Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The consistent refrain for publishers in the digital age is that everyone is still trying to figure out what can work, from platforms to advertising to workable, sustainable models. But as the path to enlightenment remains covered in fog, possibly smog, the effects of the digital era’s inscrutable disruption are being felt. The clearest recent illustration was last week’s crop of layoffs from outlets new and old: HuffPost, Vocativ, Time, the Los Angeles Times.

The Reuters Digital News Report for 2017 reifies some of the trends good and bad cropping up in various organizations’ earnings reports and elsewhere, offering glimpses of what to try next, where to double down and what to avoid.

One of the more obvious findings, and one we’ve all likely memorized by now, is that the growth of digital revenue has not been enough to offset the loss of print revenue.

Subscriptions have been picking up some of that slack....

When I started my career at The Washington Post in the late 1990s, the newsroom wore a dusty, outdated look as if it were paying homage to its legendary past. The Post of today occupies an updated building on D.C.'s renowned K Street, in modern, glass-walled offices with a Silicon Valley aesthetic.

This is the Post after Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO and e-commerce visionary, bought it in 2013. Since then, the paper's business and technology has almost outshone its award-winning journalism.

Before Bezos, the Post was losing revenue and its losses were widening, as it struggled to find income to replace its decline in print ads. The Post is now privately owned and doesn't discuss specific figures, but says revenue and profits are up, as subscribers grow and digital ad revenue increases. Its monthly Web traffic has grown 56 percent, to 78.7 million over the past two years, according to ComScore.

That reflects its journalism, but it also reflects big changes under the hood. Under Bezos, the newspaper has transformed its operations, from how it writes headlines and chooses photos, to how it generates ad dollars....