Wednesday 24th January: Futureproofing local news

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Few areas of publishing have been battered more strongly by the headwinds of digital media than local news. The conflict between scale and meaningful local coverage has meant businesses have struggled to replace print profitability with anything close to significant revenue streams in digital. Yet in recent years, we’ve seen some publishers really find their footing, from legacy titles who have successfully undergone digital transformation, to many start-ups which have risen up to fill the information gaps in their communities.

As part of a special four-part podcast series, supported by the Google News Initiative, we’ve been talking (well, Peter has!) to publishers and experts across Europe who are working to find resilient business models. We spoke to them about the state of the local news market in their regions, how they’ve evolved company culture and practice, and what tools and trends they’re working with to prepare for the next decade.

In this first episode, we look at some of the historical context around the state of local news, shifts in the UK and European markets, and what ‘good’ local news might look like. We also do a deep dive into some of the issues facing the UK local news market, as well as the continuing value of local news to communities.

This headline was beautifully juxtaposed with another article in Pocket, our shared article pool. “Print Prospered In 2023, On Track To Repeat This Year”, its neighbour read. Now one is newsprint, the other is magazines, so I won’t draw any facetious comparisons, but it did amuse me. Also (drily) amusing is this quote from chief exec Jim Mullen: “The user experience is really straightforward, we are ad funded. I am as disappointed as anyone else that people don’t really want to pay for our content online. Not enough of them, nowhere near enough of them.”

Here we are with some good news. Some publishers are recording a 200% increase in CMPs in tests of Unified ID 2.0 compared to ads served to an audience with third-party cookies present. Lots of experimentation with other ID solutions ongoing though, as this piece from Digiday outlines.

FT Strategies and the Google News Initiative have launched a new five-month intensive programme to help news publishers build an AI-driven newsroom. The Artificial Intelligence Launchpad Programme will take on eight publishers, learning from AI use cases at each stage of the content lifecycle, from audience engagement to monetisation. You’ve got until 1st February to apply, if interested.

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