My last role was as the director of digital products and platforms at a public service broadcasting group in the US. For anyone familiar with public broadcasting in the US, most of any station’s revenue comes from members - viewers and listeners who pay whatever they want. When I was asked about our digital strategy, I said it was to build habit and loyalty that led to membership. The BBC has quantified the goal with its 552 strategy. The “BBC aims for audiences to use its services for at least five hours a week, across at least five days, and on at least two platforms on both traditional broadcast and digital products”, as outlined in the Digital BBC Report (PDF). This is all in keeping with research from the Medill Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University. Researchers there analysed data from 106 newspapers in the US and found that regularity, more than pageviews or session duration, was most correlated with subscription purchase and retention.

Publishers and broadcasters are focused on developing regularity and relationships with audiences. Getting someone to register or subscribe is the start of a relationship, but media operators know that this is just the beginning. Onboarding has become a key activity to communicate the value of the registration or subscription, and it starts immediately. Christian Röpke, Chief Digital Officer of ZEIT Verlagsgruppe, told the WAN-IFRA Digital Media Europe conference last year about how the German publisher had to shift balance its focus on conversion with equal energy put into retention. They had launched a discounted subscription to convert more users but then struggled to move these new cut-rate subscribers to a full-cost plan. They found new subscribers weren’t engaging with content within the first 24 hours after they paid. Interestingly, they also found from qualitative research that new subscribers felt overwhelmed by the volume of content. Die Zeit rolled out an engagement score as part of their “First Day Subscription” strategy so that they could understand how well new subscribers were engaging with content to support retaining these.

Publishers are experimenting with a wide range of ways to communicate the value of a subscription to new subscribers and help them find things that interest them. You only have to look at The Economist’s new printed welcome pack to appreciate the breadth of these experiments. They had seen email open rates decline and felt that their “older and affluent” audience might respond to this high-touch offering. It complements rather than replaces their email onboarding series. By using an A/B test, they found that users who received the welcome pack were 3.5% more engaged.

If you want an in-depth case study of how to design an onboarding programme, David Tvrdon outlines the approach he took for Denník SME in Slovakia. A quick takeaway is that onboarding now starts immediately but goes on much longer. And it delivers. The subscribers who have gone through David’s onboarding programme have a 40% higher Customer Lifetime Value than the rest of the publishers’ digital subscribers.

David also demonstrates how important great user experience is. He started by revamping the group’s newsletter strategy and made sure that their news app engaged users.

He then mapped out all of the features that built habits and delivered value to users. Add them all, and then focus. For him, these are features that “bring immediate value to the subscribers” such as news apps with push notifications, a fast, responsive mobile web experience, paid newsletters and ad-free experiences. He added these into a 10-step onboarding experience.

And now onto our links for this week. With the unfolding crisis in local news in the US, a lot of energy and money is flowing into the system. Matt DeRienzo talks about how the future of local is small scale rather than the big groups that rose and now have fallen. To support these smaller organisations, they need support in building skills, capabilities and technology. This new de-centralised system will need new funding models.

The media support system needs an update

Not too long ago, the consensus was that a significant digital reader revenue strategy could only work at two or three outlier news organizations. The New

digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2024/06/13/the-media-support-system-needs-an-update

Oddly, running counter to that shift to de-centralisation, the National Trust for Local News is working to rebuild the centralised services that have declined as the major chains’ models have failed.

An ambitious news philanthropy makes a sharp turn after just two years - Poynter

The National Trust for Local News has found that the nonprofit sector ‘doesn’t need more coaches.’ Instead, it will send in a hands-on team.

www.poynter.org/commentary/analysis/2024/national-trust-local-news-investments-macon-melody

Interesting. Researchers in the US have found audiences believe “that the news industry as a whole values profits above truth or public service”. People assumed that the ad model forced publishers to pursue large audiences rather than accurate reporting. Well, there were also study participants who believed that news organisations got paid off by the American Right’s bogeyman, George Soros. Sigh.

Is journalism’s trust problem about money, not politics?

The people we spoke with tended to assume that news organizations made money primarily through advertising instead of also from subscribers.

www.niemanlab.org/2024/06/is-journalisms-trust-problem-about-money-not-politics

Research from FT Strategies has shown that publishers are more resilient if they have more than two revenue streams (although there is a law of diminishing returns with more than five or six). At Condé Nast’s Bon Appétit brand, they have moved beyond food with a range of adjacent products.

Jamila Robinson explains why Bon Appétit is getting into sports, relationships and subscription boxes

On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Robinson talks about the new Sports issue of Bon Appétit, hitting newsstands today.

digiday.com/podcasts/jamila-robinson-explains-why-bon-appetit-is-getting-into-sports-relationships-and-subscription-boxes

WordPress VIP has an excellent article on how publishers can adapt to Google’s algorithm changes this year. Publishers have been punished for site reputation abuse. Google’s “policy targets websites that host low-quality content created by third parties with little oversight”. I have seen this with sites that have syndication services to generate revenue. One publisher I advised saw their traffic drop by 60% overnight, and it was down to a low-quality syndication service.

One takeaway is that publishers need to lean into distinctive, high-quality, helpful content. The changes that Google has rolled out require changes in content strategy, not just technical solutions.

Adapting to Google's 2024 Algorithm Updates | WordPress VIP

Adapt to Google's 2024 algorithm update by enhancing content quality and website performance. Learn about the helpful content update and more.

wpvip.com/2024/06/11/google-algorithm-updates-2024

International developments: Aussie publisher shuts licenced US news brands and user needs process in India

Nine in Australia had pursued a strategy that I’ve seen a number of publishers pursue by licencing US brands. You’ll see that in the magazine, broadcasting and digital space. But Nine have now decided to shutter these US brands and focus on their own.

Vice, Kotaku, Refinery29 to no longer publish in Australia after Pedestrian Group announces restructure

Dozens of jobs to be cut as the Nine-owned media company decides to end its use of brand licences and focus on wholly owned brands

www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jul/08/vice-kotaku-gizmodo-job-cuts-australia-channel-nine

To have a successful subscription or membership strategy, publishers need to have a deep understanding of their audiences, and the user needs model has become one of the most widely used models to achieve this. It has helped them develop an app that has helped them build on their subscription success.

User-centric innovation drives subscriptions at Newslaundry

2024-07-04. Newslaundry, an independent and entirely digital newsroom, was one of the earliest players in India to test subscriptions. By placing user needs at the heart of product development, the team crafted a user-centric app that has become instrumental in driving its subscription success.

wan-ifra.org/2024/07/user-centric-innovation-drives-subscriptions-at-newslaundry

And I’ll add this interesting news item from India, where they are looking to develop a public AI platform.

Ashwini Vaishnaw Unveils Public Platform for AI at IndiaAI Summit

India aims to democratize AI access with a new public platform, says Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at the Global IndiaAI Summit.

www.medianama.com/2024/07/223-india-digital-public-infrastructure-ai-ashwini-vaishnaw-summit

The Reuters Institute's latest Digital News Report found that across 20 countries subscription growth has been stalled for the last three years at 17%, and they also found that 57% of people would never consider paying anything for news. Worse yet, in the UK, where I’m sitting right now, 69% would not pay anything for news, which is why the UK (8%) is dead last in terms out of the 20 countries when it comes to people who have paid for news in the past year. Ouch.

