What I've Been Reading Digest: Three post-general election media reads
The meme election, podcasts cutting through the noise and learnings from new media entrants on election night and morning
Good afternoon,
Important day is the 10th July, not just because England are in a Euros semi-final, it's also my birthday - so I'll keep this digest brief because it's back to the celebrations with family shortly.
When birthdays or anniversaries come round then it's always a good moment to take stock - and it's a year since I left Reach (that's gone quick eh?). I've been fortunate to be supported by good friends, family, former colleagues, current colleagues and lots of great people in the past 12 months to emerge blinking into a new career path (with nods to the old one). I was filling in the car insurance renewal recently and it came to occupation, I had to think, as I've got multiple hats now - journalist, editor, company director. It's good to have multiple strings to your bow as my Dad said?
I'm proud of what we've built with Alma in a relatively short period of time, and also with Blog Preston in fifteen years of operating as we published our latest impact report with some positive movements.
Anyway, enough of my wittering and here's three post-election reads for you with a media slant...
Inside the Preston election count where I spent election night…
LONG READ: It was the memes wot won it and other lessons for communicators from Labour’s General Election win - Dan Slee - from the digital communications view on how political parties communicate, Dan’s got some good reflects on how the Labour landslide this time compared to what he saw as a cub reporter in 1997. The fact as much effort was put into creating downloadable pictures and videos tells you where the digital news consumption landscape is going. But Dan’s also right about the rise of audio/podcasts, although worth noting it is often written media which leads to discovery of these as news lines are pulled out.
2024 election: Sky News boss shares six lessons for media - Jonathan Levy - writing in Press Gazette, the broadcast chief reflects on their general election. It was a good move by Sky to get well outside of London with their debate from Grimsby and he also references the strength of their podcasts, but as Dan Slee mentioned - it’s the one with personality and verve which cut through, rather than relying on a ‘big brand’ being attached to themselves.
Livestreaming, explainer videos and newsletters: Overnight election coverage with three new media companies - Jacob Grainger - without the big budgets of Sky, what were new entrants doing on election night and morning? Jacob from Journalism.co.uk had a really insightful piece with what Novara were up to, along with TLDR News (focused on YouTube and explainer videos) and
at and .I’ll be sharing some election thoughts with
in the next day or two as we reflect on what we did with The Lead during the general election, including an intense period of holding general election hustings (which helped grow newsletter subscribers) and our link-up with National World titles in Lancashire to do this.And that’s the lot for this week, hope you’re having a good one and keep going.
Ed