Why Journalists Start Newsletters
One reason we're hearing so much about journalists migrating to publishing newsletters on platforms like Substack, Ghost, Revue and Mailchimp is glaringly simple:
Economics.
On the whole, the past few years have been a disaster for legacy publications. They face problems including:
Plummeting digital ad rates
Customers expecting online content for free
Private equity cannibalization of newspapers and magazines
As a result, legacy publications have an increasingly difficult time covering business, political and lifestyle beats in an economically sustanable matter. For journalists covering those beats who have both an existing readership and deep industry contacts, that's bad news. This applies to both mainstream, consumer-oriented publications and B2B and trade publications.
Just to give one example of the current economic troubles facing the industry, arch-rivals The Hollywood Reporter and Variety recently merged, meaning that coverage of the entertainment industry is now largely focused in a single publication.
I worked in journalism for years at Fast Company and have bylines in a range of other publications. Writing on science and technology topics, I saw firsthand just how brutal industry economics have become and how difficult beat reporting has become for practitioners.
While journalists may cover stories that matter to society at large, to people working in industries they cover, to customers buying their products or services, to regulators, and to others, those stories may generate fewer clicks and pageviews than “story of the day” coverage or sensationalist link bait output. That translates into generating less income for their employers—regardless of how important their reporting is.
As a result, many publications may either scale back beat coverage or find themselves unable to offer assistance (including salary, expense accounts for travel, fact checking services, software/physical equipment) that is necessary for a reporter to do their job.
The irony is that even in an age where anti-journalism rhetoric is commonplace, being a journalist is still considered as prestigious job by many. However, that prestige doesn't necessarily translate to high pay, job stability, or practitioners having resources they need to do their jobs.
Three main options exist for established beat journalists with followings and a good network of sources:
Continue working for legacy publications or newer digital outlets
Flipping sides and working in corporate communications, public relations, or advocacy
Starting their own businesses
And if you're an independent journalist in 2020, the easiest path to making a living is publishing a pay-to-read newsletter. By far.
Publishing primarily on a new website means losing out on eyeballs. The current Walled Garden incarnation of the internet means that new sites are at a disadvantage generating traffic from Google/Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc. algorithms. Publishing on Medium or LinkedIn helps, but is difficult to monetize.
While podcasts are fun to make and can quickly generate large audiences, launching a successful podcast takes quite a bit of time. While podcasts can generate attention, publicity and webtraffic, the sorry state of podcast adtech means that podcasting is still hard to turn into a reliable revenue generator.
YouTube video content is easier to monetize, but leaves creators reliant on a platform partner who can make or break your income (See: The Adpocalypse). In addition, picking up the technical skills to make good video is considerably harder than picking up the technical skills to make good podcasts.
Books are prestigious and career-making, but non-fiction authors don't necessarily make money from writing books. Instead, the real money is in movie/TV rights or in live appearances. The fact that (as of press time in late 2020) live appearances are currently on pause complicates matters even further.
Finally, there are newsletters. Newsletters generate revenue for authors either through subscription fees, through sponsorships, or through in-newsletter advertising. This pathway is easily the most sustainable way for independent journalists to make money in 2020 media.
Newsletters aren't perfect--there are real issues around both audience fatigue and readers having limited money to subscribe to preferred authors--but they're by far the best option these days.
And, of course, I publish a free newsletter. Subscribe at nealungerleider.substack.com.
