Burnout, frustration at the lack of opportunities for advancement or growth, and the hollowing out of the industry: Journalism is facing a talent crisis. While some of the crisis is driven by the collapse of the business at multiple levels, some of it is self-inflicted. Yes, journalism is shedding staff at a furious pace, but it is also is driving people filled with passion for the mission and the work away by having rigid, outdated career paths. And it’s failing to take care of leaders exposed to incredible levels of stress as they must make painful decisions during what feels like endless rounds of cuts.

The loss of reporters

I don’t want to gloss over the loss of reporting talent as well. More than 8000 jobs in journalism disappeared last year across the US, UK and Canada, according to the Press Gazette. Not all of these positions were reporters, but the cuts were still deep and broad. More than 500 journalists were laid off in the US in January alone, according to Politico.

It’s grim, and this crisis has hit so many people. And I know how challenging it is to remain resilient in the face of this. I took a buyout from the Guardian in 2010 and joined my wife in her media consultancy. I had a fascinating role with the Media Development Investment Fund that only lasted a year in 2012. I joined Gannett as a regional executive editor in 2014. I survived the first six rounds of cuts large and small but not the seventh, and the position was eliminated in 2015. I went back to consulting and training before returning to full-time employment in 2018. I have been grateful for more stability since then. And now I work as the consulting director for Pugpig, a company that builds apps, websites and digital archives for publishers. I love helping publishers succeed, but I am wary about doing it inside the burning building.

An exodus of product talent

“Cats need to be herded. Cats don’t like being herded. How does that make the cat herder feel?” That is my tongue-in-cheek summary of my master’s dissertation. Kidding aside, the research looked at how the cross-functional coordination work - known formally as boundary-spanning - affected the professional well-being of product managers at news organisations. Were they thriving, surviving or burning out? Of the 17 product managers I interviewed for my research, five had left a role or the industry entirely not long before the research. Another data point to consider: Although the sample was evenly split between men and women, of the five who left the industry, four were women. That is a topic unto itself, which I’ll touch on in another newsletter.

I was reminded of the conversations I had with these amazing product managers this week when a community I’m part of was expressing frustration about the lack of advancement opportunities for product-minded people in the journalism industry. They told stories of being passed over for senior leadership positions in journalism groups because they hadn’t come up through the editorial side of the business. They believed that their cross-functional skills, particularly business skills, made them uniquely suited to meet the challenges facing news organisations. Like the subjects of my research, some were so frustrated that they were considering leaving the industry.

I won’t say more in detail about the conversations in that community, but I can add some of the findings from my research. One product manager had grown frustrated by what she referred to as HiPPO decision-making - strategies decided and driven not based on data and research but rather based on the highest-paid person’s opinion. It was just one example of a lack of alignment at levels of management above the product manager. Without that agreement on high-level goals, stresses built up on the product managers and they burnt out.

Market leaders like the New York Times have invested heavily in product talent, In other news organisations, managers need to understand that product managers who started as journalists still have aspirations to manage and have influence over wider parts of the business. There need to be clearer paths of progression for these valuable employees. Many of these product leaders have developed expertise across the business, and that would be valued and rewarded in other businesses. In my research, product managers naturally developed cross-functional relationships, many even before taking on formal product roles. Cross-skilling across editorial, commercial and technical roles should be formalised and used to train product managers and product-minded editors to become future leaders.

And now onto the media news for the week. AI is the topic of the year, and in this article, Ross Sleight, chief strategy officer at digital transformation specialists CI&T, talks about the changes that are coming in the industry. Google’s Gemini will change the search experience, and that is just one change coming in terms of interfaces. Changes in technology and the business will continue. New organisations need to do what so many are doing right now, experimenting with proofs of concept, working for internal alignment and adoption and scaling what works.

Ross Sleight on AI: Adapt now, as business models are under threat

“We always overestimate the short-term and underestimate the long-term impact of things. That's exactly what's happening with AI today. So, in the long

mediamakersmeet.com/ross-sleight-on-ai-adapt-now-as-business-models-are-under-threat

“Generative AI is an epochal development—less like social media and more like the advent of the internet itself. Much like that moment, this technology is transformative because it empowers people in how they create and find information.” This piece raises questions about how IP should be licenced and how business models will evolve. And it will allow for the rapid development of new products. This is a good piece that covers the complexities of the changes AI will bring.

AI is a big opportunity for the news media. Let’s not blow it. 

It’s been a rough start to the year for news media. Record layoffs in January have piled on top of years of decline at newspapers, especially at the local level. The explanations are diverse and complicated, but near the top is the impact of online platforms like social media—which have siphoned off eyeballs and advertisers. […]

www.cjr.org/analysis/ai-opportunity-news-media-lets-not-blow-it.php

WAN-IFRA, which I have had a long-standing relationship with, has just launched an AI programme for the year, and they highlighted how major media companies in Europe and Asia are using AI in their newsrooms. I like how Wang Yin of Mediacorp put it in saying that the Singaporean broadcaster was “making (AI) an assistant and not a replacement”. They are looking to use AI to make workflows more efficient. Smart.

How Schibsted and Mediacorp are deploying AI in the newsroom

2024-02-22. As AI becomes mainstream in everyday work, there are many editorial opportunities for newsrooms to discover. However, incorporating AI in your workflow can seem daunting. How does a newsroom begin this integration?

wan-ifra.org/2024/02/how-schibsted-and-mediacorp-are-deploying-ai-in-the-newsroom

The latest Reuters Digital News Report “suggests that knowing your audience is key and media publishers should target readers who are already considering paying for news”. If there is a theme to this newsletter, it is the call to focus on your audience and get close to them. Inside Story in Greece has 4000 paying members, and they connected with many of them through in-person workshops. Ah, the value of relationships.

Thriving without ads: How inside story sustains investigative journalism on subscription revenue - The Fix

As an investigative platform, it made sense for them to use a subscription model. The model gave them the freedom to report without any editorial interference and helped them gain credibility in the eyes of their readers.

thefix.media/2024/2/12/thriving-without-ads-how-inside-story-sustains-investigative-journalism-on-subscription-revenue

Google has launched a new tool called Offerwall that allows a new “range of options such as purchasing a subscription, viewing a video ad, sharing data, or making a micropayment for short-term access”.

