NewsBeat

10 NewsBeat August 2019 At the December conference, Spiegel's Malthouse suggested that emailed newsletters offered an effective way to get more readers into a daily habit—a view that Rosenstiel endorses. "We've seen data from Google that shows that email newsletters are the single most effective way to get people to decide to subscribe," said Rosenstiel. He emphasized that an engaging tone is important for newsletters. "You don't just throw a bunch of links in some automated, set-it-and-forget-it thing. Then it's a machine talking to people and not a newsletter," Rosenstiel said. Malthouse talked about "customization"—in which newsletter recipients can pick topics to follow, such as NFL football or fine dining—and "personalization"—in which stories are recommended for the reader based on past behavior. Customization is fairly common at big news outlets, allowing readers to opt in to a variety of daily email alerts and newsletters. Personalization, on the other hand, is an idea with vast unrealized potential. News outlets now have the opportunity to track when a subscriber has read five of the last seven stories on the City Council. When the eighth story is published, why not email the story or a link to the subscriber? The answer is that hardly any local news operations have the technological wherewithal to do this type of personalization. But this is just the kind of tactic that would serve customers most effectively. Without personalization, Malthouse said, emailed newsletters run the risk of causing overload, making readers think they're being spammed. Malthouse theorized that personalization could have major benefits for what he and other researchers call the CTR—the click-through rate. He even wondered aloud whether news organizations might ultimately be able to charge extra for the newsletter or charge newsletter-only fees. Malthouse is conducting a Northwestern class this term on machine learning, and the students' work will include designing "recommendation systems" such as newsletters. While news websites' over-all quality is important, certain types of content seem especially effective at keeping readers coming back, and news outlets are trying to produce more of it. For example, in past years, the Chicago Tribune would give its professional sports teams – and those teams' beat reporters – an offseason, with minimal coverage. But now the most popular teams – the Bears and Cubs – are likely to be covered virtually every day year-round. At the Chronicle, a recurring feature called "Our San Franciso" by Peter Hartlaub gives readers "a time machine look at the city's history." According to Malthouse, the new research shows that "Our San Francisco" is one of the Chronicle's offerings that "drives retention." It's Vital to Be Different – and Best The Medill data analysis backs up a mantra that has spread through newsrooms in recent years: Don't spend a lot of time producing commodity news. In order to get subscribers to pay up, local news outlets must deliver something that readers can't get elsewhere. While commodity news may get page views, it's also available through wire services serving hundreds of other websites. In an era of shrinking staffs, duplicating the wires is a particularly costly waste of resources. The good news is that there is great reward in setting yourself apart. "You see these whopper effects for all things that we call differentiated or local," said Malthouse. "What you see is that commoditized stuff, it's not bad, but it just doesn't have the same leverage as the local. If you want to drive the habit, you've got to get them interested in local." That varies by market, and Malthouse sized up the differences for the three "learning labs": • "With San Francisco, what's driving habit is local sports and local news, to some extent local entertainment, local food, opinion, and local life." • "What does it for Indy? Well, sports and then news." • "For the Trib, what's driving habit, well, it's the hyperlocal stuff, suburban coverage … some to-do entertainment stuff, sports, city news." He noted that national coverage did better for the Tribune than for the other two, perhaps because it is the biggest newspaper in the Midwest, with a history of strong nation/world coverage, and draws traffic from surrounding states. So what's next? At the December meeting, the Tribune, Chronicle and Star were briefed on Spiegel's overall findings and also received work-ups of their individual data to take back to their newsrooms for further discussion. They will keep working with Medill on further analysis of their metrics. "You see these whopper effects for all things that we call differentiated or local. … If you want to drive the habit, you've got to get them interested in local." — Ed Malthouse, Spiegel's Research Director

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