SODP Dispatch - 23 June 2023

Happy Friday!

Today, let’s discuss new media’s struggle with trust and engagement. The Reuters Institute published its latest annual report on the state of the news industry last week, revealing that audience trust in news media continues to slide.

Our managing editor, Andrew Kemp, discusses the subject in his weekly Editor’s Note column:

The UK-based think tank’s 160-page Digital News Report 2023 report (PDF download) — built on data mined from surveys of around 93,000 individuals from across 46 markets — notes that trust in the news fell by 2 percentage points this past year, with just 40% of respondents saying they “trust most news most of the time”.

The reasons for this lack of trust range from mounting criticism of the news media to greater polarization within public discourse.

When reading the report, however, the thing that kept popping up at me was the apparent lack of audience enthusiasm for news. The stats not only show a lack of trust in news but also a growing apathy to it.

The Reuters Institute found that just 48% of its aggregate sample were very or extremely interested in news, down from 63% in 2017. At the same time, only 22% of respondents were actively participating with the news, while 47% didn’t participate at all.

Continue reading

ANNOUNCEMENT

We are excited to announce the WordPress Publishers Performance Summit.

This online event will feature four panels with experts from brands like NBCU Local, Forbes, WordPress VIP, Endgame360, The Boston Globe, and others.

The panelists will deep-dive into best practices of successfully securing and scaling WordPress, improving publisher workflow, improving Core Web Vitals outcomes, and more.

This is a free event for our community. It will not be recorded. So make sure to grab your spot and join live to learn from the amazing panelists.

Learn more and grab your spot here.

FROM STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING

^{TOP TOOLS}
7 BEST ADBLOCK RECOVERY SOFTWARE FOR PUBLISHERS IN 2023

A report released by recovery specialist Blockthrough in 2022 suggests that 22% of adblock users complied with targeted messages and deactivated their ad blockers. Though 66% denied the request — and 16% left the site entirely — a 22% recovery rate is a fairly significant amount of lost ad revenue to reclaim.

There are many ad blockers currently on the market, many of which come with a wide spectrum of capabilities. As such, some adblock recovery solutions will work better against some ad blockers than others.

Given the importance of ad revenue for many publishers, we’ve compiled a list of the seven best adblock recovery software for publishers, shining a light on some of their benefits and drawbacks.

Read more

RECOMMENDED NEWSLETTERS

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

^SPONSORED
Check out the open source tools by Sourcefabric for media organizations. Learn more

Keyword Grouper is a neat tool for quick and precise keyword grouping. Learn more

BITE-SIZED INDUSTRY NEWS

^{BIG TECH}
Facebook to end news access in Canada over incoming law on paying publishers. Read more

^TECH
New York-based Captions, an AI-powered video editing app, raised a $25M Series B led by Kleiner Perkins at a $250M valuation, bringing its total funding to $40M. Read more

^MONETIZATION
Acast has announced the launch of Acast+ Access, a new technology program that gives any company with an existing paid subscription the ability to add exclusive podcast benefits. Read more

^AI
As part of its new policy on AI, The Guardian says it will use AI only when it contributes to original journalism and to help with corrections and suggestions. Read more

^TECH
NYC-based newsletter platform beehiiv raised a $12.5M Series A led by Lightspeed and says it has 7,500 active newsletters with 350M monthly impressions. Read more

^{BUSINESS OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING}
A Fortress Investment Group-led syndicate is set to acquire Vice Media, leading to the cancelation of Vice's bankruptcy auction. Read more

^SEARCH
Google is set to introduce Interaction to Next Paint (INP) issue reporting as a part of its Core Web Vitals report in Search Console. Read more