New report explores membership revenue model for news
The Membership Puzzle and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University are out with a new guidebook on how to build a membership revenue model to support local journalism, and the distinctions between membership and subscriptions/paywalls.
It's both a primer and a reality check on the news membership model.
The guide also emphasizes the value of reader engagement and the development of email newsletters as a funnel for membership and subscription programs.
It was built, in part, on case studies from several local online news organizations run by LION members, including Berkeleyside, MinnPost, Whereby.Us, VT Digger and Honolulu Civil Beat.
The guide's co-author, Emily Goligoski, will be among the speakers at a Reader Revenue Summit that LION is hosting with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University in New Jersey on April 6. (And a limited amount of travel assistance is available for LION members who would like to attend!)
Democracy Fund invests $2 million in local news in two states
The Democracy Fund has announced the creation in New Jersey and North Carolina of "two new locally-based and locally-driven funds – totaling more than $2 million – that will invest in ideas, people, and organizations that are working to ensure people have access to the news and information they need in these communities. The funds will focus on building more healthy news ecosystems as a vital part of just communities and a healthy democracy."
"These funds are not focused on maintaining the status quo in local news, but on pushing forward changes that improve how journalism serves the public and makes news and information more resilient over the long term. Through these funds, we will work closely with local partners to increase giving to local news and invest in long-term solutions — over short-term fixes — especially in the areas of business models, collaboration and community engagement."
Facebook offers advice on adjusting to News Feed changes
As publishers tried to figure out what impact Facebook's News Feed algorithm changes will have on their ability to reach readers, the company held a webinar for journalists last week. It included some advice on how to encourage the "meaningful interactions" that will be weighted more heavily under the changes.
For those who missed it, former LION board member Ned Berke took some extensive notes.
Related: "Facebook’s algorithm change isn’t all bad for publishers," "How Facebook stole the news business," and "Facebook and Google won’t save local news."
Deadline Feb. 16 to apply for money for reader engagement tools
There's only one week left to apply for funding through a new program that is helping local independent online news organizations pay for tools reader engagement tools from Hearken and GroundSource. Apply by Feb. 16!
News About Local Independent Online News
CANADA: Discourse Media is launching a membership platform and local news fellowships, as fundraising continues.
CHARLOTTESVILLE: The nonprofit news site Charlottesville Tomorrow shares its reporting with the local newspaper. Here’s how they’ve made the partnership last. Related: The organization is looking for its second-ever executive director, as founder Brian Wheeler, who has served the past few years as a LION board member, steps down.
CHICAGO: Former DNAinfo staffers link up with Civil for Block Club Chicago. The effort is relying on blockchain and subscriptions instead of billionaires.
DESIGN THINKING: Matter will hold free bootcamps in four regions of the U.S. for for-profit local news organizations.
HOODLINE: This hyperlocal news site in San Francisco is reinventing itself with an automated local news wire.
NEW JERSEY: Local independent online news sites in New Jersey honored for innovation, engagement.
PRO PUBLICA: How ProPublica exposed racial profiling in pedestrian citations in Florida.
SPIRITED MEDIA: The company that owns Billy Penn, Denverite and The Incline is launching a membership program. Report for America has selected nine local news organizations, including Spirited Media, to host Report for America corps members.
TAP INTO: With 66 Local Independent Online News Franchises, TAPinto Is Ready to Expand Up and Down Coast.
WORCESTER: The Worcester Sun launches a weekly print edition.
Tools and Tips: Advertising and Revenue
AD BLOCKING: Publishers, Ad Tech Firms Batten Hatches As Chrome Ad Blocking Deadline Nears. Google says only 1% of publishers initially affected by Chrome ad blocker.
AD TECH: German publishers are concerned the EU's ePrivacy Regulation is putting their digital advertising revenue at risk. Turner’s Top Digital Ad Strategist Sees Opportunity In Brand-Safety Push.
EVENTS: Without a strategy, newsroom events don't work. WBUR plans to build hub for events, visual journalism, debates.
FOUNDATIONS: The Case for Philanthropic Support for Local Journalism in a Time of Market Upheaval.
FUNDRAISING: Journalism’s New Patrons: Newspapers deepen embrace of philanthropy.
MOBILE: Mobile Ads To Soar In 2018, Especially In Local Media.
NEWSLETTERS: With an increased focus on paid newsletters, Substack is opening up its tools to more creators.
NONPROFITS: Journalism as Charity? How For-Profit Media May Undercut Nonprofits.
