Why a digital media expert loves newsletters

They have an authenticity that generates public trust and engagement; it's old-fashioned personal communication

You’re reading the Your News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs find viable business models.

Trust is in short supply these days, which makes trustworthy information sources and people even more valuable. Lately, I’ve been writing about how to counter trends of distrust in all our democratic institutions, including the press.

In January I interviewed my friend Ismael Nafría, the author of seven books on digital media and an expert on email newsletters. He publishes his own email newsletter in Spanish, Tendenci@s, which I follow closely.

I’ve known Ismael for more than a decade. We are both members of the executive board of a non-profit, SembraMedia.org, that supports independent media in Latin America and around the world. In addition to his native Spanish, he’s fluent in English and Catalan, the language of his hometown, Barcelona.

What follows are excerpts from our 40-minute conversation, which was conducted in Spanish. I translated it with the help of Deepl.ai and Google Translate. (The YouTube video of the interview is below.)

A summary of our conversation:

• The authentic, personal connection of email newsletters

• The growth of Ismael’s own newsletter, Tendenci@s

• The risks he took by going independent two years ago

• The digital media metrics that matter the most

• Says to stick to the media platform that works best for you

• Some advice for students of communication and journalism

The boldface emphasis in Ismael’s replies is mine.

James Breiner: There are many distribution and information channels, many information production platforms. How is the newsletter different from your point of view, in terms of audiences, connections, what are the advantages, more or less?

Ismael Nafría: The newsletter is a format, a way of communicating that I am in love with. It seems to me to be a very effective, very natural, very authentic format, which facilitates something that is the opposite of other digital platforms today.

It allows a very direct contact between the person or people who write the newsletter with their audience. It is a format that, in order for it to work, the objective has to be very clear, the subject it deals with and the target audience have to be very clear.

But that is precisely what makes it interesting, because the people who receive the newsletter are interested in that specific topic. If not, they do not sign up, or if they sign up and then see that it was not what they expected, they delete it and that's it.

So it is very authentic in the sense that the topic is very well chosen, the audience is very specific. The voice or the tone of the person who writes it is his own, that is, the best thing in a newsletter is to be as you are, you yourself are natural and tell things as you would tell them to a friend you were talking to.

The people who are signed up can read it when it suits them, as many times as they want. They can answer me, they can make a comment, they can share it with someone. It has a beginning and an end.

James: In the seven years of publishing Tendenci@s, there have been many changes in the digital ecosystem and I wonder how they have affected what you do.

Ismael: Well look, there have been changes, but in the product itself there have not been so many changes. When I launched it in May 2017, I had just published the book about The New York Times, and my goal in launching the newsletter was to reach media professionals and really anyone in the world of communication interested in the development of Spanish-speaking digital media.

It was a newsletter in Spanish that was reaching people in Spain and throughout Latin America, as well as Spanish speakers in, for example, the United States, Brazil, and Portugal.

And from then until today, which is now seven and a half years, the audience has never stopped growing, every week there are new people.

Right now I have 9,000 people signed up for the free edition every two weeks. And in September 2023, I launched a paid edition, which I publish practically every day, from Monday to Friday, shorter, with the two or three of the most interesting topics of the day and a series of additional links that have caught my attention.

And then I publish a paid version, also every two weeks, which is called Tendenci@s plus, which only paid subscribers receive. And there I always deal with six or seven topics more oriented to professionals.

James: I am among those free subscribers, but I must thank you for the amount of information about digital media in all parts of the world. I keep up to date in terms of what is happening in the industry because you follow media in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, etc. . . . .

Ismael: I thank you very much that for so many years you are following my work. In the end, my real objective with this newsletter is to help the sector to follow the rhythms set by innovation and changes in business models.

I have now tried to turn Tendenci@s into the center of my professional activity. I do consulting, I give classes, I give talks, I write books, but I think that Tendenci@s is for me right now like the heart of my activity,

Everything I write is also my brand, and it serves me and feeds all my other activities. It helps me to be constantly reflecting, and to think whether this trend, this thing that's happening, is it really going to last in time, is it really something that the media has to get to work on immediately, or should we calm down a bit and see where we have to go.

The clearest case for me is the need, in many cases, to count on subscriptions or income from users, as part of the new economic ecosystem that the media must have.

That helped me a lot to write the book about the New York Times and to understand why they did it [paid digital subscriptions]. But, well, this constant work of reflecting, reading, talking to a lot of people, interviewing, helps me a lot for that.

What I have started to do is to collaborate with other professionals in the sector to support each other. For example, there are topics that I don't follow so closely, and I have established an agreement with some media or with someone who does cover those topics well and we exchange content.

Right now I have three in progress, and what I also have is an agreement with the consulting firm FT Strategies to offer in Spanish in each issue a content of their insights. And then I have a Knowledge Partner agreement with McKinsey to promote their content, especially in Spanish, or any interesting content they offer.

