#46 — The winners and losers of the subscription frenzy
Hey readers 👋 happy Easter Sunday! Here's your round-up of stories in publishing that are worth a click, including a new membership offering from HuffPost, new grants for news startups and what journalism will do when we have 5G connectivity. Enjoy!
Get in touch – We'd love to hear from you if you have feedback or ideas about things you'd like to see more of? Or simply to chat with us about why you’re interested in the future of digital publishing! Always interested to hear your story.
💯 Top picks
Winners and losers of the subscription frenzy
“The internet for news is closing. In the wake of the global failure for digital advertising, publishers are putting their hopes in subscriptions.”An insightful 5 minute read about the key differentiators for successful subscription models.
💸 Business models
HuffPost Plus aims to cover what matters to you most
A new membership program from HuffPost has three levels ranging from free, to monthly and annual memberships, with an aim to "put people before power". You can now support their mission by becoming a member of HuffPost Plus.
Medium eyes media partnerships in pursuit of 1 million subscribers
“Medium calls itself a publisher and a platform. But founder Ev Williams thinks partnerships with outside editors and other publications could play a bigger role in Medium’s continued subscriber growth. To get there, Medium will have to overcome publisher skepticism after changing its tactics several times since its 2011 launch.”
✍️ Modern journalism
You may hate metrics – but they’re making journalism better!
“It’s conventional wisdom that the way we measure online journalism is inherently broken.”
Chris Moran writes about the negative views about metrics like pageviews and unique users in journalism, and argues that all of this data is - in fact - an incredible tool in navigating the evolving landscape of publishing.
Do media companies require strong product management?
Insights from the International Journalism Festival included the notion that successful media companies are the ones that have a clear understanding of their product across the entire company. Twipe share what they learnt about successful products in this recap.
Six experiments backed by the Membership in News Fund
The Membership Puzzle Project have announced the first six grantees of their Membership in News Fund, for six news orgs from South Africa, USA, Romania, Brazil and Mexico.
$1.5 million invested to help Latin American news startups accelerate growth
Accelerator Program Velocidad has announced funding and expert consulting to support startups in Latin America.
👩💻 Technology
To answer critics, YouTube tries a new metric: Responsibility
YouTube is now trying to change the way it recognises good "quality" content, and preventing giving too much credit to addictive or low quality content. The only catch is that they still haven't figured out how to do it!
What will journalism do with 5G’s speed and capacity? Here are some ideas!
Journalists and media groups are gearing up for 5G connectivity and how they will harness faster internet speeds for improvements in gathering and delivering news. Could this change the way stories are told? Nieman Lab take a look at some of the potential outcomes.
Your smartphone apps are filled with trackers you know nothing about
Owen Williams writes about a privacy issue that Apple and Google need to fix: Our apps track our every move giving plenty of companies free access to our data and our habits.
🤷 WTF?
Buzzfeed have 77 new job openings after letting 15% of its staff go
Just a few months after laying off 15% of its workforce, Buzzfeed has started hiring for a plethora of new roles. Meanwhile, remaining employee’s are struggling to get their editorial union recognised internally.