PERSONALIZATION: Future of news media: content, advertising personalization.
PLATFORMS: Google and Facebook make up less than 5 percent of publishers’ digital revenue.
PODCASTING: RadioPublic launches paid listens to help small podcasters monetize. Amazon launches a Polly WordPress plugin that turns blog posts into audio, including podcasts.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: “We get a much better reception now:” Piano says more news orgs are embracing paywalls, reader revenue, and consumer marketing. A Publisher’s Paywall Strategy Is About More Than The Bottom Line. Tear down this paywall: Germany’s taz newspaper launches a reader revolution from Berlin. Bikini slideshows and other click bait: Do paywalls usher in better content? Schibsted retains digital subscribers with automated onboarding. The New York Times digital paywall business is growing as fast as Facebook and faster than Google.
USER EXPERIENCE: The Most Successful Brands Focus on Users — Not Buyers. How The Financial Times Uses Reader Feedback To Launch And Test New Features.
VIDEO: How Axel Springer’s Welt gets people to watch video on its own site. Where is video going next in news media? As Twitter stock soars, its video app Periscope is drowning.
Tools and Tips: Journalism and Technology
ARCHIVES: How Tom Tryniski digitized nearly 50 million pages of newspapers in his living room.
DATA: Why small newsrooms do the best data journalism. Why teaching data is a challenge at most universities. A data journalist’s guide to sports data.
ELECTIONS: How to launch the collaborative journalism project Voting Block for your 2018 state or local election.
ENGAGEMENT: Museums are finding creative ways to engage with their audience — a lesson newsrooms should emulate. Newsrooms should strengthen relationships among community members, report recommends.
FOIA: Big tech’s bid to control FOIA. Facebook’s opacity in Seattle shows why self-regulation on digital disclosure isn’t enough.
GENDER BALANCE: "I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories: Here’s what I’ve learned, and why I did it."
GOOD NEWS: Turning to ‘good news’ in troubled times: How two journalists took charge.
GRAPHICS: To illustrate a river’s impact on the community, this group of Bolivian journalists used a web comic. How TimelineJS Can Enhance the Storytelling Process.
IMPACT: Sometimes, Impact Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be: Claims from officials that they’re acting in response to a story need to be investigated, too.
LINKEDIN: Publishers eye LinkedIn as Facebook’s reliability falters. What goes viral on LinkedIn? Ranking the top publishers.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Don't look now, but digital photo display runs rings around print. Advice for shooting and editing with a smartphone. These tools will help you find the right images for your stories.
SEO: SEO Metrics You Should Be Tracking But Probably Aren't.
STORY COMMENTS: The Atlantic is killing its comments in favor of a new Letters section to showcase reader feedback.
STYLE GUIDE: Diversity style guide helps journalists write with "accuracy and authority." What’s the difference between sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment and rape?
TAX CUTS: Three Stories to Report Now on the New Tax Cuts.
TRUST: How can publishers start rebuilding trust with their readers?
VIDEO: What the Budweiser and PETA Super Bowl ads can teach you about video storytelling.
WORDPRESS: The need for speed: Google dedicates engineering team to accelerate development of WordPress ecosystem.
WORK-LIFE BALANCE: Notoriously hard on moms, the news business isn’t getting much better.
Industry News
AI: Here’s How One Japanese Newspaper Is Moving Robo-Journalism Forward.
ALT WEEKLIES: The alt-weekly crisis hits Nashville. And democracy.
APPLE: The iPad Revolution That Wasn't — News Media Burned Again.
AUSTRALIA: Commission in Australia recommends tax deductions for news media subscriptions.
BUZZFEED: Can BuzzFeed afford to keep funding BuzzFeed News?
CHATBOTS: How to Easily Introduce Chatbots to Journalism Students.
CMS: Here’s how Arc’s cautious quest to become the go-to publishing system for news organizations is going.
COASTAL BIAS: A Nebraskan and a New Yorker cross swords over ‘coastal bias’ in reporting.
DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA: Digital First may bid to buy Boston Herald.
FACEBOOK: More than half of Facebook Instant Articles partners may have abandoned it. But overseas fake news publishers use them to bring in more cash. Flipboard cozies up to Facebook-weary publishers. Facebook and journalism: After the storm, the challenge remains remarkably simple (but at the same time, very challenging). Facebook hired a full-time pollster to monitor Zuckerberg’s approval ratings. "Facebook only cares about Facebook." Brazil's biggest newspaper pulls content from Facebook after algorithm change.
