Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative has done a
follow-up study to an analysis last year on three big-city news outlets that
showed that a regular reader habit and strong coverage of local news were the
key factors for keeping subscribers. A question remained after the initial
analysis: Was that true only for major metros, or for local news organizations
in general?
The
follow-up study focused on 12 small news outlets.
“The
results of both studies strongly endorse reader habit and local news as major
factors in subscriber retention. And the analysis of both the big metros and
the small newsrooms showed the surprising finding that page views and depth of
reading were not major factors in keeping subscribers,” according to the Local
News Initiative.
National
news was more of a key for subscriber retention in small markets, and sports
coverage was less of a retention key, according to the Local News Initiative.
The Chicago
Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Indianapolis Star are developing or
considering subscriber-only newsletters following the first study and in
discussions with Medill in which emailed newsletters were spotted as a key
tool, according to the Local News Initiative.
Gannett’s
USA Today Network partnered with Medill on the small-market study. The Spiegel Research Center
News and Tech
No comments:
Post a Comment
For now, we're opening this blog to Anonymous comments. This will continue as long as civility rules. Disagree as you may, just keep it clean and stay on topic. No profanity, and no name calling. We reserve the right to moderate such comments, though the person who made it may come back and reword their message in a more civil way.