McClatchy Offers Audiences Informed By Intent Data
McClatchy, in partnership with Bombora, announces a first-of-its-kind B2B service that will align an influential nationwide network with dynamic market intelligence to help marketers reach business professionals and pull them into the sales funnel. This lead-generation service, which connects companies with in-market businesses that are demonstrating mid-funnel purchase intent, will optimize marketing budgets and tactics.
The McClatchy organization has made a significant investment in the infrastructure to be a data-driven platform that powers local news and a robust digital audience, reaching 72M monthly visitors. Thanks to Bombora’s new analytics suite, Company Surge® Insights for Publishers, McClatchy can deliver its advertisers an enhanced understanding of the business professionals within its audience who are visiting its sites — and help those advertisers leverage market intelligence to target companies actively demonstrating buying intent.
“We find this new B2B data set very interesting, and look forward to exploring it,” said Mako Medical Senior Executive Fain Buete. “It’s challenging to reach niche business audiences on non-business publications, and it hadn’t occurred to us to try to do so on local-news sites. But McClatchy has shown us just how many potential B2B buyers are reading its news. We can’t wait to approach them.”
The Texas Social Media Law Just Became A Big Headache For Big Tech
A surprise decision by a Texas federal appeals court last week may be the opening salvo of a long and messy trench war in the trial courts of Texas for big social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the state’s controversial new social media law, HB 20, can go into effect immediately, clearing the way for state residents to sue big social media companies if they believe their posts or tweets were removed for the “viewpoint” they expressed.
The Texas legislature passed HB 20 last year, but the law was quickly blocked from going into effect by a federal judge. Last week a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out that preliminary injunction.
The Texas law isn’t so much a thoughtful policy proposal as it is a legal framework for harassing big social media companies, which right-wingers have perennially accused of censoring “conservative” viewpoints. What surprised experts (and very likely the bill’s authors) is that a federal appeals court was willing to overlook the HB 20’s considerable flaws, ambiguities, and jurisdictional conflicts. “There’s a theory that this is the dog that accidentally caught the car,” says Corbin Barthold, Internet Policy Counsel at the free speech think tank TechFreedom. “If you had asked me six months ago, I would have said no court will take this seriously. But I was wrong.”
In fact, justices on the Texas appeals court seemed decidedly sympathetic to HB 20, and unsympathetic to the social media companies, during the hearing. If the courts are becoming more political in America, that phenomenon just landed in Big Tech’s front yard.
“The courts, even the Supreme Court, now have the potential to make moves that are not knowable,” says Northeastern University professor John Wihbey, who specializes in social media platform ethics. “The courts have become a block box.”
A Plan To ‘Strengthen Local News’ In Maryland
A multi-platform news organization established by The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism has teamed up with “Your Public Radio” — the main NPR Member station serving Baltimore — for the creation of a joint operating agreement that will allow each organization to work collaboratively “to deliver quality journalism” across the state of Maryland.
The pact involves YPR, based at WYPR-FM 88.1 in Baltimore and heard in both Frederick and Ocean City on WYPFFM and WYPO-FM, respectively; and the Baltimore Banner.
What’s that? Compared to Tribune’s Baltimore Sun, today controlled by Alden Capital and targeted for significant reporter and editor downsizing, the Banner has embraced hyperlocal journalism. “We’re leaving the national news to others and focusing on the daily lives of the people who live and work here,” the news organization says. “The Baltimore Banner is bringing together Baltimore reporters and editors to make sure you know what’s happening in your neighborhood. As a nonprofit, we’re committed to delivering trustworthy journalism that tells the varied stories of our community and holds our leaders accountable.”
With WYPR already established as a not-for-profit local programming creator, the two organizations will forge bonds that tie the WYPR newsroom and chat show Midday and On the Record with the Banner.
“Both teams will work together to cover stories, special reports and develop joint programming to serve the needs of communities throughout Baltimore and around the state,” YPR said. One of the first collaborations will be to cover the upcoming local elections. Joint podcasts and radio programming are on the horizon.
NJ Buyer Dives Into Weeklies, Finds Arkansas Star
Jeremy Gulban, CEO of a thriving 500-employee software company he inherited from his father, isn’t the sort to just throw around millions of dollars. But when he invested in the distressed newspaper business, he plunged. “This time a year ago we had one newspaper. Now we have 64,” said Gulban, chief of CherryRoad Technologies of Parsippany, New Jersey, and now CherryRoad Media, his newly assembled chain of community papers. “So there’s been some spectacular growth there.”
Nine of Gulban’s weekly small-town newspapers are in Arkansas, where last June he bought The Mountaineer Echo of Flippin, the Marshall Mountain Wave, the Clay County Courier in Corning and the Pocahontas Star Herald. In February, he added five former properties of Rust Communications of Missouri: Carroll County News in Berryville, the Lovely County Citizen in Eureka Springs, the Salem News, the Villager Journal of Cherokee Village and the Clay County Times-Democrat of Piggott/Rector.
The Pocahontas paper has indeed been a star, with an energetic new editor, John Allen French, giving Gulban a community news business model to follow. “He has really gotten people re-energized and focused on the paper.” The Star Herald’s subscription numbers are the best they’ve been in 20 years. “So we’ve increased readers, we’ve added revenue, and it has been a good model for success.” The paper’s press run is 3,000, a fairly representative number among CherryRoad’s papers, and it’s growing. Gulban said French, a former florist new to journalism, is “constantly visiting with everyone, talking to advertisers, checking in with businesses daily, and promoting the paper every hour of every day “to make the paper relevant again.”
What Publishers’ Latest Earnings Reports Say About The State Of The Media Business
Key hits:
•› Digital subscriptions are no longer in a slump for some news publishers.
•› However, digital ad revenues are starting to sag, especially on the programmatic end.
•› Commerce businesses are also taking a hit as audiences change shopping habits from online to in-person.
•› After the first quarter of 2022, publishers have a lot to consider when it comes to maintaining the health of their businesses.
From the earnings reports of BuzzFeed, Future, Gannett, IAC’s Dotdash Meredith, NewsCorp’s Dow Jones and The New York Times, it’s clear that the advertising economy is already starting to slow, be it from an impending recession or major world events like the Russian-Ukrainian war. And with audiences changing everything from reading behaviors to shopping behaviors, commerce isn’t as lucrative a business as it once might have been.
Daily Clips is a culmination of various articles from an array of news sources on topics spanning from news to tech
