“Can’t they please just let us have this one thing?”
Jared Newman thinks social media is going to ruin newsletters for writers and publishers.
“My fear, then, is that they’ll inevitably follow an all-too-familiar pattern: Build their own version of a promising new idea, try to crush their competitors along the way, and then proceed to ruin—willfully or by neglect—the very thing they set out to copy in the first place.
If this ends up happening, both journalists and their readers will be worse off as a result, as big tech companies reestablish the very patterns that newsletter creators have been hoping to escape.”
Image Source: Fast Company (Zac Ong/Unsplash; Olivier Verriest/iStock)
Free Newsletter Strategy Course For Journalists And Publishers
For the media publishers and journalists in my readership, this course, “Newsletter Strategies for Journalists: How to Create, Grow & Monetize Newsletters,” looks like it could be a great opportunity.
Sponsored by The Knight Foundation, the course starts February 22 and runs for 4 weeks. Instructors include Joseph Lichterman, Caroline Porter, and Emily Roseman.
Click through to check out the promo video and register.
HD Media Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Facebook And Google
Last week a West Virginia media group decided it was time to hold big tech accountable for wrecking their revenue model.
“Owner of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail, The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch and a half-dozen weekly newspapers, HD Media LLC filed a 42-page complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. HD Media claims Google has monopolized the digital advertising market to such an extent that Google has been enabled to extract a supracompetitive share of HD Media’s advertising revenues, harming the company’s ability to effectively monetize its content. The complaint also alleges that Google and Facebook violated antitrust laws by conspiring to further their worldwide dominance of the digital advertising market, entering into a secret agreement codenamed ‘Jedi Blue’ to manipulate online auctions.”
The suit claims the tech companies threaten free press and democracy.
Will other newspapers join their fight?
Related: Read about Why Google Is Paying French Publishers But Fighting Australia.
Also Related: Check out Why Denmark’s Biggest News Site Cut Reliance On Google’s Tech.
An Idaho newspaper editor struggled to get Excel access for staff. After tweeting about it, she was fired.
This story goes beyond the repercussions of a single Tweet. It’s also a piece about the state of the local newspaper industry.
Related: Check out Twitter Needs A ‘Check Yourself’ Warning For Journalists.
A Possible Revenue Path Forward For Local News
Matt DeRienzo thinks local news publishers need to dig deeper for a better advertising model.
“If publishers can shift their mindset toward choosing the advertisers they want to work with, that they’re enthusiastic about, that they can vouch for, that they can collaborate with to serve readers, the dynamic will be powerful, and profitable, for everyone involved.”
Cheers to that!
Is The Email Newsletter The New MVP of Media?
In this issue of his newsletter Medialyte, Business Insider reporter Mark Stenberg addresses the idea of editorial newsletters as the new MVP (Minimum Viable Product OR Most Valuable Piece of writing, if you subscribe to his theory) of a media launch.
Mark makes the case for starting with a newsletter as the the lowest-cost way of determining whether someone would pay to subscribe to a publication.
“Rather than having to dazzle potential readers with a website full of material, you are evaluated only by the strength of your last newsletter. This makes it a substantially easier row to hoe solo.
And while a sign-up for a free newsletter is not as compelling as a sign-up for a paid newsletter, it means more than a page view. Subscribing to a newsletter is a pretty strong indication of interest, at least compared to landing on a page, skimming it, and then jumping off. If you show an investor that you convinced several thousand people to sign up to read your material week in and week out, that’s pretty strong evidence of a market interest for your product.”
Learn How NorthJersey.com Used Subscriber-Exclusive Stories To Drive Digital Subscriptions
Read about how Candace Mitchell, director of subscription strategy, and Elyse Toribio, audience and community engagement specialist, worked together to shift their team’s focus from which pages had the most views to which content triggered subscriptions and subscriber page views.
Top Subscription Growth Strategies
This article by Faisal Kalim rounds up some of the advice found in the WAN-IFRA’s recently published report, Reader Revenue: Subscription Marketing.
It looks like
...“investing in data and digital reader revenue are the top two priorities for nearly 90 publishing executives worldwide, according to WAN-IFRA’s latest World Press Trends Outlook data.”
Click through to learn more about the strategies European publishers plan to use to achieve subscription growth goals this year.
Related: Check out Local News Outlets Boost Digital Subscriptions by About 50% in a Year.
News Publishers are Bundling Subscriptions with Brands
The benefit of connecting publisher and non-publishers together through this subscription bundling model goes beyond the top-line subscription revenue grab and the membership perks that a company’s customers get with the access to free subscriptions, according to James Henderson, CEO and co-founder of subscription software company Zephr.
“People often think it’s just about driving subscriptions, but it’s not. It’s about driving to a connected relationship where you continue to earn the right to be connected, but you are the business that can leverage the first-party data relationship,” Henderson said.
Is Your Newsletter Writer a Host?
Learn why publishers are calling newsletter writers “hosts” and “anchors” now. It ties into the idea of tying a personality to publications. I’m suddenly feeling hostly (is that a word?).
