Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Peter.
Are you a publisher with newsletters or podcasts? Then you absolutely must have Wednesday June 12th in your diary. Advance rates for tickets ends this coming Friday!
According to its editor Graeme Brown, 11 million people read Birmingham Live last month. Birmingham is Britain’s 2nd largest city, but there are nowhere near 11 million people living there. Its population is actually just over 1 million, and even if you look at the wider West Midlands region, that’s about 3 million. So… local?
However, I’ve just been on the Birmingham Live website and pretty much every story on the home page is about a local issue. Brown explains the scale by separating drive-bys from loyal locals: “Most of those 11 million people only visit us once or twice. You look at the people who visit us 20 times a week — in the app there are people who are coming and reading 50-plus articles a week — they’re all very, very local.”
This is actually the most positive story I’ve read about Reach, Birmingham Live’s publisher, well, probably ever. The best bit is editor Brown’s signoff. Addressing criticism of younger staff from former journalists, he says, “They’re doing the job that you were doing, at a greater volume, to more people and with a kind of complexity that you would never have been able to dream up.” Right or wrong, you’ve got to love an editor that comes out swinging on behalf of his staff.
Welcome to Jacob Donnelly’s weekly Media Voices slot. Seriously, Jacob’s newsletter is great and after you’ve finished our roundup you should go and sign up for A Media Operator. In this post, he cites the most recent evidence that referral traffic from both Google and Facebook is way down and offers the following: “We need to take advantage of the traffic we will still get… and ensure we turn that traffic into our audience. We can complain all we want about the platforms, but building a lasting relationship with our customers—our readers—is essential.” He’s not often wrong, but he’s right again.
Apple has announced that Apple News+ subscribers are to get offline reading support. That seems like a major benefit to me, but maybe because I’ve spent more time than is healthy battling the crappy train Wi-Fi on the UK’s West Coast mainline. Apple Insider however is way more interested in the announcement that News+ subscribers will also be getting a new word game called Quartiles. Is media just all about games and recipes now? FML!
✉️ If you want to learn how to do newsletters — and newsletter business — brilliantly , we know you’ll love the Publisher Newsletter Summit, coming to London on June 12th.
That headline is genius and this story from The Drum is an absolute trip. It recounts an experiment that pitched a community of gen-Z copywriters against ChatGPT to see if AI can truly grasp the subtle art of meme-ing. TL;DR, not even close. To be fair to the bots, I couldn’t do any better, but then I’m self-aware enough not to try. The advice? When it comes to meme-ing, bring in a ‘living, breathing GEN-Zr’ to save yourself from the ‘hey, FELLOW Kids’ vibes.
More from Media Voices
✉️ Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to The Media Roundup here for the four most important stories in your inbox, every weekday.
???? Want to reach our audience of publishing and media professionals? Here’s our sponsorship options for the podcast and newsletter. Or just reply to this email and we can build you a custom bundle.
???? Do you have a podcast and/or newsletter and want to take them to the next level? We’d love to see you at our Publisher Podcast and Newsletter Summit.
???? Take your relationship with us to the next level: we’d love you to join our community of fellow media professionals.
