What Metrics to Monitor to Grow Subscriptions or Membership PLUS Clubhouse Poaches NPR Editor to Build Relationships with Publishers

September 16, 2021

My friends at What’s New in Publishing review metrics that Google says are the best predictors of whether someone will pay for news either as a subscriber or a member. It’s a good summary of a number of subscriber/member tactics including newsletters and the calls-to-action that work well.

Speaking of Google, they are retooling Google News so that it’s not so tied to Google’s AMP technology. It’s an interesting move that looks to insulate the search giant from claims that it is pushing its own technology as the price for inclusion in Google News.

In other industry news, the New Statesman relaunches to go global and try to take on Politico. This is going to be a heavy lift for a couple of reasons. I know about the New Statesman because I lived in the UK for nine years and have spent most of career working in British media, but it has a lot of brand-building work to do. The other challenge is Politico’s acquisition by Germany’s publishing powerhouse Axel Springer. But I wish the New Statesman well because I enjoy their work, and I think plurality is good for audiences.

PLUS how UK newsrooms are planning their return to the office, a look at a bootstrapped media start-up in a Chicago suburb and how to do a diversity audit.

A cynic might say that Google’s current efforts to help news publishers is a public relations ploy to get good press and appease anti-monopoly regulators in Europe and the US. After all, Google has more than 30% of all digital advertising globally, followed closely by Facebook with 20%. And these two companies, more than any others, have …

Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.

Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.

Clubhouse has hired a veteran editor from NPR to lead news publishing for the app. Nina Gregory will serve as Clubhouse’s head of News and Media Publishers, working as a liaison between news publishers and the Clubhouse’s ecosystem of audio-based communities. Gregory led NPR’s Arts Desk for the last seven years, shaping the news outlet’s […]

The Cicero Independiente is bringing politics into the open in Latino-majority Cicero, Illinois.

The Google News app will improve its support for web content, displaying both AMP and non-AMP web content. Google News will no longer render article text provided via RSS feeds. Instead, it will route readers directly to the publishers’ content hosted on their own websites. This change is a part of Google’s recent page experience …

Five months ago, Chalkbeat and the Reynolds Journalism Institute launched a project that will make it easier for newsrooms to track the diversity of their sources.