🔶 #47: "How Uusi Juttu added 10,000 paying members in three weeks"
Hello and welcome back to the News Alchemists newsletter!
I'm feeling a little nervous writing this email, because what comes next is new territory for me: 300 days and 40 emails after the first edition, I want to ask if you'd consider donating to support this work.
The last ten months have been such a great experience. Not just because I enjoyed writing the newsletter, but because of the conversations with readers like you who've told me how valuable this newsletter is for them:
"I read it every week and often use it as inspiration and material to prepare my journalism classes."
"My organisation has an opening for a community editor position and I'm preparing my application. Thanks for sending your newsletter, it will be helpful while I prep!"
"Your newsletter is one of my personal sources of optimism that there is still potential for societal value in digital media."
"If you read one journalism newsletter each week, make it Mattia Peretti's News Alchemists. He brings you a delightful buffet of links for a people-centric vision of journalism, and isn't afraid to share what he's learning as he experiments along the way."
Every one of these messages and shout-outs is incredibly rewarding. And I want to continue providing that value to you in 2026.
Don't worry, this is NOT leading to a paywall. I want this newsletter to remain free and accessible for everyone.
But on average I spend one day per week on this – between researching, writing, planning, promoting, admin-ing, talking with readers, etc. – and that's time I don't spend on other types of paid work.
And I would be a little fraud advocating for the idea that creating value for people through journalism can lead to financial sustainability if I didn't at least test that proposition myself, right?
My goal is to get to 25 supporters by the end of the year. That's about 5% of readers who opened last week's newsletter. Will you be one of them?
Once you click on the orange button, you won't find membership tiers or suggested amounts. It's a one-time donation, pay-what-you-want. If you can only pitch in with £10, that's great. If you have leftover professional budget to spend by the end of the year, and you want to donate £100 or more, that's also ok 🙃
If this newsletter has been valuable to you this year, and you can afford to support it, you can do it here:
And now it's time for the links 📚
See you next week!
1. How Uusi Juttu added 10,000 paying members in three weeks 👉 LINK
Not exactly the same scale as my goal of 25 supporters, huh? 😅
🧩 Uusi Juttu, Zetland's sister publication in Finland, launched with a crowdfunding campaign in late 2024 that netted over 15,000 paying members. Today, it has over 30,000 thanks to a big ambassador campaign that brought in 10,000 new members in three weeks. (I'm done with numbers, I promise.)
What's really cool about it is that the result was mostly achieved through referrals: existing members inviting friends and families to join because (I assume) they love the product and its mission so much that they're invested in its success.
2. Is it time for journalists and newsrooms to become something else? 👉 LINK
I can only repeat what I said in #25:
The rule of thumb is: 🧞Jennifer Brandel writes something >>> you go and read it ASAP.
"We all need each other. We are all connected. We all want to feel like we belong. We all care, and want our work to matter (even if we disagree on what that looks like). The stories we tell and how we tell them shape our collective realities. [...] I believe journalism’s next evolution isn’t a new platform, product, or nonprofit model. It’s a shift in how we relate — to each other, to power, to land and other living beings, to time, to the unknown."
3. As grant funding dries up, exiled newsrooms are finding hope in new revenue strategies 👉 LINK
Necessity is the mother of invention, and media organisations forced to operate in exile often find that embracing the proverb is the only way to survive. Three inspiring examples in this article:
🧩 Paper, a Russian local news outlet forced to relocate to Georgia because of its anti-war stance, created and monetised a VPN service.
🧩 El Toque, a Cuban independent news outlet that has been operating from the US since 2019, is leveraging data and financial information to create tools offered via a paid subscription to businesspeople and foreign investors.
🧩 Frontier Myanmar started operating outside the country after a military coup in 2021. As advertising revenue and grant funding collapsed, the team is doubling down on its membership programme, expanding its offering with new products and IRL events.
4. Reader psychology: What makes people pay? 👉 LINK
Donations, crowdfunding campaigns, new revenue strategies... a lot of this edition is about money, so how about we spend (pun intended) a few minutes trying to understand the psychology behind people's choice to support journalism?
This was a great conversation at the JournalismAI Festival among two of my favourite people: 🧞Mariah Craddick, executive director of product at The Atlantic, and 🧞Alet Law, head of audience development at Daily Maverick. Enjoy!
5. How Finansavisen personalised their homepage to strengthen engagement and subscription growth 👉 LINK
"The homepage, still the primary entry point for millions of readers, presents a particular puzzle. How do you serve both loyal subscribers seeking depth and casual visitors exploring what your publication offers?"
With one homepage, you can't. So how about two? One for existing subscribers, designed around premium content, expert analysis and longer articles. And one for casual visitors, focused on "a mix of free articles and paywalled stories that historically perform well with first-time and infrequent users."
Clever solution by Norwegian financial newspaper 🧩 Finansavisen.
6. We let lapsed subscribers continue to receive our books newsletter for a few weeks before sending a break-up letter from the literary editor 👉 LINK
A fun and apparently very effective win-back strategy by the audience team at The Times, which includes giving lapsed subscribers recommendations about break-up books to help them through the heartache 💔
(Worth acknowledging that the same Times that came up with this fun idea is also one of the organisations often criticised for making it very difficult for readers to cancel their subscription, forcing them to call a phone number. In 2025 / almost 2026. 🤦♂️)
7. Four fears keeping you from becoming a consultant – and how to overcome them 👉 LINK
If you've considered taking the independent route but one or more of these four blockers stopped you from taking the leap...
- I don’t have enough knowledge.
- I don’t have enough connections.
- I don’t have enough time.
- I don’t know what to offer.
...read this piece by 🧞Khalil A. Cassimally:
"Start small. Structure what you know. Share generously. Break big things down. Experiment early. And you’ll find you’re much closer to independence than you realise."
To which I'll add my own thoughts on starting small and building in public.
🥁 And the most clicked link from the previous edition is...
...the page collecting the presentations given by the speakers of this year's Splice Beta:
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Seven links are not enough? How about 250+? 🤓
📸 The header image is not connected to the content of the newsletter. Just a photo taken by me to add a little colour.
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