Tuesday 20th October: Paywalls, micropayments and donations, Oh My!

October 20, 2020

Good Morning! Tuesday's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

We talk about it all the time - how can a quality news business can pay for itself if newsstand sales and advertising revenues are drying up?

Local news publishers have been every bit as challenged as the nationals, with closures, mergers and cutbacks the order of the day from the American Midwest to the Midlands. In the UK, Press Gazette has counted 265 local newspaper closures since 2005 and reports a drop of 60% in circulations since 2007.

In their quest for survival, Britain's broadsheets have universally embraced the reader revenue imperative and the players left in the UK's regional newspaper industry are fighting back with their own reader-revenue strategies.

This piece from the Press Gazette looks at how the four major companies remaining - Reach, JPI Media, Archant and Newsquest - are using a mix of paywalls, micropayments and donations to bolster ad revenues hit by COVID.

TLDR; Reader revenues matter at a local level as much as national. There's no one way to do it, but convincing audiences to pay for content is critical.

And here's why a healthy, independent local press matters. Masquerading as ordinary local-news outlets, a network of 1,300 websites, covering all 50 US states is publishing 'propaganda' ordered up by conservative think tanks, political operatives, corporate executives and public-relations professionals.

Group Nine Media, owner of animal-video brand The Dodo, has taken a stake in pet insurer Petplan, the animal insurer. The pet insurance play, swapping equity and marketing services for regular revenue, is another effort by a digital pureplay to monetise specialist audience interests through ecommerce and diversify beyond advertising.

Fast Company has published a quirky opinion piece that is mixes a wonderfully nerdy historical analysis of email with a sombre examination of its failings, ultimately becomes a love letter that acknowledges "when our world turned upside in 2020, we retreated to the tools we know and trust... email is finally sexy again."

This week's podcast:

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of high-profile examples of journalists leaving publications to launch their own newsletters. Solopreneurs Casey Newton, Thomas Baekdal, Simon Owens, Anne Helen Petersen and Josh Sternberg talk about the realities of what it takes to go it alone with reader revenue as a journalist.

👋 Hello 👋

 We’re welcoming lots of new subscribers to the newsletter this week, so hello! If you enjoy it, we’d love you to pass it on to industry friends and colleagues.

And if you have thoughts on any of the stories we share or the other work we do at Media Voices, you can get in touch with us by simply replying to this email 📧. We’re happy to have you with us.