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How To Convert News Junkies

We don't pay for news; we pay to contribute.

Jerry Silfwer
by Jerry Silfwer

Cover photo: @jerrysilfwer

tl:dr;
This article will demonstrate just how much a news publisher has to offer to convert news junkies—without resorting to hiding news journalism behind paywalls.

Table of contents

Convert news junkies with premi­um experiences.

As a seasoned PR pro­fes­sion­al, I depend on keep­ing up with the news. I would pay for access to a news site… if the news site could give me what I want.

This art­icle will demon­strate just how many ways a news pub­lish­er can con­vert news junkies — without resort­ing to hid­ing news journ­al­ism behind pay­walls.

Here we go:

Why Traditional Paywalls Fail

Many tra­di­tion­al news busi­nesses are struggling.

Their ana­logue busi­ness mod­els are fold­ing while they des­per­ately strive to find digit­al replace­ments. The go-to solu­tion for most tra­di­tion­al news busi­nesses are to place their best edit­or­i­al work behind paywalls.

However, these mod­els aren’t being suc­cess­ful.
And it’s quite obvi­ous why.

It’s the online value reversal where today’s news con­sumers think dif­fer­ently about news.

Online Value Reversal - Journalistic Paywalls - Public Relations
The online value reversal for journ­al­ist­ic paywalls.

Modern news con­sumers under­stand that their atten­tion is valu­able and that it’s being mon­et­ised through advert­ising and beha­vi­our­al data trading.

The Business Model of Spotify

The Swedish stream­ing plat­form Spotify illus­trates the online value reversal perfectly:

While listen­ing to Spotify’s entire music lib­rary is free, you must pay for its premi­um ser­vice to elim­in­ate annoy­ing com­mer­cial breaks and improve audio quality.

On Spotify, users don’t pay for music.
They pay for a premi­um experience.

The baseline here is quid pro quo: Spotify must abstain from play­ing ads for pay­ing cus­tom­ers. That’s non-negotiable.

Traditional news busi­nesses must start think­ing the same way. News junkies don’t pay for news the way music lov­ers don’t pay for music. So, what do they pay for?

Why should I pay twice for news? I’m already donat­ing my attention.

Learn more: How To Convert News Junkies

How To Convert News Junkies

The answer to how to con­vert news junkies is simple — instead of selling news, tra­di­tion­al news media must start selling premi­um news exper­i­ences.

Examples of Premium-Only Features

What types of premi­um-only news exper­i­ences could poten­tially attract news junkies?

The value pro­pos­i­tion could include some (or all!) of the fol­low­ing fea­tures for premi­um-only news consumers:

  • Ad-free exper­i­ence (on all platforms).
  • Individual and par­tially cus­tom­is­able interest-based front page.
  • AI sum­mar­ies and chat­bots to bet­ter under­stand the news and find related news stories.
  • Links to related archived mater­i­al instead of ads.
  • Visible out­bound links with­in articles.
  • Access to journ­al­ist com­ment­ary adja­cent to articles.
  • “Free months” should be offered for refer­ring new premi­um users (like Dropbox offer­ing free refer­ral storage).
  • Advanced data­base search (with AI assist­ance) of the entire online news archive. It would be even bet­ter if old news stor­ies from oth­er pub­lic­a­tions could be bought and added to the archive.
  • Personal news archive for saved art­icles and per­son­al notes avail­able for premi­um-con­nec­tions with­in the news site.
  • Article com­ments with premi­um high­light­ing should be avail­able to add to the com­ment mod­er­a­tion queue.
  • Community trophies for user engage­ment (become a “super news junkie”).
  • Comments from awar­ded premi­um com­ment­at­ors should be vis­ible to freem­i­um users as well.
  • Access to uned­ited journ­al­ist­ic research mater­i­al for cit­izen journ­al­ism contributions.
  • Individual interest-based email send-outs.
  • Easy-to-access pri­or­ity options to send in mater­i­al for edit­or­i­al consideration.
  • Access to the wiki sec­tion (per art­icle) for user-gen­er­ated corrections.
  • AMAs with journ­al­ists and edit­ors adja­cent to exclus­ive reveals.
  • Access to share archived art­icles (unlock­ing mech­an­ism) on social media (using refer­ral links).
  • Essential ana­lyt­ics tools (media usage data) for cit­izen journalism.
  • Free to pub­lish clas­si­fied ads.
  • Access to extra life­style con­tent (how-to art­icles, doc­u­ment­ar­ies, blog posts etc.).

