Computer Weekly defies tech journalism decline | The stories driving Reach’s paid subs

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👀 Much of the technology industry is built on surveillance capitalism – where collecting the personal data of your service users becomes your main product.

So it is appropriate that this is the business model which has enabled Computer Weekly to avoid making the cutbacks forced on many of its rival titles in the tech journalism sector.

We spoke to editor Bryan Glick as the title marked 60 years since launching as the world’s first technology newspaper.

Today its main platform remains its weekly magazine, albeit a digital one, available to some 55,000 free registered subscribers. By looking at the stories those IT professionals are reading Computer Weekly can, as the media pack puts it, “help you identify, access and influence in-market accounts and engaged buyers who are actively researching solutions like yours”.

Computer Weekly’s focus on direct relationships with readers, via the emailed magazine and newsletters, has also made it less impacted by falling website traffic. Conventional display advertising makes up a small slice of the revenue pie.

It’s a business model that encourages high-quality investigative journalism because engaged, influential eyeballs are everything when it comes to gathering reader intelligence.

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✂️ Today we also have a timely interview with Reach chief content officer David Higgerson who spoke to Press Gazette’s Future of Media Technology Conference a few days before the latest massive round of editorial cutbacks at the publisher.

He revealed the stories that are most likely to drive paid-for subscriptions – court and high-quality football club content.

And he explained why the publisher is investing in new business editors (whilst cutting back staff elsewhere): “Because we’re seeing both success with that content through a subscription lens, but also through the amount of time people are spending with it as well.”

Previously the programmatic advertising ecosystem rewarded stories which produced high page views but might only be viewed for a few seconds. This could promote low-quality, thinly sourced clickbait on trending topics.

Declining referrals for these sorts of stories and falling yields for programmatic advertising have led Reach to focus more on the stories that lead to returning readers who are more likely to sign in (which means a higher yield on advertising) or even pay to subscribe.