Madeleine White of The Audiencers looks at why The Economist has launched a data journalism newsletter on Substack.
White writes, “The idea to launch “Off the Charts” on Substack was born from a great collaboration between the editorial and commercial teams. The core idea? To find a new way to reach potential readers who are interested in a specific area of The Economist’s content but might not be ready to commit to a full subscription just yet.
“‘Off the Charts’ was the perfect candidate for this experiment. It originally launched as a free newsletter back in 2021 before being moved behind the paywall as part of the core subscription. But the vibrant data journalism community that had grown around it was too compelling to ignore. This new Substack launch, which was in the works for several months, is a deliberate effort to both create a new revenue stream and nurture that niche audience.
“A key question for me was why The Economist chose to build an audience off-platform. Aaron explained it’s all about meeting readers where they are. He pointed out that Substack’s audience is growing fast, with over 5 million users, and many of them are already huge fans of data visualization and journalism.”
Read more here.