Publishers test new Offerwall monetization tool from Google

Audiences unlock access to content by selecting from a range of options such as purchasing a subscription, viewing a video ad, sharing data, or making a micropayment for short-term access.

toolkits.com/publisher-monetization/publishers-test-google-offerwall

With Press Forward starting to name partner communities and states, Dan Kennedy says that there must be other models that reach smaller communities and smaller news start-ups.

Nonprofit local news needs to move past the large funder/ large project paradigm

Nieman Lab now has a reporter devoted to covering developments in local news. Sophie Culpepper previously worked at The Lexington Observer, one of a number of nonprofit news startups in the Boston …

dankennedy.net/2024/02/13/nonprofit-local-news-needs-to-move-past-the-large-funder-large-project-paradigm

My friend Adam Tinworth takes a look at the end of the era of platform dependency. “All this talk of “gatekeepers” and “platforms” disguises the brutal truth: we let other companies come between us and our audience.” Amen. During the platform era, we got focused on the needs of platforms rather than the needs of our audiences.

A manifesto for audience centricity in journalism

The doomsayers are out in force. Journalism is dead, they say. Just look at the job losses, the titles closing. But we’re just paying the price of bungling the last digital transition. Let’s not repeat that mistake with the coming one.

onemanandhisblog.com/2024/02/the-media-inflection-point-a-manifesto-for-audience-centricity

More media business turmoil: Buzzfeed to sell acquisitions and CNN stars face pay cuts

Anderson Cooper makes $20m a year, and Wolf Blitzer makes $15m a year. This level of salaries are unlikely to remain so high as CNN struggles and new CEO Mark Thompson reviews budgets. As The Wrap points out, Thompson is not accustomed to seven-figure on-air talent salaries, and the market simply won’t support these excessive salaries in the future.

Media has always been a star system, and TV is much more so. The median TV producer salary is $53,000, but small station salaries can be a lot less. Wolf Blitzer’s makes 283 times more than the average TV producer in the US. The cable TV news market won’t justify that premium going forward.

CNN to Slash Budgets, Star Salaries as Mark Thompson Digs In

New CNN boss Mark Thompson is ready to slash budgets and star salaries to overhaul the network, experts and former CNN staffers told TheWrap

www.thewrap.com/cnn-looks-to-slash-budgets-star-salaries-as-mark-thompson-digs-in

Two years after Buzzfeed went public to raise capital to go on an acquisition spree, it is now having to sell some of those acquisitions as it struggles to hold on, Sarah Fischer of Axios says.

With such a grim start to the year for media, some analysts are predicting an ‘extinction-level event’ for the media, and it is not hard to imagine that we’re facing this in the US and UK. Brian Morrissey sees this as the end of the mass media era. I think it will result in a painful winnowing. As the Reuters Institute has been saying for a couple of years now in their annual Digital News Report, we are in a “winner takes most” scenario in which a couple of major brands e.g. the New York Times in the US, capture a good chunk of news digital subscription revenue.

Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?

Ads are scarce, search and social traffic is dying, and readers are burned out. The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience.

www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/is-the-media-prepared-for-an-extinction-level-event

This sums up the Platform Era.

It is not a particularly cheery piece, but like any New Yorker piece, it has some wonderful lines. Clare Malone writes that many will be left out and the focus will be on audiences that will reliably pay - mostly old, rich men. “There will be idiocy and the enablement of rich idiots,” she writes.

But as with the extinction of the dinosaurs, this will give way to new life. Some publishers are serving lucrative niches, such as Politico or Punchbowl DC. In the UK, we’re seeing a new level of local experimentation. Of course, in buzzy Bristol, there is the Cable news co-op. The Manchester Mill is expanding after a £350,000 investment last year from CNN’s new leader, Mark Thompson, Nicholas Johnston the publisher of Axios and others. And just today, the former editor of the Journal in Newcastle announced a well-funded launch of a weekly subscription news site to cover northeast England.

All of this disruption reminds me Stewart Brand’s famous quote, which is rarely quoted in one. “On the one hand you have—the point you’re making Woz—is that information sort of wants to be expensive because it is so valuable—the right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information almost wants to be free because the costs of getting it out is getting lower and lower all of the time. So you have these two things fighting against each other.”

For most of the internet era, the focus has been on the information wants to be free part of the quote. The casual use of the quote suffers both from the dual meaning of free in English and also from a lack of deeper analysis. Brand was saying that distribution costs were going to decrease in the digital era. The consolidation of local newspapers in the 1950s meant that newspapers became local monopolies. Print distribution became a valuable local business for newspapers. Brand was saying that the internet would render that print distribution monopoly irrelevant.

Let’s focus on the other part of the quote. Information also wants to be expensive. Yes, this means that certain types of information like the financial data that flows through Bloomberg terminals or the financial news in the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times remain extremely valuable. What is rare and valuable? That can be information, or it can be other things. It can be a sense of belonging, which is why the intersection of media and community has been a major focus of my career. Community and belonging in short supply, and those outlets or individual journalists and creators who provide that are doing quite well. Think of your personal passions and think about the creators who inform and entertain you and make you feel a sense of community. Think of how valuable that is to you.

That is one half of the equation. My editor at my college newspaper, Theo Francis, who now works at the Wall Street Journal, told me how a relative framed the other half of the equation. You know you can create value. But can you capture it? If you are starting a new media venture or looking to remake the one you have, you have to think about how you capture value.

Speaking of capturing value, the New York Times has been building a formidable subscription bundle. Puzzles have been an important part of their bundle, and I can tell you from my day job that puzzle users are a small but deeply engaged segment of the audience. With all of that great engagement, they are now looking to earn revenue by selling advertising around games.

With Games Advertising, The New York Times Is Pitching Habit

With millions of daily users and news nowhere in sight, the publisher taps new advertising categories.

www.adweek.com/media/new-york-times-games-advertising

The New York Times is looking to innovate how they sell advertising in the face of ongoing declines in the revenue source. Fortunately, they have continued to grow their subscription numbers.

