#82 — Publishers pivot to paid & newsrooms learn how to do sales
Welcome back to the second issue of 2020! Hopefully it’s been a good start of the year for you.
This weeks top reads are a great mix of topics about business models, journalism & technology in publishing. Enjoy!
💯 Top picks
As publishers pivot to paid, reporters have to be sales people too!
According to this Digiday report, as publishers increasingly shift towards subscription revenue, reporters are starting to think about things differently. Newsrooms care more about returning visitors over page views, and which pieces contribute the most for digital subscriptions. All of this has reporters thinking more about sales.
💸 Business models
International publishers will charge for more content and launch more daily news podcasts this year
Nieman Lab break down a recent Reuters Insititute report on what is expected in 2020 and beyond.
Anatomy of a subscription fail
Newspapers are hiking up costs of print subscriptions without explanations and charging long-standing subscribers much more than new ones. Readers are finding this frustrating (but still not leaving!), as explained by John Robinson in this piece.
✍️ Modern journalism
Give readers what they want from a story using this research
“New research indicates readers want to better understand terminology used and why journalists chose certain sources.”
News publishers are sending a message through powerful marketing campaigns
Evelyn Mateos calls for news publishers to step up and share the good work being done in newsrooms to communicate the power of journalism, and shares case study examples of using marketing campaigns to do this.
Here are 21 journalism conferences to attend in 2020
A list of 21 conferences from The Lenfest Institute - they’re all in the U.S. except for one which takes place in Italy.
Engage your audience with constructive journalism & identify your negativity bias
Want to try a different approach to your reporting? Constructive Journalism Network offers a few solutions-based techniques to take into your newsroom: flip the narrative, tell the other half of the story and take ownership of the problem! (You can also listen to this article).
👩💻 Technology
Spotify will use everything it knows about you to target podcast ads
Spotify announced its new podcast ad insertion technology “Streaming Ad Insertion”, which will put ads into podcasts in real time based on user data. Here’s another hot take on this topic.
BuzzFeed aims to cut out Google & other digital ‘middlemen’ as it expands its commerce business
The 2020 roadmap at BuzzFeed plans to broaden the scope of it’s commerce business by forming relationships with providers of goods. It aims to solve the “attribution problem” of Amazon, Google or Expedia capturing the profit created by publishers who inspire consumers to take action.
Starbucks is offering digital news with its coffee
“Starbucks’ introduction of on-the-house digital news could have ramifications far beyond its stores. Erich Prince discusses the possibilities.”
Google is killing digital magazines in News
The Google News team emailed customers to let them know they will be refunded their last payment and that they will no longer be able to access magazines from 200 publishers via Google News in the future. Old issues will still be available.
Twitter will put options to limit replies directly on the compose screen
“Just as Facebook has been pushing users to use its private groups feature, Twitter wants to give users the option to limit the spread of their tweets. Now, Twitter is adding a new setting for "conversation participants” right on the compose screen.“
🤷 WTF?
The two myths of the internet
“The 2010s began with one story about the political power of technology. It ended with another. Both were wrong.”
