Learnings from across Europe in new study for public interest news provision in local communities
Plus: Unlocking Reddit for news publishers and the newsletter which went 'local only'
Good afternoon,
A day delayed with this week’s digest due to picking up a sickness bug at a wedding on Tuesday afternoon/evening - the wedding was fun, the 24-hours after, less so!
Here’s a run through some pieces which have gone across my feeds in the last week or so and you may find interesting if you’re working in digital media and local publishing in particular.
Best practices for better public interest provision in local communities - IMS/Local Media For Democracy - the phrase ‘news desert’ is a very loaded phrase, efforts to try and map them have proved controversial, but I think this study along with some useful case studies and frameworks from Clare Cook and team at IMS is a good package.
I was fortunate to spend some time with publishers involved in the initiative, who were a mix of start-up and scaling-up independent publishers from all across Europe, and it was fascinating to see all the different stages they were at in terms of their audience strategies and revenue strategies too.
What struck me about the programme was the clear, and important, link between needing to ensure revenues were coming in (through whatever method, be that advertising, reader-revenues, sponsorship, social video) to ensure the viability of the products being created. Journalism cannot exist in a separate chamber from the commercial factors which dictate whether it can continue, or not. As journalists and editors we have to become comfortable speaking the business-speak to ensure our products can survive and thrive.
I also remember who focused many publishers in Eastern Europe in particular were on creating a direct connection with their readers - be that through WhatsApp, email, text message - maybe it’s because social networks aren’t as prevalent there (big assumption to make) but they were already making huge strides in having highly engaged followings away from social platforms to get their stories directly infront of each day (or hour in some cases).
Using Reddit for News - Journalism.co.uk podcast - a great interview from Jacob Granger as he speaks to Rachel Duffy of The Telegraph about how they’ve been making use of Reddit to grow audience and engagement - both on and off platform.
For those who have experienced a Reddit spike, it has quick phenomenal when it comes, but they are seldom. The time and effort has to be invested natively on Reddit itself as Rachel talks through with some great tactics for what they’ve utilised.
Anecdotally I’ve seen the Preston Reddit thread become far more active in the last six to nine months, likely as a result of the serious traffic bump the platform appears to be experience from search. Picking up on some of these queries and threads, to then put in the journalism needed to form them into stories, could well be a very fertile tactic for publishers. But beware the hoax.
Only local news, only local ads - Lion Publishers - an interesting case study from over in the US about BoiseDev, an independent news site in Idaho, about the success they’ve had in monetising their portfolio of email newsletters. What I found interesting is they hadn’t primarily targeted businesses themselves but rather agencies that were acting on behalf of those businesses and convinced them, quite rightly, on the high engagement and audience they had in their highly local newsletters.
Pitched right an email newsletter is a superb platform not just for content, but for advertising too. We’ve found on Blog Preston our email newsletter is becoming an increasingly important part of any commercial deal, but the idea of convincing the middle-man (or woman) on behalf of clients is actually a very efficient way of unlocking stronger advertising and sponsorship.
Hope those spark some interest from reading or listening, and hope you’re having a good week.
Keep going.
Ed