Folks,
Sad news today. The media outlet Salon.com closed today after 31 years. Founded in 1995, the website's owners said they could no longer afford to keep publishing.
"The business realities of independent digital journalism have changed profoundly over the years," the owners said in a statement. "After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable."
One reason independent journalism is becoming less sustainable is that people aren’t reading the news anymore; they are scanning for information in Instagram posts instead.
According to a study by the Pew Research Center, people are reading the news at half the rate they did a decade ago. Instead, people are watching free videos and slideshows on Instagram.
Salon closed today, but Payday Report could be next.
At Payday Report, we have seen a huge drop-off in people reading our site since we were founded 11 years ago. This drop-off has affected us financially: our online fundraising has declined as we lose readers, while Instagram influencers use our material and get far more traction than Payday does in terms of actual readers.
In October, Payday Report published a story about the political group of Luciano Huck, the host of Dancing with the Stars Brasil, receiving funding from the Trump Administration. The story got 38,000 views on Payday's website, which was amazing, but nothing compared to the number of views influencers got for simply reading my story out loud.
One Instagram account @Marciospio, got 200,000 views by simply reading the highlights of Payday’s Report’s investigation in a post liked by 37,000 followers.
Slideshows and posts simply restating the facts of Payday Report's investigation on Instagram far exceeded the 38,000 readers who went to Payday’s site to read the story:
- 52,000 likes on post by @afasp.
- 25,000 likes on a slideshow @Brasilforadacaverna
- 24,0000 likes on a slideshow by @mattheuslea
- 13,000 likes on post by @analisegeopol
Combined, these five Instagram posts rehashing my investigative reporting got more than 10x the viewers than actually went to my site to read it. This doesn't include the dozens of other Instagram posts on my reporting, which received several thousand likes. (Just search “Luciano Huck, Trump” on Instagram and you’ll it got hundreds of thousands of like while Payday only got 38,000 views)
To adapt, Payday Report needs to get better at Instagram to share our stories through slideshows and videos, as well as to persuade people to donate. People aren’t reading as much, but they still get news through Instagram, and a stronger Instagram presence could attract a bigger audience.
If folks find our news through Instagram, many might be persuaded to donate, and we really need the money after losing a grant worth a third of our budget.
To do that, I need to expand the budget for our part-time multimedia editor, Amos Wolf, when he returns from parental leave in two weeks so we can do more projects like this. We need to produce slick-looking Instagram videos and slideshows summarizing our reporting, and spend time pushing posts out to influencers to get us out there.
Covering this election, Payday had some success: I grew my Instagram following by 500 viewers in the last month after I produced a video on Lula’s comeback fight that got over 5,000 likes, but we need to do more, and it takes more staff to do that while I focus on reporting and fundraising.
Donate to help us reach those who have stopped reading the news. Donate today to get a free Lula shirt. (Sign up here)
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