It reminded me of the research that I highlighted a few weeks ago research covering Chicago area news audiences from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. In line with the Digital News Report, the Northwestern University study found that 19% of those surveyed had paid for or donated to a local news outlet and 16% paid money to a national outlet. And 51% of those surveyed said that no one should have to pay for news with another 29% saying that only those who could afford it should pay.

But it’s not all bad news. The Reuters Institute found that 36% of people would consider paying something for news if the price is right, and as INMA’s Greg Piechota pointed out, that creates the possibility to grow the paying audience across these 20 countries by 3.5x.

However, I want to make another point. For those who work or did work in journalism, this might seem impossible, but most people are not aware that journalism is in crisis financially. The Northwestern University research found that 71% of those surveyed “don’t know that the news business is in crisis”. More than half, 54% thought the local news businesses were doing somewhat well and 17% thought they were doing very well.

Maybe it is time to level with audiences about the financial pressures that our businesses are in before it’s too late. Poynter recently highlighted the case of LA Taco, a “food, culture and community” news outlet in Los Angeles that punched above its weight, enough to win a prestigious James Beard award, which honours chefs and food writing in the US. In April, they announced that they would have to furlough all of their staff because the bottom had dropped out of their business. LA Taco said that they had been doing OK with 2000 members but suddenly that number started dropping until they only had half that number. And then they lost their main advertiser.

But they had never done a membership drive, because as its editor-in-chief Javier Cabral told Poynter, they aren’t NPR. Some folks in the US refer to NPR pledge drives pejoratively as “beg-a-thons” so I took away from his comment that they felt uncomfortable asking. And they didn’t want to be a non-profit.

The crisis pushed the editors and staff to do an “emergency drive”, and they explained the situation to their community via social media. Within 24 hours, they had got enough support to hire back the furloughed workers, and now a couple of months later, they have 3000 members. It isn’t the 5000 members they think they need to be completely independent, but it’s a start.

My takeaway: Publishers and journalists need to get over their reluctance to talk about the dire straits journalism is in. When I was a local newspaper editor, I was honest and open in saying that to provide the kind of coverage our communities deserved I needed their help. I needed them to buy subscriptions, and I needed to work with them in partnership to fill in gaps in our staffing. That was a decade ago now, and the situation now is much, much more dire. It’s not easy. It does feel a bit like begging, but it is obvious that the public isn’t connecting the loss of coverage to the decline of journalism as a business.

Research backs this up, even in the UK where audiences are least likely to pay or even support paying. Last year, the Press Gazette highlighted City University research that compared four different types of paywall messaging with 815 people in the UK.

1. ‘Normative messaging’ that emphasises their subscription would support “independent, inclusive and watchdog journalism”.

2. A ‘price transparency’ message that spoke about the financial crisis in the industry.

3. A ‘digital-specific’ message that focused on the value of the subscription such as exclusive content.

4. A ‘social message’ about how the subscription would allow access for events and would make the subscriber a part of a community.

No single message worked, but a combination of the first two that focused on supporting independent journalism and a message about the dire financial situation of journalism performed the best. I know that this might prick at our pride, but research shows two things. People are not aware of how bad the crisis is, and they will respond to it in subscription or membership calls to action.

And now the links for this week.

GQ found that feeding the algorithm was not building a loyal audience, only people who came from social media, got that quick hit story and then promptly went back to whatever network they came from. They now look at where they can add to the conversation, add value. Their audience numbers are down but the total minutes spent with their content has rebounded in the past year.

What happened when British GQ stopped trying to 'feed the algorithm'

GQ's European director of audience development, analytics and social Neha-Tamara Patel on a major strategy change at the lifestyle brand.

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/digital-journalism/gq-audience-director-algorithm-platforms-churn-strategy

Less is more. It really is, and data bears this out. This is yet another data point that reinforces that the FT’s strategy to reduce the content that they produce by 15% each year has something to it. It is more important that we deeply understand what audiences want and need rather than simply feeding the algorithms, chasing the same audience with the same commodity content.

Audiences are overwhelmed. It’s time publishers focused on what is valuable to audiences.

Lars K Jensen on LinkedIn: #onlinemedia #digitalmedia #journalism #lessismore #strategy

???? FEWER STORIES, BETTER JOURNALISM. For the last decade — at least — we have talked about publishing fewer articles of higher quality and relevance. Until…

www.linkedin.com/posts/larskjensen_onlinemedia-digitalmedia-journalism-activity-7213445055456436224-7LdR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

A great article on how to engage with comments on TikTok. Honestly, this feels very much like what I used to do in the Naughties, when I read blogs and listened to podcasts to find sources. (I still remember when I tracked down a podcaster who had recorded their escape from a Hurricane Katrina-flooded New Orleans when I worked for the BBC.) People are talking about the issues that you cover on social media platforms. The value isn’t in simply clipping up their videos or embedding their comments. The value is in following up with them with an interview.

How to engage impactfully in the comment section – RJI

rjionline.org/news/how-to-engage-impactfully-in-the-comment-section

This week in AI content abuse

The next two items are about AI companies being accused by publishers of stealing their content. (Heck even Amazon is accusing Perplexity of scraping its content without permission.)

Quora’s Chatbot Platform Poe Allows Users to Download Paywalled Articles on Demand

WIRED was able to download stories from publishers like The New York Times and The Atlantic using Poe’s Assistant bot. One expert calls it “prima facie copyright infringement,” which Quora disputes.

www.wired.com/story/quora-chatbot-poe-download-paywalled-articles

News outlets are accusing Perplexity of plagiarism and unethical web scraping | TechCrunch

In the age of generative AI, when chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content pulled from the internet, the line between fair use

techcrunch.com/2024/07/02/news-outlets-are-accusing-perplexity-of-plagiarism-and-unethical-web-scraping

A couple of stories about the ongoing crisis in news - local and digital. Paramount shuttered MTV News in May 2023, and now they have taken down the website, pulling years of content from the web. I think back fondly to the excellent coverage that MTV News did of elections with their Rock the Vote campaigns. Sigh.

MTV News Website Goes Dark, Archives Pulled Offline

The website of the already-defunct MTV News has been fully pulled offline.

variety.com/2024/digital/news/mtv-news-website-archives-pulled-offline-1236047163

In its World Press Trends report 2022-23, WAN-IFRA highlighted how funding from settlements with platforms was going to be a growth area for news organisations in some countries. That’s coming to an end in Australia, and that could mean the closure of 50 regional newspapers.

‘We don’t know what’s going on any more’: how Australia lost its rural newspapers

The Country Press Association says up to 50 regional newspapers could close when Facebook funding agreements begin to lapse later this year

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/30/we-dont-know-whats-going-on-any-more-how-australia-lost-its-rural-newspapers

But the Associated Press wants to support local news and not just with wire copy. The cooperative has set up a fund to help green news deserts. US funders have really got the bit between their teeth and putting serious cash behind efforts to address the crisis.

