The bundle gets bundled

“If American Express can offer their users a one-year subscription to the Calm app, why not a one-year subscription to The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, or your local McClatchy paper?”

Do you know how many digital subscriptions you have? When’s the last time you scanned your credit card statement? As recurring charges pile up, it’s easy to miss one of the biggest subscription costs out there: your credit card itself.

For one annual fee, many credit cards wrap up incentives to keep your spend with Chase, American Express, or Citi. Those “incentives” are expanding rapidly. Chase added DoorDash, Lyft, and Peloton credits to some cards this year. American Express is expanding its deal with Uber and Soulcycle/Equinox. And that’s before you get to co-branded cards that carry loyalty to a particular hotel chain, airline, or bank.

With each new product and adjustment to old ones, credit card companies are building their own bundles, nudging customers to a set of select brands, many of which have higher Net Promoter Scores than their own.

My prediction: Credit card companies will add a news subscription to their mega-bundles. If American Express can offer their users a one-year subscription to the Calm app, why not a one-year subscription to The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, or your local McClatchy paper?

What’s in it for news publishers? A ton of new leads, complete with credit card numbers and email addresses on file. Most companies look at partnerships like this as a marketing cost: Hook some new subscribers for a period of time at a discount, and once the incentive goes away, some percentage of users will stay on. No doubt the first few attempts will be aimed mostly at determining the quality of the leads and how to position them among existing subscribers.

The strike against such a prediction is that credit card companies may not want to be seen as playing news favorites in an era of political polarization. Many publishers also aren’t set up technically to onboard new subscribers in bulk like this. And, of course, some publishers may not like being the fourth bullet point behind DoorDash, Lyft, and Peloton in a marketing email.

While my prediction is tilted toward bigger spenders with fancier cards and high annual fees, a partnership should also explicitly include those with lower-tier cards, no credit, and those who are unbanked. Given the public service mission of many publications — and the not-great track record of many credit card companies in serving low-income Americans — there’s just as much of an opportunity to get high-quality, factual information in front of those who can least afford it.

Ryan Kellett is senior director of audience at The Washington Post.

Do you know how many digital subscriptions you have? When’s the last time you scanned your credit card statement? As recurring charges pile up, it’s easy to miss one of the biggest subscription costs out there: your credit card itself.

For one annual fee, many credit cards wrap up incentives to keep your spend with Chase, American Express, or Citi. Those “incentives” are expanding rapidly. Chase added DoorDash, Lyft, and Peloton credits to some cards this year. American Express is expanding its deal with Uber and Soulcycle/Equinox. And that’s before you get to co-branded cards that carry loyalty to a particular hotel chain, airline, or bank.

With each new product and adjustment to old ones, credit card companies are building their own bundles, nudging customers to a set of select brands, many of which have higher Net Promoter Scores than their own.

My prediction: Credit card companies will add a news subscription to their mega-bundles. If American Express can offer their users a one-year subscription to the Calm app, why not a one-year subscription to The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, or your local McClatchy paper?

What’s in it for news publishers? A ton of new leads, complete with credit card numbers and email addresses on file. Most companies look at partnerships like this as a marketing cost: Hook some new subscribers for a period of time at a discount, and once the incentive goes away, some percentage of users will stay on. No doubt the first few attempts will be aimed mostly at determining the quality of the leads and how to position them among existing subscribers.

The strike against such a prediction is that credit card companies may not want to be seen as playing news favorites in an era of political polarization. Many publishers also aren’t set up technically to onboard new subscribers in bulk like this. And, of course, some publishers may not like being the fourth bullet point behind DoorDash, Lyft, and Peloton in a marketing email.

While my prediction is tilted toward bigger spenders with fancier cards and high annual fees, a partnership should also explicitly include those with lower-tier cards, no credit, and those who are unbanked. Given the public service mission of many publications — and the not-great track record of many credit card companies in serving low-income Americans — there’s just as much of an opportunity to get high-quality, factual information in front of those who can least afford it.

Ryan Kellett is senior director of audience at The Washington Post.

