LONG READ: What email first news is and what it means for public sector comms

Speak to almost anyone who has to use a Reach plc news site and they will roll their eyes and talk about how painful an experience it is.

There is the story, perhaps ubiquitous, of a senior Reach executive getting so frustrated with the user experience on he threw his phone across the room in frustration.

Former reporters who worked for the titles are often less glowing.

However, there is an emerging trend for email first subscription news. Over the last new months I’ve been intrigued by this approach. So I thought here’s a long reader read. 

So what’s the problem with local news? 

In a sentence, they are on their backside because of the internet.

People have stopped buying newspapers. Print circulation by 2017 has halved with just over 30 million copies sold.

So newspapers have closed down. By 2019, more than 300 local news titles have been closed.

Ads went online. Regional news accounts for less than £500 million of a £36 billion pie with Meta and Google gorgingon almost all the cake.

News deserts have emerged. In Lewisham and Gateshead, for example there are no newspapers. In London there is no dedicated news title. Readership figures across most of London is pitifully low. 

The impact of all this comes together to land in the lap of the public sector. 

There is a measurable decline in participation in civic life. As reporting drops, voting declines and the organisation is less accountable. The local title that waves through your press release is not a long term win for anyone. 

How bad the Reach experience is

I headed to a Reach website as research for this. I straight away hit a pop-up asking me for permission to give access to 5,885 individual partner requests for a range of tasks including 343 for ‘measuring content performance’ and 586 for ‘special purposes’. Scrolling through the list of partners on a laptop took me more than four minutes.

That’s even before I got to the actual site.

At their best, Reach sites can still shine a light on the work of councils, fire and rescue, NHS and police forces. But newspapers of records that listed every decision have largely long gone across the UK. I can still see elements of them in Northern Ireland and Scotland but in most of England and much of Wales they’ve didappeared. Their purpose has changed. What was everything about the community is now everything about the clicks. If that’s a click that’s actually another part of the country then that’s tough. A couple of years ago I carried out an analysis of news across 30 regional titles from across the UK. What was clear that in print, they still carried a clear majority of local stories. On Facebook, this had dropped to 50 per cent.

I’ve a feeling hard won reputations of regional titles for local community news built over more than a century are being chopped up and fed into the furnace to keep the train moving along the tracks.

So, the local title’s Facebook feed rather than to inform tries to get you to click. If the story is in Hull rather than your hometown that doesn’t matter so much. When One Direction founding member Liam Payne died Reach’s Black County Live pumped out 81 Facebook posts in 36 hours with 42 per cent of comments criticising the relentless strategy.

Indeed, it took an episode of The Rest is Entertainment podcast to call them out for a strategic change to take place. 

A clicks first approach means often Facebook timelines are filled with posts that get reactions in what appear to be thinly-policed comments sections.

In defence of the model

In the past, Reach has strongly defended the company’s tactics. The landscape has changed, they say. These tactics pay to keep the lights on and keep journalists employed. I get that. Campaigns such as that on Birmingham Live which covers the call for a public inquiry into the Birmingham Pub Bombings calling for a public inquiry are funded by those clicks, Reach has said.

Reach’s own financial statement pointed to the Liverpool Echo’s coverage of the Southport murders which turned into riots, as an example of important journalism. But they are doing it at a 19 per cent profit margin. As a comparison, Sainsbury’s profit margin is a mere two per cent. Nothing wrong with profit, surely? But is it all being reinvested for tomorrow?

Besides, Reach are only doing what others are doing. They’re just better at getting more clicks. Twenty of the top 25 regional websites by audience are Reach titles. Their Manchester Evening News title has an audience of 12.6 million and tops the chart. It’s not clear how much of this is sport with the city having two internationally famous football teams. 

I started in hot metal and worked in the pre-internet glory days. It would be easy to dismiss me as a jaded old hack. But I love news and I want it to succeed. It breaks my heart seeing newspapers fail and standards falling. 

Why local news matters

As the reporting of council matters declines voter turnout falls with it. This was a conclusion of the Cairncross report into UK journalism. This independent report was commissioned by the Teresa May Government.  It also highlighted what is described as ‘public interest news and information.’ 

Rachel Howells Doctoral thesis cited by the Cairncross report shows a link between the decline in journalism in Port Talbot and voter turn-out. 

Maybe if people stop being interested in democracy don’t be surprised if they are attracted to something else. 

The false dawn of hyperlocal news

You may recall the promise that hyperlocal news would replace those declining news rooms. Some great work was done by Talk About Local around 2010 which encouraged a network of local news sites largely run by volunteers. There have been some long running examples of hyperlocal journalism such as OnThe Wight which as been running since 2005. Indeed, many of Press regulator’s IMPRESS’s 200 members have hyperlocal roots. But the audience for hyperlocal news sites has been dwarfed by hyperlocal Facebook groups where news breaks organically in quite different ways. 

Email first news isn’t actually new

Back in 2010, I heard in Birmingham what was one of the most illuminating talks I’ve ever heard by Marc Reeves. He had just left the editorship of the Birmingham Post and was involved with Business Desk. This still thriving site delivered news by email every morning to busy people’s desk ready to help them set-up for the day.

This was a key factor in tweeting links in the morning when I co-founded a comms platform with a former colleague.

Indeed, Reach titles have been tapping into email for years. Myself? I subscribe to Stoke on Trent Live’s excellent Stoke City coverage. When I was a kid I’d cycle to the paper shop to buy the Evening Sentinel’s Peter Hewitt match reports. Now, I get the far better informed coverage by email from their Stoke reporter Pete Smith. Thanks, email. Thanks, Reach. 