The Associated Press finds a new way to combat news deserts

Nonprofit news organizations including ProPublica, The Marshall Project, and The 19th have transformed the American media landscape in the past decade. But the Associated Press has been at it far longer. Throughout its 178-year history, the AP has been run as a not-for-profit cooperative. And talk about impact. The AP has been the backbone of […]

www.cjr.org/analysis/associated-press-ap-news-deserts-joel-simon.php

A new book looks at how “fewer people are seeing a life in news as a worthwhile career. This reflects a broader problem — namely, the ways that relentless economic pressures are pushing people away from socially important careers.”

Journalism has become ground zero for the vocation crisis

Journalists — like nurses and teachers — want to do work that's interesting and socially beneficial. But the industry's increasing precariousness counterbalances the appeal.

www.niemanlab.org/2024/06/journalism-has-become-ground-zero-for-the-vocation-crisis

A call for media companies to invest in culture to make up for the lack of competitive pay. “By prioritising culture, career development, work-life balance, and meaningful recognition, media companies can build and retain effective teams that are happier in the workplace.”

Emotional salaries: How do media jobs stack up?

“And you never say thank you.” “That’s what the money is for!” Mad Men’s The Suitcase may have first aired fourteen years ago, but the episode spawned some of the show’s most-quoted and memed lines. In a disagreement about credit for an award-winning ad, Peggy Olsen communicates her frustration at the lack of acknowledgement, and Don …

pressgazette.co.uk/publishing-services-content/emotional-salaries-how-do-media-jobs-stack-up

The demand for news or the lack thereof has been the theme of the last few newsletters, and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism 2024 Digital News Report chronicles how a lack of trust (although it stabilised this year) and news avoidance are challenging news organisations in a business environment that has led to layoffs and closures. “Selective news avoidance” - where audiences choose to avoid certain issues - has risen to 39%, driven by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, suggested by some responses to the open-ended comments. The rise was highest in Brazil, Spain, Germany and Finland. Those who feel “overloaded” by the news have jumped 11% since 2019. Applying a “user needs” lens, the report found that news outlets “may be focusing too much on updating people on top news stories and not spending enough time providing different perspectives on issues or reporting stories that can provide a basis for occasional optimism”.

In Dmitry Shishkin’s ground-breaking work on user needs at the BBC World Service, focusing too much on “update me” was one of his major findings. In 2018, he told journalism.co.uk:

When they did the first user needs analysis at BBC World Service, BBC Russia produced 70% of its content to meet the “update me” user needs, but all of those updates were only delivering 7% of pageviews. What Dmitry and several other publishers have found is that they can cut back on all of these updates and focus on the other six needs - inspire me, divert me, educate me, keep me on trend and give me perspective - and reach more people. From my experience with a major UK newspaper publisher, they produced too many follow-up stories based on breaking news. The second story might have done well, but by the third update, the diminishing returns were rarely worth the effort.

The Digital News Report provided an interesting perspective on user needs by using two questions to provide a “user needs priority index” for six different user needs. “Give me perspective” scored the highest with “inspire me” coming in second, with “update me” lagging in third. “Divert me” came in last, which isn’t surprising to me. Audiences have plenty of choices when it comes to diversion, and news media will struggle to compete here and frankly doesn’t need to.

Providing people with perspective and inspiring them resonates with other findings in the report that show that news audiences are overwhelmed and worn out. With COVID, the climate crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and conflicts, people are exhausted by the news. In France, Brazil, Spain, Canada, the United States and South Africa, more than 40% of audiences said they were “worn out” by the news, and this had risen in several of these countries from the mid-20s in 2019. They want to understand the chaotic world around them and find inspiration and agency. People feel that news is part of the problem rather than a solution to these major crises, based on data like this and conversations I’ve had.

The user needs model has proven extremely effective at helping news organisations (and other content companies) create content strategies that deliver the most value to audiences. More than that, when many news organisations are grappling with reduced resources, it helps media leaders know they are using their resources in the best way possible. The user needs framework has reached a level of maturity that it can be effectively applied in newsrooms that operate at any scale, and the smaller the newsroom, the more important it is for them to ensure their people are doing work that resonates with audiences.

User needs is one framework, and the quality reads metric is another tool to align and focus newsrooms so that their work resonates with audiences. The FT has a goal of reducing the volume of content it produces each year by 15% “in order to focus more time on quality journalism”. The quality reads analysis plots stories by the volume of pageviews and the completion rate of content to provide a nuanced measure of audience engagement. High-performing content has high number pageviews and high completion rates so editors know to do more of that content, while high completion rate and lower pageviews appeal to niches. Stories in the lower left corner of the graph are stories that have low pageview and engagement, and editors know with confidence that they can reduce their efforts on these stories.

Returning to the Digital News Report, it has plenty of other insights, which I’ll be mulling over (but not this week as I’m off work), including a “platform reset” and audiences, especially younger ones, consuming more news via short-form video.

Now on to a few links this week. As I wrote in Pugpig’s Media Bulletin, major European media houses are leaning into digital transformation. They have reset their digital subscription North Star goals and are focused on young audienes who consume news primarily on their smartphones. At Mediahuis, they are focusing on flipping their digital-print subscription mix in seven years so that 70% of their subscription revenue comes from digital.

How newspaper giant Mediahuis aims to reach 70% digital revenue by 2030

European news publisher Mediahuis has set a 7-7-7 goal of generating 70% of its revenue from digital by 2030.

pressgazette.co.uk/media_business/mediahuis-revenue-digital-print-subscribers-gert-ysebaert

At NTM, they had to retool their subscription efforts because growth had stalled - something the Digital News Report found in many countries. Mobile is their focus. They redesigned their app to be simpler and cleaner, which delivered a dramatic increase in engagement with stories even deeper on their mobile front page. Focusing on their app made perfect sense with 80% of their audiences coming to them via a mobile device.

Sweden’s NTM doubles subscribers with digital pivot

2024-06-12. NTM, one of the largest media groups in Sweden, is spread across 17 newsrooms, with a 70 percent reach in its operational areas. It launched its subscription efforts in 2017, with a freemium paywall.

wan-ifra.org/2024/06/swedens-ntm-doubles-subscribers-with-digital-pivot

Josh Awtry at Newsweek (who was at Gannett when I was there) spoke about one of my favourite topics - shifting from rented to owned audiences to the Local Media Association. He challenged participants in the webinar with this question: “Do you have traffic or audience?”

Strategies to shift from acquiring traffic to owning audience

The models that fueled publisher growth for 20 years are changing. Social, once a reliable and significant source of referrals, has become a competitor. TikTok, Instagram and others aren’t interested in sending audiences to publishers –– they’re trying to keep audiences on their own platforms. Search is likely to change rapidly because of generative AI. […]

localmedia.org/2024/06/strategies-to-shift-from-acquiring-traffic-to-owning-audience

Suddenly ad economy forecasts get rosier, but the biggest companies will benefit the most

Ad spending looks set to keep going strong for the foreseeable future. In fact, experts have even revised their forecasts to account for the additional upside.

digiday.com/media/suddenly-ad-economy-forecasts-get-rosier-but-the-biggest-companies-will-benefit-the-most

Revenue diversification is one of the major themes for news groups, and the venerable Associated Press is no exception. It’s a good example of how even a wire service can develop new products and revenue streams. Of course, its recent deal with OpenAI is one of their alternatuve sources of revenue.

