Are We Past Peak Newsletter?

In recent years, the humble email became a star in its own right. During the pandemic, media companies sought to cash in on a surge of excitement around the format from both readers and writers. But the fast-changing priorities of tech giants and the unforgiving economics of digital media have led to a reckoning at the inbox, as executives take a harder look at deals they struck with writers.

“Everybody had time to both create and consume,” said Jacob Cohen Donnelly, the publisher of the Morning Brew business news outlet and the author of the newsletter A Media Operator. “As the world has started to open, people don’t have as much time.”

The Atlantic has been one of the most prominent recent adopters of email newsletters. Last year, Nicholas Thompson, the chief executive, rolled out a program that allowed writers of certain newsletters to rack up major bonuses if they converted readers to Atlantic subscribers. At the upper end, some writers could earn total annual compensation approaching $400,000 if they converted 14,500 readers, according to people who spoke anonymously to discuss the details of confidential deals.

Newsletter writers were also paid a base salary, some exceeding $100,000, and some hit less aggressive targets for lower compensation.

The program attracted writers such as Charlie Warzel, Molly Jong-Fast and Nicole Chung.

But many of the targets proved too ambitious, and The Atlantic is reassessing the way it structures those deals, Mr. Thompson said in an interview. The company has offered to extend the contracts of its newsletter writers to assess how the emails affect the likelihood that readers maintain their subscriptions. Still, he said that the newsletter program had most likely made a small contribution to The Atlantic’s bottom line and that the company planned to continue the program.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/20/business/media/newsletters-bubble.html