Monthly Archives: January 2021

Our New Virtual Reality

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Our New Virtual Reality

Sept. 3, 2020

One thing we at NewStart preach to our students (and to the industry at large) is the need for media outlets to diversify their revenue sources.

A bright spot in that department the last couple of years has been the hosting of live events.

Annnnd … then the pandemic happened.

The topic of events still comes up often, but now it is in a different context: how can we transition our in-person events to a virtual environment and still make money? And what do those events even look like?

These are questions that many industries are grappling with, so it’s not unique to media outlets.

In an excellent article on Skift, Rafat Ali says “Zoom is the Napster of the event industry.” And anyone who was online back in the Napster days knows that’s not a good thing for those trying to make money. (Personally I was a Winamp guy who perused tons of music blogs that offered up free mp3s, but that’s a story for another day…)

But what does Ali mean with the Napster comparison?

Yikes.

Ali estimated that for Skift events, “in the best case scenario, virtual one-day events bring in only about a quarter to a third of what a physical conference revenues used to pre-pandemic.”

Double yikes.

So where does that leave us? Well, I’d say that leaves us in an opportunity zone, where those who are able to take advantage of the existing technology can survive and thrive, and those who innovate beyond that have a chance to be leaders in this space.

Jacqui Park, a JSK fellow at Stanford, wrote about the next wave of virtual events building off of whatever we’ve been able to scrape together on Zoom the past couple of months.

Park brought up eight takeaways for future virtual events, “all based on the one big idea that each new medium, each new distribution channel, teaches us: the medium is the message!”  You can read about those eight takeaways here.

That brings us to the focus of today’s newsletter: Terry Williams, the president and COO of The Keene Sentinel in New Hampshire. He’s not here to tell you he’s developed a new virtual event technology, but he’s trying to envision what an outstanding in-person event that revolves around all things rural can look and feel like when it’s moved online.

Williams currently is developing the Radically Rural conference, which will take place Sept. 24. When life was good, the conference was held in a scenic New Hampshire town. This year you can participate from wherever your internet connection takes you via a virtual venue called Hopin.

Radically Rural focuses on issues and opportunities in small cities and towns across the country, with a particular focus on six areas: main streets, entrepreneurship, community journalism, arts and culture, land and communities, and clean energy.

(Full disclosure: I will be a panelist for one of the community journalism sessions. Despite that fact, this event looks fantastic and you may want to register and attend.)

Instead of Radically Rural being held in numerous quaint locations throughout Keene, it has moved online.

“When COVID hit us, that was in the March timeframe, and with this being a September event, we had to figure out if this was going to be a serious problem or something that might subside and we could still have the event,” Williams said. “It became pretty clear that as the rate of infection increased, it made no sense to do this in person.”

So in April the decision was made to go virtual. Soon after it was decided to make it an event experience instead of a webinar. Soon after that, Hopin was chosen as the virtual venue because it had some networking components to it that Zoom and other platforms don’t offer.

As with any change like this, Williams said there are advantages and disadvantages in transitioning to a virtual event. 

For one thing, being virtual expands the potential audience, as a lot of people may not have been able to afford the travel costs of getting to the event and, as Williams admits, it’s not easy to get to Keene. Having a virtual component was something Williams and his team already were considering adding down the road. The pandemic made it a reality this year.

A virtual environment also means you don’t have to spend money on venues, food, drink, speaker travel costs and, worst of all, my very own outlandish demands, including a well-armed security detail, five bottles of Pappy Van Winkle and a baby panda.

Don’t ask.

At the same time, however, one of Radically Rural’s most popular features in previous years was the Connect event, where everyone eats, drinks and networks like nobody’s business. That ambiance is gone. And Williams said it is hard to transition sponsors of those types of events to other virtual opportunities.

“There are significant costs associated with that event … but we lost a lot of sponsorship associated with that event, too,” Williams said. “So it’s a bit of a wash.”

And while the physical venue costs are non-existent, the Radically Rural team had to factor in other costs for things like the virtual venue platform and tech support to make sure it works as planned.

Williams and his team have hosted several other virtual events this year, including awards shows, so they have a good sense for what’s in store for them in a few weeks. And Williams already knows what he’s going to miss most — the live audience.

“These (events) can be done, for sure,” he said, “but it is disappointing not having a live audience there to push you along or give appreciation to award winners and those things.”

Defending the Digital Transition

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Defending the Digital Transition

Sept. 10, 2020

A little over a year ago, the Chicago Defender made the decision to transition from print to completely online.

Did it work? What lessons have been learned? I recently talked with Hiram Jackson, the CEO of the Defender’s parent company, Real Times Media, to find out.

For those not familiar with the Defender, it has a long, important history in journalism in this country. It was founded in 1905 and was considered the nation’s most influential Black weekly newspaper.

