What’s the monetary value of longform journalism?
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What’s the monetary value of longform journalism?
Every year a debate erupts within media circles as to whether there’s all that much consumer and business demand for longform journalism.
The skeptic’s case is fairly simple: for the time and money spent on a 4,000-word article, you could produce four 1,000-word articles, thereby quadrupling the chances that an article will win the viral lottery and take off. These skeptics also point to stats showing that longform articles have much lower completion rates than their shortform counterparts.
I should start by noting that none of this analysis is particularly wrong. Those four shorter articles are likely to collectively draw more traffic than the longform article, and yes, longform articles do have lower completion rates.
But as Chris Stokel-Walker discusses in a recent piece, longform journalism packs more longterm value, both from an audience-building perspective and in the potential to drive revenue.
A lot of consumption of short-form content is ephemeral, with the reader entering and exiting the article from some kind of side door, whether it’s Facebook or Google News. Back when we thought that content could be monetized purely from programmatic advertising, this didn’t seem like a problem.
But those programmatic remainder ads brought with them bottom-of-the-barrel CPMs, and it slowly dawned on publishers that the more lucrative direct advertisers were interested in publishers with loyal, dedicated followings.
This mental calculus shifted even more once outlets started adopting paid subscription models. Suddenly, audience loyalty was paramount. “A blind case study carried out by Chartbeat in the US found that loyal readers to news websites – the people who logged on every other day or more often – only represented 11% of a publication’s audience, but generated more than half their ad revenue,” wrote Stokel-Walker.
And THAT is where longform journalism packs its punch. It deepens the relationship with the reader and generates more brand affinity. As Chartbeat’s Jill Nicholson put it in Stokel-Walker’s article, “Yes, it’s an investment, and yes, in some cases those stories may have fewer page views or volume metrics, but at the end of the day, its ability to build loyalty pays longer-term dividends.”
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How influential are political podcasts?
It seems like political podcasts are having a bit of a moment right now, what with Hillary Clinton launching a new podcast, Crooked Media expanding into non-political shows, and Chapo Trap House getting a long profile in The New York Times.
This convergence of events is likely why Nick Quah decided to write an overview of the genre. The piece is interesting because it both runs us through the history of political podcasts (from John Edwards’s 2005 campaign podcast to the rise of the Dirtbag Left) as well as assesses their current state.
One interesting question that arises from the article is how influential political news podcasts are within the national discourse, especially in terms of whether they can actually impact election outcomes.
The relationship between politics and podcasting has become noticeably deeper — and not to mention, more complicated. Joe Rogan, the prominent podcaster controversial for his “freethinking” disposition whose reach is widely believed to be substantial, was recently treated as a significant political voice, with his endorsement of Bernie Sanders becoming the subject of voracious debate. Similar treatments have been applied to Chapo Trap House, which in recent years has become increasingly taken as a viable window into the mindset of the enthusiastic Sanders base.
The presence of politicians in podcasts has also become more of a thing. In April, a communications adviser to the Buttigieg campaign told CNN’s Reliable Sources that she felt podcasts were “underappreciated” and “really hot right now,” which probably explains Mayor Pete’s appearances on two Vox podcasts: The Ezra Klein Show and The Weeds. The wildly improbable, long-shot candidacy of Andrew Yang lasted into the first stages of the primaries, with his success being attributed in part to a fluency of digital communities, including those of various podcasts. (Yang had appeared on Rogan’s podcast last February.)
There’s always plenty of hand wringing and criticism aimed at the coverage provided by the 24-hour cable news networks, but at any given time there are only about a million people watching CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC. Given that each episode of Pod Saves America gets downloaded about a million times and The New York Times’s The Daily attracts twice that audience, could you argue that podcasts are more than niche media products and can affect the national conversation just as effectively as any newspaper article or network news segment?
My guess is we’re not quite there yet, with regular podcast listening only occurring within a relatively small sliver of the American public. Even among my friends, who mostly consist of well-educated urban dwellers, I only know a few who would consider themselves to be regular podcast listeners. But given the industry’s growth trajectory and its major backing from platforms like Spotify, I do think we’re approaching an era in which a particularly insightful interview or investigative series can pack as much punch as a front-page story in the Washington Post or New York Times. After all, a podcast did just launch a case all the way to the Supreme Court and got an innocent man off death row.
Either way, Chapo Trap House generating $2.2 million a year just from Patreon subscriptions is a significant feat.
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Is the New York Times a monopoly?
This seems like a silly question to ask, but it’s a theory put forth in Ben Smith’s debut media column for The New York Times. He argues that the Times is sucking up all of the talent, audience, and subscription revenue that would otherwise go to other media outlets, making it more difficult for smaller upstarts to thrive.
I actually wrote a recent column about why local news outlets have struggled to replicate the Times’s success, and no, I don’t blame the Times for this misfortune. I could probably spend several thousand words explaining all the ways Smith’s analysis is reductive and doesn’t accurately present the current state of news media, but, for the purposes of this newsletter, I want to call attention to a critique of Smith’s column from Jacob Donnelly.
In his piece, Donnelly observes that the Times, because it’s a national standard bearer in news, is limited in how deep it can dive into any particular niche, and that a lot of the most successful media companies to emerge in the last few years exploit this weakness. I’ve written recently about the subscription models for both The Athletic and The Information, two publications that have so effectively wedged themselves into their respective niches that I doubt the Times could ever replicate the level of depth they provide. I do think the idea that most news should be delivered via general interest outlets to be an anachronism, a vestigial trait left over from an era when distribution was limited to print newspapers and a handful of broadcast networks.
In his column, Smith laments that digital media ecosystem no longer seems as diverse as it was when he took his editor-in-chief job at BuzzFeed, and that there are fewer media startups launching today.
Really? He and I must be looking at a very different media landscape, because every day I see creators launching new Substacks, podcasts, and YouTube channels. And yes, most are narrow in their coverage, but collectively they offer an extremely wide range of content, both free and paid. Consider my own newsletter and podcast as an example; every week I get to geek out on subjects the Times hardly ever touches.
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Other news:
I continue to be confused as to what Mailchimp's longterm strategy is here. It appears to be pivoting from email marketing to becoming an entrepreneur-focused media company. [link]
The "pivot to video" ended up being a huge strategic mistake for a lot of publishers, but all the mocking of that pivot masks the fact that some outlets did a good job of expanding into video. One of those outlets is Bon Appétit. [link]
There's no doubt that The Athletic has carved out a market for itself and is a real innovator in the sports journalism space. But will it be able to sustain its high overhead once the VC money runs out? That I'm not sure about. [link]
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Simon Owens is a tech and media journalist living in Washington, DC. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Email him at simonowens@gmail.com. For a full bio, go here.
Creative Commons image via needpix