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The Correspondent, De Correspondent’s English-language site, is shutting down on Dec. 31 — www.niemanlab.org

Some sad news to start the day, unfortunately. The Correspondent, sister site to Dutch De Correspondent, is shutting down after just over a year of publishing. The closure has come down to a lack of members renewing; in 2019, The Correspondent had about 55,000 people on a 'choose what you pay' model. But fewer than half of them renewed, and today, the count stands at around 20,000 members.

The reasons for this are less easy to pinpoint. Nieman Lab cites a row which broke out last year, where US contributors got salty when it emerged that a US office wasn't viable. Some claimed that the De Correspondent team had been misleading, and had assumed that The Correspondent would be bringing its successful Dutch model physically to America.

Personally, this is a bit of a US-centric view. We've been discussing among ourselves why The Correspondent's life was so short when other outlets have seen such success this year. Their vision was admirable. But targeting 'English speakers' as a market was possibly too broad a play.

With competitors like The Atlantic in the US and Tortoise in the UK offering similar thoughtful, 'slower' journalism with a more local lens, and both Covid and rocky political situations demanding a regional approach, this was not the right time for a global news outlet. We'll expand more on these thoughts in Monday's podcast news round-up.

NYC ad spending initiative boosts community news outlets — www.journalism.cuny.edu

In 2019, the mayor of New York signed an executive order mandating that city agencies had to spend at least half of their print and digital ad budgets in the community press. This piece rounds up the benefit this financial infusion has had on the outlets serving the sector, 1 in 5 of which had never received city advertising before then. A brilliant, well-executed idea.

Google, Facebook win key concession in Australia Digital News Law — www.bloomberg.com

It's not been a great week for Facebook, as the US has filed its long-awaited anti-competition lawsuit against them. But it's had better news from Australia, where alongside Google, they've won a key concession that recognises the monetary value the platforms provide to news businesses by directing readers to their websites.

Inside The Athletic UK's subscriber growth strategy — www.thedrum.com

Having breached a million subscribers globally thanks to aggressive pricing discounts, The Athletic's UK wing is now looking to hit the big leagues with the launch of a creative platform, including its first TV advert. An interesting interview which acknowledges the hurdles the publisher still has to overcome before conquering the UK sports scene.

This week's podcast:

Special: Highlights from Media Moments 2020, and how publishers are preparing for 2021 — voices.media

This special episode includes the audio of our launch presentation for the Media Moments 2020 report. We examine one key stat of each section within the report, from diversity and advertising to platforms, trust and more. In the second half, the team is joined by a panel featuring The Atlantic's Jemima Villanueva, Permutive's Aly Nurmohamed and The Week Junior's Andrea Barbalich.

You can buy us coffee every month (if you want) — ko-fi.com

Between The Publisher Podcast Awards, this newsletter, the podcast every week and our other projects and full-time jobs, we can sometimes feel a little exhausted. If you want to kick in to buy us a brew, we'd really appreciate it ☕