Friday 3rd May: Giant social platforms may ultimately seem like an aberration

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You know the story The New Yorker is telling… for much of the past decade, publications’ home pages have rarely been the focus of attention. Publishers - probably you - relied on social media to distribute everything that they published.

So when The Verge redesigned its home page in 2022 to look a bit like a social media feed, people were pretty dismissive. Then Elmo broke Twitter and all the other platforms pivoted away from publisher content, especially news, and The Verge’s redesign made sense. The number of “loyal users” (5 or more sessions in a calendar month) increased by 47%.

“Giant social platforms may ultimately seem like an aberration in the history of digital journalism,” Evan Goldstein, managing editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education, told The New Yorker. And writer Kyle Chayka’s sage advice for everyone that has spent years scrambling for clicks on the socials: “It may be time to turn inward, for a home-page renovation.”

The FT has introduced a new ‘North Star’ (anyone have that on their buzzword bingo sheet?). It’s called Global Paying Audience (GPA) and it’s designed to help grow audience revenue beyond its core journalism. It includes digital subscriptions, but also factors in customers paying for live events, specialist publications and print newspaper circulation. The company currently has a global paying audience of 2.6 million and targeting 3 million by 2028. Follow that star 💫

When it comes to keeping people engaged, newsletters retain their vital role. So if you’re interested in the above story you’ll probably also love our Publisher Newsletter Summit, coming up on June 12th. A full day of newsletter learnings and networking with fellow professionals? Tell me more.

There’s is no easy answer to the question, ‘How do you get Big Tech to pay for publisher content?’ However, this bill being introduced in California might just be worth watching. Instead of levies that lead the platforms to switch everything off, this proposes a fee on data-mining - the black beating heart of surveillance capitalism. The Zuckers can never switch that off! There are also some smart tax breaks written in to reward publishers who treat their staff and freelancers like actual human beings.

The team behing the Lichfield Live news website have printed four issues of the fortnightly Lichfield Independent. The print run of 5,000 flew off the shelves with people asking for more copies to be distributed to collection points. After a four-year gap in the Staffordshire town’s local newspaper provision, "people were so glad to see a paper again," says Philip John who co-runs Lichfield Live with editor Ross Hawkes. Next step, making a profit.

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