Conversion techniques are constantly being refined and getting more sophisticated, and data is at its core. In this example, newspaper publisher Advance Local is using data to understand the propensity to subscribe, or readiness as they define it. It makes a lot of logical sense that a loosely engaged user isn’t the likeliest to buy a subscription. Advance Local is using this data to refine its conversion strategy and its trial offerings. Most publishers are using a registration step, but Advance Local is instead using trial subs for the first step on its subscription journey. The case study also brings us back to one of the common themes of this newsletter, engagement. For those with infrequent engagement, they have been testing a day pass offering.

Advance Local finds a way to reach prospects on their terms

Advance Local implemented an audience segmentation model that buckets prospects according to their readiness. This provides the first of many steps to align offers to where a prospect is in their subscription journey.

www.inma.org/blogs/ideas/post.cfm/advance-local-finds-a-way-to-reach-prospects-on-their-terms

Nieman Lab offers up a good overview of how news outlets from around the world are using WhatsApp Channels feature - the US, UK, Argentina and India. They are seeing fast growth, solid engagement and even referrals back to their websites.

How 13 news publishers are using WhatsApp Channels

We talked to the Financial Times, La Nación, The New York Times, Vox, Chilango, the Times of India, and others about their early experiments sharing news on the world's favorite messaging app.

www.niemanlab.org/2023/11/how-13-news-publishers-are-using-whatsapp-channels

Coverage has focused on how traffic from social media, especially Facebook, to news sites has collapsed. Charlie Warzel has a different explanation.

He sees news fatigue as something that was created not just by events but also the toxicity of news consumption through social media.

The Great Social Media–News Collapse

Big Tech’s relationship with journalism is much more complicated than it appears.

www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/11/social-media-news-readership-decline/675890

The Press Gazette in the UK reviews traffic trends amongst local newspaper sites in the country. What is interesting is how Reach’s largest sites grew but many of their other sites saw traffic declines.

Regional digital top 50: Half of UK's biggest local news websites grew audience in September

Press Gazette ranking of the 50 biggest local news websites in the UK in September 2023 using Ipsos iris data.

pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/regional-top-50-biggest-local-news-websites-uk

Press Foward is the foundation funded project that hopes to stem the collapse of local journalism in the United States, and they are not wasting time. This is an example of the type of projects that they are funding, local journalism projects in Chicago.

Hunterbrook, a hedge fund, is going to pay for journalism that helps it identify investing opportunities. Well, at least it is more productive than some of the investments that other funds are making in buying up journalism outlets.

Publishers are challenging the idea that scrapping content without permission for the purpose of LLM training is fair use, and the News/Media Alliance has called for an end to unauthorised use of publishers’ content. While I see a lot of potential for AI, I think there has to be a clear value exchange for content creators.

AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content

Most argue training with copyrighted data is fair use.

www.theverge.com/2023/11/4/23946353/generative-ai-copyright-training-data-openai-microsoft-google-meta-stabilityai

Pervasive Unauthorized Use of Publisher Content Powers Generative AI - a News/Media Alliance Study - WAN-IFRA

White Paper: The News/Media Alliance recognizes the exciting potential of GenAI models and applications to improve aspects of our lives and supports the principled development of these systems. But this development must not come at the expense of publishers and journalists

wan-ifra.org/2023/11/pervasive-unauthorized-use-of-publisher-content-powers-generative-ai-a-news-media-alliance-study

Community is a resurgence in terms of media. Whether it’s membership schemes or other strategies that include experiences, media outlets including Hearst and DC Thomson are both announcing their pivot to community. From a business standpoint, it makes a lot of sense because the community plays often include premium tiers that allow publishers to increase ARPU. That is definitely the case with Elle UK in which their membership scheme is £110 more than the basic subscription.

But I understand the repacking of media as a community play. I think that a sense of belonging is one of the things in short supply following the pandemic. People are hungry for social experiences and a sense of connection.

Elle UK's move from subscriptions to membership shares access to editors' 'daily joys'

Kenya Hunt, the editor of Elle UK, talks to Press Gazette about the future of magazines and the launch of a membership scheme.

pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/magazines/kenya-hunt-elle-uk

One of the major themes in media over the past year has been the collapse in traffic from social media to publishers’ properties. The Verge conducted a rather radical redesign in part to lure more audiences directly to their site as traffic from Twitter dried up. The Verge has seen readership increase by 15% in part because of a dramatic, 62% rise in its loyal readership. This article is thing on details, but the tech publisher has been to convert casual readers into more loyal audience members.