A Surprising New Study Says Facebook’s Ridiculed Plan to Rate the Media Could Actually Work. (But there’s one big caveat.) Crowdsourcing trusted news sources can work — but not the way Facebook says it’ll do it. Facebook wants its users to drive out fake news. Here’s the problem with that. What fact-checkers want from Facebook.
FACT CHECKING: Factmata closes $1M seed round as it seeks to build an ‘anti fake news’ media platform.
FAKE NEWS: Google executives are floating a plan to fight fake news on Facebook and Twitter.
Meet The Macedonian Officer Running A Ring Of Fake News Websites. Hard right dominates use of fake US news, Oxford study finds. How ‘Fake News’ Changed The New York Times – and Didn’t.
GAWKER: Peter Thiel Bid For Gawker.com. Now He May Want To Turn It Into A Conservative Investigative News Site.
GOOGLE: Google’s advertising business is showing holes.
HARASSMENT: A Las Vegas newspaper killed a story on Steve Wynn. Why can’t anyone recall the details? Can public radio powerhouse WNYC navigate a crisis of its own making? Ten women sign letter accusing Northwestern journalism professor Alec Klein of sexual harassment and assault. Newseum launches initiative promoting workplace integrity on behalf of women in the news industry.
LOCAL TV: Local TV news gets a $2.6 million boost from the Knight Foundation.
LOS ANGELES: Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong close to deal to buy the L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune. Inside Tronc’s sale of the L.A. Times (and all the new questions to come). What should the Los Angeles Times expect from its new owner? The Los Angeles Times’s huge sale price isn’t necessarily a turning point for newspapers. Meanwhile, a family-run Eastside Los Angeles newspaper chain is closing down after nearly 40 years.
NEWSEUM: ‘A slow-motion disaster’: Journalism museum in talks about possible building sale.
NEWSWEEK: Newsweek’s future in question after firing top editors. Who’s Behind Newsweek? Why are the new owners so anxious to hide their ties to an enigmatic religious figure? Journalists shouldn't be fired for investigating their own publications.
PAY DISPARITY: At the BBC, gender pay gap concerns become a crisis.
PRESS FREEDOM: What some reporters get wrong about the First Amendment. America Is No Longer the Standard Bearer for a Free Press. Dem lawmaker introduces bill to protect journalists from violence. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services threatens to bar Modern Healthcare from press calls after reporter refuses to alter story. Journalists are fleeing for their lives in Mexico. There are few havens.
PRINT: Two Alabama daily newspapers cutting back from 7 to 5 days a week.
SINCLAIR: NAB, Sinclear defend FCC deregulation to court. Sinclair May Try to Keep More Major Stations as Decision on Tribune Deal Looms.
SNAPCHAT: Snapchat is now selling merchandise in its app. Snapchat shares pop as revenue rises.
TUMBLR: Russian Trolls Ran Wild On Tumblr And The Company Refuses To Say Anything About It.
TWITTER: For the first time ever, Twitter has finally turned a profit. Twitter failed to remove hundreds of Russian propaganda videos aimed at Americans. The other kind of Twitter spam nobody’s talking about.
UK: Decline of local journalism threatens democracy, says May. UK will study Google's and Facebook's impact on viability of newspapers. How the Bureau Local collaborated with more than 160 people in five UK cities to investigate local budget proposals.
WEST VIRGINIA: Judge delays ruling on bidding process for Gazette-Mail.
YOUTUBE: YouTube Takes Aim at Conspiracies, Propaganda. 'Fiction is outperforming reality': how YouTube's algorithm distorts truth. Facebook goes after YouTube by expanding "Watch" to more creators. YouTube's problem with transparency.
Upcoming Events
AD SALES CRM WEBINAR: LION will host a webinar on customer-relations management software for local advertising sales at 1 p.m. Feb. 20.
AD RATE BASICS WEBINAR: LION will host a webinar on how to determine advertising rates and packages at 1 p.m. March 20.
YOUTUBE FOR PUBLISHERS WEBINAR: LION will host a webinar on YouTube for local news publishers at 1 p.m. April 24.
READER REVENUE SUMMIT: LION and the Center for Cooperative Media will host a day-long summit on Reader Revenue April 6 at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
LION ANNUAL CONFERENCE: LION's annual conference, the country's largest gathering of local independent online news organizations, will be held Oct. 11-13 at Columbia College, Chicago. |