Advertising, philanthropy and AI: How the AP is diversifying its revenue streams

AP has doubled down on diversifying its revenues in recent years amid headwinds facing many of its former crucial clients - US newspapers.

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/wires_and_agencies/advertising-philanthropy-and-ai-how-the-ap-is-diversifying-its-revenue-streams

The Digital News Report adds to a recent study that the Reuters Institute released about AI and journalism with additional detail about audiences’ attitudes towards its use. As with the previous research, audiences are open to AI being used to automate processes but less open for genAI being used to create content. Most responsible news companies are using genAI to create summaries and automate back end services such as tagging and other metadata additions. INMA has a good review here of how AI is being rolled out at media companies.

News media companies share AI revenue opportunities, ethical considerations

Media leaders from Times Internet, Nikkei, Stuff, The New York Times, and Bayerischer Rundfunk shared how they are using AI to generate revenue and emphasised the importance of defined ethics around the technology’s use during INMA’s recent Generative AI Master Class.

www.inma.org/blogs/conference/post.cfm/news-media-companies-share-ai-revenue-opportunities-ethical-considerations

Job cuts and closures across the media in the US, UK, and Canada in 2023 were, in the words of the Press Gazette, “brutal”, and 2024 is off to an equally rough start. In the US, job losses across digital, print and broadcast have led to some describing the situation as a market failure.

What is ailing digital, broadcast and print journalism is complicated. Certainly, news has been losing in the attention economy for quite a while. A 2010 analysis by Ken Doctor highlighted that users of the New York Times site spent roughly 20 minutes a month, which was better than the 8-10 minutes a month that audiences spent on most local news sites. In 2010, the average Facebook user spent seven hours on the social network, more than “40 times more time spent on social sites than on any single news site”, Ken said.

As internet analyst Mary Meeker pointed out for several years in her annual reviews, advertising follows attention. While these issues are connected, it is the loss of advertising that has and is disrupting journalism. The layoffs and closures in the past year have been because of a decline in ad revenue. As Australian media researcher Amanda Lotz recently wrote: “The development of more effective and efficient advertising tools is what killed traditional newspaper operations, not the circulation of news on social media.”

The erosion of the business of newspapers began long before the rise of social media and even digital media, which I have talked about before. Raw circulation for newspapers in the US peaked in about 1991, but if you look at newspaper ‘penetration’ - the number of copies sold versus the population in a circulation area - in the US, it peaked in the middle of the 20th Century and then declined. In 1950, penetration was 123%. That declined to 67% in 1990 and had dropped to 50% a decade later. Circulation declined as people turned to TV and eventually digital outlets and platforms. Advertising followed the attention.

I have another hypothesis that I really to research. I also believe that shifts in retail have dramatically changed patterns in advertising. The consolidation and nationalisation of retail eliminated many of the local advertisers that used to advertise in newspapers. There simply aren’t as many local independent businesses as there once were. When I looked through the back issues of the newspapers I published, it was incredible to see the number of local grocery stores that advertised. In one of the towns where I edited the newspapers, it was the headquarters of a regional department store chain, even though the town had a population of 50,000 people. Those local or regional department stores took out huge full-page ads in their local newspapers.

Another case in point, the sales director at that paper, the Sheboygan Press, told me that when he started in the 1980s, the store managers of even national chains had locally controlled advertising budgets. They could decide where they spent their advertising money whether it was spent at radio stations, outdoor, or the newspaper. By the time I was executive editor, all of the ad inserts were printed nationally and added to the Sunday newspaper. Now, it is just as likely that a major retailer like Target will rely on selling directly to customers via their app as advertising via flyers in newspapers.

This is why larger news and media organisations have pivoted to reader revenue. In the past week, The Atlantic has announced that they now get 2/3 of their revenue from readers rather than advertising. However, more could and should be done to innovate around advertising products and other revenue streams, and the opportunities to do this vary by the scale and market sector of the audience.

• For large organisations like Bloomberg, first-party data has allowed them to end their use of programmatic advertising. The data hold for a very valuable audience provide them with a competitive moat.

• After the pandemic, events are booming again, and this revenue stream works across publishing scales, from local independent publishers to larger publishers, as well as whether the publisher operates in the news, consumer or B2B sectors.

• Publishers in the B2C space are seeing e-commerce as another opportunity, according to the UK Association of Online Publishers.

Space exists for innovation in both revenue and content products. Lotz goes on to say, “The commercial failure of news organisations is not due to their journalism product but because they are no longer nearly so strong a tool for attracting attention for advertisers.” That statement requires some unpacking. I agree that journalism is struggling in the attention economy, but I think there are issues around their journalism products. As FT Strategies and the Knight Lab recently found out, a gulf exists between the expectations of Gen Z audiences about how they want to receive their news and the products that currently exist. There is ample room to innovate around individual products and the product bundle as the New York Times is demonstrating.

And now onto the links for the week. The AI developments continue to come quickly. The Financial Times became the latest major publisher to ink a deal with OpenAI. They will receive attribution for the user of their journalism, and the FT sees this as an opportunity to learn how generative AI will be used to discover content. Their openness to experimentation and learning shows how confident they are.

OpenAI inks strategic tie-up with UK's Financial Times, including content use | TechCrunch

OpenAI, maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has netted another news licensing deal in Europe, adding London's Financial Times to a growing list of OpenAI, maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has netted another news licensing deal in Europe, adding London's Financial Times to a growing list of publishers it's paying for content access.

techcrunch.com/2024/04/29/openai-inks-strategic-tie-up-with-uks-financial-times-including-content-use

The FT can be confident because it was early to pivot to reader revenue. Financial information and analysis that the FT provides sits on the information wants to be expensive end of the spectrum. The FT has become famous for its North Star framework, in part, because it markets that framework as part of its consulting business, FT Strategies. This new metric includes: “FT.com’s paying digital audience; FT Specialist paying subscribers; FT Live paying attendees; FT newspaper circulation (retail and subscribed print sales) and FTChinese.com paying subscribers.” If a customer is subscribed to multiple products, they are counted twice because it reflects the total revenue of the group.

The FT reorients its business around ‘global paying audience’

The new approach is designed to help grow direct audience revenue beyond its core journalism offerings and across its broader portfolio of products and services.

toolkits.com/publisher-monetization/financial-times-global-paying-audience

As I mentioned above, The Atlantic has announced that it has reached profitability and now earns two-thirds of its revenue from readers. CEO Nicholas Thompson isn’t breaking out the champagne and instead highlighted that he will continue his disciplined approach. He isn’t going on a hiring spree.

What's next for The Atlantic after reaching profitability and 1m subscribers

The Atlantic has reached two milestones: of reaching both profitability and one million subscriptions. Interview with CEO Nicholas Thompson.

pressgazette.co.uk/news-leaders/the-atlantic-ceo-nicholas-thompson-interview-profitable-subscriptions

For The Guardian, a 16% decline in advertising revenue has put pressure on its business, forcing it to seek a small number of redundancies (layoffs for my US readers). For a lot of publishers, I wonder how much they will pivot away from advertising and how permanent that will be.

