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Journalists Are Trading Newsrooms For Newsletters

Email puts it right in front of them and meets people where they’re at.

Angel James

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“Brevity is the soul of wit.” -William Shakespeare

In other words, say more with less. 

We all know a long-winded Polonius from Hamlet, who will take five minutes to tell you what he could have said in 30 seconds. In 2020, where attention and time are money, where there is constant noise coming at us from all different directions, one digital news startup is banking on brevity.

BANKING ON BREVITY

axios.com

Axios is putting its money on “smart brevity,” its motto and registered trademark.

In a sea of layoffs, furloughs and newsroom closures, the three-year old startup is poised to make a profit this year in spite of the pandemic that has shuttered newsrooms across the country with
smart, efficient news worthy of your time, attention and trust.”

The company is on track to take in about $58 million in 2020, up more than 30% from the year before, according to The Wall Street Journal, thanks in large part to its sponsored newsletter business, which makes up more than 50% of the company’s total revenue.

Now, Axios is now positioning itself to fill a gap that is widening by the day in local news. Early next year, Axios plans to launch local newsletters in four local markets:

  • Minneapolis
  • Denver
  • Tampa, Florida
  • Des Moines, Iowa

Axios was founded by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz after they left Politico. They’re not alone. Journalists are leaving newsrooms and becoming their own media companies.

theskimm.com

The Skimm was founded in 2012 by two former news producers who launched it from their couch. A brand which now includes newsletters, an app, podcasts, video social and community reaching an audience of 12 million people across platforms.

morningbrew.com

At the end of August, the Morning Brew hit one million unique daily opens. Alex Lieberman and co-founder, Austin Rief, were two bankers, who launched the Morning Brew to liven up traditional business news reporting and make it more conversational and fun.

Instead of focusing on subscribers, the word that makes for great headlines, The Morning Brew focused on metrics that matter: Open rates.

Similar to social media, a lot of attention is paid to follower counts, but it’s a vanity metric—things you can measure that don’t matter. As entrepreneur & author, Tim Ferris, puts it:

“Vanity metrics: Good for feeling awesome, bad for action.”

A subscriber that isn’t opening an email isn’t a valuable metric.

So, The Morning Brew hyper focused on engagement and for email newsletters, that’s open rates. 

As co-founder, Austin Rief, tweeted, The Morning Brew would stop what they were doing to see at 11am every day to see the open rates, then they’d write it on their “great wall of opens.”  

A daily reminder of what really matters.

They also hopped on Instagram Stories early and benefitted greatly from that. 

Other journalists are leaving newsrooms and using tech companies such as Substack to reach an audience.

Emily Atkin, a former reporter at the New Republic, told the Washington Post that she got into a position I believe many journalists, including myself, do at some point or another, asking herself: “Is this publication giving me as much as I’m giving it?” 

heated.world

Soon after, she launched “Heated” a four-times-a-week newsletter on the climate crisis. It’s now one of Substack’s top paid publications.

substack.com

Substack describes itself as “A place for independent writing. We make it simple for a writer to start a paid newsletter.” 

The platform handles the technical end of the newsletter process in exchange for ten percent of the subscription revenue. 

Some journalists have left their publications to write on Substack full-time, including Matt Taibb, who left Rolling Stone & Andrew Sullivan who left New York Magazine to resurrect his blog, “The Dish.”  

Ten years ago, many declared “Email Is Dead,” as they turned to the next shiny new thing, Facebook. But algorithms are a tricky thing, deciding who sees your content and who doesn’t. Email puts it right in front of them and meets people where they are. 

I resigned from my TV producing job a few years ago, after 20+ in local television. It’s hard to leave the only thing you know whether you do it by choice or it’s a choice made for you. I had no plan. I wasn’t even on Facebook at the time. So, I wrote, started a blog… 

It’s that writing that connected me with my next opportunity.

I turned on the local news the other day for the first time in a long time. Same format, same way we were doing things 20 years ago. Nothing has changed.

