I’m on a period of leave at the moment, one of the benefits of this is having some time to read around and there’s interesting links below that I’ve stumbled upon. If you’re in the digital media, digital journalism, social media, digital comms space then I hope these are a good reading list. I’ll try and post these as frequently as I get chance, and if you find them useful let me know. And if you spot something I should include, or you’ve written something that you think should be shared then drop it over. I’m on edward_walker86 AT hotmail.co.uk
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Why news subscriptions feel like a burden to young people – The Audiencers – As subscription strategies become more complex for news, this study highlighted by the excellent Audiencers drilled in-depth into young people’s attitudes to digital news subscriptions. The study was conducted in Norway and with people aged 26-30 (I will let you all argue about whether that is genuinely young!). One of the key standout lines was this – “news content should not appear too exclusive, in the sense of narrow. Stories only covered on one news site, typically in a local or regional one, were valued as less important or even unnecessary by the informants: they felt less obligated to read about it and refrained from paying.” – fascinating given how in the UK anyway we seem to be seeing some strong examples of hyperlocal sites generating revenue from subscription models like Substack. The research also highlighted that when a story that was more issue-based/topic-based and the individual had an overwhelming interest in that topic the propensity to pay became much stronger. I guess, if you think back to magazine subscriptions, this shouldn’t be a surprise and again supports media organisations making more of ‘topic-themed bundles’ as a way of making their content attractive to subscribers. They won’t subscribe to the brand, as generally they don’t care, but they will subscribe by topic/content.
Journalist quits Meta job after Edinburgh-focused Substack takes off – Press Gazette – I referenced above about Substack and people paying for localness, and also featured Michael’s move last week, there’s more depth in this piece from Charlotte on Press Gazette about his decision, thought process, product and also background (the why) too. The numbers are interesting, essentially for a strong, curated, product then it’s bringing in just shy of £20,000-a-year. That’s without additional sponsorship/advertising or other commercial activities. A great return and shows the value in having a hyper-focused idea and sticking at it too – fair play to Michael!
An Update on Facebook News in Europe – Meta – Well the only silver lining to be found is they aren’t throttling news in the UK in the same way Canada is currently experiencing. There’s been a lot of reaction to the decision – which isn’t unexpected but is disappointing. The drift between the news industry and Meta has been widely discussed for a long period and now we are starting to see the kind of black and white decisions which are being made by the tech platform following the words and indications. There will still audience, engagement and reach to be had from such a large platform – which is still widely used and despite what it says is a source and active discussion platform for news – but diversification of audience and revenue streams if it wasn’t before becomes absolutely crucial.
I found a notebook full of notes from my earliest BuzzFeed days – Dan Oshinsky – now an email consultant, Dan literally opens the lid on his 2012 email strategy for Buzzfeed. As with many things, the truisms remain true for having a successful email strategy. It’s a good reminder that you don’t always need to reinvent the wheel and sometimes the answers are hiding in plain sight. I might just revisit some old notebooks!
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Ed Walker 