What I've Been Reading: New era media leaders, Google testing 'offerwall' for publishers and what Gen Z want from news study
A digest of interesting links I've found (and been sent) in the last week or so from the cross-section of digital, publishing, and more.
Good evening, just… (in the UK anyway),
This newsletter paused for a week as I had my first ever holiday as a self-employed person. A bit odd I have to admit. It’s hard work not to work but I worked hard not to do that and spent time with the family. But it’s definitely back to it this week! Anyway, I promised to keep this newsletter up each week and so without further ado into some interesting bits I’ve found and then a few updates from me on some projects/launches I’ve been involved in recently.
Journalism Needs Leaders Who Know How to Run a Business - Laura Krantz McNeill - it’s tough out there but I saw this quite widely shared in a number of places, as Laura dug into the skillsets needed to lead in this disrupted world. I’d add in that soft skills, taking the time to understand your team as individuals and their situations is really important - what motivates one person is very different to another. A blanket approach doesn’t work. And that’s both harder and easier to do when working in a hybrid way as many people are. The general view though that you need journalism, and media, leaders with a good understanding of business is ever more important - regardless of whether you’re in the for-profit or non-profit sectors. Without revenue or income, from whichever source it comes from, then journalism is very difficult to achieve. Yes, as journalists and editors, we want to talk about the story but we also need to be able to talk the spreadsheets, and the numbers, alongside this. And know that this helps drive our story as journalists.
News publishers must innovate to meet shifting Gen Z needs - Rebecca Roberts, CIPR - this report comes not from a media organisation but a PR institute, but is timely and relevant. The bit that I guess made me raise my eyebrows is how if media organisations are not on the platforms where Gen Z are then they risk being filtered out of their lives in the most part and influencers and other brands, which may have questionable motives when it comes to the truth, will be where younger readers start to become informed by. As an aside, what a good idea from CIPR to offer these research grants for members to pursue a topic of interest and essentially buy the headspace to do it.
Publishers test new Offerwall monetization tool from Google - Jack Marshall, Toolkits - this really caught my eye. There's concerns about the limited ability of subscriptions to convert, which I think is fair, a large percentage of your readers are not converting when hitting an article and therefore at some point you cap out for growth.
Google's been testing the 'offerwall' functionality so you can try out essentially multiple revenue streams on one publication, either driving registrations, subscriptions, one-off purchases/single access or view an advertisements.
It's not a huge leap from the Google Surveys of old, when you used to have to fill in a survey to then access the article? But this is smarter, and the key will be having content of value that makes the reader/user feel they need to give value in that exchange. It's encouraging to see Google offering this tool, as it'll make it accessible to a tranche of publishers who may not be able to build this in house or fund the development through a third party. There’s an interesting case study from the Google News Initiative here from the Sakal Media group in India, one of the territories this tool is being beta tested in.
Hope those are of interest, they were my reading diet this week.
Now a few updates from me, we’ve launched our latest newsletters as part of the project with The Lead - in Stoke-on-Trent and Teesside. Two places I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the year. From digging into the mass crustacean death in Teesside to how loneliness in Stoke-on-Trent is being tackled we’re seeing good sign-up and engagement rates with both these newsletter launches. A massive thank you to everyone involved.
Secondly, I’ve been back doing Blog Preston as co-editor for a few weeks now - will write more extensively about that in the coming weeks - but we’ve launched a crowdfunder to try and increase our arts and cultural coverage. Something that’s needed with the city’s main venue the Guild Hall having been shut for nearly five years now. We’re doing it as part of the Crowdfund Lancashire initiative, and means we might potentially access the Lancashire Cultural and Sport fund and it’s all through the Spacehive tool. It’s a new one for us working to secure funds in this way, with a mix of reader and organisations asked to pledge to help us. Hopefully we can get to the target and then it’ll unlock a really exciting 12 months ahead.
Hope everyone’s had a good week, or surviving the half-term if it’s your turn this week in the UK, and a reminder if you ever spot an interesting link on the topics I write about then please do ping it to ed@almaonline.co.uk
Keep going.
Ed