Alyssa Zeisler   Holistic medicine for journalism

Imaeyen Ibanga   Journalism gets unmasked

Jennifer Brandel   A sneak peak at power mapping, 2073’s top innovation

Mariano Blejman   It’s time to challenge autocompleted journalism

Brandy Zadrozny   Misinformation fatigue sets in

Annie Rudd   Newsrooms grow less comfortable with the “view from above”

Marie Shanahan   Journalism schools stop perpetuating the status quo

David Skok   A pandemic-prompted wave of consolidation

Joshua P. Darr   Legislatures will tackle the local news crisis

Francesca Tripodi   Don’t expect breaking up Google and Facebook to solve our information woes

John Saroff   Covid sparks the growth of independent local news sites

Matt DeRienzo   Citizen truth brigades steer us back toward reality

Steve Henn   Has independent podcasting peaked?

David Chavern   Local video finally gets momentum

Andrew Ramsammy   Stop being polite and start getting real

C.W. Anderson   Journalism changed under Trump — will it keep changing under Biden?

Celeste Headlee   The rise of radical newsroom transparency

Burt Herman   Journalists build post-Facebook digital communities

Kevin D. Grant   Parachute journalism goes away for good

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky and Cassie Haynes   A shift from conversation to action

Hossein Derakhshan   Mass personalization of truth

Jesse Holcomb   Genre erosion in nonprofit journalism

Renée Kaplan   Falling in love with your subscription

Mike Caulfield   2021’s misinformation will look a lot like 2020’s (and 2019’s, and…)

Doris Truong   Indigenous issues get long-overdue mainstream coverage

Chicas Poderosas   More voices mean better information

Garance Franke-Ruta   Rebundling content, rebuilding connections

Mark Stenberg   The rise of the journalist-influencer

Christoph Mergerson   Black Americans will demand more from journalism

Meredith D. Clark   The year journalism starts paying reparations

AX Mina   2020 isn’t a black swan — it’s a yellow canary

Don Day   Business first, journalism second

Shaydanay Urbani and Nancy Watzman   Local collaboration is key to slowing misinformation

Hadjar Benmiloud   Get representative, or die trying

Edward Roussel   Tech companies get aggressive in local

Cherian George   Enter the lamb warriors

Candis Callison   Calling it a crisis isn’t enough (if it ever was)

Kristen Muller   Engaged journalism scales

Tanya Cordrey   Declining trust forces publishers to claim (or disclaim) values

Patrick Butler   Covid-19 reporting has prepared us for cross-border collaboration

Ashton Lattimore   Remote work helps level the playing field in an insular industry

Joni Deutsch   Local arts and music make journalism more joyous

Danielle C. Belton   A decimated media rededicates itself to truth

Nabiha Syed   Newsrooms quit their toxic relationships

Jacqué Palmer   The rise of the plain-text email newsletter

Laura E. Davis   The focus turns to newsroom leaders for lasting change

Francesco Zaffarano   The year we ask the audience what it needs

Amara Aguilar   Journalism schools emphasize listening

Ben Collins   We need to learn how to talk to (and about) accidental conspiracists

Loretta Chao   Open up the profession

Brian Moritz   The year sports journalism changes for good

Stefanie Murray and Anthony Advincula   Expect to see more translations and non-English content

Sonali Prasad   Making disaster journalism that cuts through the noise

Nisha Chittal   The year we stop pivoting

Cindy Royal   J-school grads maintain their optimism and adaptability

Ben Werdmuller   The web blooms again

Zizi Papacharissi   The year we rebuild the infrastructure of truth

Zainab Khan   From understanding to feeling

Tshepo Tshabalala   Go niche

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   Stop pretending publishers are a united front

Rachel Glickhouse   Journalists will be kinder to each other — and to themselves

Linda Solomon Wood   Canada steps up for journalism

José Zamora   Walking the talk on diversity

Sarah Marshall   The year audiences need extra cheer

Astead W. Herndon   The Trump-sized window of the media caring about race closes again