I looked up their Instagram accounts. One of them hasn’t posted since the First Day of Fall. That was September 22nd

Today is October 12th

A lot of news happened in that time…

Seems like a good time to remind you of another Shakespeare quote, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

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The Only Path Forward For News Radio is Strong Personalities

Radio’s competitive advantage remains its people. And when it comes to personality, no format owns that right now more so than News/Talk

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Radio

If radio wants to keep up, personality has to be the way. The format of choice is irrelevant, but personality has to be the biggest asset for the format and station.

It’s something I’ve written about before in this column, but when it gets reinforced by iHeart CEO Bob Pittman, it’s worth mentioning again.

In a great conversation with Talkers’ Michael Harrison, Pittman pointed out that “25% of iHeart’s stations do not play music”, and that more and more shows on the company’s music stations are “actually talk shows that play little or no music at all.”

Then came the best line of the conversation, when Pittman said, “Even on our music stations, you find us moving much more towards heavier personalities, because as we begin to say, If somebody just wanted music, they’ve got a lot of places to go. We’re probably not their best option, if they just want to dig through music. If they want somebody to keep them company, and hang out with them, and be their friend, and be an informed friend, and connect with them, there’s no better place. So we’re very committed to it.”

That’s it right there. 

Radio’s competitive advantage is being a friend (ideally local), while using personality-driven content to develop that relationship with the listener to then drive listening occasions. 

As has been discussed and addressed for years, music radio simply can’t compete with Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. if your goal is to listen to your music at the exact time that you want it.

Radio’s competitive advantage remains its people. And when it comes to personality, no format owns that right now more so than news/talk, where the strongest opinions and deepest connections often exist. That’s backed up by the Time Spent Listening for the format, which leads the way in many markets.

In many ways, news/talk is the best — and most exciting — place to be right now in the business, and none of that has to do with what is shaping up to be a fascinating 2024 election cycle. But rather because the industry’s biggest advantage to maintaining and growing its audience is its personalities, so if you’re already in the talk format, you’re ahead of the game. And then if you’re good, you’re a highly valuable asset. 

As Pittman also noted in his conversation with Harrison, “For the first time ever, the radio business is bigger than the TV business, in terms of audience from 18 to 49 [year olds].”

National coastal media won’t write about that, because too many of them aren’t everyday American consumers. However, the data doesn’t lie. Radio is beating TV in a key demo and the leaders in the industry know that personality-driven content is their key to future success. That’s a great combination for those of us working in the business.

Granted, as we all know, it’s not all roses and sunshine. These are still tough times with continuing competition in the ad space and a soft 2023 shaping up. 

However, the show must go on. 

And as radio strategically prepares itself for not just the rest of this year, but the next five to ten years, there are plenty of goals that need to be achieved, but if growing and developing personalities is at the top of the list, that’s a win for the industry and an even bigger win for the news/talk format.

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If CNN is For Sale, Here Are 5 Potential Buyers

CNN can’t survive as a “both sides” network, as a Fox News lite, or as a leftist network. It needs to be the network that upholds the truth. These companies would align with that method of thinking.

Jessie Karangu

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(Photo: Getty Images)

It’s hard to run a cable news network like CNN these days. Just look at NewsNation. It was founded on the principle of being the first centrist cable news network to come into existence in years. But over the past couple of months, the network has peddled by coming from a slightly right-of-center angle with headlines. They’ve tried to steal left-of-center viewers from CNN with the hiring of Chris Cuomo. And now they’re literally going wall-to-wall with coverage of UFOs. I’m not even making that up.

In a world where a big chunk of its denizens believes the truth is a maybe while the other half doesn’t pay attention to the news unless it is bite-sized, does it still make sense to own a cable news network? Given the turmoil Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zazlav has faced lately with CNN it may not be for him. 