And the list goes on.

The point should be clear: None of the premi­um-only fea­tures includes read­ing pay­walled articles.

And there’s more.

Examples of Business-Only Features

Many brands love news. They’re news junkies, too. As a PR pro­fes­sion­al, I should know. The value of B2B premi­um sub­scrip­tions could be substantial.

Here are a few examples of a bet­ter news exper­i­ence for busi­ness accounts:

  • All premi­um-only fea­tures for every brand employ­ee. The staff can be treated to indi­vidu­al premi­um accounts — and keep up with the news.
  • Business-spe­cif­ic front page for brand employees.
  • A self-ser­vice pro­gram­mat­ic dash­board could place tar­geted ads with­in the digit­al ecosystem.
  • Do-fol­low out­bound brand links for bet­ter SEO. (Organisations are already pay­ing top-dol­lar for these kinds of ser­vices elsewhere.)
  • Advanced media mon­it­or­ing ser­vices. (Organisations are already pay­ing top-dol­lar for these kinds of ser­vices elsewhere.)
  • Priority post box to send in con­tent for edit­or­i­al con­sid­er­a­tion (pay-to-play).
  • Pay to keep art­icles with pos­it­ive brand men­tions “nev­er-archived” and thus forever visible. 
  • Advanced ana­lyt­ics tools (media usage data) for brand employ­ees to research.
  • Token-based sur­vey tools for brand employ­ees. (Organisations are already pay­ing top-dol­lar for these kinds of ser­vices elsewhere.)
  • Indexable press release portal with do-fol­low links for bet­ter SEO. (Organisations are already pay­ing top-dol­lar for these kinds of ser­vices elsewhere.)
  • Publish con­tent (how-to art­icles, doc­u­ment­ar­ies, blog posts, etc.) to com­pete fairly with exist­ing news mater­i­al on the plat­form. Pay extra to have an edit­or give pro­fes­sion­al feed­back. (Organisations are already pay­ing top-dol­lar for these kinds of ser­vices elsewhere.)

Learn more: How To Convert News Junkies

The News Junkie

I’m a news junkie.

It’s not weird; I’m a pas­sion­ate PR pro­fes­sion­al with over two dec­ades of exper­i­ence, I’m mar­ried to a nation­al news anchor, and I’ve been fas­cin­ated by the news for as long as I can remember.

When it comes to news, I’m a con­tent diver.

I’d pay for news if a news out­let offered me a stel­lar news exper­i­ence. The news? If it was only about the news, I could always get them in exchange for my atten­tion elsewhere.

When I listen to music, I expect the ser­vice pro­vider to let me choose the music I listen to. The same goes for news. In a digit­al-first world, the edit­or­i­al gate­keep­er func­tion does­n’t add value; it detracts.

I under­stand this hurts the feel­ings of news edit­ors every­where, but their emo­tion­al states are theirs alone. I expect my premi­um news source to have “all the news,” just as my stream­ing ser­vice has “all the music.”

It’s nice if you have fancy ana­lysts, colum­nists, and writers. But for the actu­al news, I’d settle for the basics — cor­rect­ness and objectiv­ity. (Which, by the way, seems to be a tall order in and of itself these days.)

The kick­er here is that non-news junkies out­num­ber us, the real news junkies, ten to one. But it does­n’t matter.

We’re not lurk­ers (90%), we’re con­trib­ut­ors (9%).