Gordon Crovitz   Common law will finally apply to the Internet

John Ketchum   More journalists of color become newsroom founders

Colleen Shalby   The definition of good journalism shifts

Alicia Bell and Simon Galperin   Media reparations now

Jeremy Gilbert   Human-centered journalism

Eric Nuzum   Podcasting dodged a bullet in 2020, but 2021 will be harder

Taylor Lorenz   Journalists will learn influencing isn’t easy

Ryan Kellett   The bundle gets bundled

Heidi Tworek   A year of news mocktails

John Davidow   Reflect and repent

Kate Myers   My son will join every Zoom call in our industry

Natalie Meade   Journalism enters rehab

Errin Haines   Let’s normalize women’s leadership

Anthony Nadler   Journalism struggles to find a new model of legitimacy

Mike Ananny   Toward better tech journalism

Tamar Charney   Public radio has a midlife crisis

J. Siguru Wahutu   Journalists still wrongly think the U.S. is different

Cory Bergman   The year after a thousand earthquakes

John Garrett   A surprisingly good year

M. Scott Havens   Traditional pay TV will embrace the disruption

Sam Ford   We’ll find better ways to archive our work

Nico Gendron   Ask your readers to help build your products

Alfred Hermida and Oscar Westlund   The virus ups data journalism’s game

Samantha Ragland   The year of journalists taking initiative

Gabe Schneider   Another year of empty promises on diversity

Sarah Stonbely   Videoconferencing brings more geographic diversity

Megan McCarthy   Readers embrace a low-information diet

Parker Molloy   The press will risk elevating a Shadow President Trump

Aaron Foley   Diversity gains haven’t shown up in local news

Bill Adair   The future of fact-checking is all about structured data

Jim Friedlich   A newspaper renaissance reached by stopping the presses

Sara M. Watson   Return of the RSS reader

Tim Carmody   Spotify will make big waves in video

Catalina Albeanu   Publish less, listen more

Sue Cross   A global consensus around the kind of news we need to save

Cory Haik   Be essential

Richard Tofel   Less on politics, more on how government works (or doesn’t)

Whitney Phillips   Facts are an insufficient response to falsehoods

Juleyka Lantigua   The download, podcasting’s metric king, gets dethroned

Rachel Schallom   The rise of nonprofit journalism continues

Julia B. Chan and Kim Bui   Millennials are ready to run things

Robert Hernandez   Data and shame

Charo Henríquez   A new path to leadership

Beena Raghavendran   Journalism gets fused with art

Logan Jaffe   History as a reporting tool

A.J. Bauer   The year of MAGAcal thinking

Masuma Ahuja   We’ll remember how interconnected our world is

Gonzalo del Peon   Collaborations expand from newsrooms to the business side

Rishad Patel   From direct-to-consumer to direct-to-believers

Tauhid Chappell and Mike Rispoli   Defund the crime beat

Moreno Cruz Osório   In Brazil, a push for pluralism

Anna Nirmala   Local news orgs grasp the urgency of community roots

Jennifer Choi   What have we done for you lately?

Jonas Kaiser   Toward a wehrhafte journalism

Tonya Mosley   True equity means ownership

María Sánchez Díez   Traffic will plummet — and it’ll be ok

Julia Angwin   Show your (computational) work

Nonny de la Pena   News reaches the third dimension

Kawandeep Virdee   Goodbye, doomscroll

Ariel Zirulnick   Local newsrooms question their paywalls

Andrew Donohue   The rise of the democracy beat

Michael W. Wagner   Fractured democracy, fractured journalism

Rick Berke   Virtual events are here to stay

Victor Pickard   The commercial era for local journalism is over

Marissa Evans   Putting community trauma into context

Talmon Joseph Smith   The media rejects deficit hawkery

Chase Davis   The year we look beyond The Story

Mandy Jenkins   You build trust by helping your readers

Nikki Usher   Don’t expect an antitrust dividend for the media

Nicholas Jackson   Blogging is back, but better

Jody Brannon   People won’t renew

Sumi Aggarwal   News literacy programs aren’t child’s play

Kerri Hoffman   Protecting podcasting’s open ecosystem

Ernie Smith   Entrepreneurship on rails

Marcus Mabry   News orgs adapt to a post-Trump world (with Trump still in it)

Ray Soto   The news gets spatial

Jessica Clark   News becomes plural

Joanne McNeil   Newsrooms push back against Ivy League cronyism

Pia Frey   Building growth through tastemakers and their communities

Janet Haven and Sam Hinds   Is this an AI newsroom?

Ariane Bernard   Going solo is still only a path for the few

Bo Hee Kim   Newsrooms create an intentional and collaborative culture

Matt Skibinski   Misinformation won’t stop unless we stop it

Raney Aronson-Rath   To get past information divides, we need to understand them first

Delia Cai   Subscriptions start working for the middle

Rodney Gibbs   Zooming beyond talking heads

Basile Simon   Graphics, unite

Benjamin Toff   Beltway reporting gets normal again, for better and for worse

Jer Thorp   Fewer pixels, more cardboard

Pablo Boczkowski   Audiences have revolted. Will newsrooms adapt?

Mark S. Luckie   Newsrooms and streaming services get cozy

Ståle Grut   Network analysis enters the journalism toolbox