Guest: Eric Barnes, The Daily Memphian

What are some of the things to consider when starting a local newspaper? How can you be nonprofit and still operate like a for-profit newspaper? How did you attract subscribers in a competitive market? What went better than you expected and what didn’t go as well? What have you learned about finding the best revenue mix? What should someone thinking about starting a local newspaper know before they get started?

In this episode of News Take, News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern talks with Eric Barnes, CEO of The Daily Memphian (Tennessee), about his experience over the last four years launching a nonprofit local newspaper. Eric takes us from the very initial discussions and fundraising steps, to deciding whether to publish a print edition or be a purely a digital news publication, to how they decided what to charge for subscriptions and how they structure their organization to allow them to employ 40 newsroom staff (Hint: It’s not on pure philanthropy!) He shares everything, from how they took cues from the community to chart a practical course for advertising, fundraising, and reporting; to why they don’t do sponsored content and scaled back on podcasts; to how they found a balance that is working for them. This must-listen primer on launching a nonprofit digital news publication is full of practical tips and takeaways for anyone wanting to run a news publishing business!

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Speaker bios

Eric Barnes

Eric is CEO of The Daily Memphian, an online daily news source in Memphis that launched in September 2018. For ten years, Eric has hosted “Behind the Headlines” on Memphis’ PBS station, a weekly news show focused on local government, business and the community. Since 2019, he has also hosted “The Sidebar,” a podcast on The Daily Memphian and radio show on local radio station WYXR, that focuses on arts, culture and everything in between. Eric is also publisher of a group of community newspapers in Tennessee, and a former president and current board member of the Tennessee Press Association. He is currently president of the American Court & Commercial Newspapers and is on the board of the Local Media Association. He is a novelist and a published short story writer, and has a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s from Connecticut College.

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The post News Take Episode 112: Lessons in Practicality from The Daily Memphian: “A Lot of People Don’t Know We’re a Nonprofit” appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Guest: Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

“My position is, How do we help marketers find the sources of influence that their audience pays attention to outside of these big ecosystems? Because we think that’s not only good for the advertiser, it’s good for the publisher, too. If you’ve built a great audience, you should have people coming to you who want to reach that audience, you shouldn’t have to participate in Google’s extremely low payout advertising network or FB’s or put all your content on TikTok for free. Those mechanisms for driving revenue, we think are fundamentally biased and unfair.”

– Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

What can publishers do to get out from under the dominant tech platforms that control the digital advertising space? How have other industries pushed back on Google’s scraping of their data and coming between them and their audience? How can publishers take back control of our audience data so that we’re not having to go through Google, Facebook and the other tech platforms to reach our own audience?

In this episode of News Take, News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern is joined by Rand Fishkin, cofounder and CEO of audience research software firm SparkToro, for a fascinating conversation about the big tech platforms, their algorithms, and how the Internet has evolved from a once equitable environment that was mutually beneficial, to now favoring only a handful of giant tech platforms today. Rand paints a picture of the digital marketing landscape businesses must navigate today, highlighting concerns with tech platforms’ walled gardens in which they intentionally try to keep you from leaving. He shares SparkToro’s research on “zero click searches” that has gained attention from marketers worldwide on how few web searches now result in a click through to the original content. And he explains how his company helps marketers understand their audience’s behaviors and preferences without having to rely on Google and Facebook, and the importance of taking back ownership of your audience relationships and data.

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Speaker bios

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of SparkToro, a software company that provides unique audience research and insights, aggregated from tens of millions of verifiable public social and web profiles, to make channels outside Facebook and Google accessible to everyone. Rand started SparkToro in 2018 with Casey Henry. Prior to that, he was CEO of Moz, where he raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. From 2007 to 2014, he grew the company to over 130 employees, more than $30 million in revenue, and web traffic to over 30 million visitors a year. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, videos, speaking, and his book, Lost and Founder. Rand previously co-contributed to two other books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO. He’s been profiled in the Seattle Times, featured in Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, named to BusinessWeek’s 30 Under 30, written about in Newsweek, The Next Web, the Inc 500, and hundreds of other publications.

