Weekly Digest

Market Trends

Top 10 Subscription Stories of 2021 In this round-up, Subscription Insider revisits Netflix’s many attempts to diversify revenue with new products and services, the popularity of paid newsletters, and buy-now-pay-later services for subscriptions. They are also looking at the podcasting wars which has new players, programs and partnerships, and Spotify’s ever-expanding features and functionality, thanks to a series of acquisitions. www.subscriptioninsider.com

The 2021 media industry in charts: Ad spend bounces back, digital subs grow and press freedom declines After an often dismal 2020, 2021 has felt like a much more positive year for the media industry, Press Gazette reports. pressgazette.co.uk ?

Most-popular news apps in the UK, US and around the world for 2021 Half of the top ten spots were taken by Chinese and Indian apps; no surprise on account of their large populations. Indian news aggregator Daily Hunt was the most-downloaded news app globally in 2021 (55.9 million downloads). It was followed by NewsBreak (20.7 million downloads) and Opera News (19.6 million downloads). News aggregation apps scored well globally - twelve of the top 20 were aggregators. While?mobile aggregators ?play a relatively small part in the media eco-system of Western countries, they are much more popular in Asian markets including India, Japan and South Korea pressgazette.co.uk

21 findings from the Reuters Institute’s research in 2021 still relevant in 2022 As the year draws to a close, here are 21 findings from the Reuters Institute’s research in 2021 that will be still relevant in 2022. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

2021 in Review: 10 Important Research Findings and What they Mean for Newsrooms Ten takeaways from the research at the Center for Media Engagement (University of Texas at Austin) that can help newsrooms and journalists tackle challenges in the year ahead. mediaengagement.org

More than 50 local newsrooms launched in the US during the pandemic The pandemic changed the news business and, in a lot of ways, not for the better. It accelerated layoffs. It hastened the end of more than 100 news organizations. It led a handful of newsrooms losing their actual newsrooms. But in some communities, the pandemic also clarified the value of reliable information.? www.poynter.org

Publishers, Stop Prioritizing Monetization Over User Experience Analysis from Chrome’s user experience report and Similar Web’s global traffic data reveals high-end publishers have consistently performed below average over the past 18 months. This is because their complex monetization setups, although good for generating revenue, often degrade the user experience. www.adexchanger.com

Local news enters new era, reshaped by the pandemic and industry shifts There are now more than 700 independent local news startups in the U.S. and Canada, according to Local Independent Online News Publishers (LION), a trade organization. www.axios.com

The news industry is a technology- and talent-based industry that has for decades neglected investment in both. The difference between resigning oneself to managing decline and actively investing in the future is not about peppering presentations with mentions of AI, big data, and blockchain, or appointing a head of talent with no budget or power. It’s about committing real resources to drive real change. The news media invests far less in R&D than most other industries.?OECD research ?puts R&D investment in the publishing industry at 0.57% of gross value added, broadcasting at 0.32%. The average R&D share across all industries is?estimated at 5% .?That’s almost ten times publishing’s investment. www.niemanlab.org

How M&A Waves Reshaped Programmatic Media In 2021 in programmatic media, 2021 has brought a world of change. Ad tech and mobile marketing companies flooded the stock exchange, and already-public companies, including Magnite, Digital Turbine and Media and Games Invest (MGI), which owns the ad tech business Verve Group, have become active consolidators. AdExchanger takes a look at some of the deals and categories that fueled an M&A frenzy this year. www.adexchanger.com

Study: Sustainability Guilt Rises, While Climate Change Skepticism Falls Consumers’ concerns about the environment are growing fast, with?new research from GfK ?showing dramatic shifts in how that concern expresses itself. Some 69% of U.S. consumers now describe themselves as pro-environment, a gain of 17 points since 2012. The best news may be that fewer people feel cynical about sustainability efforts. GfK, which calls this group the Jaded, says that now describes just 22% of Americans, a steep drop from 38% back in 2010. www.mediapost.com

Business Insights

Mark Thompson interview: How New York Times defied 'scepticism' to build digital subscriptions powerhouse Big Tech regulation? ‘I actually don’t terribly like regulators and governments getting involved in this’ pressgazette.co.uk

UK newspapers that launched and closed in 2021 The 12 months of 2021 have been characterised by further launches and counter-launches by the bigger publishers on each other’s traditional territories, both online and in print. Nowhere has this been more marked than Reach plc achieving its stated ambition of launching websites to cover every county of England and Wales. www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk

Cyberattack on Amedia, Norway’s largest local media companies shuts down presses Amedia announced on Tuesday that several of its central computer systems were shut down in what it is calling an apparent “serious” cyberattack. The attack is preventing the company from printing Wednesday’s edition of physical newspapers, and presses will continue to be halted until the issue is resolved therecord.media

Taiwan’s sister website of former Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily set for sale Hong Kong liquidator for owner Next Digital, founded by jailed tycoon Jimmy Lai, is negotiating with potential buyers for Taiwan’s Apple Online, latter says. www.scmp.com

How The Quint increased traffic by 200 percent in 6 months From May to October 2021, India-based digital news publisher The Quint’s traffic went up by around 200 percent. Nidhi Mahajan, Associate Editor (Team Lead), Audience Engagement at The Quint attributes this to the audience engagement strategies the publisher has been pursuing. wan-ifra.org

