What I've been reading: Ofcom's local digital news landscape, the great Chrome cookie switch off + email newsletter tips for non-profits but could work anywhere

My weekly digest of interesting links I've found scattered across the web in the last few weeks.

Good evening, and here's my first post on Substack. I had to move away from TinyLetter as it's decided to be bought out and so I've drunk the coolade and am Dad-dancing my way onto Substack. Thanks for joining me here.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a restful one if there’s such a thing - with a soon to be 12-week old baby in our household it was as ‘restful’ as you might expect!

Below are a few interesting bits I spotted in amongst the festive season browsing.

Ofcom’s Local Media Survey - covering a period in Spring 2023 this is an in-depth look at the local media habits in the UK. It’s lengthy and I still need to crunch through more of it but two key things jumped out at me. I’ve referenced before about the fragmentation of audiences and that’s becoming even more pronounced at a local level - along with the proliferation of people who now get their main source of news as being ‘from a local group’. And by that they mean Facebook. So yes, while the ‘main page’ may be struggling on Facebook having a distributed strategy that utilises localised groups is still a key part of getting the word out. But just posting the same story in 20 different groups will not get the results you’re expecting, it’s about targeting the right place, with the right story. My second takeaway was the strength of the BBC in terms of digital consumption, and this is before the changes coming in to bolster its online output. While you could argue they are responding to user habits, it does also suggest that audiences are perhaps happy and comfortable with the current service they are receiving given the timing of this survey. I’ll be doing a deeper analysis on the Ofcom report in due course.

Why ad-funded journalism-for-all faces fight for survival in 2024 - Jim Edwards - because as if 2023 wasn’t difficult enough…. although there are some major challenges here, it is worth remembering that a lot of ad-campaigns these days are intent-based or inferred-interest based as opposed to the older-school dropping a cookie to stalk me around the web type of advertising. What it serves as a timely reminder of, that it’s important to build out and diversify digital products that have direct relationships with readers but also with commercial partners. So the value isn’t based on millions of anonymous users. You can apply that logic from the most hyperlocal of titles, all the way up to global titles too.

10 Mistakes Non-Profits Make in Their Newsletters — And How to Fix Them - Dan Oshinsky - there’s so much smart stuff in Dan’s email digests, they are a great read. This piece was packed full of useful advice but I don’t think it should just apply to non-profit organisations. There’s loads of guidance here that actually anyone sending a newsletter could do with taking stock on (me included!).

I’ve still got plenty of decorating to do in the new Substack abode, but I’ve managed to unload the posts packed up from my old Wordpress blog site and also migrate the mailing list successfully from TinyLetter so I’m taking hitting publish and send on this as my win for Wednesday.

Hope you have a great week ahead.

Keep going and thanks for reading.

Ed