The Verge’s Dramatic Redesign Boosts Loyalty as Readership Dwindles

The publisher, like much of the industry, has seen traffic steadily decline.

www.adweek.com/media/the-verge-redesign-loyalty-readership-dwindles/#

Product management is first and foremost a coordinating function. Product managers work across organisations to bring stakeholders into alignment from editorial, commercial and technical teams. Communication is key, and as I found in my master’s degree, product managers are able to translate across these teams.

Internal communication sustains engagement throughout product cycles at Mediahuis Belgium

Internal communication can be the driving factor in keeping the organisation motivated regarding product and technical development.

www.inma.org/blogs/Product-and-Tech/post.cfm/internal-communication-sustains-engagement-throughout-product-cycles-at-mediahuis-belgium

First, major foundations in the US announced a huge half billion dollar fund to try to address the crisis in local journalism there. They always said that this was a down payment that they hoped would act like seed money for more investment. And now, they have made that goal explicit.

Press Forward announces goal to ‘raise the next $500 million at the local level’ - Poynter

So far, local chapters have been announced in Alaska, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas and Philadelphia

www.poynter.org/business-work/2023/press-forward-local-chapters

Creators on social media are finding success in providing news on social media. Their followers find their recommendations more relevant than traditional media.

Apart from triple digital growth from Ilife Media’s Kent Online, Reach’s network of ‘live’ regional news website dominated the top 10. Reach’s large sites such as the Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Live and the Liverpool Echo stood at the top of the list. However, not all of the news was good for Reach. If its 31 titles, all but seven lost audience.

Regional digital top 50: Half of UK's biggest local news websites grew audience in September

Press Gazette ranking of the 50 biggest local news websites in the UK in September 2023 using Ipsos iris data.

pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/regional-top-50-biggest-local-news-websites-uk

By distributing new shows through existing feeds, it helps leverage existing show followings to give new offerings a boost.

How podcast networks use existing feeds to improve engagement and discoverability for new shows

One tactic that is helping podcast networks find an audience for new shows is distributing them through existing feeds for large podcast franchises.

digiday.com/media/how-podcast-networks-are-using-existing-feeds-to-improve-engagement-and-discoverability-for-new-shows

Maybe this is my adverse reaction to Natty Geo laying off all of its writers, but this feels like a strategy from the Platform Era. Followers and social media impressions are one thing, but as we have seen, that doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue and sustainable media businesses.

How National Geographic is using its contributor network to refresh its social media channels

To stay on top of the changes to social media, National Geographic is getting more raw and real with its photojournalists.

digiday.com/media/how-national-geographic-is-tapping-its-contributor-network-to-refresh-it-social-media-changes

There are playbooks and then there recipes for success. This is one of the most detailed articles that I have seen in terms of how a publisher has developed their analytics. Der Spiegel walks you through how they evolved the RFV - recency, frequency, volume - metric that was developed at the Financial Times. They also added regularity, and for good reason. The Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University has shown how regularity is more highly correlated to conversion and retention than dwell time and the volume of content that a user consumes. It is why I stress loyalty and habit that drives known users as keys to building a sustainable media business.

But Der Spiegel adds another important element - empirical cumulative distribution function. “ECDF transforms numerical data, indicating the proportion of values that are less than or equal to a specific value.” It is some powerful data science that they are deploying, and they connect these audience metrics with their business metrics.

How we measure audience engagement at DER SPIEGEL | The Audiencers

By focusing on delivering a meaningful and relevant experience to our readers, DER SPIEGEL has built a loyal and engaged community of subscribers who

theaudiencers.com/operations/how-we-measure-audience-engagement-at-der-spiegel

And in our second case study, WAN-IFRA looks at how The Conversation is building engagement and donations to add to the university funding that they receive. Analytics is helping them develop new content products such as their Quarter Life series, content that is focused on young professionals. The success of the the series has led them to other audience engagement efforts including quizzes and newsletters. And the next step in their development is in-person events.