Most import­antly, at the end of a news cycle, real news junkies are the only ones who are poten­tial con­verts any­way. And there are enough of us to fuel healthy journ­al­ism for everyone.

Learn more: How To Convert News Junkies

The Engagement Pyramid

The 1% rule of online engage­ment was mainly an urb­an legend on the inter­net. However, a peer-reviewed paper from 2014 con­firmed the 1% rule of thumb. 1Trevor van Mierlo. (2014). The 1% Rule in Four Digital Health Social Networks: An Observational Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 16(2), e33 – e33. … Continue read­ing

Active pub­lics dis­trib­ute them­selves in a way proven sci­en­tific­ally by soci­olo­gists — long before the inter­net and social media emerged. 

The engage­ment pyr­am­id divides pub­lics into three dis­tinct groups:

  • Creators (1%)
  • Contributors (9%)
  • Lurkers (90%)

When study­ing inter­net for­ums spe­cific­ally, it’s not uncom­mon to find that 90% of users have nev­er pos­ted (lurk­ers), 9% are adding only to exist­ing top­ics and threads (con­trib­ut­ors), and 1% are act­ively start­ing new sub­jects and threads (cre­at­ors).

The engage­ment pyr­am­id is some­times called the 1% rule or the 90−9−1 principle.

“The 90−9−1 prin­ciple and Zipf’s Law both effect­ively clas­si­fy mem­bers in online sup­port groups, with the Zipf dis­tri­bu­tion account­ing for 98.6% of the vari­ance.”
Source: Internet Interventions 2Carron-Arthur, B., Cunningham, J., & Griffiths, K. (2014). Describing the dis­tri­bu­tion of engage­ment in an Internet sup­port group by post fre­quency: A com­par­is­on of the 90−9−1 Principle and … Continue read­ing

Learn more: The Engagement Pyramid (The 90−9−1 Principle)

The Future of Online News

Why are journ­al­ists so slow to adapt? 

Most news pub­lish­ers are “homeschooled” in tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing. They haven’t been exposed to high-level online busi­ness mod­els in highly com­pet­it­ive areas like e‑commerce, fash­ion, or enter­prise software.

News cor­por­a­tions are not accus­tomed to giv­ing their read­ers any influ­ence over their news exper­i­ence, nor are they will­ing to grant super-users (“news junkies”) any extra favours. This has got to change.

Online busi­ness mod­els seem pro­voc­at­ive for most tra­di­tion­al news cor­por­a­tions. They’ve been enjoy­ing the tra­di­tion­al role of hav­ing pass­ive news consumers. 

They’re unwill­ing to sac­ri­fice their holi­est of cows — their gate­keep­er function.

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Annotations
Annotations
1 Trevor van Mierlo. (2014). The 1% Rule in Four Digital Health Social Networks: An Observational Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 16(2), e33 – e33. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​2​1​9​6​/​j​m​i​r​.​2​966
2 Carron-Arthur, B., Cunningham, J., & Griffiths, K. (2014). Describing the dis­tri­bu­tion of engage­ment in an Internet sup­port group by post fre­quency: A com­par­is­on of the 90−9−1 Principle and Zipf’s Law. Internet Interventions, 1, 165 – 168. https://​doi​.org/​1​0​.​1​0​1​6​/​J​.​I​N​V​E​N​T​.​2​0​1​4​.​0​9​.​003
Jerry Silfwer
Jerry Silfwerhttps://doctorspin.net/
Jerry Silfwer, alias Doctor Spin, is an awarded senior adviser specialising in public relations and digital strategy. Currently CEO at Spin Factory and KIX Communication Index. Before that, he worked at Whispr Group NYC, Springtime PR, and Spotlight PR. Based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The Cover Photo

The cover photo isn't related to public relations obviously; it's just a photo of mine. Think of it as a 'decorative diversion', a subtle reminder that it's good to have hobbies outside work.

The cover photo has

The Future of Online News— Converting News Junkies into Premium Buyers

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