The company was forced to let go of CNN CEO Chris Licht this week after a scathing profile from The Atlantic that went behind the scenes into how Licht operated the network post-Jeff Zucker. It was a circus, to say the least. After reading the profile though, you still come away feeling bad for Licht while considering the fact that there is a hand that might have been puppeteering him along the way that was used to having control over everyone.

Zazlav comes from a part of cable where it is necessary to operate like a dictatorship because the formula has proven to work with Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, etc…and because the shows that air on these networks create their own warped reality to spit out for thirsty reality consumers who want it the way it is served.

It’s impossible to have this kind of culture in cable news where the personalities aren’t really the star of the network — the news and facts are and they can’t be warped to fit all interested parties. They just have to be true whether it benefits one side or the other. The truth is the truth. 

There are new ways to tell stories and there’s new technology you can use to tell those stories but at the end of the day, telling stories also has the same formula as it always has and can’t be changed.

Remarkably, Don Lemon comes away from Licht’s profile looking the most intelligent when he says that many critics of CNN like Zazlav are committed to Monday morning quarterbacking. CNN went a little too hard on various things happening in the Trump administration too many times, but at the end of the day, it was the job of journalists to hold politicians accountable to the truth just like it has been since the founding of television news. 

This lack of realization on Zazlav’s part shows that CNN probably doesn’t belong in the same company as Warner Bros. Discovery. The cultures of Discovery and CNN clearly don’t align. Axios has already reported that because of the low ad market, cord-cutting, slumping ratings, and the run-up to the election having not started yet, WBD doesn’t plan on selling CNN any time soon. It also should be noted that CNN still makes almost $800 million a year for WBD so it is not the big loss of an asset that many in the media would make you think it is. 

At the same time, unless Zazlav decides to change his mindset, he needs to sell before this situation becomes unmanageable. CNN can’t survive as a “both sides” network, as a Fox News lite, or as a leftist network. It needs to be the network that upholds democracy and the truth. These companies would align with that method of thinking.

Disney

The Mickey Mouse Club owns the news organization that already has the most trust among conservatives on television besides Fox News (ABC News), so they would help legitimize CNN’s mission of garnering more conservatives.

CNN’s library of content would bolster its digital platforms and provide an avenue to create new documentaries and films. ABC News’ own extracurricular projects would be on a platform that has consistent reach with the audience they’re seeking and wouldn’t get lost in the clouds like it currently does on Hulu.

National Geographic could move its content to CNN and HLN and help Disney get rid of one less cable network (NatGeo Channel) that doesn’t generate revenue.

NBC

CNN already has the largest news organization in the world. Their addition would bring NBC over the top. NBC’s ability to promote news offerings on Peacock would get some much-needed help as well since CNN has the number one digital news website in the United States.

Peacock would also be able to add CNN’s library to its app giving viewers who crave live news and sports another reason to subscribe to the app.

Regulatory issues may prevail due to past rulings by the federal government but this may have a chance to go through if the government believes the internet and streaming and the fragmentation of television has created enough competition for a CNN/MSNBC combo to not be too powerful.

The Emerson Collective

In a stroke of sheer awkwardness, could the owners of The Atlantic be contenders? Laurene Powell Jobs has constantly spoken about how much she believes journalism affects the balance of our society.

CNN, despite its ratings drag, still plays a vital role in shaping what we talk about as a society. Jobs’ causes like social justice reform, immigration reform, and the environment might get more attention from the general populous on a platform like CNN

The Washington Post or New York Times

Both entities were hand-in-hand with CNN reporting on the latest developments involving the Trump administration and both also faced public backlash about what they deemed as important with a Trump admin vs. a regular administration.

They all share the same mission and journalism ethos and, in the case of WaPo, have a very wealthy backer who could fund a potential deal.

Byron Allen

The media mogul has become more deeply involved with the industry than he ever was before. He has a stake in the sports RSNs that are currently failing, he owns The Weather Channel — the most trusted name in news right now which is a remarkable feat to achieve in an era where so many deny climate change and he’s in the market to buy more.

