This was finally the year that exposed just how fragmented our sources of news, information, and entertainment have become. And it’s going to be extremely hard to put audiences back together to form one or two mass mediums of distribution — just ask the “media,” who fully lost hold of a broad audience during this year’s presidential election. Reaching an audience enmeshed and attuned to the topics, formats, and/or sensibilities that creators have previously sublimated to favor broad appeal will present a new opportunity to creators. And the way we think (and track) those audiences has to change to ensure that we’re making content discoverable to as many people as possible (through ad-supported, freemium models, for example), so that we can use that relationship to push super-users into a high-touch, high-margin experiences.
What are those high-margin experiences? As someone who spent spare time in 2016 launching a print-only magazine, I’m a big believer in the prospect of indie publications to connect with specific audiences and charge a premium for an exemplary experience. What we’re doing at Racquet — identifying a niche audience centered around highbrow tennis culture and providing a premium experience at a premium price — tracks with what I do in my day job at Acast — working with independent producers and media companies to attract and grow high-value audio products with high CPMs to match to reach more engaged audience.
Live events, newsletters, merch — even wine clubs — round out the mix for publishers looking to expand a footprint in one medium and open the door for super-users to a premium environment where they can better control and monetize the experience. Our magazine efforts join a long-established community of Indie publishers, but increasingly we’ll see other creators venture into print to create a splashy, high-touch offering. Matter Studios put out a print accompaniment to its Total Power Move event in November, and the e-commerce mavens behind Of A Kind capped off the year by releasing Kind of a Mag, a new foray into a very old and beloved medium. Watch out for many more in 2017.
To better accommodate a world where individual media consumption is fragmented into a collection of personalized niche topics, recommendations, integrations, and connectivity will become more important than ever. Any media company who can anticipate where their audience is likely to be and how they’re likely to consume content can expect to make huge gains in the current media landscape. My former employer, The Washington Post Co., is a great example of how a fully integrated media company could function. Amazon Prime purchases can fuel recommendations for print products and digital subscriptions; data provided by on-demand audio delivered by Alexa and funneled back into Amazon and Audible to determine the slate of releases for the next season of programming. To accompany this, we’re likely to see a return to the studio model, where IP is the most valuable asset a media company or an independent producer can leverage.
News and entertainment have merged to create “content,” but while the election revealed that broadcasting to a giant unified audience might not be recoverable, recommendations and empowering a niche audience can help free news to be news again. With the prospect of a post-fact political climate defining our next four years, speaking truth to power has never felt more necessary or patriotic as it does now, and the amount of Americans willing to spend or donate money to support quality journalism has proven encouragingly high; see the soaring subscription rates to The New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Washington Post as well as increased donations to ProPublica and Mother Jones. This frees news to unshackle itself from polls, clickbait, punditry that defined (and saw declining audience in) the past two decades and to shift towards investigations, FOIA requests, policy analysis, and legislative scrutiny. What better outcome for this new cycle’s shortcomings than to pave the way for shoe-leather reporting, reporting, reporting that could reboot our entire industry.
Caitlin Thompson is director of U.S. content for Acast and publisher of Racquet magazine.
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Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
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Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
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Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
David Weigel A test for online speech
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Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
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Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur