Friday 10th February: Let it grow, let it grow...

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

Publishers of all sizes, from global to local, continue adding new digital subscribers

The experts can't agree on whether this long-forecast recession is actually going to come to pass, and regardless, many of us are facing increasing financial pressures. A slowdown - if not a reversal - in revenues at subscription-focused publishers seemed like a sure bet late last year.

But looking at FIPP's latest Global Digital Subscription Snapshot paints a very different picture. "We see evidence of growth everywhere, and no sign that publishers are yet being affected by any sort of slowdown," FIPP's President and CEO James Hewes writes.

There are some really encouraging numbers, which WNIP helpfully summarises. In fact, INMA's Greg Piechota thinks that streaming and entertainment will be more vulnerable to cancellations than news and magazine subscriptions, because a high proportion of customers to the latter are fans and heavy users. There's some good news for the weekend.

DCMS-backed media literacy programme is supporting vulnerable internet users

Last year, the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport awarded funding to 17 UK organisations to support young, elderly and disabled people using the internet. The Economist Education Foundation, The Guardian Foundation and NewsGuard are among those helping to deliver training courses, tech solutions and mentoring schemes to vulnerable internet users.

Top 27 highest-earning Substack newsletters generate over $22m a year

This is a really interesting look at some of the top earners on Substack. There are, of course, some political writers with (to put it politely) some more fringe views clearly making a very good living from the platform. But there's actually a fair range of other topics as well, from parenting and culture to science and technology cracking the top 27.

Benchmarking Digital Subscriptions: An improved framework based on subscriptions per 1,000 visits

If two publishers have the same number of digital subscribers, it’s far from clear that both titles can talk about comparable success in digital sales. Markus Schöberl suggests a different way of benchmarking digital subscriptions against digital reach, and applies this to a number of well-known publications. The results are fascinating.

NEW EPISODE: Word in Black COO Andrew Ramsammy on the opportunities of news collaboratives

This week we hear from Andrew Ramsammy, Chief Operating Officer of Word in Black. The publication was founded in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, and brings together 10 of the nation’s leading Black publishers in a news collaborative. He discusses how the collaborative came together, how they’ve tripled revenue since launching, and other areas of opportunity for publishers to come together.