Guardian to make 'small number of voluntary redundancies' amid ad recession

The Guardian is looking to make editorial voluntary redundancies as it attempts to manoeuvre around a £39m forecasted budget deficit.

pressgazette.co.uk/news/guardian-voluntary-redundancies-advertising-recession

While big players like the Associated Press, Axel Springer and the FT are striking deals with OpenAI, other newspapers are taking a different approach. As I wrote in Pugpig’s Media Bulletin last week, three approaches seem to be developing amongst publishers:

• Licencing deals

• Lawsuits

• or BYO - build your own, strategies that B2B players like Bloomberg and business-of-media site Skift are pursuing.

In this lawsuit, eight newspapers owned by hedge fund Alden Global Capital accuse the tech companies of violating their copyright by using their content to train their models.

8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I.

The suit, which accuses the tech companies of copyright infringement, adds to the fight over the online data used to power artificial intelligence.

www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/business/media/newspapers-sued-microsoft-openai.html

Colour Axios CEO Jim VanderHei sceptical of AI. He and his company spoke to all of the AI heavies.

Sounding very much like Wrexham’s Phil Parkinson, he says that AI will write a bunch of commoditised content, which “which I think are fucked anyway”, VanderHei said. It’s a useful contrary position, and VanderHei has launched two very successful media brands so he’s difficult to write off.

Jim VandeHei on AI-Proofing the News and Ignoring ‘Twitter Nerds’

The outspoken Axios CEO thinks the future is personalized, brief, and human.

nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jim-vandehei-on-ai-proofing-news-and-defying-twitter-nerds.html

An interesting stance on how AI will be added to publishing tools. “Primarily, our AI tools streamline editorial workflows by automating routine tasks such as translating, tagging, categorization, titles, and summaries, which frees up journalists’ time.”

Labrador CMS’ Jan Thoresen on why publishing platforms must have AI embedded into their fabric

At this year’s FIPP World Media Congress in Cascais, Portugal, one of the key event partners is Labrador CMS, an online web content publishing system

mediamakersmeet.com/less-than-10-of-reporters-know-how-to-use-chatgpt-labrador-cms-jan-thoresen-on-why-publishing-platforms-must-have-ai-embedded-into-their-fabric

I am going to make a link social media and AI. A YouGov poll found 48% of Brits view AI in journalism negatively, and only 6% believe it will do more good than bad. Across the Atlantic, Americans want the government to make social media better. The

New Report Finds Most Americans Favor Government Regulation of Social Media

Would more government regulation improve social media?

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-report-finds-most-americans-favor-government-regulation-of-social-media/714657

I’m writing this on Beehiiv, and they made some news last week, announcing a new funding round. The newsletter space continues to be a space for growth.

Beehiiv attracts $33M to make its newsletter publishing platform more sticky | TechCrunch

With the number of people using e-mail globally approaching 5 billion, newsletters delivered regularly into people's inboxes continue to look like a

techcrunch.com/2024/04/30/beehiiv-newsletters

I grew up in a wood surrounded by the corn fields of Illinois about 90 miles west of Chicago. The Windy City was a hub of journalism in the state, and it used to be that the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, where I got my bachelor’s degree, kept the city supplied with talent. I know how grim the situation is with local news organisations in the US. But it still took my breath away when I recently found out that since 2005, Illinois has lost 85% of its newspaper journalists, according to Northwestern University’s Local News Initiative. Illinois has suffered the highest number of journalism job losses of any state in the US.

But the story is similar across the country, even if not to the same degree. “Total newspaper circulation declined from more than 50 million in 2005 to just over 10 million in 2023,” according to Frank Jones in Big Think. Sadly, not only are things not getting better, the decline is getting worse.

And that means that more communities are losing their only source of local news. For many of these communities, there isn’t a local radio or TV station that is providing coverage.

America’s news deserts are spreading

Most counties in the U.S. have only one local newspaper, often one that publishes weekly instead of daily.

bigthink.com/strange-maps/counties-without-newspapers

I’ve written quite a bit about ways to stem this loss including applying innovation models, different funding models and the revenue mix for the new independent news organisations springing up in communities. we’re going to have to get creative to stem the collapse.

Information Districts offer a new model

We are going to need all kinds of experiments and models to address this crisis, and it is a crisis. For me, it is not just a crisis in journalism but a symptom of the decline of communities and the rising crisis in loneliness, particularly in my native United States. When I was at the BBC, they brought Robert Putnam to talk about his research and book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community.

Can journalism play a role in rebuilding communities? I think it can in partnership with other local institutions, such as libraries and civic groups. I have long followed the work of Simon Galperin for his advocacy of information districts, which is a form of municipal service district. In the US, there are 33,000 such districts, which are “defined areas in a city or county” where property owners pay an additional tax for extra services in the area. They have been established to pay for fire, water, sanitation or business improvement districts, but Simon’s idea is that the same concept could be used to provide for the information needs of a community. Simon estimated that if the 32,000 people in his community paid $40 a year, it would provide a half-million-dollar budget for a newsroom. He said:

He estimated that the budget would provide for three to four reporters, money for events and community engagement activities. Of course, as Christine Schmidt wrote in the Nieman Lab, it would be difficult for low-income communities to pay for such districts. Galperin said that communities could pool their resources. “The point of an info district it to create more civically engaged communities. It’s about bridging the gap between democracy and journalism,” he said.

Galperin is now testing his idea with the Jersey Bee, which “address(es) people’s basic needs to enable their well-being”. For an info district to serve its community, it needs to identify the information needs of that community. Galperin has applied Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs as a framework to provide a map of community information needs. “It’s a framework we use to prioritize delivering information that enables more people to participate fully in our community by addressing gaps in access to essential resources, public safety, and social connection,” Simon wrote.

It’s a novel model for local news that focuses on engaging the community by listening to community members and collaborating with them. The project looks to build media literacy in the community and help people living there improve their quality of life.

Their research isn’t just driving the topics they cover but also how they distribute their news. Like Outlier Media in Detroit, they are using a text-based information service, which is unsurprising because of Simon’s work with Groundsource. Broadcasters and newspapers are using its text-messaging technology to engage audiences in the process of their journalism not just trying to build an audience after the journalism is finished.

Simon’s approach has elements of human-centred design and Saul Alinsky’s community organising approach. It is radically different than the standard approach to journalism, and I am cautious about invoking Alinsky’s name because he has become a partisan symbol of animosity for the Right in the US, in no small part because of Barack Obama’s history as a community organiser. To me, community organising is about helping communities meet their needs, and I think Simon is right in trying to rebuild journalism’s relationship with the communities that it serves because that is essential in rebuilding the trust people need to have in journalism.

A decade ago when I had the gift of serving as a local newspaper editor in the US, so much of my energy was in building relationships in the communities our papers served. Like what Simon is doing, some of what I did was about facilitation, not just the traditional production of journalism. I was honest with the community that we couldn’t cover the community they wanted without working with them. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a runway to run with that approach. Within months after I started, Gannett launched its Newsroom of the Future reorganisation, which I was involved in at the national and regional level. I tried to build my vision of community engagement into what happened after the reorganisation, but due to cuts and people taking buyouts (voluntary redundancy), I lost half of my staff for a time. And the cuts took my own job only months later.

I am rethinking my future, and I wonder if there is a way that I can have another go at my vision. It definitely will have to exist outside of the corporate model. If you want to talk about it, please get in touch.

