Hello! This is Tristan, Head of National Programs at the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and former Chief Product Officer and co-founder of the nonprofit agency News Revenue Hub. I’m sharing notes about work and life from the past month from a curious point of view. This is an experiment and will likely change over time — we’ll see how it goes. Send feedback if you have it!
Last month on LI
I asked: What's one thing in your work or life that you can credit to Online News Association's annual conference? Join the conversation — I’d love to hear from you.
What we learned last month
The National Programs team went to ONA24 in Atlanta!
Community Manager Diana López organized two in-person events — a happy hour and a breakfast. It was great catching up with friends old and new, colleagues, and partners. We also sponsored the attendance of 25 attendees from across the sector.
Lex Roman, a member of our Audience Community of Practice, wrote up some takeaways for us: “AI was the star at last month’s ONA24 Conference in Atlanta. We’re beyond the question of ‘should we use AI’ and we’re now hashing out the ‘how’ part.”
Grants & things
📌 Beyond Print Toolkit: A highly comprehensive step-by-step guide for newspaper operators to reimagine the role of print and build sustainable long-term success.
Engaged Cities catalyst grant: (no deadline, but must be a member The Lenfest Institute’s Engaged Cities Community of Practice)
Interesting quotes
Journalism
“Stop saying ‘save local news’ … Take it back.” (Chris Baxter via Kristen Hare, Poynter)
“Despite digital-only subscriptions outpacing print (66% vs. 33%), print still drives nearly 75% of total revenue.” (Peter Doucette and Matt Lindsay, Mather)
“The Bulwark’s YouTube explosion also offers a glimpse into what a post-cable future might look like for political news.” (Max Tani, Semafor)
Tech & product
“They put 2,190 conspiracy-believing Americans in brief but detailed conversation with the large language model GPT-4 Turbo [and] they ‘reduced participants’ belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by 20% on average’ … The effect ‘persisted undiminished for at least 2 months.’” (Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Lab)
“Reddit traffic has tripled following a change to the Google algorithm last September … Some [publishers] are seeing record readership.” (Mark Stenberg, X)
EOY fundraising
“Our study showed that switching from monthly asks in favor of annual asks has the potential to increase 12-month value for Lapsed Donors by 78%; for Prospects, the change could be as large as 65%. At the same time, we found that sticking to monthly asks for Current Donors is best, since switching to annual asks could lead to a 6% decrease in 12-month value.” (Dustin Kight, M&R)
“With approximately 50% of email users utilizing Apple’s native mail client, [the end of email preheaders] has the potential to change how emails — including important year-end fundraising emails — show up in supporter’s inboxes.” (Rachael Wolber, M&R)
Work
“[OOO] autoreplies from Bahat are like ‘mini-newsletters’ … combining clarity, personal expression, and a bit of humor.” (Kevin Delaney, Charter)
"McKinsey has found that for every senior woman promoted to director level or above, two quit. And why did they quit? They reported status-related incivility, where they have their judgment questioned. People leave them out of important meetings. People imply they’re not qualified for their jobs. These subtle digs that people take at you when you’re in a position of control but you don’t have status, people will find these subtle ways to let it be known that they resent your authority." (Alison Fragale, Time)
“[Gravity problems] occur when team members get sucked into discussing a challenge or issue that’s fundamentally unsolvable at the team level, much like the force of gravity.” (Luis Velasquez, HBR)
“We often talk ourselves out of a win. Our need to have the last word can make the business deal implode or the friend retreat, pushing us further from people we love and things we want.” (Rachel Feintzeig, WSJ)
From LinkedIn
“This past week has been an extraordinary one for us at The Haitian Times, to say the least. We've faced threats, had to cancel a gathering, and our editor was swatted … Despite these challenges, we're deeply moved by the outpouring of support we've received from fellow journalists, foundation leaders, and many others. … In solidarity!” (Garry Pierre-Pierre)
“I am frequently asked to work for free, to refer my competitors, to offer special discounts on my services, to make special exceptions to my policies, and to provide more services than I have been paid for. I could get really angry and resentful about this, but I don't. I choose to believe that it's just people being thoughtless, not intentionally trying to take advantage of me.” (Phoebe Gavin)
“The longer you've been in business, the more complicated your business will become. It's a natural process that you have to guard against. X client now wants you to do this. Y employee thought this was a good process. Z software app slowly became embedded, and now there are all these dependencies to make it work, with data that has to be pulled in from here and there and even over there. … Entropy is a bitch. Don't think of your business as a top that slowly stops spinning. Think of your business as a huge iron flywheel that's magnetized. There are little demons you can't see who keep it spinning, and every revolution picks up some stray piece of metal and the mass grows.” (David C. Baker)
Last month’s shuffle
Each month for over a year I’ve put together a Spotify playlist of the songs that caught my ear. Some are familiar to me, some aren’t. Some are new, some are old. The playlist tends to span eras, genres, and sounds. It’s probably not for everyone but here it is!