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6 strategies to build a newsletter list from scratch, and more: The Media Roundup

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Reach journalists report taking second jobs to pay bills amid staff strike

More than 1,000 journalists at the UK’s largest newspaper publisher Reach are walking out today after talks fell through over the weekend. Here, Press Gazette talks to some of them to find out why they’re heading to the picket lines.

The strike is primarily about wages, with staff increasingly struggling to make ends meet. A number have had to take second jobs to pay bills. In 2020 at the start of the pandemic, non-furloughed staff took a pay cut, and given inflation rates, staff are currently looking at a real terms pay cut approaching 10%.

Reach journalists report taking second jobs to pay bills amid staff strike

It certainly isn’t the case of affordability for the company. Last year, Reach posted a pre-tax profit of £143.5m. Executive pay has also caused anger, with chief exec Jim Mullen’s overall remuneration package totalling over £4 million; a 743% increase on the year before and 104 times the median pay package at the company.

From 0 to 3,000: Six tactics we used to build a newsletter list from scratch

This is very much from the perspective of a publisher with an existing audience, but it shows the importance of treating the newsletter as a product you’re launching, and marketing it accordingly. Some great tips here, although none beat the tactics I saw RocaNews using on Instagram yesterday.

Twitter is letting some news publishers post customizable cards

Tweet Tiles are “a new, customizable way to expand the creative surface area of a tweet” that could give news publishers a way to stand out in feeds. This might look like a trivial design tweak, but they’ll be distinct from normal URL previews, and may well help highlight articles for publishers.

Could media companies soon collectively negotiate against platforms?

One inherent disadvantage of media companies when talking about platforms is their size. Compared to Facebook or Google, a publisher will never be able to negotiate with any sort of heft. That might actually change. A good look at what changes the US’s new Journalism Competition and Preservation Act could bring in, and who would actually benefit. Plus a solid explanation about how insane this whole paying for links thing is.


This content originally appeared in The Media Roundup, a daily newsletter from Media Voices. Subscribe here: