Digest 10/12/2020

A new study on publishing and the coronavirus pandemic, behind the NYT Guild tweet, and more.

A NEW STUDY CONFIRMS THE VIBE: SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE UP

A new study from website and newsletter What’s New in Publishing, The Publisher’s Guide to Navigating COVID-19, examines industry trends induced or exacerbated by the pandemic and offers some insight into where we may be headed. The takeaway: although advertising and marketing budgets at media companies are down, many publications have seen a bump in traffic and, in some cases, an accompanying bump in subscriptions.

The study cites a report from subscription software business Zuora, which shows that subscriptions in digital news and media grew by 110% between March to May 2020 compared to the previous 12 months, although that rate has since slowed. Subscription rates for digital media were the second-fastest-growing across categories, with streaming services ranking first. Many publishers also saw a reduction in churn, or readers cancelling subscriptions — perhaps more important than subscriber growth in building a solid audience, since retaining existing subscribers is a less expensive feat than attracting new ones.

Even local publishers had seen a significant boost in traffic since the start of the pandemic, a finding I wasn’t surprised to see. When I spoke to Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez of the San Francisco Examiner back in April, he told me that, on the day the paper broke the story of the city’s shelter-in-place order, traffic to the Examiner’s site was 6,000 times higher than usual. This study shows that what the Examiner experienced wasn’t an anomaly — the FIPP, a global trade association aimed at improving the media, noted that traffic to local papers like the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times, and the Boston Globe was up 100% to 150% over the month of August, adding that “these figure suggest a welcome consumer shift for more locally focused news media.”

In some cases, local outlets have converted traffic bumps into subscriber growth. The study’s author, University of Oregon journalism professor Damian Radcliffe, told Poynter that local outlets were becoming bolder in charging for content, in part because they’ve learned that subscription revenue is the most promising way forward as advertising plummets. (The executive editor of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, when the publication put up a paywall for some content, called it “a matter of survival” for the paper.) But for many publications, more eyeballs haven’t necessarily meant more paying readers. 

Even outlets that have seen subscription growth have still struggled financially. Tribune Publishing, which owns many local and regional outlets including the New York Daily News, saw a 293% increase in digital subscription sales in March of 2020. In the following months, the company imposed “broad furloughs” and pay cuts across newsrooms. Five of their physical newsrooms have been shuttered.

Still, the trend of subscriber growth and better subscriber retention bodes well for the future of media as publishers attempt to detangle themselves from a dependency on advertising revenue, much of which comes in via Google. There isn’t an industry-wide consensus on the best way to convert subscribers — some opt for special sign-up offers; some offer COVID-19 content for free, while others place it behind a paywall — but publishers recognize that the pandemic has presented a unique opportunity to try new strategies. Per the study: “Especially for news publishers, the pandemic has arguably created an environment where consumers may be more receptive to subscribing, and where the reason for doing so can be more readily understood. It’s an opportunity that publishers need to capitalize on.”

COVID has led to more video streaming subscriptions, but it’s killing production. Subscriptions to video streaming services are way up, and consumers are spending more time on their devices in general, per the study. But with COVID restrictions creating production hurdles, producing new content for those services is challenging. Netflix’s GLOW, a dramedy about a troupe of women wrestlers, has now been cancelled due to those obstacles. The show was about three weeks into filming its fourth and final season when production was shut down in March, and Deadline reports that it faced unique challenges as Netflix tried to get production back up and running: It has a large, ensemble cast, and the content of the show necessitates close-up contact between actors. (It’s hard to social distance in the ring.) It would have been expensive to work around those factors, and the show is already an expensive production, so Netflix decided to bail.

Not all content production is created equally — some productions with limited casts and flexible filming locations are easier to film with COVID restrictions in place. This means the type of content that gets greenlit over the next few months will be limited. The Washington Post reported in August that crowd scenes were no longer possible and shooting locations were limited, along with on-screen romance, for obvious reasons. Expect a lot of scenes with a handful of actors and no kissing. 

---

BEHIND THE TWEET Drama ensued over the weekend in the hallowed halls of everyone’s favorite legacy media institution, the New York Times. Opinion columnist Bret Stephens penned a critique of the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, and in response, the Times Guild sent a now-deleted tweet: “It says a lot about an organization when it breaks it’s own rules and goes after one of it’s own. The act, like the article, reeks.” The Guild later, after deleting the initial tweet, issued an apology, claiming it had been “tweeted in error.” Judging by the responses to this opaque explanation, no one seems to be buying it.

But while the tweet was intentional, it was in fact dispatched by a union leader who is not a journalist, without the approval of other guild members, many of whom are displeased with the gaffe, a source told me — though many Guild members were also not thrilled with Stephens’ column. On Sunday evening, publisher AG Sulzberger issued a statement both standing by the 1619 Project and arguing for the importance of publishing criticism of the project. This is all happening at a time when the Times is grappling with some complex internal politics following the debacle around the Tom Cotton op-ed and James Bennet’s subsequent resignation, which brought to the forefront broader concerns about a lack of diversity at the company and the impact of that deficit on editorial. As always, anyone at the Times is welcome to email me at [email protected].

---

EVERYTHING ELSE

— In an effort to fight misinformation around the election, Twitter is making some changes. Users will receive a prompt encouraging sharing their own thoughts before retweeting a post from another account and will receive a warning if they’re about to share information flagged as false. Given the likelihood of uncertainty around election results, Twitter will also label premature claims about who won the election.

— Facebook, meanwhile, has decided to ban all political ads indefinitely once the polls close on November 3 in response to fears that candidates (let’s be honest, Trump) could use the platform to manipulate the election outcome. Waiting until after the election to prevent disinformation about the election is certainly…a choice!

— Nobody seems to love Emily in Paris, Netflix’s new show about an oblivious American brand manager who moves to Paris to tell French people how to do feminism, but everyone seems to be watching it! As writer Harron Walker pointed out, Netflix has done a great job of churning out content meant to be half-watched while you look at your phone. Maybe there’s also something appealing about especially vacuous content right now, given that we live in hell?

— Some poor soul at Deadline is living my worst nightmare: they accidentally pressed “publish” on a pre-written story about Mike Pence contracting the coronavirus, which has not happened. Pre-written “shells” of possible breaking news stories are standard in newsrooms and allow for quicker turnaround, but cue the conspiracy theories about Deadline hiding information from the American public.

— Why is Emerson Collective (owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, the majority owner of The Atlantic) talking about its decision to pull funding from Pop-Up Magazine Productions, the parent company of California Sunday, like it’s one half of a celebrity divorce? The collective claims they “agreed to a mutual separation that included an additional substantial contribution from Emerson Collective to allow Pop-Up to operate independently and do so without oversight or control by Emerson Collective.” The result is that California Sunday, which had already ceased its print edition, has shut down entirely, and 11 staffers from both publications have been laid off. The union has written a letter to the magazine’s owners accusing them of violating “legal and moral obligations” by not informing the union of the layoffs ahead of time and not bargaining their scope.

— Media Twitter is dying to know what media guy posted to the r/relationships subreddit asking for advice on his girlfriend, who he claims is painfully unfunny but has accrued a sizable Twitter following of around 30,000 (a number that might be skewed to conceal the couple’s identity) with her jokes.