Thursday 24th June: Can the Covid trust rebound outlast the pandemic?

June 24, 2021

Morning all! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

It's the most wonderful time of the year! This year's Reuters Institute Digital News Report is out, with all of its implications for the news outlets in the various territories it studied. As you'd expect after the year we've had it's mostly bad news, as all of the existing trends we're familiar with have been accelerated by Covid. Despite that there are bright spots for some publishers, with the report noting that subscription sign-ups have been accelerated by the pandemic:

"Both The Telegraph and The Times now have around 400,000 digital subscribers, while The Guardian says 900,000 are regularly paying for its online journalism via a combination of subscription to their apps and recurring donations, though the website remains free to access."

I would like to signal a note of caution though. Some people have jumped on the idea that audience trust in news outlets is rebounding, as trust in news across the UK has risen 8%. However, that's still 14 points lower than before the Brexit referendum, and none of the underlying issues around polarisation have disappeared. In fact, they might be getting worse.

An unexpected casualty of the pandemic - the in-flight magazine. The glossy travel and luxury goods mags that have sat in the pocket in the back of plane seats are going the way of the dodo, as Katie Deighton explains for The Wall Street Journal.

We know that even the newspapers that have been skeptical of anthropocentric climate change are reappraising their views, so there's clearly a sea change taking place. Despite that, as Sara Fischer writes for Axios, there is still lots more coverage of weather than the climate despite the latter being vastly more important.

The distinction between digital video and television is blurring, as YouTube is no longer relegated to phone and tablet screens. Instead, nearly 40% of ads that air on YouTube in the US are now watched on TVs, up from 12% two years ago.

This week's episode:

This week we hear from Jasper Wang, VP of Revenue & Operations for Defector Media. Defector was formed after a mass staff exodus from former GO Media property Deadspin after an internal dispute about who knew its audience best. Defector is now an employee-owned and operated news site that has introduced measures specifically to ensure its staff have a say in the business, even as they write for its audience.

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