The New York Times expects ad revenue to continue to decline in 2024

The New York Times' Q4 2023 earnings report showed the company isn’t entirely immune from the volatile ad market. In fact, the company doesn’t expect to improve in the first quarter of this year.

digiday.com/media/the-new-york-times-expects-ad-revenue-to-continue-to-decline-in-2024

Last year, most publishers finally realised that the Platform Era was finally over, but some publishers still see value in using social media as part of their audience acquisition strategy. In this INMA case study, Argentina’s ViaPaís pivoted after Facebook killed Instant Articles. But even before the end of Instate Articles, they found that awareness on social media wasn’t translating to traffic back to their website to generate revenue. They decided to tease content to bring more visitors to their owned properties, and true to the trends of the TikTok era, they are leaning into short videos.

With removal of Instant Articles, VíaPaís reinvents audience engagement strategy

After Facebook’s removal of Instant Articles, VíaPaís re-engaged audiences by teasing content on social media and doubling down on its video strategy.

www.inma.org/blogs/value-content/post.cfm/with-removal-of-instant-articles-viapais-reinvents-audience-engagement-strategy

Building on the theme of attracting more traffic to your owned properties, my former Gannett colleague Amalie Nash writes about the need to build more direct traffic. It is why a few major news sites that have remained as destinations have continued to enjoy success.

Building direct traffic is more important than ever for news publishers

Research from the Reuters Institute/Oxford University backs up the need for news publishers to create content for social media, despite the decline in referrals from Big Tech companies like Facebook. Yet, the research also says 77% of news publishers say they are working harder on building direct links to their platforms.

www.inma.org/blogs/newsroom-initiative/post.cfm/building-direct-traffic-is-more-important-than-ever-for-news-publishers

We have a stark warning from ITN in the UK. Deepfake videos of their high profile presenters are making the rounds on social media.

ITN sounds alarm over fake online content featuring Robert Peston, Mary Nightingale and others

Deepfake video Mary Nightingale newsreader video sees ITN sound the alarm over a growing problem on social media.

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/broadcast/deepfake-mary-nightingale

WAN-IFRA CEO Vincent Peyrègne shared this excellent report on AI and journalism. It’s a great long read for the weekend.

Artificial Intelligence in the News: How AI Retools, Rationalizes, and Reshapes Journalism and the Public Arena

Download the pdf here. Executive Summary Despite growing interest, the effects of AI on the news industry and our information environment — the public arena — remain poorly understood. Insufficient attention has also been paid to the implications of the news industry’s dependence on technology companies for AI. Drawing on 134 interviews with news workers […]

www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/artificial-intelligence-in-the-news.php

I’ll write more about this next week because I think that the picture is more complex than simple predictions of “peak subscription”, but Axios serves up several data points.

Last week, I wrote that one of the two guiding principles was that journalism needed new products for new realities and the new audience behaviours. For much of the past decade, a dominant strand of audience and product development reflected the fact that audiences had flocked to social media platforms. In 2023, there was a realisation that renting an audience brought profound risks. The threat had been there all of the time. I had worked for newspaper groups that saw a 40% drop in traffic overnight when Facebook rolled out a new algorithm. And Facebook made it clear that it was de-emphasising news over the last few years. Last year, long-simmering issues came to a head.

Suddenly, there was an emphasis on renewing direct relationships with audiences. At a national or international level, the product mix was there: Newsletters, podcasts and apps. As I say in the Media Bulletin that I write for Pugpig, the Platform Era has given way to the Push Era. Instead of focusing on attracting a large, loosely connected rented audience using social networks, publishers are now focused on building relationships with audiences using content that they had opted receive via push, in their inboxes, their podcast apps and all on their lock screens. Here’s an interview with FT Strategies head of insights about these trends.

“The industry must embrace product & revenue diversification to survive”: FT Strategies’ George Montagu on the importance of content verticals

In a little over six weeks' time, Mx3 Barcelona will take place in the Catalan capital. Alongside a world class agenda, a number of premium event partners

mediamakersmeet.com/the-industry-must-embrace-product-revenue-diversification-to-survive-ft-strategies-george-montagu-on-the-importance-of-content-verticals

Let’s talk about local news. My journalism career started in a local newsroom, the Hays Daily News in Kansas, and a decade ago, I returned to local journalism, managing small newspapers for Gannett in Wisconsin. I love community journalism because I love being a part of and serving communities. But we all know that it is in crisis.

One of my favourite innovation frameworks is Clay Christensen’s “jobs to be done”. As Clay said: “If The New York Times doesn’t understand why I might choose to ‘hire’ its product in certain circumstances and why I might choose something else in others, its data about me or people like me is unlikely to help it create any new innovations for me.”

As a journalist, my professional values tell me that people ‘hire’ what I do because they want to be informed. Dmitry Shiskin’s user needs model accepted the reality that audiences were ‘hiring’ the BBC’s journalism for a range of jobs they wanted to do: update me (inform), keep me on trend, inspire me, amuse me, educate me and give me perspective. The analysis found that the BBC World Service was producing too much “update me” content and underproducing other forms of content. It helps deliver what product leaders call product-market fit. It does the job that audiences need doing.

Let me give you an example. People move around a lot more than they used to. Having moved across the Atlantic three times now, I’m this person. The jobs that newcomers need to be done are different from the jobs of someone who has lived in your community for years or their entire lives. One of the products that has been developed by local newsrooms to cater to these newcomers is a welcome email series. It helps them understand It’s free and starts a relationship with those new community members, and it starts the relationship so that they might hire you for other jobs that they need to do.

Good journalists know their communities deeply. To build products that do the jobs that communities need to be done, journalists need to deploy that knowledge differently. What are your community’s needs that journalists’ capabilities can uniquely satisfy? Ask them, and then reflect on what you can do. (And check out human-centred design if you need a process.)

This will go beyond articles and with good reason. Meta is not going to hold an event about key issues in your community. They aren’t going to create a podcast about local school or amateur sports. Local media innovators will have to balance effort, impact and financial return with all of these products. And one key thing that I learned is that while operating at a small, local level allows you to be nimble, you will always have to be thinking about sustainability - not only in financial terms but also in human terms. One of the lessons from my master’s degree is Michael Porter’s line that managers are the guardians of trade-offs. Too many managers do not wrestle with trade-offs. That lack of focus is never successful, and it comes at a high cost to the people who work for them.

