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- Wednesday 22nd February: Newsletters are mini-magazines
Wednesday 22nd February: Newsletters are mini-magazines
Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.
Adam Tinworth has turned his mind to a question that we've been thinking about a lot recently - what is a newsletter? We've been thinking about this in relation to the imminent launch of our Publisher Newsletter Awards and the urgent need to sort out our entry forms. For Adam, it's more about getting past the default of seeing newsletters as a 'glorified list of links to bring the readers back to the “real” product — the websites'.
Adam happily accepts that newsletters are a powerful audience-development tool; helping transition ephemeral social and search visitors to reachable newsletter visitors. But he also points out that newsletters are products in their own right and laments the fact that too many of the newsletters he sees haven’t moved beyond promotional thinking.
"If you’re taking newsletters seriously — and if you aren’t, why the hell not? — then you must move away from looking at it as a list of links with some fancy additions, and really think of it as a mini-magazine, delivered by email. It needs to contain its own inherent value, as well as being a gateway to other information on your site or those of others." Amen Adam!
The New Statesman is reporting that its paid circulation has grown to 43,230, an increase of more than 27% over the last year. With a total average circulation (including free distribution) of 47,320 per issue and significant growth in online audiences, this represents the magazine’s highest readership for more than four decades. Credit for the growth goes to flexible pricing, apps, podcasts, a magazine redesign and the arrival of Andrew Marr as the New Statesman’s political editor. No pressure Andrew 😊
Few UK publishers expect open programmatic to be their main advertising revenue driver three years from now. These are the findings of the "Digital Publishing: Outlook and Priorities for 2023" study from the AOP. Just 14% of survey respondents say open programmatic will be their main source of ad revenue growth this year, while 44% say private marketplaces are a big potential source of advertising. Interesting that 42% feel 'non-programmatic direct deals' will be their biggest opportunity. Old-school ad sales FTW.
This piece from Dazed expresses dismay at the behaviour of 'TikTok ghouls' and their morbid antics surrounding the tragic death of Nicola Bulley. But it also highlights the less-than-perfect behaviour of traditional media outlets in relation to the case.
"Maybe the reaction to Bulley’s death can be read as yet another example of social media poisoning our brains, but there’s little you can accuse these ’citizen journalists’ of which doesn’t hold true for many of their counterparts in traditional media."
On this week’s episode we hear from Janice Min, co-owner and CEO of The Ankler, a newsletter-first media brand covering Hollywood and the world of entertainment. She tells us how The Ankler’s revenue streams have evolved over the last twelve months, the potential she sees in lean, newsletter-first businesses, and what lessons she’s applying from her time at big-name legacy publications like the Hollywood Reporter.