#29 Paid newsletters, membership, media companies, and horseless newsletters
A paywall defines a membership organization
This week will be more opinion and analysis of the newsletter business.
Eight great writers produce eight great newsletters. Sidechannel is what brings these newsletters together which is a very different approach to grouping newsletters than the Memoir Monday newsletter which I wrote about last week. Sidechannel is a community site for paid members of these 8 newsletters:
Well Written Newsletters
Casey Newton pulled together these 8 newsletters to start Sidechannel. (These link to the announcement email from each publisher.)
Platform from Casey Newton covering behavior of big tech.
Culture Study from Anne Helen Petersen covering changes in work and life.
Newcomer from Eric Newcomer covering venture capital deals.
Zero Day from Kim Zetter covering cybersecurity.
Hot Pod from Nick Quah covering audio content, primarily podcasts
Deez Links from Delia Cai covering media. No paywall.
Garbage Day from Ryan Broderick covering internet culture.
Galaxy Brian from Charlie Warzel covering attention economy
If you log into Reading.email there is a list to read the public current and back issues of each of these newsletters. These topics are important in our tech driven world. They provide great reading as you’d get from any publication.
Paid Newsletters are Membership Organizations
Paid newsletters are newsletters with a paywall. Just as most newspaper require a paid subscription to read some articles, paid newsletters require a paid subscription to read some or all issues. Once a paywall is in place the company behind the paywall, even if it is one person, becomes a membership organization. (There is a newsletter devoted to The Membership Puzzle Project for newsrooms which has a slightly different take on membership.)
Some will argue that paywall means the organization is now a media company. (For more on media companies see A Media Operator.) Perhaps the same difference. The important take away is that paying subscribers have a different “what have you done lately” expectation once a paywall is introduced. Another way to think about it is that well known membership organizations like AARP are well known for their publications. The largest magazine in the United States by circulation is AARP’s publication. That is how membership organizations get your attention and retention. Membership and publications go together.
Membership organizations hope that members identify with the organization. “I’m a [insert org name here] member.” American Express used this campaign for years. There even is a “Members Only” brand. Membership is more than branding.
Membership is different than just writing a great or well known newsletter. Some paywalled organizations will ignore the membership side or even deny it. Eventually, most will realize they left opportunities “on the table” and wish they had explored them.
Sidechannel for Members Only
To explore the membership opportunities these eight paid newsleters*created Sidechannel. Specifically it is a Discord server for members of these newsletters. There are also BIPOC memberships available.
Discord is a chat app with features. Sidechannel has organized their Discord space by newsletter with several topic channels under each. Topics include cyber-policy, apple-event, clubhouse-at-4-billion, petspetspets, meme-hell, promote-yourself, great-ticktocks, culture-links, and more. Any newsletter member can participate in all topics.
Sidechannel is a community way for collecting comments, messaging and chatting. And building membership.
Membership and Events
If you look at most paywall newspapers, they have online events: The Washington Post and New York Times. As do many other publications. The privilege of membership.
Events are a very important part of any membership organization. This was realized in the 1980s by paid Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) who held live, in-person events for their members. Discord has long recognized the importance of events.
Sidechannel started with a big event a day after launch. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg was on a channel discussing tech and media. A lot of newsletter subscribers gave Sidechannel a try.
This emphasizes that Sidechannel is really a membership effort.
New Innovation
How do you know that paid newsletters are not newsletters but something else? There is a simple expression: “the content of new media is old media”. Early movies were plays and adoptions of novels. Early television news had men at desks reading newspapers. This ‘law’ also follows on the internet where stores, newspapers, etc are all content.
So it is with newsletters. They are now content for these new membership organizations called paid newsletters. Might as well call them horseless newsletters. Just as society came up with a new name for horseless carriages, so a new name will emerge for these membership organizations.
This new innovation will also be confirmed when people start saying that “the newsletter is king” and downplaying membership’s part in the organization.
Expectations
The key to a successful newsletter is summarized in one word: consistency. This applies to format, writing style, length, publication schedule, staying on topic, and more. Most publications recognize this as “the deadline”.
Membership organization are driven by a different priorities. The newsletter is part of the product mix in a membership organization. Members expect to feel part of a great brand that meets the “what have you done for me lately” question. And there is the entire backend for keeping the member profile and payments current.
Some of the authors of these eight newsletter may struggle with these two different expectations of readers and members. It will be interesting to follow.
Thank you for being a member of Reading.email
“Paid newsletters” are an exciting new medium with different expectations and the membership component makes them a new innovation.
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