Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Chris.
The latest issue of The Grub Street Journal asks: Why won’t print just lie down and die? Answers from industry insiders were less about zombie print, more about making print work as a valuable part of the modern media mix.
On this week’s episode of the podcast we take a deep dive into the subscription trends of the past year. To get insight from someone who’s had experience in subscription management, we spoke to Zamir Walimohamed, Head of Digital, Marketing & Subscriptions at Motor Sport Magazine. Zamir has been playing a pivotal role in driving Motor Sport Magazine’s digital expansion and marketing initiatives for 12 years now, during which time he’s seen trends come, go, and stay.
Zamir tells us about how the magazine has managed bringing print subscribers into its digital ecosystem, and why a growing propensity to pay for digital subscriptions is benefitting magazines across the industry. He also discusses the extent to which off-the-shelf subscription management tools are fit for purpose, and where the smart money is being spent on improving retention.
We also chat about recent research that suggests making subscriptions easier to cancel can actually benefit publishers in the long term. As you’ll hear from me screaming ‘YES’ when he says it, I agree strongly that we should approach consumers first as people with the same frustrations we also experience, and not just as big walking wallets.
For those of you outside the UK, Newsnight has been a fixture of the political media landscape here for over three decades. But now — for a variety of reasons from greater choice to news avoidance — viewing figures are down to around 300,000. As the Guardian puts it, ‘will the flagship late-night news analysis show on BBC Two live to fight another day, or is it to be fatally wounded by £5m cuts to its £8m budget?’
Yes, Pugpig is a vendor, and therefore its insights need to be viewed through the lens that they’re trying to sell you a product. Who isn’t? But there are some interesting trends in here that you could only really spot by being a vendor and working with a range of publishers. The one that’s leaping out at me right now is the work that went on at The Seattle Times to let its business journalists access better analytics — and what happened as a result.
Big fan of this piece from independent media consultant Isabelle Roughol on how newsroom culture needs to be fostered by managers who know what they’re doing: “While the individuals in newsrooms are overwhelmingly good, management and culture simply are not. Our organisations are less than the sum of their parts.” It’s not an admonishment, however — it’s a call to do better, with some practical advice on how to do that thrown in for good measure. V good read.
Since launching last month, we’ve kept topics and posts in our community forum restricted to only logged-in users. We’re asking our registered users if that’s something they’d like to maintain, or if opening them up would encourage more participation (posting will always require a login, but we can open viewing up to the public). If you’re a community member you can vote here, or reply to this email if you haven’t signed up but have a opinion.
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