And now into the round-up. With social media declining as a source of traffic for news sites, journalists at a non-profit newsroom got creative in coming up with new ways to reach audiences. Students at New York University’s Studio 20 masters program decided to go low-tech to reach older adults. They leveraged a marketing service from the US Postal Service that allowed them target specific areas affected by the stories that they were covering. And they could target areas “30 times smaller than that covered by the Facebook ad”. They also ran an A/B test by running a Facebook ad. They found that the audiences who came from the postcard promotions were more engaged. Fascinating!

How to meet readers where they are (when where they are is offline)

"Traffic to news sites through social media has dropped in recent years, and over half of adults over 65 don’t use social media at all. We wanted to build a way to get The City’s service journalism to New Yorkers who wouldn’t otherwise see it."

www.niemanlab.org/2024/01/how-to-meet-readers-where-they-are-when-where-they-are-is-offline

Did Sports Illustrated need to fail? “…interviews with shareholders and current and former employees suggest that Arena missed the licensing payment by choice, not because it didn’t have the money to make it”. Read on.

Sports Illustrated’s $10 Million Mystery

There was plenty of cash to keep the venerable sports magazine alive. Why did its parent company, Arena Group, choose not to?

nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/01/sports-illustrateds-usd10-million-mystery.html

Apple wants to use news to train its LLM, and it’s offering better deals and terms than other AI groups. But as INMA says, news publishers are wary.

Apple approaches some news publishers with multi-year, multi-million AI deals

Unlike other Big Tech companies, Apple is asking permission and offering to pay news media companies to use content to train its version of GenAI. News publishers, though, have mixed feelings about the move.

www.inma.org/blogs/Digital-Platform-Initiative/post.cfm/apple-approaches-some-news-publishers-with-multi-year-multi-million-ai-deals

The Messenger was killed

News came out last week that The Messenger was shutting down. It was a surprise to no one who was watching it closely. Digital media veterans including Brian Morrissey and Nieman Lab’s Josh Benton roasted The Messenger’s owner. The model was based on wistfulness for not only a pre-internet media landscape but a pre-cable TV world and a trying to run a digital strategy that might have made sense in 2014 but not at all in 2024. He managed to blow through $50m in nine months. It was a disaster from the start with editorial leadership defecting almost immediately after launch when it became clear that the site was more content farm than a hearkening back to some vision of the glory days of journalism.

“Economic headwinds”? No, The Messenger’s flop is the result of one man’s blindness to his own bad ideas

The flaws in the site's strategy were highly predictable (and repeatedly predicted). But Jimmy Finkelstein's muddled nostalgia has still left hundreds of people out of a job.

www.niemanlab.org/2024/02/economic-headwinds-no-the-messengers-flop-is-the-result-of-one-mans-blindness-to-his-own-bad-ideas

Brian Morrissey said in his Rebooting newsletter:

Receipts

Standing on business

www.therebooting.com/receipts

Platform updates: Poynter calculates how much Meta and Google owe news publishers and validate your email your domain now!

Two researchers have calculated just how much Google and Meta have profited from news publishers, and they offer up a robust defence of their methods and explain what it means.

Why Google and Meta ‘owe’ news publishers - Poynter

Our working paper found that the tech giants owe publishers billions of dollars. Here’s how we arrived at that conclusion and what it means.

www.poynter.org/business-work/2024/why-google-and-meta-owe-news-publishers

If you are a publisher and send more than 5000 email messages a day, you need to validate your domains or your emails will go straight to spam for Gmail and Yahoo users. And this isn’t just these platforms being bullies. Email fraud has spiked.

Navigating the new 2024 email guidelines: A roadmap for Gmail & Yahoo

Today, new guidelines have been introduced by two of the largest email service providers, Gmail and Yahoo. The changes will require email senders to prove

mediamakersmeet.com/navigating-the-new-2024-email-guidelines-a-roadmap-for-gmail-yahoo

My wife publishes newsletters on Substack so we have had plenty of conversations about whether or not to abandon that platform that has been described as having a “Nazi Bar problem”. In a well-reasoned piece, The Fix’s David Tvrdon explains that for people feeling ethically uncomfortable about Substack there are other choices out there that make it easier to leave.

Why I left Substack, a European perspective. And the surprising alternative that works - The Fix

It just gotten more difficult to run a free newsletter if you take into account how platform approach content moderation

thefix.media/2024/02/01/why-i-left-substack-a-european-perspective-and-the-surprising-alternative-that-works

Over the last two weeks, I have written about the crisis in media, particularly local journalism, and ways to address it. For much of my career, I have worked with two assumptions:

1. We needed to create new products for the new ways that people consumed and interacted with media.

2. We needed to develop a new relationship with “the people formerly known as the audience”, as Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis and Dan Gillmor talked about this shift in the early part of this century.

   The first decade of this century was heady days for digital media innovation, and the media is launching a new wave of community strategies as publishers and broadcasters seek to reclaim their relationships with audiences and drive higher revenue as those relationships develop and deepen. Reflecting on community strategies and the media for Pugpig’s Media Bulletin, I believe that we’ve seen three eras of community strategies in media.

The first era: Forums, blogs and podcasts

The first era began in the late 1990s and early 2000s with forums, blogs and the first generation of podcasts. Quite a few media organisations, like the BBC and the Guardian (I worked at both during this time - the BBC from 1998 to 2006, and the Guardian from 2006 to 2010), launched blogs and podcasts. I wrote a guide to blogs and blogging for the BBC that supported those efforts. At the BBC, we often used Jeff Jarvis’ phrase that news had become a conversation, and as public service media, it was our civic and missional responsibility to take part in those conversations, whether we initiated them or not.

I was asked to write the guide to blogging because I had written a blog for the BBC during the 2004 US presidential election, but I had been involved in very early experiments in audience engagement dating back to the 1990s, with Talking Point at the World Service, which allowed audiences from around the world to pose questions to newsmakers. During the 2000 election, we took this a step further. We took questions from the BBC’s global audience and hosted webcasts using a portable satellite data uplink allowing voters and experts to answer those questions.

