do you know about them beyond their credit card number and address? How often have they heard from you? Are they even opening your emails? Engagement. At a basic level, if a subscriber is consistently engaging with your content, they’re less likely to cancel. Newsletters and other engagement by email has been a focus in trying to convert readers to subscribers. Building a more premium newsletter product specifically designed to engage people after they subscribe could be a key to retention efforts. Giving readers “inside” information about the workings of the newsroom and inviting them to participate in your process for developing story ideas and sources could be seen as a perk for subscribing in addition to a point of engagement that might support retention. Stretched newsrooms have been slow to carve out resources for
this kind of work, as the tradeoff means less capacity to produce the journalism that is prompting people to subscribe. But a Northwestern study on digital newspaper subscriptions showed that “less can be more,” that more attention to a tight curation of your best and most relevant work is more important than flooding readers with as large a volume as possible of local content. User experience. More focus on the experience subscribers are having, versus simply what kind of content you are producing, is a resource issue that cuts across a news organization’s entire operation. The newspaper industry has suffered a lot of self-inflicted damage over the past 10 years in bungling the literal delivery component to print newspaper subscribers, and outsourcing customer service, making it more frustrating to complain about
that delivery. Circulation bills are confusing, and sketchy on purpose in many markets, to hide extra fees and fine-print “opt-out” sections that end up inflating the cost of a subscription far beyond the advertised price. Tactics that were ramped up as overall volume declined. The industry is carrying some of those bad habits over to digital, tacking on “sign-up fees” not tied to any kind of real expense, and being less than transparent about the nature of introductory pricing and automatic renewal rates. And if you can sign up for a digital subscription online, why do you have to make a phone call to cancel? It’s not about what’s intuitive or convenient for subscribers. It’s about making it difficult for people to know how much money you’re really getting out of them and making it difficult for them to do anything about it. It’s not a good formula for a long-
term relationship of trust with subscribers. And a great user experience requires marketing, tech and editorial to be aligned. When will major newspaper chains figure out the basic issue of keeping digital subscribers logged in? Or how to stop sending constant subscription marketing offers to people who have already subscribed? Matt DeRienzo has worked in journalism as a reporter, editor, publisher, corporate director of news for 25 years, including most recently as vice president of news and digital content at Hearst’s Connecticut newspapers, and previously serving as the first full-time executive director of LION Publishers, a national nonprofit that supports the publishers of local independent online news organizations.
Syndicated Philip E. Swift was born in Holden, Mo., on August 1, 1917. He passed away at his home in La Quinta, Calif. on November 27, 2019 at the age of 102. He was reared on a farm near Olathe, Kan., and attended Moonlight grade school, a country school located near the farm home. He graduated from Olathe High School and College of Emporia, Kansas. After college graduation, he was employed as a teacher in the high school at Ozawkie, Kan. for two years (1938-39). Pursuing his strong interest in newspapers, he bought the weekly newspaper in Clarence, Mo., in 1940. Employees of that newspaper continued its publication while he served 47 months (March 1942-January 1946) in the United States Navy as a naval aviator. His training as a Navy pilot was completed at Corpus Christi (Texas) Naval Air Station where he was commissioned an Ensign and received his Navy wings November 1942. He resumed active publication of The Clarence Courier following military service and, in 1948, acquired three additional weekly newspapers in St. Clair County, Mo. moving to Osceola, Mo. in 1949 to assume their active management. In 1955, he sold the four weekly newspapers in Missouri and joined Scripps League of Newspapers which published daily newspapers in several Western states, serving that company in various executive positions from offices in Logan, Utah and Napa, Calif. In 1975, he left the Scripps company to form Swift Newspapers, Inc. (currently Swift Communications, Inc.) which, during the ensuing years, acquired daily and weekly newspapers located in the West. The company’s corporate offices have been maintained in Carson City, Nev. His two daughters, Marilyn Shelton of Carlsbad, Calif. and Janet Buschert of Eagle, Idaho, are the current owners of the company. He was married in 1948 to Leta Margaret Dobyns Trussell of Shelbina, Mo. who predeceased him in 1997. In 2001, he married Elizabeth (Ruth) Blakey of Morley, Yorkshire, England. Since that time, they have lived in homes in La Quinta and Morley. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; two daughters, Marilyn Shelton (John) and Janet Buschert (Russell); a stepson, David Trussell (Micke) of Lancaster, Pa.; grandsons, Jack Shelton (Cecilia) of Carlsbad, Calif. and Tim Trussell (Cindy) of Lancaster, Pa. and five great grandchildren. Respecting Philip’s desire for privacy, there will be no memorial service. He requested those desiring to make memorial contributions make them to the Bessie Minor Swift Foundation (named in honor of his mother who was a one-room school teacher) celebrating literacy and education. Those contributions may be directed to the Foundation at 235 W Floating Feather Road, Eagle, ID 83616.
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