• Publishing Trends to Watch in 2020

The weather is cooler, the pumpkins are here, and it’s time for people with opinions to start publishing articles announcing what to watch for in the media and publishing industry in the coming year.

• “The idea is for new subscribers not just to come on board but to stay on board”

“The subscriber journey doesn’t end with the purchase (of subscription).” It’s the beginning, says INMA’s Researcher-in-Residence, Grzegorz Piechota.

• D.R.I.V.E. Your Sales Results to the Finish Line

Winning the Daytona 500 is just one stop on your quest to auto racing greatness. It’s more than going fast. It requires a plan. Race crews test and create a unique plan for each race and race track.

• 5 Ways To Establish Consumer Loyalty For Your Brand

What are some character traits that you admire? Patience, integrity, honesty, loyalty? So do we. Specifically, loyalty.

• Newsonomics: Will Facebook’s new news tab be a milestone or millstone?

The money is welcome, and the potential audience is too. But does this push publishers away from being destinations and toward being suppliers?

• Is TikTok an Opportunity for Publishers?

If you’re over 35, spend and hour or two on the social media sensation TikTok, and leave feeling befuddled, don’t worry.

• Developing Technology Standards to Support Privacy Regulations of the Future

Advertising has played a vital role in the internet’s mass adoption, but as the industry evolved, consumer privacy took a back seat.

• How to build your own paid newsletter, and the people who are doing it

Newsletters are seeing a renaissance, particularly as algorithmic timelines have become saturated with click-bait, advertising, and irrelevant information.

• When It Comes to Your Publication, Consider the Simple Things.

Alternate revenue streams, paywalls, sponsored content, versioning, big data, social media tracking… Today’s publishing environment is complicated.

• What’s Next for American Media, LLC? | News & Notes

After nearly two years of ongoing scrutiny related to the alleged activities of its CEO, David Pecker, and chief content officer, Dylan Howard, the company now known as American Media, LLC is moving on to life after The National Enquirer, the cornerstone upon which Pecker built his tabloid empire after taking over the company in 1999.

• “Publishers are going to live or die based on their relationship with readers”: How Quartz is rethinking its membership offerings

It has been a bumpy stretch for Quartz, one of the most lauded digital news startups of the past decade.

• Critical Thinking: How Can Newspapers Come Together to Create a National Identity?

A national identity among newspapers cannot be separated from the national identity of everyday Americans. And if there’s one thing to learn from the obliteration of a unified American identity in 2016, it’s that there’s a whole lot of work to do to regain a sustainable and inclusive grasp on what it means to be American.

• Publishers, Don’t Overlook Your Best Source of Content Ideas

As a publisher, if you’re following a trend, you’re already behind. Here at 101 Network, we discovered that the hard way when we were first starting out back in 2016.

• Using data as content: The publishers’ “secret weapon” to break through the noise

As more companies take content and audience seriously as a marketing function, the bar for audience attention continues to rise. It’s always been incredibly challenging to break through the noise, but we have a secret weapon we’ve been using: data.

• What Would Media Companies Look Like If Sales Leaders Reinvented The Business Model?

Twenty years ago, the news publishing world looked a lot different than it does today. Newspapers were still the main source of information for many consumers, and they had more cash flow and more people working in their newsrooms

• What’s In a Name? When It’s in Your Inbox, a Lot.

You want your emails to get great results. All email strategists know the importance of testing their emails, but the overwhelming majority of tests are focused on subject lines.

• These 5 Publications Are Doing Instagram Right

Instagram, a photo-and-video-sharing platform, doesn’t initially seem like the best place for a magazine to thrive. Captions are capped at 2,200 characters and links can’t be clicked on or copied and pasted.

• Which podcasts have truly shaped the medium? And do they fit in convenient list form?

They do! Plus: Apple aims for a “super-bundle,” Luminary shuffles executives, StartUp tells its own tale, and Dolly Parton’s America.

• What publishers can learn from adblockers

Almost half of all internet users are currently using ad blockers, and Google itself has launched a native adblocker in its web browser Chrome. Digiday predicts the cost to publishers could exceed $35 billion by 2020. What can publishers learn from this large population of readers that block ads?

• One subscriber or 48,000 pageviews: Why every journalist should know the “unit economics” of their content

Imagine you’re a barista at a coffee shop. You may have no background in business, finance, or data analysis — but you still probably have a decent handle on how the company you work for makes money and what role you play in that process.

• Joe Pulizzi Shares His Secret to Event Success

Here at Niche HQ, we believe industry event attendance can make a huge difference to your company growth (I mean…it’s our business model!)

• With the Help of Washington, News Publishers Fight to Recapture Advertising Dollars From Facebook and Google

Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of News Corp and co-chairman of Fox Corp., who built his fortune in the newspaper business, once called the ad-driven profits from his publications “rivers of gold.” By 2005, he lamented, “Sometimes rivers dry up.”