When I was writing the guide to blogging, it was the beginning of the rise of media critics who referred to the BBC and other traditional outlets as the “lame-stream media”. Defensiveness led many media outlets not to engage with the critics, but I did, often directly. When I was covering Tony Blair’s visit to George W. Bush’s ranch. I referred to a local news story jokingly discussing cow tipping. An angry reader wrote to us assuming that I was a member of some coastal elite who wasn’t aware of farming. My mother grew up on a farm, which is still in the family, and I grew up helping friends on their dairy farms. I responded directly to the reader in good humour about my farming experience. It broke the ice, and I had a wonderful exchange, converting a critic into a supporter. Trust is based on relationships, not just professional standards.

However, during this first era of community strategies, many other publishers simply added comments to the bottom of their articles. Journalists wrote and audiences were consigned to the comment sections, which often became toxic and combative. Many media outlets didn’t adjust their editorial strategies to this new interactive era. It reinforced the us vs. them strategy. It didn’t deliver increased engagement or increased revenue because moderation costs often outweighed any benefit.

The second era: The rise of social platforms

The second era shifted community efforts from publishers’ and broadcasters’ websites to social platforms. It seemed to make the most sense to follow where the audience was, and audiences had moved en masse to myriad social platforms before settling on Facebook’s platforms and, to a lesser extent, Twitter (well and now TikTok).

As I said in the Media Bulletin:

“Eventually, those early on-site community projects were shuttered. NPR, Reuters, Recode, The Verge and USA Today closed their comment sections. As NPR’s public editor said of the decision, “The audience itself has decided for NPR, choosing to engage much more via social media, primarily on Twitter and Facebook, rather than in the NPR.org comments section.” Unfortunately, outsourcing their relationships to audiences on social platforms has had disastrous effects on publishers.”

The Third Era: Membership and Community

Now publishers and broadcasters have a renewed interest in membership and community. While NPR - US public radio - has had a membership strategy since its inception, the model is expanding, from small local start-ups to large publishers. For community outlets and public media, membership means a sense of belonging and connecting to the mission. But membership can also mean exclusivity, which is what Elle is trying to do with its membership model with its Collective. Hearst and DC Thomson are rolling out several different approaches to community depending on the product. DC Thomson’s newspapers are leaning into the nature of community and place. It’s Stylist title is focusing on activism and empowerment for the women who read it.

For news publishers, I believe relationships are key to responding to the decline in trust in journalism. Trust is not abstract, and it is built on genuine engagement between publishers and their audiences.

The challenges are strategic, cultural and organisational we well as material. Strategically and culturally, organisations will need to develop clear propositions and the capabilities - editorially and technically - to carry out these strategies. Organisationally, it will be a challenge to develop and find the talent as well as reconfigure their operations to manage these strategies. And lastly, it will be a material challenge. It takes time and investment, and those are in short supply in media now.

The technology has matured with services like Coral and Viafoura, which leverage AI to ease the management of comments and offer new ways for publishers to interact with audiences.

Viafoura has some excellent data on why the effort is worth it. They say that audiences actively engaged in comment communities are six times more likely to subscribe. It proves the hypothesis that drove a lot of original engagement strategies - that engagement would lead to more time on-site and a deeper relationship with the media outlet. Moreover, with reader revenue now a meaningful part of many publishers’ and broadcasters’ strategies, this engagement translates to revenue. Greater trust and higher revenue are the key KPIs that will measure the success of these strategies.

Now onto the key media stories from the past week. David Cohn has worked at the intersection of media and technology for years now, and at this moment of immense change in media, he riffs on the environmental three Rs - reduce, recycle and reuse. says that publishers need to reduce reliance on platforms - the issue of an owned or rented audience. Read on to find out how he thinks recycling and reuse are relevant to publishers.

The Fix spoke to Mattia Peretti about his career river - the unique path professionally that he has taken. From a local radio station in Italy to LSE working with JournalismAI, he talks about that professional journey. This is just one bit of insight from the piece: “A helpful distinction Peretti suggests is discerning ‘knowledge tasks’ from ‘language tasks’. Current generative AI systems do a poor job producing content just based on prompt, but they are much better with repackaging existing content, meaning “language tasks’”.

AI consultant Mattia Peretti on his “career river” and how newsrooms should approach AI - The Fix

We spoke Mattia Peretti, AI consultant and learning experience designer, about his approach to his career and advice for newsrooms on approaching generative AI.

thefix.media/2024/01/26/ai-consultant-mattia-peretti-on-his-career-river-and-how-newsrooms-should-approach-ai

One of the major changes this year will be the end of third-party cookies. The Press Gazette says that publishers must fight this new move by Google. During a time when digital advertising revenue has fallen dramatically for many publishers, the PG says that this will only make the situation worse.

Why news publishers should fight to stop rollout of Google Privacy Sandbox

Google Privacy Sandbox: Why publishers should fight to stop rollout of technology which will further erode ability to fund journalism.

pressgazette.co.uk/marketing/why-news-publishers-should-fight-to-stop-rollout-of-google-privacy-sandbox

For one of the UK’s largest publishers, Reach, they have announced a strategy to respond to the end of third-party cookies:

• First-party data collected through its customer value strategy

• Contextual advertising through its in-house AI-powered tool Mantis

• And industry ID and cookie-less solutions.

Reach reveals 'three pillars' that prepare it for end of third-party cookies

Reach digital director Terry Hornsby explains three pillars of advertising strategy for 2024 which prepare publisher for post-cookies world.

pressgazette.co.uk/marketing/reach-digital-third-party-cookies

A very bad start to 2024 for US media

Last week was particularly grim for US publishers, the LATimes laid off 20 percent of its staff. There was a strike at Condé Nast due to the expectation of job cuts while the company is engaged in contract negotiations. And there is a story about how all of the turmoil is making journalism students concerned about their professional opportunities

Tuesday was a bleak day for the media industry - Poynter

And journalists at several Condé Nast publications struck over proposed job cuts. It was a bleak day for the media industry.

www.poynter.org/commentary/2024/los-angeles-times-time-magazine-national-geographic-news-layoffs

The Media Apocalypse

Condé Nast and other publishers stare into the abyss.

nymag.com/intelligencer/article/conde-nast-pitchfork-gq-layoffs.html

Months of layoffs and controversy unearth old concerns, anxieties in some journalism students - Daily Trojan

The Israel-Hamas war has drawn students’ attention to the challenges of the journalism industry.

dailytrojan.com/2024/01/25/months-of-layoffs-and-controversy-unearth-old-concerns-anxieties-in-some-journalism-students

Nic Newman at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism has released his annual trends and predictions report based on interviews with 300 media leaders from more than 50 countries and territories around the world.