Selling the Chicago Defender on the street in 1942. (Photo credit: Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information photograph collection; Library of Congress)

In the 1950s it transitioned to a daily paper, making it the largest Black-owned daily in the world, according to PBS.  Eventually the Defender added several more papers to its portfolio, which now includes the Atlanta Daily World, Atlanta Tribune, Michigan Chronicle and the New Pittsburgh Courier.

It eventually returned to its roots of being a weekly product in print, but now is all digital, all the time.

The transition hasn’t been easy, but Jackson believes it is the best thing for the future of the Defender, and eventually the rest of Real Times Media’s publications.

“It was really difficult in terms of which one would we do this with,” Jackson said. “I had a real deep desire to go all digital with one of them. … I felt like it was inevitable. I still feel like it is inevitable that at some point the paper business model just doesn’t work like it used to.”

Jackson said the Defender was chosen because that brand had very strong name recognition. 

Of course, any time there is change, especially significant change, there is going to be pushback. The Defender’s move to digital was no exception. Jackson said the publication’s younger audience applauded the move, but baby boomers, in particular, didn’t take kindly to it. The nostalgia factor certainly played a role in that.

“We had a lot of people who were really disappointed,” Jackson said. “They walked to the corner store and got their Defender and remember their mom or grandma had the Defender. It was such an important newspaper, and there is a certain level of fondness you associate the Defender with. It’s not just a newspaper, it’s an emotional attachment.”

At the same time, the audience realized a change might be necessary considering the state of print media. Of course, that narrative often comes with another one — that the publication is struggling financially.  Jackson said those two didn’t go hand in hand at the Defender.

“They saw it as the first step to going out of business, quite frankly,” Jackson said. “Maybe we just didn’t message that well. To us, it was a necessary step to ensure that we had a future. We wanted to be proactive about it as opposed to waiting until we got to a point where we were financially impaired and it was a mandatory move.”

There were bumps along the way in the transition to a completely digital offering, including monetizing the site. 

“We learned that it is not a matter of just traditional ad sales,” Jackson said, adding that a local community newspaper cannot thrive with a revenue model based on CPMs and tower and banner ads.

“With a local, small community niche organization, it is difficult to drive enough traffic to monetize enough pennies to support a payroll,” he said. “We have to have multiple streams (of revenue), not just monetizing visitors and uniques.”

So how did the Defender do it? The publication was able to make the transition to digital because Jackson felt the brand recognition was strong, but also because it had diversified its revenue sources through events and an integrated marketing agency called RTM360.

“We carved out our niche where clients come to us to create a unique avenue to engage their consumers,” he said.

The events space, like everything else, has changed this year due to COVID-19, and the Defender has had to adjust. Jackson said they usually do about 65 events each year. The recently completed Men of Excellence event is an example of that. Normally that would be an in-person event for 600-800 people in Downtown Chicago. But this year the event was streamed on Facebook, and had thousands of views, Jackson said.

Continued adjustments will need to be made going forward, as the entire media industry continues to change along with technology, the economy and the world at large.

“We have to continue to evolve,” Jackson said. “The business continues to change. The challenge is reaching the 18- to 30-year-olds. That continues to be a challenge for us.”

Instead of reaching them through the Defender in print or online, they’ve developed sub-brands and programs to target them.  

“I may not be able to get that 25-year-old with the (New) Pittsburgh Courier,” Jackson said, “but I can get them with the development of programs in that community.”

Those things include the Fab 40 in Pittsburgh, The Front Page in Detroit, and outreach to young professionals in Atlanta.

“They may not have same appreciation for the history and reverence of the Courier or Defender,” Jackson said, “but we have been really effective at creating programs for them and highlight the people they are following.”

Jackson said when protests started across the country, the Defender’s traffic increased significantly, as it did when COVID-19 first hit the U.S.

He said the evolution of the Defender won’t stop at just going digital, and that the speed of change this year has been productive. He’s also learned a lot about his own publication and how the community views it.

“We don’t do sensationalized news. When people see our name on it they assume it is true and trust it,” Jackson said. “We were always hopeful that people would accept the transition. Now we know that people want our content and need our content and they still feel like they’re not getting enough of it.”

“I think the future is pretty bright.”

How To Transition From Layoff To Newsletter Publisher

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How To Transition From Layoff To Newsletter Publisher

Oct. 1, 2020

Craig Calcaterra wrote the HardballTalk baseball blog for 11 years. But in early August 2020, he was part of NBCUniversal’s company-wide layoffs. 

This, however, isn’t a story of woe. 

That’s because just two weeks after losing his job, Calcaterra was publishing again — this time for his new business venture — the Cup of Coffee newsletter on Substack.