• A soccer league, job fairs, and local news: How this Spanish-language news org in New Orleans reshaped its mission post-Katrina

Jambalaya News is one of those organizations that’s hard to pin down — because it’s busy doing as much as it can for its ever-growing community.

• How Magazines Can Avoid Disaster by Coming Back to Earth

You will be familiar, I suppose, with Apollo 13—if not the phenomenal movie, perhaps the unfortunate outer-space incident that inspired it. Seriously. It was in all the papers.

• “Slow sites have a negative impact on revenue”: Publishers opt for leaner websites to attract and keep users on site

Publishers looking to deliver more value to their readers, may inadvertently do so at the cost of user experience. “In our shared pursuit to push the web to do more, we’re running into a common problem: performance.

• New, Big B2B Ideas, from MarTech to Dimensional Mail

Last summer, I picked up a score of great ideas from the FlipMyFunnel conference in Boston. This year, the conference has joined forces with two other B2B niche conferences to form the B2B Sales and Marketing Exchange…

• Million Dollar Idea: Happy Attendees, Happier Sponsors

For those in the events business, you know the better experience you provide for sponsors, the more revenue you generate.

• Shoptalk: Google, Facebook Should Pay For News They Use

The good news is that somebody is once again making money from journalism. The bad news is that it’s not those who are doing the actual work of producing journalism; instead, it’s Google and Facebook, which have figured out how to “monetize” the publication of news.

• This company opens up the black box of what print newspaper subscribers are actually reading

For each article, Lesewert comes up with a “reading value” score that brings together the data on how many print readers at least noticed it and how much of it they read.

• Turning Editorial Franchises into Brand Builders and Moneymakers

Bon Appétit’s “Hot 10″ list of the best new restaurants in the country began as a typical magazine feature when it made its debut in BA‘s September restaurants issue in 2009.

 

• Getting More from Google Analytics: 3 Tips for Editors

Over the last year or so, I’ve had the chance to run several editorial training sessions with B2B media players. In these sessions, the number-one question I get from content teams is how to best judge success for their site content, video, podcasts, and other efforts.

• ‘Don’t Lose Local News’ Campaign Urges Kroger to Keep Weekly Papers in Stores

Local, independent journalism will get kicked to the curb in more than 20 markets later this month as the Kroger Co. removes free publications from all of its grocery stores nationwide.

• Revenue, Database, and Leads – Oh My!

Indy’s Child is a parenting magazine based out of Indianapolis, Indiana. Our magazine prides itself on being the ultimate parenting resource for families living in the greater Indianapolis area and beyond.

• The newspaper edition has endured over 400 years: How has it evolved in today’s digital age?

Defining the edition concept was simple in yesterday’s print world; the newspaper edition was the printed product that landed on your doorstep every morning.

• Nonprofit news outlets aren’t relying as heavily on foundations — but journalism philanthropy continues to grow

Nonprofit news does not mean news without a business model. As more and more 501(c)(3) status–granted outlets emerge in the last decade of journalism, more and more are building out ways to make money beyond foundation grants — though with less impact from membership than their commercial counterparts.

• How publishers get their reporters to drive subscriptions

For many newsrooms, paying subscribers have replaced pageviews as the key barometer of success.
That means thinking up new ways to steer reporters to create subscriber-worthy stories.

• Researchers analyzed more than 300,000 local news stories on Facebook. Here’s what they found.

The distribution and consumption of news on social media is a central concern for the future of journalism as social media platforms have become a prominent component of the news ecosystem.

• How to effectively transition from print to digital: API report

Over the last decade or so, many newspapers have slowly reduced print publishing. Between 2004 and 2018, at least 104 US newspapers reduced publishing frequency enough to change…

• Niche “School” is In! Fall Revenue Idea Refresh

January 1st is a fresh start date for most folks. But for me, fall always signals that “new beginnings” feeling. I may not have a new Star Wars lunch box anymore… But my pencils are sharpened, and I’m ready to take notes on fresh business growth ideas!

• Critical Thinking: Several Newspapers Have Stopped Printing Editorial Cartoons Due to Criticism. Did Those Publications Respond Correctly?

Recently, the New York Times stopped printing editorial cartoons in its international edition due to a cartoon’s anti-Semitic imagery.

• Here’s what we know so far about the upcoming Facebook News tab

Facebook’s News Tab is supposed to launch this fall; the company will pay some news publishers to syndicate their headlines and article previews.

• The Guardian reaches 1 million YouTube subscribers after doubling longer-form videos

The Guardian has hit 1 million subscribers on its main YouTube channel, racking up 1 billion minutes in total watch time from publishing longer-form investigative journalism, documentaries and explainers, according to the publisher.