【干货】专职编辑谈华盛顿邮报推送策略！|163

文章提要

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锁屏、手机和收件箱有着非常宝贵的价值；
新闻通讯邮件是一个独立的新闻产品；
邮件读者就是潜在付费用户；
经由创作的新闻通讯是编辑部鹤立鸡群的法宝。

How The Washington Post is using newsletters and alerts to reach readers

华盛顿邮报是如何通过邮件和推送提示抵达读者的？

华盛顿邮报LOGO

When readers wake up every morning, what do they check first? Probably their texts. Then, if they're feeling brave, their email inboxes.

读者每天起床的时候会先看什么？很可能是他们的短信。接着，如果他们有勇气的话，会看电子邮件收件箱。

Readers are inundated with content nowadays, which puts the onus on journalists to reach them where they're actually paying attention. That's why many news organizations have begun hiring editors who deal exclusively with email and push notifications, journalism that audiences can't easily tune out.

当今的读者被内容淹没，这使得记者们担起了从读者们最关心的地方抵达读者的责任。这也是许多新闻机构已经开始聘用专门的编辑来处理受众无法轻易转移关注的新闻的电子邮件和推送通知。

华盛顿邮报新闻通讯订阅提示

"I think it's incredibly valuable to be on someone's lock screen, on their phone or in their inbox," said Tessa Muggeridge, the newsletter and alerts editor for The Washington Post. "If you look on your lock screen, your push alert from The Washington Post might be right next to the text from your mom."

“我认为，每个人的锁屏、手机和邮箱都有非常宝贵的价值，”华盛顿邮报的通讯通知编辑泰沙·马格里奇说：“当你看锁屏的时候，来自华盛顿邮报的推送提醒可能就刚好挨着你的妈妈发给你的短信。”

The Washington Post has embraced this strategy, developing about 70 newsletters designed to appeal to specific segments of its audience. For politics junkies, there's The Daily 202, a tipsheet that's reminiscent of Politico's Playbook. Perennial sunny-siders have The Optimist, a newsletter full of uplifting stories. For the empirically minded, there's Speaking of Science, which serves up science news twice-weekly. Today’s WorldView, The Post's first newsletter created for an international audience, launched last week.

华盛顿邮报已经采取了这一策略，陆续发出了大约70篇旨在吸引特定细分受众群体的通讯。对于政治爱好者，有《每日202》，一个类似政客新闻网的图解集的内情通报；对于常年乐观的人，有写满了振奋人心的故事的《乐观主义者》；对于经验主义者，有一周两期、提供科技新闻的《说到科学》；报社的第一篇专门提供给国际用户的通讯《日观世界》也于上周发刊了。

Read These Comments

And earlier this month, they launched Read These Comments, a newsletter designed put a spotlight on online comments that are actually — gasp — civil. The weekly newsletter, which sends on Friday afternoons, is written by comments editor Teddy Amenabar, who sifts through thousands of reader comments on a daily basis, Muggeridge said.

马格里奇告诉我们，本月早些时候，他们推出了《读看评论》，一个旨在关注事实上代表着市民生息的在线评论的通讯。这篇通讯在每周五下午发送，由评论编辑泰迪·阿蒙纳巴执笔，编辑需要每天阅读数以千计的读者评论。

"The name goes back to the idea that a lot of people say 'don't read the comments,' or 'never read the comments,'" she said. "...We're really aiming to make sure the best stuff ends up at the top."

“起这个名字要追溯到一个想法：很多人说‘不看评论’或‘从来不看评论’，”她说：“我们真正的目标是，确保顶部就是最好的评论。”

The newsletters fit into a strategy to develop a "customer-engagement funnel" that pulls the audience into The Washington Post's orbit with a series of gradual steps. Readers who subscribe to a newsletter receive Post journalism in their inboxes at least once a week.

这些通讯融入了一个用于构建“客户参与漏斗”的战略。这个“漏斗”旨在通过一系列的渐进步骤将受众带入华盛顿邮报的轨道。订阅通讯的读者在收件箱里每周至少收到一篇推送新闻。

After enough emails, the reader could engage deeper, perhaps by commenting on a story, sharing it on social media or emailing a reporter. Before long, they might pay to become a digital subscriber. Newsletters and push alerts also give The Washington Post a direct connection to readers, unmediated by platforms like Facebook or Google.