A little over a month after that first email went out, Calcaterra likes the audience growth he’s seeing.

“I’m pretty damn confident that this will be my full-time job,” he said.

Calcaterra is not alone. You’ve heard plenty of stories recently about journalists who have either been laid off or who left their corporate media jobs to go solo via a newsletter.

The New York Times recently did a story on the exodus of national writers, like former The Verge star Casey Newton, who started his own Substack newsletter.

Industry analyst Simon Owens wrote about this trend of writers leaving national publications for Substack — on his own Substack newsletter:

(Owens also appeared on the Curated YouTube channel recently to discuss how he generates revenue and leads for stories via his own newsletter.)

That’s great for national writers. But you’re here because you love local news. So would this work at the local level? Can a local journalist make a living via Substack or another email platform?

Calcaterra believes it is possible.

“I think it might be better at a local level,” he said. “Look at a city like Cleveland. Basically it had a newspaper disappear. The level of local coverage in a lot of cities has gotten really bad. There are definitely 2,000 or 3,000 people who do care (about local news enough to pay for it).

“Sports is inherently a local thing,” he continued. “Baseball coverage is a localized thing. Aaron Gleeman (who covers the Minnesota Twins and has a successful podcast) made a mini empire based on 10,000 Twins fans.”

Yes, Virginia, newsletters are a viable business model.  Just ask the folks at 6AM City, which publishes its content not via a website, but inside newsletters.

And don’t look now, but Axios — yes, Axios — is getting into the local space with a newsletter model that could be very similar in structure to 6AM City. Depending on the structure, this could be a major threat to newspapers that are asleep at the wheel when it comes to capitalizing on the newsletter market potential in their own cities.

Scott Brodbeck has some thoughts about this on Twitter:

For Calcaterra and his baseball newsletter, he was able to capitalize on his national following to quickly establish his newsletter presence. He charges $6 a month or $65 for a year, with a premium tier if people are interested — and some have taken him up on that. 

Matt Brown is another sports journalist who turned a furlough/layoff into a newsletter business opportunity.

Brown has been creating his Extra Points college athletics newsletter since April 2019, and is now trying to make a full-time gig out of it after spending many years with SB Nation and Vox Media. 

After losing his job at SB Nation this past April, in the middle of a pandemic, Brown realized a few things. All of the media jobs he could find that fit his skill set were in New York or D.C. He lives in Chicago, and has a young family, so moving there wasn’t really an option. Luckily, he did have something in his back pocket, so to speak.

“Other than work at a deli counter, I could try to monetize this newsletter,” Brown said.

Brown is very open about the financial viability of his newsletter. In fact, he dedicates an edition of his newsletter every four months or so to this very topic as a way to make a personal connection with his audience. Here’s a sample of that from his latest temperature check on Sept. 15:

Brown’s paid subscription model is similar to Calcaterra’s setup — $7 a month or $70 for a full year. He also has a “deluxe membership” at $150 — which includes an Extra Points shirt and some stickers. (The shirts, BTW, are pretty sweet.)

There are several things Brown is trying in order to make his newsletter a profitable venture for the long haul.

First, he entered a partnership with The Intercollegiate website, which is also about college athletics. That site focuses on long-form journalism and open records requests. Extra Points provides a strong, four-day-a-week newsletter arm that the folks at The Intercollegiate couldn’t offer.

Second, Brown has been aggressively trying to sell subscription packages to university professors — especially those in undergraduate communications and journalism departments and sports management programs.

He’s signed deals with about six universities to provide a set number of subscriptions at a discount (of about 60 percent off) to use as supplemental classroom curriculum. Brown also offers to talk to classes via Zoom. Brown believes his newsletter can compete with sports business journals that have a much higher subscription price point.

“About 60 percent of my business are regular college sports nerds, and the other 40 percent increasingly are those who work in this business,” Brown said. “Athletic departments, commissioners and others who work with them and who want to move up.”

As for Brown’s future, he knows that reporting and writing four newsletters a week, recording podcasts, doing marketing and promotion, growing subscriptions and also managing home life during a pandemic is tough to manage.

“If you are someone who has other responsibilities in your life, it is hard to grow this into a full time job,” he said. “I’m working more hours at this than I did at Vox. But I’m happier. It is mine. It’s what I want to do.”

Calcaterra thinks there may be a saturation point for newsletters, but he also believes that, if the audience is there, the business model can work.

“If you can get 2,000 subscribers on a Substack, you’re doing better than almost any media person can do at a regular job,” he said. “If you’re launching CBS All Access, or Peacock, you need millions of people.”

He said it is all about the value proposition. 

“The No. 1 thing is do you bring something to the table that people can’t get elsewhere,” Calcaterra added. “Will people follow you, or is your readership because of where you work?  If it’s the latter, you might have problems.”