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Wednesday 13th December: Pivot to subscriptions is a pivot to being smaller
Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Chris. Don’t forget — our brand new Media Moments 2023 report is out now! If you need a refresher on everything that’s happened in print, broadcast, trust, etc. over the year (and who doesn’t) you can grab that here. For free! Though any contribution you make will be gratefully received.
Jacob Donnelly has taken a look at what it means that the Daily Mail — one of the largest advertising funded ‘news’ sites online — is reportedly pursuing a subscription strategy. The Telegraph reported that the site is to trial putting 10 to 15 articles per day behind a paywall from January, as part of a recognition that the digital advertising ecosystem is extremely volatile.
Donnelly has pulled out some particular stumbling blocks for the Mail: “For MailOnline to see sufficient growth in paid subscriptions, all 10-15 daily stories need to be related in some way to provide a sufficient quantity of content to the subscriber. For example, it could be a paid subscription tied to everything royalty… but if it’s just a random collection of stories, I can’t imagine it working.”
He suggests that in, two years, we’ll be looking back on the Mail’s attempts to launch a subscription service as a failure. His contention is that the Mail’s editorial strategy is too far removed from its business strategy. Personally I’d have said the Mail has pursued a strategy of pumping out pablum at scale, and has a reputation deficit to overcome before anyone would ever think of paying for trash they can get elsewhere for free.
Here’s an interesting argument from Brian Morrissey which puts a positive spin on one of podcasting’s perennial issues — that of discovery: “The knock on podcasting is discoverability, yet that’s also a way of saying podcasting isn’t ruled by a dominant algorithm”. It’s a very every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining way of looking at the podcasting industry, which remains open and democratic.
We don’t often cover appointments here, but this is relevant from quite a few angles. For one thing Seward has been all over this stuff for years, so he’s a smart choice for the NYT. Secondly, where the NYT goes other publications follow, so this is a bellwether for what to expect from the rest of the news industry over the course of 2024.
I’ve only had the pleasure of flatplanning a magazine a few times, but even from my limited experience it was one of the most fun aspects of magazine making. On our community hub, Paul Fisher Cockburn explained why he still uses paper — actual physical paper! — to do so. It’s a fun read, we’d love it if you got involved in the discussion.
There was a really nice article from Megan Clement the other day, all about what we lose when feminist publications die. Well, a few weeks after G/O Media shuttered Jezebel… it’s back, baby! The biting, often hilarious feminist news site was a rare beast and it’s fantastic to see it given a second lease of life. Here’s hoping advertisers support it.
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