• Less than half of the leaders - editors, CEOs and digital executives - (47%) say they are confident about journalism’s prospects this year, and 12% say that they have low confidence.

• Chartbeat shows that traffic is down from Facebook by 48% to news sites, and two-thirds of the leaders said that they are concerned about this sharp decline.

• More than that, there are concerns that search-generative experiences and AI chatbots pose additional threats to traffic to news sites.

• While 2023 ended with Axel Springer striking a big deal with OpenAI, half of those surveyed thought that little money would come from AI companies for licencing. And almost a third thought the major cash would go to big players (like Springer).

• A majority (56%) of publishers were looking to leverage AI for back-end news automation. The other applications for AI include better recommendations (37%) and commercial uses (28%).

• More publishers will stop the presses this year.

Some leaders believe that they can or must build direct relationships with their audiences to break their dependency on the platforms. Much of this isn’t new, but Nic has quantified the level of anxiety amongst media leaders. And while some publishers feel so stung by the loss of referrals that they are questioning their past reliance on platforms, other publishers are looking for new platforms including TikTok and WhatsApp to reach audiences. I think that there is a middle ground in which platforms are understood as ways to raise awareness of your brand but that they are understood as a part of a larger conversion process to a range of conversion goals including newsletter signups, registration and subscription.

Reading this, I have concerns. Publishers are looking to create more video, more newsletters and more podcasts. Much of this feels like publishers are going back to the well, turning to traffic-driving formats as the traffic from search and social dries up.

Advertising was soft in 2023, and 80% of those surveyed will continue to invest in subscriptions and membership, more than either traditional display or native advertising. The survey also hinted that subscription growth is slowing.

It sounds like another year of upheaval in journalism. A year full of elections will drive traffic, but it’s unclear if that traffic will translate into more revenue or more trust.

The first story below is Nic’s write-up about the report, and the following are two summaries.

Facebook traffic to news sites 48pc down in 2023 - Journalism News from HoldtheFrontPage

Publishers fear further falls in social traffic in year ahead

www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2024/news/facebook-traffic-to-news-sites-fell-by-48pc-in-2023-report-reveals

News media trends for 2024: AI, Whatsapp, newsletters and video among focus areas

News media trends and predictions for 2024: News leaders tell Reuters Institute survey what their focus areas are for year ahead,

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/news-media-trends-and-predictions-2024

Building on the responses from the survey, big publishers and broadcasters will seek leverage to strike deals with AI firms. Exhibit A is Fox trying to use blockchain to help media companies keep track of how their content is being used. The system is designed to empower media companies to manage how LLMs use their content.

Here is OpenAI’s response to the New York Times’ lawsuit. It sounds conciliatory, and the company says that it wants to strike a deal with the Times and other media companies. However, they also accuse the Times of manipulating its system to create the ‘regurgitation’ that the newspaper cited in its suit, and they say that they are working to eliminate the LLM regurgitating aka copying/plagiarising content.

OpenAI and journalism

We support journalism, partner with news organizations, and believe The New York Times lawsuit is without merit.

openai.com/blog/openai-and-journalism

OpenAI launches a store to make it easier to create custom AI chatbots.

OpenAI Launches ‘GPT Store’ to Provide More Specialized AI Assistants

The GPT Store will feature custom AI chatbots to assist with specific tasks.

www.socialmediatoday.com/news/openai-launches-gpt-store-to-provide-more-specialized-ai-assistants/704258

I did something rare over the holidays. I took a break and downed tools so that I could start 2024 recharged and ready for everything that this year will bring. I hope that all of you had some downtime as well.

My downtime has left me in a reflective mood. 2023 was a challenging year for people in the media, and back in the US where I’m from, tens of thousands of people working in the media lost their jobs last year. Mark Stenberg of Adweek called it the “worst year in digital media”. And in the UK, where I live now, friends of mine lost or left their jobs.

I’m a survivor and so will all of you talented folks, even though it’s stressful and extremely challenging. I survived the dot.com crash, the one that wiped out a wave of early internet companies but also wiped out the careers of an early wave of digital journalists. I know so many incredibly smart young journalists like myself who lost their jobs and couldn’t find work in the industry because it didn’t value their skills at the time. A few years later, they would be desperate for staff with their skills. Increasing precarity has been the trajectory of the industry. I worked for the BBC for eight years, and half the time there were cuts. I worked at The Guardian for three and a half years, and half the time there were cuts. I worked for Gannett for 21 months, and as I have told many friends, I survived the first six rounds of cuts but not the seventh. It has been a lot of turmoil, and it has not always been easy to keep my confidence.

Of course, the other challenge for me and so many others is a loss of professional identity. Who are we outside of newsrooms? How will we ever find a job with such purpose and meaning again? Trust me when I say that there are a lot of ways to use your skills to do meaningful work. My career has been a wild ride and a fascinating journey and will continue to be. If you know of someone who needs to talk, point them in my direction.

Now onto the new year. 2024 is already upon us. The Press Gazette has a good overview of the challenges that media leaders are focused on in this new year and how they are looking to respond. The challenges are familiar: loss of advertising revenue, loss of social and search traffic and anxiety over AI. I think a lot of this can be summed up by a renewed sense of ownership, with the shift to first-party data and owned platforms and owning relationships with audiences

How can news media bounce back in 2024? 18 leaders share their insights

News leaders share predictions for 2024: Bosses from likes of Guardian, Reach, Business Insider and Bloomberg on challenges and opportunities

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/news-predictions-2024-challenges-opportunities

Keeping our heads about AI

I’m not sure that I agree with the Press Gazette that the New York Times is seeking the “destruction of OpenAI and Microsoft LLMs”. I think they are rightfully offended by the lifting of their content. Plagiarism is a cardinal sin in US journalism, and the NY Times has found a wealth of examples of OpenAI copying and pasting their content. The New York Times want to be compensated for the theft of their content.