Additional Resources

In 2020, Two Thirds of Google Searches Ended Without a Click (Sparktoro)

White Paper: How Google Abuses Its Position as a Market Dominant Platform to Strong-Arm News Publishers and Hurt Journalism (News/Media Alliance – features SparkToro’s zero click research)

Watch the next episode: Lessons in Practicality from The Daily Memphian: “A Lot of People Don’t Know We’re a Nonprofit” 

Watch the previous episode: Update on News Deserts and Local News Trends

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Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

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The post News Take Episode 111: Outsmarting Google and Facebook: Helping Publishers Grow Their Audience Outside the Dominant Platforms appeared first on News/Media Alliance.

Guests: Penny Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin, the Medill Journalism School Local News Initiative at Northwestern University

“In this vast country, newspapers have historically been the prime, if not the sole source, for most small and mid-size independent communities. So, if you lose a newspaper, you’re losing the person who shows up to cover the school board meeting, the person who shows up to cover the county commissioner or even the zoning policy changes that can be quite controversial and affect the long-term quality of life of a community. The good news is I think there are a lot of things that are going on that can stem that, that range from policy solutions to new funding opportunities to new business development.“

– Penny Muse Abernathy, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

“What comes behind a news desert? We know that Facebook Groups emerge in these communities. … But as we know even as well-intentioned as those good people can be, that’s not the same as vetted, reported local news and local journalism. As so what happens is you have the, in some cases, unintentional spread of misinformation in those communities, and especially at a time when our democracy is already facing challenges, and at a time when we’re coming out of a pandemic, we know the need for accurate, credible, reliable news and information.”

– Tim Franklin, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University

What is the state of local news today? What’s changed, where are there still concerns? What makes a community vulnerable to becoming a news desert? What does the future hold for the print newspaper? What are the most powerful opportunities for policy to help local news grow and thrive? What are some examples of positive outcomes and how can other news publishers emulate their success?

News/Media Alliance President & CEO David Chavern talks with the authors of now well-known research throughout the industry on the phenomenon known as news deserts, Penny Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin of the Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative at Northwestern University. In this thought-provoking conversation, Abernathy and Franklin share the findings from their latest update to The State of Local News report, released this summer. The previous edition of the report by Abernathy, released by the University of North Carolina Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 2020, revealed startling trends on the prevalence of news deserts, finding one-quarter of U.S. newspapers have closed since 2005. But there are reasons to be optimistic, and Abernathy and Franklin provide their thoughts on how the trend could yet be reversed. The two journalists-turned-academicians discuss innovations in digital publishing, as well as the introduction of non-advertising focused revenue models, including subscriptions and membership models, nonprofit organization structures, and other revenue models, that they say could offer a path for publishers who are living in areas that are vulnerable to becoming a news desert, as well as those who want to start a newspaper in a news desert.

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Speaker bios

Penny Muse Abernathy is a visiting professor at the Medill School. While at Medill, Abernathy is collaborating with the school’s Local News Initiative and Spiegel Research Center on local news-related projects, research and teaching. Abernathy is a former senior business executive with The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and Wall Street Journal, and was the Knight Chair in Journalism and Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina from 2008 to 2020. Her research focuses on the implications of the digital revolution for news organizations, the information needs of communities and the emergence of news deserts in the United States.

Tim Franklin is Senior Associate Dean, Professor and John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at the Medill School , where he is leading the Local News Initiative, a research-and-development project designed to bolster the sustainability of local news in America, and the Medill Metro Media Lab, a project funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation to strengthen the local news ecosystem and journalism education in the Chicago area. Franklin was appointed earlier this year by Governor J.B. Pritzker to serve on the Illinois Local Journalism Task Force, a bipartisan group studying the local news crisis in the state and recommending potential policy solutions. Before joining Medill in 2017, Franklin was President of The Poynter Institute, a leading international school for journalists and a media think tank.

Additional Resources

The State of Local News 2022 (Medill School of Journalism’s Local News Initiative, Northwestern University)

Watch the previous episode: The State of Advertising and Local News

Watch the next episode: Outsmarting Google and Facebook: Helping Publishers Grow Their Audience Outside the Dominant Platforms 

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Send your suggestions for future News Take guests to Alliance VP, Research & Insights Rebecca Frank at rebecca@newsmediaalliance.org.

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The post News Take Episode 110: Update on News Deserts and Local News Trends with Penny Muse Abernathy and Tim Franklin appeared first on News/Media Alliance.