|
 |
The Hill 'geeks out' with first paid subscription | Semafor to expand in Gulf
And Google search traffic to leading UK publishers set to halve by Q3 2027
|
| |||||||||||||||
Welcome to the Press Gazette Future of Media US newsletter on Friday, 24 July.
🤓 The Hill has a lot of political geeks who come to it day after day, wanting to know the latest in policy and politics.
It does serve a huge audience beyond policy wonks. But it saw an opportunity to make the most of those deeply engaged people.
The Hill’s addition of paid memberships is part of a trend towards building reader revenue to sit alongside the page-view dependent ad revenue that is not as reliable as it was during the peak Google era.
 |
🧑💼 When Semafor launched in 2021, it was met with some scepticism about its aim to be a global news company.
But the journey in that direction is well on the way. And it’s wise not to have launched big and fizzled out - we’ve seen that happen many times. Semafor has been much more strategic about its growth.
I spoke to co-founder Ben Smith this week about Semafor’s expansion in the Middle East. He said their aim is to be “the business outlet of record in the Gulf”.
Meanwhile, Semafor launched its first China newsletter this year and Smith teased further plans for Asia as well as Europe to come within the next couple of years.
 |
📉 This week we had new analysis showing organic Google Search referrals to leading UK publishers could halve by Q3 2027.
But the data also made clear that news and interviews remain more resilient than “how-to” style content.
The evergreen stuff that used to help pay for more resource-intensive types of journalism via ad revenue is no longer a reliable revenue stream.
The findings underline the need to produce content that, ultimately, contains new information: what journalism should be at its core. Opinion also fared well as, again, it’s something that AI can’t do on our behalf.
 |