James: What do these sponsors or advertisers tell you about the value of your newsletter to them?

Ismael: For them it is clearly a very natural way to enter a market and an audience they are interested in.

In other words, what I really want is to be able to reach the public that is really interested in reading the things I offer in the newsletter. For the advertisers, that is the public they are also looking for, so everything fits very well.

James: So, quality of audience rather than quantity. Engagement rather than scale.

Ismael: I think this would be one of the most interesting things that could happen to our industry is that we stop talking about total users and talk about much more real things like daily users or registered users or subscribed users or paid users or those who actually interact with the publication.

In other words, much more quality metrics, because in reality, and as I always say in my talks — and I say it because I am 100% convinced that it is so — if you have 20 million users, or you say you have 20 million users, you are going to do your business with one or two million of those, right?

If you have 100 thousand, you are going to do it with 10 thousand or 15 thousand, and if you have a thousand, you are going to do it with 100, okay?

So I think that this race to be the one with the most users that has been going on in many countries — and the reason was because the advertising market seemed to be going that way — I think that has really done a lot of damage because it has forced many media to adopt strategies of growth only.

And it is a false growth because there are many people who are in those numbers who do not even know that they have gone through your site.

James: You made the leap to go completely independent about two years ago. And what is it like to be completely independent? There are risks, but what are they?

Ismael: It has disadvantages, the main one being that the market can be unstable, so you don't always have a regular income every month, a salary that allows you to plan anything. The great advantages are of a very clear personal nature, of being able to dedicate myself to subjects that I love, of being able to organize my time.

It is true that you work a lot, but you can organize it, you can focus your attention on those aspects that interest you the most, or that you think are more interesting to you, or that you believe in.

I, for example, am putting a lot of effort now in creating a product base that can run by itself as much as possible, to have as many paying subscribers as possible.

I am going to launch the new book on newsletters [it is to be published soon] and I want to accompany it with an online training course on this topic that can circulate and run on its own. I will accompany it with individual sessions as well.

James: At this point in our conversation, Ismael mentioned the social network that works best for him these days is LinkedIn. He had seen a big dropoff in response to his links on X (Twitter) long before its owner made it more of a megaphone for the ultra-right.

Ismael: LinkedIn is the one that has the best quality in all the conversation, the type of content you find, the contacts it makes for me. It is a magnificent territory right now. And I am also exploring Threads or BlueSky as alternatives to X. But I am not going to abandon X totally.

James: I am a writer, always a writer, although I dabble in multimedia. And I am a little worried about the future of those who write text, like me, because after covid-19, with Zoom classes and meetings, my students didn’t read. And when I am on some professor websites, they always complain about the lack of reading by students.

Ismael: Yes, I think that what you say is partly true. I also don't know if it is as serious as you say. For example, I find university students among the subscribers of Tendenci@s. Of course, I can't tell you to what extent they read everything or don't read, but I do see that they do sign up and that they are interested,

I also agree with you that I, for example, have worked mainly in writing and also in radio, right? I like radio a lot. I do see doing something in audio, in podcasts. It's one of the things that I would like to propose, but, for example, doing other types of content more like video — well, I see it as much more complicated.

I aspire to reach the people that I think can take advantage of what I'm offering, right?And that's why, with the book I'm writing about newsletters in Tendenci@s, I'll do a course that will be on video.

I'm convinced that there will be many people who will prefer to have the newsletter book, to consult it whenever they want, at their own pace and so on. And other people who will prefer to take the course and learn in a short space of time and apply that.

I do think that quality is much more important than quantity, I think that this also applies to formats: that is, do what you can do well, so as not to go crazy, because there are so many things to do, right? And in the end, I think that where the value is or where I find value in things is when there is a well-made, well-prepared and well-packaged message.

James: What are your recommendations to communication or journalism students worried about finding jobs?

Ismael: For me, a very clear recommendation is that they produce something, in a format that they like. That they write, that they publish, that they start a newsletter, that they launch a podcast, that they open a social media account, that they do whatever, if that is what they like, but that they learn to communicate in a better way.

The other thing is that they consume a lot — read, search, compare. I am surprised sometimes at how little variety of information consumption there is among, for example, journalism students.

Even if you don't want to dedicate yourself to a format, you have to know how it's done. You have to consume media in a critical way: the big digital media, the niche media, a television report, a well crafted podcast, a well crafted magazine . . .

And the only way, if you don't work in those media, is to consume them in a critical way, to analyze what they are offering you. That seems essential to me in your whole life — to have a lot of curiosity and judgment, to be skeptical about things.

As a matter of professional advice, I always encourage you to publish, because you learn a lot — a lot. And it serves as a professional portfolio, because when you want to apply for a job or whatever, I think it is very difficult for a company or a media organization to hire you, if you don’t have any work to show.