AI shifts from experimentation to execution

I have been working in digital journalism since the mid-90s, and there have been few technologies that have shifted from awareness to experimentation to implementation as large-language models have. Poynter highlighted an Associated Press survey that found 70% of newsroom staff in the US and Europe are already using generative AI to create content, using genAI to help write headlines, newsletters and social media posts.

AI is already reshaping newsrooms, AP study finds - Poynter

Despite ethical concerns, nearly 70% of newsroom staffers recruited for an Associated Press survey say they’re using generative AI to create content

www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2024/artificial-intelligence-transforming-journalism

I have been a little surprised about the sudden frenzy over AI because journalism organisations have been using elements of artificial intelligence for years now. They have been using:

• machine learning models to find patterns in data, text or images

• natural language processing for entity extraction or topic analysis

• even automated content about topics with consistent data such as sports, weather and real estate. 

However, genAI tools have lowered the bar to entry in using the technology. Lowering the barriers to entry for technology always as I wrote in Pugpig’s Media Bulletin last week, we’re seeing news organisations shift from experimentation to execution with this new generation of AI tools. As with other technological revolutions in newsrooms, the tools have become accessible to a wider range of journalists, and for more advanced news organisations, they have the product frameworks and the cross-functional management muscle to rapidly experiment and iterate AI services.

Leveraging AI to boost efficiency and innovation in the news

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has generated excitement and fear alike within the news industry, prompting many to ponder what lies in store for journalism’s future. If approached smartly and leveraged strategically, AI offers journalists and their outlets promising potential to boost efficiency and innovation.

ijnet.org/en/story/leveraging-ai-boost-efficiency-and-innovation-news

Of course, we are also seeing volume publishers lean into AI to create more content. That way lies madness, and it runs counter to what news organisations need to do. AI should be used to free up journalists time to do more original reporting and engage audiences, basically any activity that creates more value for audiences and captures more value from them.

Newsweek is making generative AI a fixture in its newsroom

The legacy publication is leaning on AI for video production, a new breaking news team, and first drafts of some stories.

www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/inside-newsweek-ai-experiment

And meanwhile, the platforms continue to build their AI capabilities. Google continues its work with Gemini and Search Generative Experience, and Microsoft pushes forward with Copilot. Meta continues to update and roll out its AI tools. I used Copilot to create the image for this newsletter, and I have to admit to being blown away. That being said, I often use Creative Commons images, another community that I am part of.

Meta Brings its Most Advanced AI Chatbot to All of its Aps

Meta's keen to get more people using its latest AI chatbot - but will they?

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-brings-its-most-advanced-ai-chatbot-to-all-of-its-aps/713662

"Impressed by their agility, shocked by their arrogance": Meta's Llama 3 divides opinion

At a time when Google's Gemini and Open AI's ChatGPT are charging premium subscriptions for the full use of their AI, last Thursday's launch of Meta's

mediamakersmeet.com/impressed-by-their-agility-shocked-by-their-arrogance-metas-llama-3-divides-opinion

Are paywalls ceding the battleground to misinformation?

We wrote about this piece in Pugpig’s Media Bulletin this week. Time’s former managing editor Richard Stengel has researched and written about misinformation, and he is concerned that as more journalism moves behind paywalls, it means that more people will fall prey to misinformation. While I share his concerns about misinformation especially with increased activity by state actors and partisans, I don’t agree with his solution, which is to simply drop the paywalls around election content. I don’t believe in simple solutions. If the solutions to journalism’s problems were simple, we would see more success, especially at the local level. It is more complicated.

I do agree with him that news organisations should leverage the attention that the elections will deliver to attract more subscribers and more registered users. As my friend at The Audiencers highlighted, Bloomberg changed up their paywall to a registration wall to allow audiences to read their climate coverage during COP.

Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls

The case for making journalism free—at least during the 2024 election

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/04/paywall-problems-media-trust-democracy/678032

And lastly, it is interesting to see the unraveling of the consolidation in digital media. G/O just sold The Onion to local investors in Chicago, giving the Windy City-based staff assurances that they could continue to work where they were and telling the that they would deal them into the satire site’s success. As someone who read The Onion in print at university, I’m pulling for them.

Area man, Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson, buys The Onion | TechCrunch

Jeff Lawson, co-founder and recently departed CEO of Twilio, is the proud new owner of satirical online newspaper The Onion.

techcrunch.com/2024/04/26/area-man-twilio-co-founder-jeff-lawson-buys-the-onion

Vice Media sold Refinery29, which has been hit hard by the decline in social media, to Essence. Sundial Media Group, a VC-backed company that owns Essence, says that the purchase will fill out its holdings across culture and commerce. Commerce is increasingly becoming an element of fashion and culture content companies.

Essence's parent to buy Refinery29 from Vice Media

The deal offers Refinery29 a lifeline.

www.axios.com/2024/04/18/essences-refinery29-vice-media-deal

A bit of an apology for the slight delay. I took up running during the pandemic, and I ran my first half-marathon this week. I have been training for the past four months, and it felt like such a great achievement to finish the race, much less finish it in one hour 41 minutes.

After years of outsourcing interactivity and community to social platforms, news organisations are launching multiple efforts to reclaim their relationships with their audiences. It comes almost a decade after news organisations threw in the towel, shut down their comment sections and focused on off-platform strategies for their audience development. As the executive editor at Reuters said at the time: “We felt that, since so much of the conversation around stories had gravitated toward social, that was the better place for that discourse to happen.”

However, with Meta making it clear that it won’t be promoting news either on Facebook or in its new Twitter competitor Threads and declining traffic from other social platforms, publishers have decided that it is time for them to rebuild their own communities. Comments are reappearing on media sites and apps as community software has become more sophisticated, services such as Coral, Hyvor and Viafoura. (Disclosure, these are all community integrations with Pugpig’s Bolt app platform - my day job.) These platforms use AI to help with moderation and have strategies to help support positive communities. As I know from my years working on engaged journalism projects at the BBC and The Guardian, good technology is part of supporting healthy communities, but the best technology cannot replace the active involvement of the editorial staff.

It is inspiring to see what innovative media companies are doing to reclaim the relationships with their audiences from the platforms. In the Philippines, the groundbreaking journalism group Rappler launched its own community apps on iOS, Android and on the web late last year. Rappler decided to do this for audience development and also to counter disinformation that has been rampant on social media platforms in the Philippines.

“The insidious manipulation of Big Tech – inciting fear, anger and hate for profit – has destroyed the public sphere and the crucial discussions needed for democracy. It’s time to build our shared reality and redefine civic engagement, to restore trust,” Rappler CEO and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa wrote in an article launching the apps.

Rappler has long been incredibly effective at leveraging technology to support its journalistic mission, but they have also married technology with smart community strategies, involving journalists in the conversations on the platform. “When you go into chat rooms and you see Maria or another Rappler reporter asking you what you think, there’s something there that builds trust,” Rappler Community Lead Pia Ranada told Esther Kezia Thorpe for Digital Content Next. Rappler’s success has been its commitment to journalism, its successful development of technology and its product thinking. They have used the community for crowdsourcing and have moved beyond news content, which has opened up revenue opportunities.