How The Conversation is boosting engagement with an aim of driving donations - WAN-IFRA

2023-10-20. "Our content is why people come to us. Anything we can do to make more valuable content will lead to more engagement and retention, and for us, donations as well," says Khalil Cassimally, Head of Audience Insights for The Conversation.

wan-ifra.org/2023/10/how-the-conversation-is-boosting-engagement-with-an-aim-of-driving-donations

These engagement efforts to build direct relationships with audiences are key as traffic drivers like search and social decline. That has been one of the major themes this year, but now, Digiday has evidence that traffic from news aggregators is also on the decline. That decline in traffic and the emphasis on first-party data has media leaders reassessing their relationship with aggregators.

As news aggregator referral traffic slips, publishers turn their attention inward

Traffic sent from news aggregators to publishers’ sites is stalling, according to four publishing execs and data from analytics firm Chartbeat, leading some publishers to reevaluate their content distribution and revenue share deals.

digiday.com/media/as-news-aggregator-referral-traffic-slips-publishers-turn-their-attention-inward/?utm_campaign=digidaydis&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=general-rss

From INMA, we have an overview of two mindsets that determine whether a company develops the agility to embrace innovation. The second mindset is often referred to as “fail fast” in Silicon Valley culture. I prefer to frame it as “learn quickly”. Or as the piece says: “Encourage a culture where failure is not a dirty word but an opportunity for learning and growth.”

Two failure mindsets offer differing outcomes for media innovation

Media companies often fail to implement bold ideas quickly, but fostering a “type 2” failure mindset, incorporating gut instincts into decision-making, and creating an innovation buffer can help curb that tendency.

www.inma.org/blogs/Product-and-Tech/post.cfm/two-failure-mindsets-offer-differing-outcomes-for-media-innovation

Speculation grows as to who might acquire The Telegraph and Spectator in the UK. Germany’s Axel Springer has become a major global media player, but it has cast doubt about whether they will pursue a bid for the British newspaper. They want to focus on a digital-only strategy.

Axel Springer’s Telegraph bid in doubt over ‘digital-only’ future

Head of German-based group tells Politico podcast its strategy is to grow its digital media

www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/29/axel-springer-telegraph-bid-doubt-digital-only-future

Meta’s Twitter-competitor, Thread, enjoyed a huge burst of growth when it launched because of its integration with Instagram, but then use tailed off. As they develop the product, use seems to have rebounded, and now they are talking about launching an API. The head of Instagram says that they will develop it even if it means more publisher content as opposed to creator content. I guess that shows where their priorities are.

Instagram head says Threads API is in the works | TechCrunch

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said today that a Threads API is in the works, paving a way possible for third-party experinces.

techcrunch.com/2023/10/27/instagram-head-says-threads-api-is-in-the-works

Thus far, there have been limited use of AI to generate deepfakes during the Israel-Hamas War, but what little has been created has only created more mistrust of traditional media. How depressing.

A.I. Muddies Israel-Hamas War in Unexpected Way

Fakes related to the conflict have been limited and largely unconvincing, but their presence has people doubting real evidence.

www.nytimes.com/2023/10/28/business/media/ai-muddies-israel-hamas-war-in-unexpected-way.html

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

The Business of Fashion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogs are your SEO superpower

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Lookout for Local News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Position one for a query is no longer close to enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should you raise your subscription price?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wondery launches three podcast FAST channels on Amazon Freevee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Report Suggests X Usage is Declining Amid Various App Changes

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

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

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

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

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

Silicon Valley Ditches News, Shaking an Unstable Industry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'News companies need survival strategies and culture change'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Navigating the pros and cons of AI in editorial organisations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week in Twitter: New subscription plans coming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to develop a sales and content strategy for streaming

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

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

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

Guardian Australia drives traffic with engaging headlines

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week in platforms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The impacted roles are primarily within its engineering department.

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

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

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

Media Collective Report: Focus on relationships to increase retention

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is the future of podcasts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Death, Sex, and the future of WNYC podcasts

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

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

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

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

Can local podcasts become profitable?

PLUS: How Michael Lewis became a nonfiction juggernaut

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

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

Bundling up: the secret to subscriber success

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

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

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

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

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin)
Oct 10, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social media traffic to top news sites craters

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

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

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

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

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

pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/linkedins-newsroom

Can local podcasts be successful?

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



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

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

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

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

hellgatenyc.com/nypr-layoffs

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

Can local podcasts become profitable?

PLUS: How Michael Lewis became a nonfiction juggernaut

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

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

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

Learn how the newsroom, community and technology comes together

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is your company’s Head of AI Transformation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pushkin Industries lays off one-third of employees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bild publisher Axel Springer eyes Telegraph auction

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

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