-ad-free-express

Very apropos of the discussion about internal services, the New York Times has an interesting piece from a member of their print hub team. The Print Hub at the New York Times takes copy that was written for digital platforms and edits it for print. It shows how digital-first these processes have become, and it also pulls back the curtain to let readers understand how the sausage is made.

Lessons Learned From the Print Hub

After a few months writing (and rewriting) headlines for the front page of The New York Times, one journalist has some takeaways.

www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/insider/lessons-learned-from-the-print-hub.html

This story shows that the local journalism crisis is a North American story, not just a US story, and in many ways, the headlines out of Canada about job cuts and the wholesale shuttering of titles has been starker than in the US over the last year. This headline was incredibly shocking, and it’s unclear what happens next.

Toronto Star owner cutting 600 jobs at regional papers, seeking bankruptcy protection for unit | CBC News

Nordstar, the company that owns the Toronto Star and other newspapers, announced Friday that it is seeking bankruptcy protection for the unit that owns more than 70 local newspapers and axing more than 600 jobs in the process.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/torstar-metroland-nordstar-1.6968044

As someone who has worked in local print, TV and radio media in the US, I find this fascinating. The crisis in local media in North America is undeniable. Press Forward is just one effort to respond to this crisis. Another comes out of US public radio. Public radio provides invaluable services to local communities across the US. My first full-time journalism job was in western Kansas, and I used to listen to High Plains Public Radio reading service for the blind. It was a service intended for the blind or visually impaired, but for me, it was a great way for a poor journalist to listen to what was, in effect, an audiobook service. But the news service was spread out over thousands of square miles, and they often relied on local newspapers for material. It will take creativity and a lot of different experiments to address the crisis. I think small digital outlets will be the foundation, but I also see public radio playing a role as well.

'Public Media and the Future of Local Journalism' position paper released - Editor and Publisher

A coalition of public media organizations has published "Public Media and the Future of Local Journalism." The paper, endorsed by more than 120 leaders across public media, presents a shared vision for the role public media can play in the future of local news and provides specific action items to face the growing information crisis.

www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/public-media-and-the-future-of-local-journalism-position-paper-released,245730

Revenue pressures are not just on local journalism groups but also on digital creators such as the writers on Substack. Like bigger outlets looking to increase ARPU through bundling, Substack creators are looking to diversify their revenue by adding podcasts.

Substack writers are launching podcasts on the platform to ease reliance on ad revenue

Hoping for more subscription revenue – and to lessen their reliance on ad revenue – Substack writers are bringing their podcasts to the platform.

digiday.com/media/substack-writers-are-launching-podcasts-on-the-platform-to-ease-reliance-on-ad-revenue

And in today’s review of AI headlines, we have news out of the UK of AI 'editorial ‘co-pilots’’ but also a bit of news about efforts to monetise archives. Again, this is about creating resilience at publishers by leveraging technology not just to squeeze costs from the business but also to add revenue. This is promising.

Editorial 'co-pilots' and monetising archives: What likes of ITN, Future, Bauer and AP are doing with generative AI

We round up the best things publishers told Press Gazette's Future of Media Technology Conference 2023 about what they're doing with AI.

pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/ai-news-publishers-future

And my friends over The Mix look at the challenges that generative AI pose to publishers. This article looks at the challenge that AI chatbots could pose. As we often say at Pugpig, now is the time to lean into creating direct relationships with audiences. Instead of worrying about what Google, Microsoft and others do, this is the time to act.

Generative AI threatens to undermine news media business models. How are news publishers reacting and adapting? - The Fix

As generative AI gains prominence, news publishers are grappling with concerns about its potential impact on their business models. Can they devise a winning strategy to stay afloat?

thefix.media/2023/9/8/generative-ai-threatens-to-undermine-news-media-business-models-how-are-news-publishers-reacting-and-adapting