The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work

Millions of articles from The New York Times were used to train chatbots that now compete with it, the lawsuit said.

www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-times-open-ai-microsoft-lawsuit.html

This is part of the response to LLMs by the industry. In my professional journey, I have seen too many folks treat technology as magic. They think what technology does is the realm of Harry Potter. It is much more like The Matrix: It is a logical system and sets of tools. AI offers up many operational benefits for many industries, including media. It can optimise front-page displays and tailor them for each known user. It can create personalised newsletters. It can support consistency of metadata, which can support improved discovery.

AI should be understood for the operational, not magical, gifts it brings

Don’t let the headlines fool you: Generative AI is more tactical and operational than organisation changing. Still, the exploration and possibilities — with expectations managed — are exciting for news media companies.

www.inma.org/blogs/smart-data-initiative/post.cfm/ai-should-be-understood-for-the-operational-not-magical-gifts-it-brings

And my friend, Gina Chua at Semafor, has some other advice on how to use data and AI. He experimented building very focused chatbots to summarise reporters’ notebooks, develop interactive experiences and explain technical expertise to “resource-strapped newsrooms”. He came away impressed..

How less, not more, data, could help journalism | Semafor

Restricting the information that chatbots can access may be the quickest way to build useful AI-powered tools for journalism.

www.semafor.com/article/12/19/2023/how-ai-could-help-journalism-with-less-data

And now onto other topics. Puzzles and quizzes can build habit and engagement. Here are some examples of how to do that.

In the middle of the last decade, I used to hold up theSkimm and its newsletter-based business to help millennial women get informed quickly as an example of a great model. But like so many other millennially-focused outlets, it hasn’t aged well and continues to struggle to diversify.

theSkimm Cuts 10% of Staff, Its Third Round of Layoffs This Year

The reductions come amid a broader push from the publisher to diversify its business

www.adweek.com/media/theskimm-layoffs-2023

It is interesting to see how many newspapers are getting into TV, not just video but TV. The Boston Globe (a customer of Pugpig, where I work) is just the latest example.

The Boston Globe expands reach with TV show, investigative journalism and more - Editor and Publisher

The Boston Globe is evolving how they report and deliver the news and expanding geographically and technologically to serve their loyal readers and reach today's more diverse audiences. The Globe has focused on building its digital presence for many years, resulting in more than 245,000 digital-only subscribers. And in April 2023, the Globe launched "Boston Globe Today," a 30-minute news broadcast jointly produced with the New England Sports Network (NESN).

www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/the-boston-globe,247279

Podcasting is still attracting money. What is interesting about Podimo is that is operating in non-English markets - Denmark, Norway, Germany and Spain. Will this investment help it to break out into larger markets? (Colour me sceptical.)

Podimo raises €44M to turn up the volume on its Netflix-style podcasting platform | TechCrunch

We are fast approaching half a billion people listening to podcasts, and today one of the independent players hoping to cash in on that activity has

techcrunch.com/2023/12/21/podimo-raises-e44m-to-turn-up-the-volume-on-its-netflix-style-podcasting-platform

I’m not quite ready to do a year-in-review piece, but when I do, there is a lot to reflect on over the past year. During my career in digital media and working with digital media projects, there have been few years where I’ve seen as much change. Despite the job losses this year and the change, I think it’s a little more hopeful because we do have models and tactics to build successful media businesses. More on that in that in the year-end wrap. Now onto the stories..

Data-driven optimisation is one of the major positive results of product-driven cultures at news organisations, and INMA has a case study from Sweden of how VK used a “data-driven, iterative process” to improve its click-through rate.

VK Media increased CTR by 130% “one step at a time”

VK Media’s front page was working well, but the article recommendations shown below the article on the article pages were not generating much engagement. It began A/B testing and compared clicks in its article recommendations to article pageviews over time to evaluate how it was doing.

www.inma.org/blogs/ideas/post.cfm/vk-media-increased-ctr-by-130-one-step-at-a-time

As I said, we have some great tactics on how to increase revenue in media, and on the journalism side, WAN-IFRA has a great rundown of the stories that it has done about reader revenue. From paid newsletters to tactics to grow subscriptions, WAN-IFRA has some great case studies.

Ten of our top reader revenue stories from 2023 - WAN-IFRA

2023-12-14. To close out this year, we are taking a look back at some of our most popular reader revenue related articles from 2023. These stories offer good lessons to be learned, reviewed and re-considered, and we’re pleased to see that they come from many different countries around the world as well.

wan-ifra.org/2023/12/ten-of-our-top-reader-revenue-related-stories-from-2023

In my day job at Pugpig, we write a weekly newsletter, and we have a mutual admiration society with Madeleine and Marion from The Audiencers, which has excellent pieces about audience development, digital media transformation and subscription optimisation. A great insight in this piece is to allow for the novelty effect to wear off so that you can see how things have settled down into discernable patterns. As we have said at the Pugpig Media Bulletin, make sure to test only one variable at a time.

4 learnings about A/B testing after 5 years working on Paid Content at ZEIT ONLINE | The Audiencers

A/B testing is essential to being successful in the subscription business. Whether Spotify, Netflix, Disney or The New York Times - everything is tested

theaudiencers.com/operations/4-learnings-about-a-b-testing-after-5-years-working-on-paid-content-at-zeit-online

I will write more about this in my year-end wrap, but it’s been a tough year both in the US and the UK for folks working in media. And at the end of the year, I had a few friends who were affected by layoffs. Adweek’s Mark Stenberg looks back at the job losses in the US and how many players it affected, particularly in the internet space. And he writes how advertisers are now shifting away from the internet as a channel.

