Are micro-communities the future of news?
Plus: Why scale is important even for subscription models + a new Substack with powerful writing on grief
Good afternoon,
Normally this digest arrives on a Wednesday, but I was out of action yesterday (in a working sense) as my wife needed to work (she's a midwife) and our nursery didn't have space to take our 15-month-old son at short notice (we did have an ace father-son day together though!). Certain things had to go out the window, and I'm afraid the What I've Been Reading digest was one of those - so 24-hours later than usual, here it is...
Let's get to it with some interesting things which have gone across my feed in the past seven days in the digital/journalism/media space.
The future of news lies in micro-communities - Heiko Scherer - there's some good sense in this graphic which breaks down the idea of having multiple topic-based audiences under your main audience, as a publisher or a community. Identifying where there's a strong affinity with stories your media brand is producing (or social posts your organisation is producing) is crucial for identifying what these are. But don't be constrained by what you have, it's also important to think as much about where you are producing content as where you're not.
A good content audit can help expose this, matching the output of a publication against the audience performance of stories and identifying areas of over-interest and under-interest. There's plenty of tools which can help with these - SmartOcto and NewsWhip are two I've been using in recent months and are very strong for this. If you’re interested in me taking a look under the hood of your digital analytics, then ed@almaonline.co.uk
As well as looking to build these micro communities it's also worth reflecting back on what your core as a brand is - as this will also help bring you a micro-community who are passionate about all your output in its different forms and topic areas. So don't forget the micro-community that is willing to be hyper-engaged with your title or organisation.
Diminishing pageviews, a focus on quality journalism indicate a subscription-based future - Rudra Kasturi - on the face of it this headline may tick a lot of people's boxes, drilling into it isn't actually as it seems - for a start MailOnline is referenced as being a page-view only beast. It's not, it now has a paid-for offering (MailPlus) which has been proving very popular at giving subscribers additional content. If the Mail didn’t have that scale of audience, it would not have achieved that kind of rapid subscription growth.
What I think this piece misses is that having a good, strong, free to air audience is always going to be crucial to give any subscription/paid-for/contributions model a fighting chance. It's a conversions game. The future will be a mixed model, where there’s still a scalable free-to-air audience (likely supported by advertising and sponsorship, affiliates and other revenue streams) and then paid-for content underneath (following a subscription/membership model depending on the legal entity of the media brand).
Time is a healer. Unless it's not - Natalie Morris - through the work we do with The Lead then I am fortunate to be able to work with some very talented freelance journalists and editors. Natalie is one of those, her writing is powerful, insightful and she has an incredible sense of fairness and justice. She has written before about losing a parent to cancer, something which I have also written about, and her new Substack 'The Sun'll Come Out' aims to be a place to write about grief and reflect on how it changes a person. She's not wrong as her sub-head reflects on how grief affects the concept of time and messes with your head. Raw, honest, writing.
Whatever type of journalism or media you're in, writing that is from the heart will always break through whatever the platform.
That's it for this week's digest, I hope you've enjoyed that mix of interesting bits and let’s hope next week goes more to plan and I’ll be back in your inbox on a Wednesday afternoon.
Hope you’re having a good week.
Keep going.
Ed