Newsletter predictions for the year ahead

For media publications, it’ll be how to quickly grow their lists to optimize for revenue. This will look like buyouts of complementary companies (and solo writers) with large audiences, more cross-brand collaborations, more limited pop-up newsletter and text efforts, sponsored digital experiences, and paywalled online communities where an email address gets you in. 

For the individual newsletter writer with a large audience, it’ll be whether to keep going and monetize or shut down. Newsletters take a lot of effort to write, edit, produce, manage, optimize and promote – and that work can burn you out quickly. Not to mention the stress of living through a pandemic. I’m seeing a lot of “this will be my last newsletter” and “we’re shutting down” emails lately and that’s the natural order of the one-person shop. You eventually get to a point where you have to scale or call it.

2021 has seen journalists leaving big media companies to fly solo in the newsletter space. In 2022 we will see more news companies luring back some of those journalists to enrich their subscription offerings. We will also see a much deeper integration between newsletter platforms and social media companies. This will benefit both authors and readers. It will make it easier to acquire and retain subscribers, and will create new spaces and new formats to be in touch with them.

At the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, we are aware of these trends and will spend the next few months figuring out how to engage with our most loyal audiences in ways that are even more meaningful to them. We might create new products to stay in touch with our alumni network or to connect with people interested in the topics we cover in our research. Finding valuable niches will also be one of the themes we will see in 2022.

Newsrooms Strike Back. 2021 saw the rise of national VC-backed media companies parachuting a few reporters into cities across the country in a bid to offer up daily “all you need to know” newsletters. While this strategy is certainly well-intentioned, the products they produce all too often heavily aggregate the original reporting of the existing local news ecosystem of NPR affiliates, TV stations, and metro daily newsrooms.

In 2022 we’ll see established local news organizations battle back against these new players. Using proven local expertise, large Twitter audiences, and the resources of well-staffed newsrooms, these local players will produce competing products that are far more relevant and tightly tied to the community in which they operate.

It’s difficult to make any sort of accurate prediction when innovation and trends change the game regularly, but I hope readers will continue asking for transparency around data tracking and their online privacy in 2022 so that those of us who produce newsletters can evolve and look beyond click-through and open rates for metrics of success.

Something that a lot of folks in the newsletter space need to be focused on is the fate of the middle-class creator. Throughout 2020 and 2021, big names with traditional backgrounds seemed to dominate as they came into the platform… some receiving compensation for making the leap. It was great in that it validated the model as a mainstream success story, but it increased competition within the space.

Most people won’t make millions of dollars from running a newsletter, and realistically, the people who don’t have the big names are the ones likely in need of help. And that help may not look like a subscription model, either; it may be through advertising, or by uncovering nontraditional revenue streams.

Any services and opportunities that target the non-professional creator and help them expand reach and income are a net positive right now. Focus on the little guy.