Double awards success as email news becomes part of daily life for publisher Reach
Two politically-focused newsletters from regional newsrooms scooped honours at an awards dedicated to news via email.
The Publisher Newsletter Awards were held in London last week, with two newsletters run by journalists employed at Reach plc picking up awards.
The Northern Agenda, edited by Rob Parsons, won Best Daily Newsletter.
It covers politics and other issues which affect towns and cities across the North of England, blending daily analysis from Rob and other journalists at Reach’s northern newsrooms with a curation of the most important stories of the day. It is also home to a podcast which analyses the big issues facing the North and regularly hosts politicians and experts to examine matters from a Northern perspective.
The Northern Agenda beat entries from the Financial Times, The Spectator, The Week and the Evening Standard to claim the prize.
Will Hayward, author of the Will Hayward Newsletter from WalesOnline, won Best Politics Newsletter.
Will’s newsletter, published on Substack, has more than 2,000 subscribers and is one of a growing portfolio of paid-for newsletters run by publisher Reach, where Will is Wales Affairs Editor for WalesOnline.
Will was one of the journalists targeted by former Wales First Minister Vaughan Gething for not being a ‘serious journalist’ after raising questions about the sources of campaign fund donations given to Mr Gething in his successful battle to become Wales’ most senior politician. He has since stood down.
Will was shortlisted alongside entries from Metro.co,.uk, The Economist, The Spectator, Financial Times, Irish Times, Bloomberg, National World, The Telegraph and also The North Agenda.
Email newsletters have been at the heart of Reach’s efforts to get to know readers better in recent years. In 2020, the company unveiled its Customer Value Strategy, with a plan to build direct relationships with many of 40m people a month who read its brands online.
Since then, hundreds of newsletters have been launched around the country, ranging from daily newsletter headlines through to ones about specialist topics and interests.
In 2021 and 2022, Reach partnered with the Google News Initative in 2022 to experiment with new styles of newsletters, hiring a team to work specifically on newsletters, the first of which was the Mancunian Way for the Manchester Evening News. It was designed to provide an easy way for people to catch up with the headlines the MEN was already reporting, and provide space to dig into more detail with stories too.
This week, the newsletter’s Monday edition took readers inside the process to revealing exclusive video from the Manchester Airport violence which had made global headlines over the previous week.
Newsletters contribute around 2m page views a day to publisher Reach’s total daily page views — with readers who click through from its stable of email services sticking around on site longer than readers arriving from other sources.
More recently, Reach has launched a number of newsletters on Substack, with readers paying for in-depth coverage on topics including Port Vale Football Club, Birmingham politics and, as demonstrated by Will’s newsletter awards win, Welsh affairs.
At the company’s half year results announcement today, CEO Jim Mullen revealed Reach’s journalists had secured 9m sign ups from readers to receive stories directly from the company, many of which are via newsletters.
Around 2.4m of those sign ups are from people who are now receiving content directly from Reach via WhatsApp. These audiences — grouped as ‘secure audiences’ by Reach, have grown 4% year on year, bucking a wider traffic trend which has seen audience fall at many publishers.
Jim Mullen said: “We are the UK and Ireland’s largest commercial news publisher, a business with an audience of 34 million, built around over 120 brands. These titles, whether the Mirror, the Express, the Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Live, or Daily Record, give people a voice and play a vital and important role in communities across the UK.
“Together these brands have a place in the digital lives of nearly 70% of the UK’s online population.
“It’s worth spending some time covering our secure audience metrics. We now have 2.4 million signed up to receive content directly via Whatsapp, making a total of 9 million people signed up to get content directly to their device. This is encouraging progress as we focus on securing our audience, so that we are less reliant on other platforms.”