CNN being black-owned could quell the accusations of the network becoming white-washed. A partnership with The Weather Channel bolsters coverage of climate change for the cable network.

And for Byron Allen, CNN gives him a seat on the table when it comes to power and influence in the worlds of Wall Street and Congress.

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What Chris Licht Got Right, and Wrong, During His CNN Tenure

Chris Licht faced an impossible mission of improving ratings without Donald Trump and with a staff he alienated.

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MIKE COPPOLA/GETTY IMAGES

The departure of Chris Licht from CNN was abrupt but expected after a string of missteps. His criticism of his predecessor Jeff Zucker spilled into criticisms of the network’s coverage of Donald Trump and the Covid pandemic, which undercut his staff. Journalists who stood up to conspiracy theories and election falsehoods from the very top felt betrayed.

I’ve known Chris for 30 years, when he served as an associate producer at a KNBC/CNBC for a daily half-hour program centered on the O.J. Simpson trial. Later, we were colleagues at NBC and kept in touch while he was at CBS and I was at ABC. He is whip-smart, congenial, worked well with big talents like Joe Scarborough, Charlie Rose, and Gayle King, and, until now, had a stellar track record.

And in his latest and biggest post — despite being put in an impossible position — did some things right, which I will highlight in a moment.

But first that impossible position. His new bosses at Warner Bros. Discovery wanted a restructuring and high ratings. They insisted on less calling out of misinformation and more “both sidesism”. So Licht had to derail the CNN train and then try to lift it back on the ratings track. No small job. Especially in a news climate that is in decline.

All the cable networks — who depended upon Donald Trump’s unpredictable, often treasonous and dangerous style — have suffered ratings decline. Fox numbers are down and so is MSNBC. The viewing public no longer has to tune in every minute of the day to see what the President is going to do or say. Life has largely returned to normal for most people.

So CNN, which could once depend upon airing and then fact-checking Trump’s latest absurdity, had to find new content.

Licht’s decision to emphasize down-the-middle news gathering seemed like a solid response to life without a bombastic — some say irrational — President.

Just cover the news, at which CNN is great. It’s the first place to turn during a mass shooting, a war, or natural disaster. But those are inconsistent events and cannot be depended upon for steady ratings. That’s the environment Licht stepped into.

He reacted with some good moves. His midday CNN News Central program, 3 hours of straight news, positions itself well to cover breaking news. It’s followed by Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer, also emphasizing news coverage.

However, unfortunately, the list of mistakes is a lot longer. Starting with Don Lemon. His “whole thing” in primetime was to be provocative and with a strong progressive bent. Licht attempted to turn Lemon into what he is not, an easy-to-watch, not opinionated host in the morning. A broadcast that was supposed to keynote the Licht agenda blew up in months. Lemon had an opinion on everything and could not get along with his co-hosts, which in morning TV is critical. The all-important chemistry was not there.

His meeting with Republican politicians on Capitol Hill to invite them back to CNN sent a message that they would no longer be challenged for disinformation. And Licht balanced the commentary panels on CNN with GOP election deniers who shouted over questions they could not answer, in turn sticking to talking points. A move that did little to attract viewers from Fox, and instead drove away legacy CNN viewers accustomed to progressive analysis and Republicans who respected opposite opinions.

Next, his attempt to normalize Donald Trump with a CNN Town Hall, somehow expecting the old rules of decorum would work became a disaster. Trump has to be covered. 30% of the electorate supports him, as do nearly 50% of Republicans. But a live Trump supporter audience overwhelmed Kaitlan Collins who was drenched by a firehouse of lies and deception.

And finally, there was Licht’s decision to make his criticisms of staff and their former coverage public in The Atlantic. A profile that made his gym trainer appear to be his top adviser.

To sum up: Chris Licht faced an impossible mission of improving ratings without Donald Trump and with a staff he alienated.

It was an opportunity wasted and a good man self-defeated.

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