Reuters Report 2022: Revenue up, audience down; Instagram up, Facebook down and the challenges of attracting technical talent PLUS lack of new hit podcasts

January 11, 2022

My friend and former manager Nic Newman has his annual journalism trends report out under the aegis of the Reuters Institute, and as usual, it's full of interesting insights. One thing that would be interesting to unpack would be 70% of journalism leaders are optimistic about their own outlets but 60% are upbeat about the future of journalism.

What jumped out at me was that 67% were focused on optimising and extending existing products while only 32% were looking to launch new products. "Publishers say the biggest barriers to innovation are the lack of money, due to wider economic challenges, and difficulty in attracting and retaining technical staff."

While I don't consider product managers to be technical staff necessarily, a key motivation for my master's research was the challenges that were reported retaining product management staff. Most of this was attributed to competition from other companies for product management talent, but I found other motivations (I will be talking about this more in the coming months).

PLUS there hasn't been a new podcast hit in years. Hmmm, what does this say about the maturity of the market. The Associated Press is launching an NFT market. The strong advertising recovery has some publishers rethinking their negativity about ad revenue. Khan Academy has insights for news leaders on how to manage change in their newsrooms. Ninja search skills for investigative journalists. And AR = Apple Reality and what that means and doesn't mean.

The average podcast in the top 10 is more than seven years old.

Smarter ways to capitalize on purchase intent Affiliate marketing offers opportunities for all types of content publishers to capitalize on purchase intent. Tech and electronics reviewers can build a commerce strategy around product launches. Lifestyle influencers can earn commissions by promoting fitness products or sharing travel deals on social media. The possibilities are truly endless. …

The Associated Press is creating an NFT marketplace to sell its photographers’ work as blockchain-based tokens. The outlet seems to be targeting collectors, who will have the ability to resell the art to other buyers.

This annual report, based on a survey of senior executives, looks at the key issues facing journalism in 2022 and beyond.

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Nonprofit news is on the march. There are questions and concerns, but also optimism.

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A case study of how Khan Academy changed how they worked — and what newsrooms can learn from how they tested new ideas, tackled challenges, and found success.

In May 2021, GIJN hosted two webinars with Paul Myers, a leading international expert in online investigation. Myers, who works for the BBC and is a big favorite at GIJN conferences, shared his tips on the best tools and strategies for digging up information about people. Check out his tipsheet below. It was updated in April […]

AR=Apple Reality, but don’t look for full VR