This is not yet happening everywhere, but it is a slow trend that will catch on in the months and years ahead.
Already in the US, the big titles, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times all have more digital subscribers than they do for their print edition.
I see that we will hear of more titles, including regional and local ones, where this will be happening, although perhaps not just yet.
For The Boston Globe, the number of weekday print subscribers fell from 108,719 to 98,978, an 11 percent decline year-over-year. Not surprising, as this seems to be just about average decline for newspapers nationally, if not globally.
Read all about it here:
“During the same time, the filing indicates that digital subscriptions — as measured by a category called “restricted digital access”— went from 107,902 to 112,241 as of March 31. While the Globe doesn’t specify exactly how it counts the number of online subscribers, restricted digital access seems to be a good approximation, and the paper’s director of consumer revenue, Tom Brown, confirmed this week that its number of online subscribers now stands at 112,700.”
A similar situation as in Boston is happening for Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter which has 165,000 digital subscribers and 163,000 print, with digital paying members overtaking print for the first time in May.
A question that usually comes up in all my workshops: how can we increase the number of digital subscribers?
Nobody has a precise answer for this. I think it usually is a combination of content that is geared to mobile, more linear storytelling experiences for readers, content that is essential in the lives of the readers, and, of course, marketing, and subscription packages that are affordable and make sense to the audience.
Mario’s speaking engagements
Here are places where I will be taking the message of mobile storytelling in the weeks ahead:
May 25, Milan, Italy, EidosMedia Annual Customer Meeting, Keynote: Mobile First Strategies for Publishers
June 12, NEC Media City, Bergen, Norway, Storytelling workshop for Editors
June 13, Fortellingens kraft 2019, Bergen, Norway, Long form Mobile Storytelling for Writers
July 11, Florida Media Conference, St. Petersburg, FL, Keynote for editors: The mobile first newspaper strategy.
Mario’s weekend rituals…..
Monocle interviews me about what I do on a typical weekend (is there such a thing? Not for someone like me who is seldom in the same location twice. But I gave it my best shot, for what may come as a normal weekend, when I am home in New York! Enjoy.
https://monocle.com/minute/2019/04/27/
Pre-order The Story
The newspaper remains the most powerful source of storytelling on the planet. But technology threatens its very existence. To survive, the Editor must transform, adapt, and manage the newsroom in a new way. Find out how, pre-orderThe Story by Mario Garcia, chief strategist for the redesign of over 700 newspapers around the world.
Order here:
https://thaneandprose.com/shop-the-bookstore?olsPage=products%2Fthe-story
An interview of interest
http://www.itertranslations.com/blog/2019/3/11/fd60ybflpvlqrgrpdp5ida5rq0c3sp
TheMarioBlog post #3056