#MediaRevenue - David Clinch

Welcome to a slightly-delayed #MediaRevenue newsletter. My excuse is that I have been attending a good friend's birthday and, despite the urgency of our work, life always comes first.

My curated list of stories this week revolves around the questions of whether subcriptions are the answer for news orgs (the answer is that reader revenue + ad revenue + multiple other sources of revenue have to be calibrated,) and whether tech companies are really here to help the news industry?

My partners and I are doing everything we can to support a sustainable future for journalism, and we have now launched the Local Boost Package of media technology, built around quizzes that are tied to local content, that is specifically designed to drive engagement, registration, membership, advertising revenue and impact. Let me know if you want to know more about how you can access, or support, this set of resources.

We will all be attending the Mather Symposium in Atlanta in March, please join us there and contact me for a discounted rate. Click below for more:

Last week I did a partner spotlight on NewsGames.org, this week, I feature Legitimate. Every journalist should sign up to their universal bio to verify themselves based on their own body of work. As we battle the threat of AI and pink slime, indicators of authenticity are key. See more below.

News companies reverse course on hard subscriptions: A strategy focused mainly on subscriptions requires upfront spending on premium content. That takes time to pay off — and many publishers don't have the cushion for that in the current ad slowdown. At the same time, many outlets have learned that simply throwing a paywall up over your previously free content doesn't work either. It throttles ad revenue without capturing enough new subscribers. - Axios.

Subscription giants News Corp and New York Times buck the trend of revenue decline: News Corp marked a major digital revenue milestone and said a deal with AI companies is "imminent". - Press Gazette.

New York Times Co. Adds 300,000 Digital Subscribers in Quarter: The company has focused in recent years on pushing a bundle of products to subscribers: its core news report as well as games like Wordle and Spelling Bee; its product review site, Wirecutter; a recipe app; and The Athletic, its sports news website. - New York Times.

"We're not going to be a lifestyle company," Dow Jones CEO says: Dow Jones, the parent company to the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, Investor's Business Daily and Financial News, has doubled its digital subscription base from 2.43 million during the last three months of 2019 to 4.86 million in January. - Axios.

Games are helping the New York Times thrive amid media chaos: The New York Times' puzzle and games were played more than 8 billion times last year, the company tells Axios exclusively, led by breakout hit Wordle, with 4.8 billion plays — and a Games app redesign is on the way. - Axios.

The New York Times Games Advertising Is More Than an Awareness Machine: With millions of daily users and news nowhere in sight, the publisher taps new advertising categories. - AdWeek.

Life after Google: Should news industry embrace Amazon and Microsoft?: ...salvation could come from striking deals with Microsoft to license content to feed its AI platforms and with Amazon to help grow its advertising business. - Press Gazette.

How The Generative AI Boom Proves We Need Journalism: Danielle Coffey, CEO and president of the News/Media Alliance, believes journalism and generative AI can play nice. But first, generative AI companies must get real about the value journalism brings to their products. - AdExchanger

A ‘Mothra vs. Godzilla’ battle is looming over AI: As a journalist who writes about artificial intelligence, NYT vs. OpenAI is the only thing people in my professional life want to talk about. And they all have the same question: How does it end? - Washington Post.

OpenAI’s Secret Weapon Is Sam Altman’s 33-Year-Old Lieutenant: Brad Lightcap helped seal the startup’s deal with publisher Axel Springer. Now he’s experimenting with the company’s business model. - Bloomberg.

Here’s how we’re working with journalists to create the newsrooms of the future with AI: Microsoft is launching several collaborations with news organizations to adopt generative AI. In a year where billions of people will vote in democratic elections worldwide, journalism is critical to creating healthy information ecosystems, and it is our mission, working with the industry, to ensure that newsrooms can innovate to serve this year and in the future. - Microsoft Blog.

Introducing Semafor Signals: Semafor is launching a new, global multi-source breaking news feed called Signals, in which journalists, using tools from Microsoft and Open AI, offer readers diverse, sophisticated perspectives and insights on the biggest stories in the world as they develop. - Semafor.

How Condé Nast bought and destroyed America’s iconic music publication: Last month, Semafor broke the news that Condé Nast will fold the publication into GQ, laying off Pitchfork’s top editors and at least 10 other longtime staff writers. - Semafor.

They gave local news away for free. Virtually nobody wanted it.: 2,529 people were offered a free subscription to their local newspapers, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Philadelphia Inquirer, only forty-four accepted—less than 2 percent—according to an academic study set to be published this year in the American Journal of Political Science. - Columbia Journalism Review.  

Pivot Fund invests in Baltimore Beat: The Pivot Fund has invested $150,000 in Baltimore Beat, a Black-led, nonprofit alternative to the Baltimore Sun, which was purchased last month by the conservative chairman of Sinclair Broadcasting Group. - Pivot Fund.

Partner Profile - Legitimate: Legitimate provides journalists and publishers with the latest tools to enhance their work while helping audiences build trust and have context in the content they consume. At a time when misinformation, disinformation and AI generated content are impacting how people perceive journalism it is more important than ever to help readers understand where their content is coming from and the people behind it. Universal Bio is designed to show the journalists’ or publishers’ credentials anywhere their content appears online. - Legitimate.