Tag: Future of news
The Age of the Skim
Back in the days of monopoly distribution, selling the news was a fantastic business. Local media outlets, with captive customers and competitive insulation, enjoyed profit margins as high as 25% or even higher. The internet dismantled their monopoly advantage. Now, offering general news like that is a shitty business. In a world where diversion is just a click or a swipe away, user engagement with general news products is irregular, with short, shallow usage sessions and erratic visit frequency. Smartphones have given birth to the Age of the Skim, which has made the engagement problem even worse. How to build audience by transforming skimmers into engaged customers with a predictable consumption habit is the singular challenge faced by media outlets today. The second challenge? Learning how to sell them, of course.
Plus, the fall 2021 update of the most interesting current developments in media…
Where’s the beef?
Five insights guaranteed to shortcut the path to profitability of any news start-up – they’re the basis of the playbook both Axios Local and 6AM City are using to fuel the rapid growth of their local offerings. Plus, the usual summary of the latest developments in digital media, from another epic Murdoch fail to Nextdoor’s public offering to the surprising resurgence of Yelp to a heartfelt memoriam for one of the last great newspaper editors…
My Spring 2021 $0.02 worth…
Everything happening in media right now, including the post-Trump slump in audiences, how CNN got lost, the big revenue challenge of newyorktimes.com, dialing up headlines for more clicks, the Washington Post technology strategy, the rebound in advertising, a confused Congress holds another hearing on social media, and how the newly-independent sovereign writer poses a threat to the companies they used to work for…
Small is Beautiful and Product is Everything
Everything that’s going on in the news business right now, from attempts to make Google and Facebook pay for linking to publisher websites, to the arrival of newsletter products in local markets, to the rise of the role of the news product manager, to subscription tax credits to support newspapers…in France, naturellement
Starting up
As local newspapers continue their fall to extinction, digital news start-ups are emerging to fill the market gap. But do they understand how the market for news has changed? And do they understand the process of building a start-up business in the digital age?
Rubbernecking
how the mad pursuit of user engagement forced social media companies to take responsibility for what is published on their platforms – and backed Facebook into a corner
Why is local news so boring?
There is an art to telling a story. Even a local news story can be rendered in an attractive way. So why isn’t it?
Local news, emerging from the ashes
– local news in a post-newspaper world
BlastofWinter 