除了足够的电子邮件，读者还可以通过评论故事、在社交网络上分享或与报道者邮件交流更深层次地参与进来。不久之后，他们可能会成为电子订阅的付费用户。新闻通讯和推送提示也给华盛顿邮报带来了一个与读者之间的直接联系，而并未被类似脸书或谷歌的平台中介隔离开来。

Washington Post newsletters depart from the business-as-usual list of headlines designed to entice readers to click through, Muggeridge said. The Post focuses on authored newsletters — emails written by journalists with a specific audience in mind — and less on feed-based newsletters that feature a digest of popular stories.

华盛顿邮报的新闻通讯从稀疏平常的标题列表中脱颖而出，以吸引读者点击进入，马格里奇说。报社侧重于编写的通讯——经由记者、为特定读者撰写的电子邮件——而较少刊送旨在摘取流行故事的基于订阅的通讯。

The reason: Newsletters at their best are a separate editorial product, not some kind of clickthrough carnival barker.

原因是：通讯最好是一个独立的编辑产品，而非“唯点击量至上”之流。

"Some people see email as a distribution tool, but I don't think of it as only that," Muggeridge said. "If someone comes to me and says, 'I want to launch a newsletter' — if their goal is to get a lot of traffic to their stories, the answer is almost always 'no.' A newsletter is a product in itself. It's not a means to something else."

“有的人认为电子邮件是一个分发工具，但我并不认同它仅仅是一个这样的工具，”马格里奇说：“假如有人跑来跟我说‘我想发布一个通讯’——如果他们的目标是为他们的故事引导流量的话，答案基本上都是‘否’。新闻通讯本身就是一个产品，而不是其他东西。”

The Post Most

That doesn't mean The Post has totally abandoned newsletters designed to encourage website visits. The Post Most, one of its most popular newsletters, serves up popular articles, video and content. Another, called First Reads, contains an arrangement of headlines along with graphics touting the stories.

这并不意味着华盛顿邮报已经完全放弃了用于网站导流的通讯。《邮报热门》，华盛顿邮报最热门的新闻通讯，就提供流行文章、视频和内容。而另一个叫做《首要阅读》的新闻通讯，其内容是新闻标题配上解释故事的图像。

Now that many news organizations are sending these straightforward briefings along, authored newsletters allow newsrooms to distinguish themselves.

现在很多新闻机构在发送者直截了当的新闻简报，但经由创作的新闻通讯允许编辑部与其他编辑部区分开来。

"I think whenever somebody is really popular, you're going to see a lot of people pop up with competing projects," Muggeridge said. "And the ones that are worth spending time on will rise to the top."

“我想，每当有一个人非常受人们欢迎的时候，我们都会看到，很多人都会突然在竞争项目中冒出来，”马格里奇说：“接着，那些值得花费时间的就会攀上顶峰。”

Muggeridge declined to provide specifics about The Post's open rate, beyond saying that the newsroom was "really proud of it," and that it was increasing.

除了说编辑部“非常为之自豪”和正在提升之外，马格里奇拒绝提供华盛顿邮报（新闻通讯）的具体的打开率。

华盛顿邮报APP

The second prong of Muggeridge's job is managing alerts, which she does across The Post's two smartphone apps, Washington Post classic (which features all of the newspaper's coverage) and National suite, which is a magazine-style news app. The apps send push alerts, both for breaking news and for specific topics.

马格里奇的工作的另一方面是管理华盛顿邮报两个智能手机应用程序（“华盛顿邮报经典”，覆盖所有的印刷版报纸；国家套件，杂志风格的新闻应用）的通知提示。应用发送的推送提示，既有突发新闻，也有特定话题的相关新闻。

Muggeridge treats push alerts with caution because the lock screen is hallowed real estate. Whereas people will tolerate some clutter in their inboxes, they're less forgiving with notifications. If Muggeridge is considering pushing the update to smartphones, it better be important.

马格里奇谨慎地对待着推送提示，因为锁屏是一个神圣的、真实存在的个人资产。尽管人们可以容忍收件箱里有些杂乱的东西，但他们对于推送通知的就没这么关荣了。如果要让马格里奇考虑推送最新情况到智能手机上，最好它们是重要的。

"You're in a very personal space to people," she said. "So you better be there for a good reason."

“你处在人们的一个非常私人的空间，”她说：“因此你最好有一个好理由。”

来自：Poynter.org 作者：Benjamin Mullin ???

编辑：欧阳荣鑫 ?