IF YOU read ONE THING
Teach your readers something new

Unsure of what to do with your archives? Struggling to help readers understand a complex issue? An email course might be your answer. This past week at the Online News Association conference in New Orleans, four newsletter experts sat down to share what they’ve learned about creating email courses—automated email series intended to teach readers a new skill, habit, or lesson. Here’s how it works: Once readers sign up, they receive a predetermined number of emails at fixed intervals, ensuring an end date for your readers and a one-time creation effort from your organization. Check out examples like this mini-course on immigration from Pew or this course on plant-powered cooking from The Washington Post as inspiration, and then use the resources kindly shared by the ONA panelists to take the next step:    

• The slides from the session—including best practices and examples from Pew, the Post, BuzzFeed, and The New Yorker 
• Video from the panel 
• A one-sheet guide to best practices and tips 
• A positioning doc to help you think through your first course

POWERSTAT
A shift in nonprofit newsroom revenue streams
Nonprofit newsrooms are relying less on foundations and more on individuals and families, with 40 percent of revenue coming from individual giving. Among donors, the fastest-growing group consists of those who gave $5,000 or more.

Source: Nieman Lab

TREND WATCH
A cause for podcast celebration

Two newsrooms are celebrating podcast milestones this week. The New York Times’ The Daily podcast has reached a total of 1 billion downloads after launching in February 2017. Meanwhile, NPR is forecasting that revenue coming from podcast sponsorships will overtake revenue coming from broadcast sponsorships for the first time. The news comes at a good time for both organizations. NPR is forecasted to have a profitable 2019 with a $3 million cash surplus, while The New York Times has grown its total subscriptions to 3.7 million from 2.9 million subscriptions in 2018. Both organizations credit the success of their podcasts with their growth. “[Podcasts have been a] huge return on investment for us and a major growth engine for our business,” says NPR chief financial officer Deborah Cowan.

NEWS YOU CAN USE
Take it from a teen

Hoping to reach teens on social platforms? Who better to turn to than a 50-person team of teen fact-checkers. MediaWise is a grant-funded digital media literacy project that aims to teach teens how to tell fact from fiction online. The project uses a network of teens to fact-check claims and lives (almost) entirely on social media. As a result, teen reporters are encouraged to craft everything from the pitch to the final copy with social sharing in mind: “We repeatedly ask our teen fact-checkers, ‘How would you text this to your friends?’” write MediaWise reporters Heaven Taylor-Wynn and Alexa Volland in Poynter’s newsletter, The Cohort. “From there, we encourage them to craft their articles around features built within the Instagram app. Effects, filters, boomerangs, and GIFS are all fair game when it comes to our style of storytelling.”

PERSPECTIVES
What's up in the world of streaming?

On Tuesday, NBCUniversal announced the name of its upcoming streaming service: Peacock. The service, which is scheduled to launch in April, will join a competitive field of new players in the space, including Disney+ and Apple TV+, as well as incumbents, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. As updates continue to pour out about services, shows, and subscription prices, what are the macro trends that we should be on the lookout for?

• “The old business of media, in which content was supported by advertising, is no longer really the business. New media giants have mostly abandoned advertising and are using creative content to sell you something else. … This is the business almost every new media company is in. Even Disney is selling you on something else: merchandise, theme parks, cruises, etc. Those that are still in the advertising game—Google and Facebook—are there because they figured out a way to reinvent and dominate that market.” - Dylan Byers, senior media reporter at NBC News (Byers Market)
• “The subset [of streaming services] I subscribe to is still way cheaper than cable. The UX on these apps is 10x better than cable. Competition has led to better programming across the board. Eventually the lesser of these services will be culled and the content re-bundled.” - Casey Newton, Silicon Valley editor at The Verge (Twitter)
• “In this market, services that are distinctive and different will stand out. … Purpose and values matter today more than ever, as people pick and choose services for ethical reasons as much as economic ones.” - Tony Hall, director-general of the BBC (The Guardian)

• “The key here isn't how much Netflix paid (it was more than Friends or The Office recently went for), it's who sold it: Sony. The only companies willing to work with Netflix are the ones without their own streaming platforms. … Streamers are discovering that cord-cutters care most about the shows they'll watch over and over again—aka sitcoms. Netflix lost U.S. subscribers last quarter because its new shows didn't land. Now it's searching for a ‘loyalty leader’—a show that keeps you hooked to your subscription.” - Robinhood Snacks newsletter (Link)

This week in our office
We surprised Tugce Menguc, our fearless director of strategy and bride-to-be, with a delicious muffin-themed breakfast before she left for her big day. Our team also came together to give Tugce a portrait of her beloved pomeranian (and office mascot), Foxcat, as a wedding gift. A big thank you to Amy Wike for the lovely painting! 

THIS MONTH AT THE ATLANTIC
We were thrilled to host our first West Coast Analytics Lab in San Francisco this week. Thank you to all of the attendees who joined us—we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! Check out our events page or follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with our latest event offerings. 

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