Tuesday 24th May: Posh news for posh people?

May 24, 2022

Today we're taking a look at the problems with paid news, ecommerce strategies and the Taliban's latest attack on women in media.

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Is the the future of news paid subscription products for a small elite? We 100% hope not, but it's a very valid question and it was asked at a recent panel organised by Deloitte and Enders Media and drew a variety of responses.

Jon Slade, chief commercial officer at the FT said it was a possible outcome, not desirable, but possible. He also said paid for news could subsidise news that's free to access. That's not happening on a significant scale now and I really can't see it happening in the future.

Encouragingly, other panel participants, from Future, The Guardian and The Daily Mail, said that open access was at least part of their preferred model. Future now boasts the holy trinity of ads, ecommerce and subs and The Guardian of course has a solid reader revenue component to its bottom line. And the exclusively ad-funded Mail... well least said, soonest mended.

Studying why poor people don't pay for news is an important research area and a new report from The Netherlands confirms previous findings that high price, free news elsewhere, and commitment issues are the main reasons for not paying. The good news is there are some thoughts in this piece on how publishers are working to fix the problem.

Digiday has some takeaways from its first Commerce Week to help publishers hold onto recent ecommerce gains.

  • Expand your audience without diluting it

  • Create direct relationships with advertisers

  • Introduce KPIs that value content

  • When times are tough, promote discounts.

The Taliban have ordered female Afghan TV presenters and other women on screen to cover their faces while on air. There's nothing any of us can do about this or any of the other madness practised by that regime, but it's important to remember that this is going on in the world and to keep it in the public eye in any way we can.

Mediagazer is an up-to-the-minute homepage of breaking trends and commentary for publishers and media owners. They sift through thousands of sites to present the very best picks on a single page.

Go to mediagazer.com or follow them on Twitter @mediagazer.

This week's podcast

This week we hear from Charlotte Cijffers, Digital Director at Rolling Stone UK & Attitude Magazine. We spoke about launching the iconic Rolling Stone title in the UK, her work on Attitude’s digital transformation, and the benefits of developing more localised content for magazines. She also gives advice on what publishers should focus on when looking to grow their own audiences online.

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