The worst year in digital media history

More than 20,000 jobs have been lost

medialyter.substack.com/p/the-worst-year-in-digital-media-history?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Another theme this year has been regulators battles with tech giants in Australia, Canada, the EU and US states. Canada recently struck a deal with Google for payments to news publishers, and now Australia is looking to share the details of the deals that tech giants have made with news publishers there.

Tech giants could be forced to share secret news deals under Australia’s media bargaining code

New legislation will help ensure sustainability of public interest journalism, Labor says

www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/18/tech-giants-could-be-forced-to-share-secret-news-deals-under-australias-media-bargaining-code

This is data for the UK TV industry, and while I haven’t heard similar figures for newspapers and magazines, I can’t believe that it is any rosier. However, the UK market has its own unique headwinds that aren’t the same for others.

Even a drop of festive Bublé can’t halt £150m slump in Christmas TV advertising

As a cash-strapped festive season looms, brands are reining in their spending on traditional broadcast campaigns

www.theguardian.com/media/2023/dec/17/even-a-drop-of-festive-buble-cant-halt-150m-slump-in-christmas-tv-advertising

Content discovery is a major issue in TV and podcasts, but improved discovery can also support improved engagement with text content. And AI personalisation of newsletters and homepages is an opportunity for publishers to apply AI.

AI-powered personalization will boost revenue in new ways

AI-powered personalization is discovery's future. It will enable content distribution optimization and conversational voice discovery.

nscreenmedia.com/ai-powered-personalization-revenue

The big news this week was German media giant Axel Springer’s deal with OpenAI, more on that in a bit. Before we get into that, I think it’s worth taking a step back and getting some strategic thinking from my friend Damin Radcliffe. His starting point is not to jump on the bandwagon, which is to say that any move needs to be considered and carried out with intentionality. A media company needs to establish guidelines and bring the entire company along through the process, he says. And lastly, he says that media companies need to protect their IP and monetise it when possible.

Seven steps for a successful AI strategy - Digital Content Next

Many media companies have already been using AI for some time. Rapid advances have accelerated interest in the possibilities AI can unlock.

digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2023/09/28/seven-steps-for-a-successful-ai-strategy

TechCrunch has the details on the deal. OpenAI will create summaries of content for its properties including those that are behind paywall gates. The agreement includes licencing and attribution.

OpenAI inks deal with Axel Springer on licensing news for model training | TechCrunch

OpenAI has inked a deal with the news publisher Axel Springer to pay for articles on which OpenAI will train future AI models.

techcrunch.com/2023/12/13/openai-inks-deal-with-axel-springer-on-licensing-news-for-model-training

My friend Adam Tinworth summarises other details of the deal. Axel Springer will get to use OpenAI to improve its products. Adam also puts this in the context of other developments at Springer such as its decision to close down aggregator Upday. He thinks that this bodes well for big publishers, but I also think that smaller publishers need to come together and make sure that their content is licenced properly as well.

OpenAI is paying Axel Springer for its content

The German publishing giant has inked a deal with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT

onemanandhisblog.com/2023/12/openai-is-paying-axel-springer-for-its-content

In other news, the Press Gazette reviews what it has learned from five years of daily news podcasting. It is a competitive space with the New York Times’ Daily. But The Guardian takes a slightly different take on the model as it focuses on its in-depth journalism.

What The Guardian has learned from five years of daily news podcasting

The Guardian's head of audio Nicole Jackson and podcast presenter Michael Safi on five years of daily news podcast Today in Focus.

pressgazette.co.uk/podcasts/guardian-today-in-focus-daily-news-podcast-five-years

Aron Pilhofer is moving on from News Catalyst to lead product at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, and he takes time before he moves on to recap the lessons that he learned. One thing that I appreciate is that they didn’t have the resources “to drive the change (they) wanted to see” on their own so they used a networked, collaborative approach. It’s a good piece on how to partner smartly to have the impact you want to have.

Lessons from News Catalyst - The Lenfest Institute for Journalism

News Catalyst provides tools, fosters collaboration, and promotes experimentation to build digitally sustainable local news organizations

www.lenfestinstitute.org/solutions-resources/lessons-from-news-catalyst-as-it-sunsets

LIONPubs also has some sage wisdom on building sustainable local news businesses. Direct funding alone won’t make them sustainable so they invest in helping companies get operationally ready and invest in business hires as well as editorial talent. (They also need to have a business plan as early as possible.)

Direct funding alone does not make a news business more sustainable - from ⁦@LIONPubs⁩ Couldn’t agree more - we’ve distributed $15M over past 3 yrs. Operational readiness is key to success. Revenue hires need training & competitive pay. Good read!

— Nancy Lane (@localmediarocks)
Dec 13, 2023

This is a classic story of digital transformation about aligning editorial teams and focusing on user needs. They realised that their production cycles were not in sync with their audiences’ behaviour. More than that, they struggled because 90% of their revenue still comes from print. This was the story with publishers across the West, and now, it is coming to India as well.

To guide their transformation, they are focusing on users and also developing metrics so that they have a common understanding of what success looks like. And their transformation is focused on digital subscription.

How The Hindu increased audience engagement by 21% in 6 months - WAN-IFRA

2023-12-14. India’s The Hindu Group recently undertook a major initiative to overhaul their digital transformation strategy. The objective of the project was to seed audience-first thinking in the company’s Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru bureaus and study its impact before rolling out the program to all the centres.

wan-ifra.org/2023/12/how-the-hindu-increased-audience-engagement-by-21-in-6-months

Twitter has long obsessed journalists, often in unhealthy ways. It did drive the conversation about politics and sports, but for a lot of other news especially local news, it didn’t really have that much of an impact. As I have said a number of times, I’ve seen the analytics at hundreds of publishers, and Twitter rarely ever drove more than single digit referrals. And even before Musk started breaking the platform, Twitter’s analytics were increasingly poor. This is a good corrective view of Twitter. Some incredible folks worked there who tried to increase the positive impact of the platform, but sadly, all of that has been undone. This isn’t to detract from their work, but it is to add some perspective

How Twitter broke the news

“No one chasing money in media ever chased Twitter. But anyone chasing power found themselves irresistibly drawn to the platform.”

www.theverge.com/c/features/23993135/twitter-breaking-news-history