What I've been reading: Measuring audience in 2024 + lessons from the independent media sector
And the value and learnings from how The Telegraph is treating and expanding what it does with email newsletters
Good afternoon,
After the Easter holiday break then it’s back to it - although work didn’t actually stop, this newsletter did for a fortnight. Now the kids are back to school I am resuming this Wednesday afternoon digest of a few pieces which have caught my eye on all things digital journalism and more.
Let’s dive straight in…
Why we invented a new metric for measuring readership - Alexandra Smith, Columbia Journalism Review - with the divergence of how people are spending their time online, see growth of TikTok, resilience of Instagram, Google's unbundling of its actual products, it used to be enough to say this story got 30,000 views. But that's not enough now. How many times was it shared? Did it engage people? And where? How was it told across the different platforms?
Right now, it includes website views; views of our stories that are republished on other news sites and aggregation apps, like Apple News; views of our newsletters based on how many emails we send and their average open rates, reduced for inflation since Apple implemented a new privacy feature; event attendees; video views; podcast listens; and Instagram post views.
Alexandra Smith, The 19th
That's the 2024 and beyond model for audience reach and engagement. Alexandra's piece resonated about how they are tackling this shift and with Blog Preston we're about to embark on a trial with SmartOcto and are particularly interested in utilising their CPI index to tie into our community news outlook. How does their impact metric change the way we approach telling stories? Will report back in the coming months on how that's happened (if indeed it has!).
What can publishers learn from the independent news sector? - Jeremy Cliforrd, BehindLocalNews - the digest of what's happening in local media publishing in the UK, BehindLocalNews, has kicked started again recently. There's a good read from editorial consultant Jeremy Clifford on what he sees as learnings for the mainstream local media publications from independent, or hyperlocal, media titles. Nimbleness, closeness to audience and growth all come into play but a warning about a lack of structure and coherence for the independent sector in terms of organising bodies and support for it.
How The Telegraph is harnessing newsletters for community development and retention - Esther Kezia Thorpe, Media Voices - a really interesting conversation between Media Voices and David Alexander and Maire Boneheim about how they are expanding and utilising newsletters at the Telegraph. They are increasingly putting exclusive content within the newsletters themselves - so not necessarily as articles - and there's a strong stat about the value of someone clicking a link from a newsletter has to then becoming a subscriber on the site (there's a correlation). Newsletters build loyalty and brand awareness in a way that other platforms, while being larger in scale, don't.
Those are my three for this week which caught my eyes, as ever if there’s something you think I should feature then drop it through to ed@almaonline.co.uk
And some parish news from me, working with The Lead then we’ve announced three further launches - this time all in the North West of England - as we expand the in-depth features and news we do on a hyperlocal level. Importantly, we continue to work closely with both independent and established media titles covering those towns.
Hope you’re having a good week.
Keep going.
Ed