As subscriptions to streaming services stall, Comcast, Disney, and other media companies are roping in their news operations to attract subscribers TV’s biggest news operations prepare for an intense round of streaming wars, including the launch of CNN Plus and a CBS News digital revamp. variety.com

Disney, Apple, Netflix, Comcast, ViacomCBS, Fox, WarnerMedia, and Amazon plan to spend $115B+ on content in 2022, or ~$140B including sports rights ?(Financial Times)

Many startup accelerators fail. Here’s how to find the right one The amount of new startup accelerators has gone through the roof. Since they first entered the scene in 2005 over 3,000 accelerators were advertised globally in 2021. Accelerators are proven to have a positive effect on startup success. Research shows startups that ‘graduate’ from an accelerator program have a 23% better survival rate. This is considerable seeing as an estimated 90% of startups fail. So, how do you weed through the literally thousands of options to find the right program for your business? thenextweb.com

The Power of Data

What data management leaders see for the sector in 2022 AI and machine learning will be working overtime in the data management space on numerous new use cases. www.zdnet.com

New report suggests widespread infringements of the GDPR remain commonplace A University of Oxford study found that third-party trackers in Google Play and Apple iOS apps remain relatively unchanged. “The same handful of third-party tracking companies have similar prevalence and prominence,” according to the Internet Policy Review journal. The number of apps with zero trackers actually dropped by 3%. Some solutions that were supposed to save advertising from a cookieless future haven’t taken root – not yet, at least. www.adexchanger.com

2021's Top Stories About AI Spoiler: A lot of them talked about what’s wrong with machine learning today… spectrum.ieee.org

The Craft of News

Disinformation Resilience in Central and Eastern Europe According to its “resilience index” of 14 countries, based on data collected by the European Union’s East StratCom Task Force,?Disinformation Resilience?shows how unprepared our democratic systems are to respond. This study of Russian disinformation campaigns in Central and Eastern Europe reveals some scary data. But it also suggests some effective countermeasures and the role journalists can play in the battle for hearts and minds. prismua.org

Hong Kong pro-democracy news outlet shuts down after police raid and arrests A vocal pro-democracy website in Hong Kong has been shut down after police raided its office, froze its assets and arrested senior staff. Stand News said in a statement that its website and social media were no longer being updated and would be taken down. news.sky.com

Readers prefer home-grown local news … but less than half will pay for it The Public Interest News Foundation research showed 58% of people surveyed in the UK would trust local news from an organisation that was based in their area, compared to 31% who said they would not. When asked if they would trust local news that came from a news organisation based outside their area, 31% said they would, and 55% said they would not. “It is heartening to read the results of the research which confirm what we already know — that local news is most trusted when it is reported by people based in the area" medium.com

How 2021 changed journalism Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism’s podcast episod on: hybrid working | newsroom diversity?| their new climate journalism network?| improving climate coverage?| important lessons learned?| perceptions of fairness in news coverage??|?social media and diversity of news diets?|?government support for journalism?| newsroom strategies to stay afloat |? reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

Tomorrow’s news audience: Smaller, but more obsessed When we think we’re asking survey respondents about their consumption of news, they might as well be telling us about their consumption of politics. News outlets that were once viewed skeptically as tools of political parties and movements, today may be more likely seen as official organs of those parties and movements. It’s a whole new era of convergence, one that a growing segment of the American news audience distrusts — but also can’t resist. www.niemanlab.org

Can Portugal's Mensagem be a new hyperlocal publishing model? Nestled in the epicenter of Chiado, the cultural and political heart of Lisbon, Portugal, lies an intriguing experiment in local news. For it is here, amongst the cafés of Portugal’s capital city, that the ex-executive Editor in Chief of Diario De Noticias, the country’s oldest daily newspaper, has gone back to her roots and launched a digital, hyperlocal newspaper, Mensagem. whatsnewinpublishing.com

Why did good news do so well in 2021? Whether it is cute puppies or stories about prison reform, 2021 left audiences thirsty for positive stories. And news organisations responded. www.journalism.co.uk

News publishers adopt artificial intelligence (A.I.) technologies to tell data-driven stories McClatchy has begun experimenting with?publishing?transitional real estate stories with artificial intelligence software. And, it’s hardly the first news organization to explore the benefits of automated?journalism, which in theory can free up journalists from more mundane tasks — if it doesn’t cost them their jobs www.editorandpublisher.com ?

Innovation in journalism: two media start-ups booming despite challenges South Africa’s The Daily Maverick and Paraguay’s El Surti are proving that you do not need huge budgets to have political and social impact. www.journalism.co.uk

The Metaverse’s Dark Side: Here Come Harassment and Assaults As Meta and other companies bet big on an immersive digital world, questions about its harms are rising. www.nytimes.com

WAN-IFRA Press Corner

Winners of South Asian Digital Media Awards 2021 announced Malayala Manorama’s manoramaonline.com bagged the ‘ Best in News Website’ South Asian Digital Media Award for the third time in a row. Among the winners are The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Quint, Mojo Story, NDTV Convergence, Times of India Digital and Sakal. wan-ifra.org

SEE YOU IN 2022!