Rappler is not alone. I was fascinated to see Jeff Elgie of Canada’s Village Media announce that his group was launching a “local, community-powered social network”. He wrote:

“SPACES: a haven for local discussions, curated by those who know them best—local experts and professional journalists. Our platform is more than just a social network; it's a commitment to reviving the lost art of community engagement. By fostering safe, civil, and meaningful interactions, SPACES aims to strengthen the bonds between neighbours, reignite local passions, and rebuild the trust that has been eroded by impersonal and divisive platforms.”

Elgie’s Village Media has been building a local journalism network in Canada while the country’s local media has been declining just as rapidly as in the US. Spaces and Village Media is a company to watch, particularly if you work in the local journalism space.

Staying in Canada, the Toronto Star added comments across its site in 2022. They tied commenting to registration, which became a key part of their strategy to convert anonymous users to known ones and improve the community experience, according to an article on Poool’s Audiencers. It led to improvement in several KPIs, including:

• A 26% increase in new commenters

• A 72% increase in registrations and commenters now make up 25% of all registrations.

• And since commenting has been tied to registrations, there has been a 405% increase in logins.

They have since added new features that drive engagement from their commenters using Viafoura’s technology. When users login, they are alerted to responses to their comments, much as on social networks like Facebook. The volume of comments has increased by 60%, the replies to comments increased by 79% and time spent in the commenting section has increased by 30%.

Having spent more than half of my career working at the intersection of community, technology and community, it is exciting to see these new efforts. I was involved in several early audience engagement projects at the BBC, including the World Service’s Talking Point, answering crowd-sourced questions about the 2000 US election (using an early mobile webcasting kit), blogging about the 2004 US election and being on the launch team of the BBC’s World Have Your Say. When social media platforms led media companies to focus on off-platform activities, for a time it led to too much focus on building the audiences for those platforms without enough clear benefit for media companies. Certainly, some strategic leaders made sure that their off-platform efforts had direct benefits for their companies in terms of audience development and revenue, but for volume-focused companies, I saw those companies chase the whims of platforms without enough attention to how these efforts supported their own businesses.

The Toronto Star’s success shows how these new community efforts can drive important engagement outcomes, and Rappler is showing how strategic use of community can directly generate additional revenue. I am hopeful that these efforts can restore some of the damage done during the Platform Era.

Now for the weekly round-up. Isabelle Roughol highlights the lack of advancement opportunities for journalists and how this is leading to the flight of talent. She proposes that journalism companies develop a career ladder and communicate transparently how employees can climb it.

The management tool too many newsrooms lack

A career ladder is a roadmap to promotion.

www.isabelleroughol.com/lede/how-not-to-send-the-wrong-people-into-management

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen of the Reuters Institute makes an excellent point that many recent tech advances have failed to live up to the hype that they would transform society such as AR/VR, smart speakers and blockchain/Web3. The demand was dramatically less than the titans of tech led us to believe. He described the public’s approach as “AI pragmatism”, with a mix of concern, scepticism and yet a practical appreciation.

That’s the demand side, and Rasmus also considers the supply side. He says that news organisations are engaging in experimeation and incrementalism. Bookmark this one.

Axios thinks that original reporting and in-person events will become even more valuable in the age of AI.

Axios Sees A.I. Coming, and Shifts Its Strategy

“The premium for people who can tell you things you do not know will only grow in importance, and no machine will do that,” says Jim VandeHei, C.E.O. of Axios.

www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/business/media/axios-ai-strategy.html

With this view in mind, it was interesting to see Yahoo acquire Artifcact, the short-lived app from the co-founders of Instagram. Yahoo will not be bringing the app back but will instead use its underlying technology to power personalisation across its platform.

Yahoo announces the acquisition of Artifact, the news discovery platform created by Instagram cofounders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger | Yahoo Inc.

Through Artifact's AI platform, Yahoo will bring users more content tailored to their interests

www.yahooinc.com/press/yahoo-announces-the-acquisition-of-artifact-the-news-discovery-platform-created-by-instagram-cofounders-kevin-systrom-and-mike-krieger

Pain in media podcasting

Simon Owens explains why local podcasts have struggled. As he says and I know, building audiences for local podcasts is an uphill battle, and he says that local ad sales teams lack the sophistication to do the type of sales necessary to support them. It’s hard to sell ads when local podcasts struggle so much to build an audience. The podcast economy has a high head and a very shallow tail.

Why local podcasts are rarely sustainable

Most local news operators have either never launched a podcast or shuttered one after only a few months.

simonowens.substack.com/p/why-local-podcasts-are-rarely-sustainable

Simon points to SB Nation shutting down its podcast network which covered local sporting teams across the US, as well as The Athletic closing some of its local podcasts as well. We currently don’t have have a generic model for local podcast success, and from the time I worked for a local public media group in the US, I found that we had an easier time of building an audience in 2018 than we did a couple of years later.

SB Nation Podcast Network Being Shut Down

barrettsportsmedia.com/2024/04/04/sb-nation-podcast-network-being-shut-down

Chicago Public Media’s problems run deeper than the difficulty of local podcasts, but that is one element of their challenges. The Chicago public media group is suffering from a declining audience and advertising revenue as well as declines in philanthropic support, which is a major revenue item for stations like the groups WBEZ. The cuts also included drastic cuts in the broadcasters podcast unit. Podcats not tied to its news output were shuttered. If a big shop like WBEZ struggles with promoting its podcasts, it underlines challenges that the medium faces.

Chicago Public Media lays off 14 staffers, citing financial troubles

The move to terminate nearly 15% of 62 unionized content creators at WBEZ and four people at the Chicago Sun-Times comes amid declining fundraising, listenership and philanthropic support.

www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-public-media-lays-off-14-staffers/451b3f28-338c-45bc-98c2-742a7106ecf2

It is not all doom and gloom. In announcing a deal by Substack to allow podcastrers on its platform to distribute episodes on Spotify, Substack annnounced that its podcasters were generating $100 m of revenue a year, which was double the year before.

Substack now allows podcasters to sync and distribute their episodes to Spotify | TechCrunch

Substack announced on Thursday that it's launching a few new features for podcasters on its platform.

techcrunch.com/2024/04/11/substack-podcasters-sync-distribute-episodes-spotify/

Events and custom content are helping the start-up land major accounts including Microsoft, Verizon and Genesis. The young global news site already is having profitable months despite the generally challenging environment in media. Some 20% of Semafor’s audience are C-suite executives, and that is helping to drive their sales.

How Semafor's Rachel Oppenheim is prioritizing predictability in the ad business

Semafor's CRO discussed how she's leading the media start-up's sales team in achieving profitable months.

digiday.com/media/how-semafors-rachel-oppenheim-is-prioritizing-predictability-in-the-ad-business/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss

AI influencers have grown very popular in the Chinese market, and by adding tools to create them in TikTok, the hope is that the app can generate more revenue. All I have to say is what fresh hell is this!

TikTok May Enable Brands To Generate AI Bots to Pitch Products

The process would enable brands to create AI characters that sell their products in the app.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-may-soon-enable-brands-to-generate-ai-bots-to-pitch-products-on-thei/713027

What lessons can journalism organisations learn from an agricultural (and construction) equipment maker? Relationship marketing. It is a branch of marketing that focuses on creating long-term relationships with customers by focusing on their satisfaction. The goal is to build a deep sense of brand loyalty. For the media, this leads to the kind of retention that is a major goal of subscription businesses.

