In the age of retention, know the value of a subscriber

WAN-IFRA has released its annual World Press Trends report. They don't sugarcoat what they found saying that it makes for sobering reading. Last year, more than 80% of respondents were optimistic about their near-term outlook, but this year, expectations have swung with more than half of respondents, 55.4%, saying that they were pessimistic. But more importantly, researchers, including my friends Damian Radcliffe and François Nel, have found a 'tale of two worlds', the developed and developing world. 

Most of you are probably familiar with keyword optimisation and content strategies related to SEO, but then there is technical SEO. It starts with things like Google's Core Vitals and basic website performance. But technical SEO also operates at the intersection of content and technology. Barry Adams has an excellent view of one aspect of technical SEO: crawl budget. Even with the incredible resources of Google, it has to make algorithmic decisions about how much effort it will spend on your site. This piece helps you know that you are spending that budget wisely. 

There is some good advice here, and I think that some of the best bits are to have a business model from day one. It is as essential to know how your news outlet will earn money as it is to understand how you will cover your community. 

It's a bit of a provocative title, but Piano says that you need to focus not only on conversion but also revenue. We're working on a bit of research at Pugpig with our partners, and the key message here is that not all subscribers are as valuable as others. 

And building on this, this is a good summary of customer focus: "But key to the success and customer retention of these subscriptions must be value, not inertia."  

I have heard friends rave about the new round of AI tools, whether GPT-4 or MidJourney 5, especially the latter. The evolution of these new tools is breathtaking. Just remember, we overestimate technology's impact in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. 

Green shoots in local journalism in North America

The first story is near and dear to me being from the US state of Illinois. As the giant chains slowly retreat as their business model fails and they can no longer contest every small community, local journalists are starting to slowly build new outlets.