Thanks for visiting. In early 2024 I decided to shift over to Substack for my weekly What I’ve Been Reading post and musings on journalism, digital and more. You can get signed up here for the Substack email and posts.
Many thanks for taking the time to seek me out and read this. I’ll leave the WordPress site here as an archive, although all the posts did come with me to Substack.
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
You can also receive this digest of interesting links by signing up to my email newsletter – just tap here to subscribe and I’ll pop it in your inbox each time I publish.
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!
Reminder – you can have this dropped into your inbox by subscribing for free to my newsletter.
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
You can also receive this digest of interesting links by signing up to my email newsletter – just tap here to subscribe and I’ll pop it in your inbox each time I publish.
The Value of News Content to Google is Way More Than You Think – Dr. Courtney C. Radsch, Tech Policy Press – the focus on the value given to platforms by having content featured on them is intense right now and the Swiss study within this piece is fascinating. Essentially people who see journalistic content (as in pictures, excerpts) on Google itself find their experience of the platform a better experience. The big thing I’ve noticed is how Google is increasingly taking snippets from articles, and other sources, and displaying them as the search result. This negates the need to click-through and discover more. Google, of course, says this is them providing a good user experience, but when there’s been resource and time put into researching and verifying that content then is the value exchange fair?
150 editions in: What’s next for The Edinburgh Guardian… – Michael Macleod – been fascinating to see how Michael’s round-up newsletter and website has developed, building on what was a strand of the Guardian Local project back in the early 2010s. As well as building a really solid subscriber base – which Michael says has meant he’s been able to now go part-time on the Substack-built site – he’s also sending a healthy amount of traffic to the existing news eco-system in Edinburgh and surrounds (I like how he references this and it’s clearly a metric he’s tracking closely). Given the current soul-searching at the BBC about its digital set up and plans, they could draw a lot of learnings from how shining a spotlight on good journalism and interesting stories could be a central pillar of their digital future. If Michael can do that, from scratch, imagine what a major direct-traffic website (with consistent and strong traffic to homepages and key landing pages) can do in terms of sharing of that digital audience around other corners of the internet. I wrote about the impact the ‘from other local news site’ box had on Blog Preston back in 2016.
Google is introducing an new experiment called “SGE while browsing,” – Ezra Eeman – initially the response would be ‘oh no, not more summaries and snippets’ as Google starts to make use of AI to provide ‘summaries’ of articles that appear in search results. But scrolling through the comments on Ezra’s post there’s a really interesting read on how Swedish daily Aftonbladet began to use ChatGPT to produce article summaries at the top, and this actually encouraged stronger article-read time (the concept is also being tested by NottinghamshireLive in the UK with AI-driven summaries of longer articles). Perhaps we under-estimate that to tap on a link there’s that question from a user/reader of ‘is it worth it? is it what I am looking for?’ and allowing people to see a summary encourages people to read the full article. In one sense, it’s nothing new, MailOnline has always had three to four big summary ‘blobs’ at the top of its digital articles for many years as have other sites.
What next for The Telegraph as subscription revenues continue to shrink? – Dominic Young, Media Leader – there’s a lot of focus at the moment about how subscription revenue growth is going to continue for those who have pursued this strategy in recent years. Dominic here explores the rapid growth and tactics used to drive the Telegraph, and it comes at an interesting time as the conversion of existing loyal audiences to established digital properties subsides and then comes the challenge of attracting new and different readers, and convincing them to pay. As I’ve referenced previously, The Audiencers have some excellent reading in this subscriptions space.
Building a successful presence in America – Alan Hunter and Michael Brunt, Media Makers Meet – the charge across the Atlantic is happening as more UK publishers increase their content and operations in the US market, with the Independent the latest to announced an increase focus on top of existing operations. Alan and Michael explore the differences in the market and look at whether the plays that UK publishers make here will translate in the US. One thing is clear, whatever your metric of success, expansion into the largest English-speaking market in the world is definitely on the cards in the coming months or years ahead to maintain a growth curve.
Why New Statesman became first major publisher to exclusively host newsletters on Substack – Bron Maher, Press Gazette – there’s an ever-increasing buzz about Substack, the email-focused platform that also delivers you a website and subscription services. My takeaway from the New Statesman is how they kept the focus narrow on two appointment-to-read newsletters – The Saturday Read and Morning Call – which similar to Michael’s Edinburgh effort above – are both clearly defined, arrive at a moment in time and they’ve been ruthlessly consistent too. Then the rewards come. And that buzz shows no sign of slowing, as the Mill announced it’s received some shot-in-the-arm investment as they take their Substack model into other UK cities.
Reminder – you can have this dropped into your inbox by subscribing for free to my newsletter.
Ed Walker 