I grew up surrounded by the cornfields of Illinois. I helped my friends not far away in Wisconsin milk their dairy heard and collect eggs on their farm, and my mother’s farm in central Illinois is still in the family. Farmers where I grew up primarily bought International tractors, which were red, or John Deere, which were green. John Deere always seemed to garner the most loyalty, and you can still buy t-shirts, hats, posters and all kinds of things emblazoned with “I bleed green”. That’s the kind of loyalty John Deere elicits from farmers. Most journalism organisations would love to have such fanaticism amongst their customers.

Newspapers did at one point. Growing up west of Chicago, I grew up reading Mike Royko, who was one of the singular voices of Windy City journalism. He is one of many journalists on the Wall of Fame at another Chicago institution, the Billy Goat Tavern. The wall includes the late, great oral historian and radio host Studs Terkel. These were the influencers of their day. The Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times were the voices of the city that represented very different parts of Chicago society, but you developed a relationship with the voices in their pages, writing about news, society and culture. They were more than columnists shaping opinion. Royko and Studs were the voice of the people, often people who felt like they had very little voice in the machine politics of Chicago.

Relationships take nurturing, and businesses can damage those relationships. During my master’s degree, I studied how John Deere had damaged the relationship that it had created with customers by waging war with them over issues known as “right to repair”. At the time I did the research, farmers in the US were bidding up prices on tractors and harvesters from the 1980s because they were much cheaper and they could service them.More than that, Deere was shutting down licenced service centres, which meant that farmers couldn’t get authorised service in a timely fashion. John Deere made peace with the National Farmers Union in 2023. Their product mix and marketing had cost the company dearly in one of the most important competitive advantages they had: their enviable relationship with their customers.

Journalism companies have done their fair share to alienate their communities, especially those large groups that have bought up local titles and then presided over their decline. In the US, researchers tracking the expansion of news deserts now refer to some titles as ghost newspapers. They say that these titles no longer cover meetings or local breaking news. To me, the bigger issue is that they often have no editors and maybe one or possibly two reporters who are out in the community. Local journalists not only provide coverage, but they are the face of the newspaper. They are the first and most important line in building these relationships essential to building loyalty. As we wrote in the retention report with the Media Collective: successful retention programmes are about relationship management.

When I was a local editor, I tried to be as visible in present in the communities I served. I hosted meetings and tried to get to know people. I knew it was important because I was new to the area. As the job pressure increased, I became more tied to my office. Now, there are just so few journalists working for these newspapers that it is difficult to have time to build these relationships.

How do journalism organisations restore their relationship with their audiences? For much of my career, I have advocated or worked to bring journalism closer to the communities they serve, whether that is a geographical community or a community of interest. As Rob Golub says in this piece, “Our revenue models are strengthened when our news products are lathered in community love.”

Love your community and watch your revenue models do better - Poynter

Journalists should not be outsiders, watching curiously like aliens examining broadcasts from outer space. They are part of the community.

www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/community-journalism-successful-business-model

It goes back to what I wrote about earlier in the year, which is that information wants to be free, but it also wants to be expensive. In this context, providing a sense of connection in your community is a rare thing that people value. After the pandemic and with the increasing toxicity of social platforms, people crave positive connections. If you can help provide that in your community, it provides a tremendous value.

It is, of course, a balance. People will want news, but if you can do news plus community connections, you build the kind of relationships that build brand loyalty. I have done this kind of work before for large media brands including the BBC, the Guardian and Gannett. I think the one thing I would do differently is build the business model into the community model.

And now onto the links for this week.

The International Press Institute explores a theme that I have been writing about recently, which is how to uncover the unmet and latent needs of audiences. The newsletter includes how to do user interviews with loyal audiences to uncover things they wanted. “(T)hey can tell you when they read the news, what frustrates them about the news, and what makes them engage with your product.” And they said that questions that tapped into users’ emotional needs worked best.

Nick Petrie and I were talking about audience research over a pint recently, and he has some inspiring ideas in his most recent newsletter. News organisations need to invest much more in user research, and I think that academic institutions can do more to support news innovation by doing research for those outlets that can’t afford it. Nick says that news organisations need to be much more engaged with their audiences around novel news products. “Talk to them, show them new ideas, run diary studies, listen listen listen and then implement and listen some more,” he says. I could not agree with him more that we have a lot of territory to explore in terms of new concepts.

A good practical piece on using Google Discover as part of your SEO strategy, and I can tell you that from data we have from our customers at Pugpig, Discover drives subscriptions and registration because more relevant content than Google Search.

Boost Your Traffic in Google Discover

Explore the intricate world of Google Discover and elevate your content strategy with insights from top SEO experts.

moz.com/blog/boost-traffic-google-discover

How AI is entering newsrooms

Google is paying newsrooms, mostly small ones, to test a generative AI tool that can take a ‘seed’ source such as a city council meeting and generate a story from it. The reporter can then add their reporting and check the story. Google also sees a role for the tool to support audience development by generating newsletters and social posts. Alex Kantrowitz has more details.

Here’s How Google’s Generative AI for Newsrooms Product Will Work

Google wants to help journalists write stories with generative AI. Will it succeed?

www.bigtechnology.com/p/heres-how-googles-generative-ai-for

Zach Seward outlines his vision for AI at the New York Times. After reviewing where its application went awry, he laid out the values that will inform the use of AI at the Times. My view is that with any technology, it is important to consider the value that it delivers to the audience, whether that is better journalism through the unique abilities that AI brings to journalism such as finding patterns from images or unstructured text or an improved user experience. A smart piece to bookmark.

AI news that’s fit to print: The New York Times’ editorial AI director on the current state of AI-powered journalism

"I'm only speaking for myself today, but this certainly reflects how I'm thinking about the role AI could play in the Times newsroom and beyond."

www.niemanlab.org/2024/03/ai-news-thats-fit-to-print-the-new-york-times-editorial-ai-director-on-the-current-state-of-ai-powered-journalism

CrowdTangle was an incredibly useful service for both journalists and researchers. Researchers are trying to convince Meta to keep it running until after the large number of elections this year to help combat misinformation.

Researchers ask Meta to keep CrowdTangle online until after 2024 elections

The Mozilla Foundation and dozens of other research and advocacy groups are pushing back on Meta’s decisions to shut down its research tool, CrowdTangle, later this year.

www.engadget.com/researchers-ask-meta-to-keep-crowdtangle-online-until-after-2024-elections-211527731.html

Journalism has always been a stressful job, and the precarity and low pay have compounded that. The study by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri found that 84% of journalists said that burnout is affecting them personally. Those who took part say that four-day workweeks and management training could help. I was particularly interested in the relatively high percentage of people who had left journalism and said that management training would be helpful.

What to do about newsroom burnout? A new study offers ideas

A US study on burnout in journalism finds a global industry in crisis – and proposes solid solutions for newsrooms and educators – to combat this.

wan-ifra.org/2024/03/what-to-do-about-burnout-a-new-study-offers-ideas