But subscriber email first news is new 

Much has been made of the wave of innovation. In Manchester, The Mill has chalked-up 50,000 subscribers. The company behind it raised £350,000 including some notable names. A raft of similar models have launched. Overall, I counted 19 email first subscription models across the UK. 

Journalism costs. Having no journalism in your town also costs but the bill for this is markedly different.

What do they look like? They’ll often be some news aggregation of other sites. But so far this year Manchester’s The Mill has published at least 16 original long form stories in the first three months of the year. 

For example:

• A piece that speculates on why companies are leaving media city?
• A long piece on the struggle for control of Boohoo the online clothes firm.
• A fiesty investigative piece on the role Sacha Lord is playing in Manchester.

All of these look like meaty topics for readers to sink their teeth into.

Or in Birmingham’s Dispatch whose patch is blighted by a long running council waste worker’s strike.

• Claim and counter-claim on the Birmingham bin strikes.
• Speculation the Government should get involved in the bin strikes.
• The role a Birmingham suburb has played in the film industry.

I can absolutely see the logic in the model. If you are a news company and they your email you are not beholden to Google and Meta. Your business may not be subject to an algorithm’s whim.

I can also see the logic of steering clear of pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap clicks. If their schtick is quality and not clicks they don’t have to worry so much about headlines which tease then under-deliver. 

As a user experience, it’s agreeably clickbait free and if I click on a story I can read it through without being interrupted by banner ads or pop-ups. 

What email news means for public sector comms

If you work in a council, NHS, fire and rescue or police comms teams will this make a huge difference to what you do?

With 17 stories a month on The Mill’s website, for example, the tales are likely to be more about holding people to account rather than throwing content into an ever-hungry requirement to post dozens of times a day on Facebook. So, a council’s failures in a bin strike may get coverage. Its programme of town centre events probably won’t.

Besides, they may break a story that is then followed-up by more established titles such as the BBC.

So far, the model appears to be paying for itself in Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London. There’s no evidence yet that the model will replicate itself well in smaller communities outside of big cities.

All this loops back to your organisation’s own channels. Have strong channels. You’ll need them. 

Ofcom say that the most popular way people find out local government information is through Facebook groups if you are aged between 25 to 64. It’s as much as 50 per cent for this demographic. Newspaper websites are around 20 per cent and email is half of that. So, maybe lets not get too carried away.

Would email first news pay in smaller areas? 

An average reporter’s job on HoldtheFrontpage.com is £30k a year. Back of fag packet maths means that more than 3,300 subscribers are needed at the full fat £8.95 a month that’s at the upper level of monthly subscription charges. But. Just eight per cent of UK people are prepared to pay for journalism.

What the email subscription news landscape looks like

Here’s a quick trawl. This is limited to sites which have a free and paid subscription model. There’s a few substack accounts that I’ve not included for this reason. Not every subscriber pays. 

A list of subscriber-funded email first news sites

Let me know what I’ve missed from the list. I’m not seeing anything in Wales, Northern Ireland or other parts of the UK.

NORTH WEST 

Blackpool Blackpool Lead (2,000 subscribers) https://blackpool.thelead.uk/ free and from £4.99 a month.

Manchester The Mill, (50,000 subscribers) https://manchestermill.co.uk/about/ free and from £8.95 a month.

Liverpool Liverpool Post, (30,000 subscribers) https://www.livpost.co.uk/ free and from £7 a month.

North West Stored Honey cultural news (n/a subscribers) https://www.stored-honey.com free and from £4 a month.

NORTH EAST

Teeside Teeside Lead (n/a subscribers) https://teesside.thelead.uk/ free and from £4.99 a month.

YORKSHIRE

Calderdale Calderdale Lead (n/a subscribers) https://calderdale.thelead.uk/ free and from £4.99 a month.

Sheffield The Tribune, (30,000 subscribers) https://www.sheffieldtribune.co.uk/ free and from £8.95 a month.

MIDLANDS

Birmingham Birmingham Dispatch 25,000 subscribers https://www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/ free and from £8 a month.

LONDON

Leytonstone Leytonstoner cultural news (n/a subscribers) https://leytonstoner.substack.com/ free and from £5 a month.

London Londoncentric (19,000 subscribers) https://www.londoncentric.media/ free and from £5.96 a month.

London The London Culture Edit cultural news (n/a subscribers) https://nancydurrant.substack.com/ free and from £6 a month.

London The London Minute (n/a subscribers) https://londonminute.substack.com/ free and from £5 a month.

London The London Spy (n/a subscribers) https://www.thelondonspy.co.uk/ free and from £5 a month.

SOUTH

Brighton & Hove Brighton & Hove Wrap (n/a subscribers) https://thebrightonandhovewrap.substack.com/ free and from £5 a month.

SOUTH WEST

Somerset Somerset Leveller free and £6 a month.

SCOTLAND 

Scotland UK, Scottish and world news (n/a subscribers) earlyline.co free and from £6.99 a month.

Edinburgh The Edinburgh Minute (20,000 subscribers)  https://edinburghminute.substack.com/ free and from £5 a month.

Edinburgh Gayle’s Guide family friendly places to go (n/a subscribers): https://gaylesguide.substack.com/ free and £4 a month.

Glasgow The Glasgow Wrap (n/a subscribers) https://theglasgowwrap.substack.com free and £5 a month.

Glasgow The Bell (n/a subscribers) https://www.glasgowbell.co.uk/ free and from £8.99 a month.

If you are involved in trying to work out how news can work in 2025 I wish you luck. It’s such an important thing to get right for all of us. 

Creative commons credit: WH Smith, Widnes, 1986 by Roger Cornfoot.

I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

Thanks Karen for spotting the Somerset Leveller.