They say you need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
You may have followed recent news about accelerating layoffs in both the print and TV news business. Just in the past few weeks, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine, and National Geographic all announced significant layoffs. Making it more troubling, both the L.A. Times and Washington Post are owned by billionaires (who arguably did not have to do it for financial reasons). Facebook (now Meta) has also announced that it would be pulling back on its news coverage, and other social media platforms are doing the same.
Mary Louise Kelly, who hosts National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” recently wrote: “If you care about journalism — local news, national news, international news — every warning light should be blinking red.”
Those are not exactly words and developments that help us sleep well at night as we continue to invest significantly in Mexico News Daily.
But we knew about these industry trends when we purchased the company, and also that this would not be easy. What makes us think that we will be successful when so many others are failing?
To begin with, we feel that the “failure” of many news organizations is to a large extent their own fault for three important reasons:
Many media outlets got away from impartially covering the news and began to inject their own opinions into their news coverage
We have all seen this happening. Many media outlets now feel like a mouthpiece of either the right or the left. Most people find that to be tiring, frustrating, and often insulting to their intelligence. News seems to have been replaced with opinions. We at Mexico News Daily take very seriously the importance of impartiality, and the importance of analysis to help you connect the dots on the issues. We will bring you the facts of the news as best as we can, via an array of sources. We will have respected writers from Mexico and other countries share their analysis and opinions on important issues. And then we will leave it up to you, the reader, to form your own conclusions on the issues.
Many digital news organizations became too focused on “chasing clicks”
A profit-generating business is naturally always looking for ways to maximize revenue. Unfortunately for the digital media industry, that has far too often meant a hyper focus on “chasing clicks.”
Clicks that bring more eyeballs, eyeballs that bring more ad revenue, etc. The problem is that this strategy logically leads to news coverage becoming ever-increasingly sensationalized and shallow. Violence, car accidents, weather events, death, death, and more death…as the industry saying goes “if it bleeds, it leads.”
We at Mexico News Daily are trying very hard to not fall into this trap. The temptation to “go there” happens every day, but we will do everything we can to continue to bring you balanced, relevant, and important news that impacts Mexico — not just the stories that will give you a quick dopamine hit. We are striving to educate and inform the reader, not just provide sensationalist stories.
Ads, ads, and more ads
Many news publications have become too reliant on ads that have diminished the user experience. Along with the strategy of sensationalist stories, many news publications have filled their sites with “pop-up” and “crawler ads” that must be navigated through in order to be able to read the article. Although this generates ad revenue, we think it makes for a terrible reader experience. We at MND have cut back significantly on the amount and type of ads, despite the loss in revenue, to make for a better reader experience.
Which brings us back to the original question of “are we crazy?”
My wife Tamanna and I strongly believe Mexico’s importance in the world is becoming increasingly more apparent. We believe that it is a historically important time for Mexico and its relationship with the United States and the world. We believe that Mexico has an economic opportunity to seize that could dramatically reduce poverty and improve living standards nationwide. And we believe that there is a need for an English-language news outlet like Mexico News Daily to provide balanced and unbiased news and information about the country.
These beliefs lead us to think that operating MND is important work that will help our readers learn about and better understand Mexico.
If you want a front row seat to the changes Mexico is undergoing, Mexico News Daily is the platform.
We are very much aware that it will not be an easy task. This vision and business model requires our paid subscriber model to be successful.
Despite a doubling of our total unique viewers to over 1 million per month over the past year, we still have a very low percentage of our readers becoming paid subscribers.
As a result, MND continues to lose money each month.
Although we might be a little bit crazy, we truly believe that we can bring trust and optimism back to the world of journalism — at least for Mexico — at a time when so much trust has been lost. We sincerely believe that by doing that, we will be successful. But we need your support!
We are honored to bring you news, information, analysis, and opinions about this great country. We are working hard to get better each and every day. If you are a paid subscriber, we thank you!
And if you are not yet a paid subscriber, why not become one today? Click here to subscribe.
Travis Bembenek is the CEO of Mexico News Daily and has been living, working or playing in Mexico for over 27 years.
I am a paid subscriber of MND, keep writing and I’ll keep reading.
Thank you Kelly!
I’m a happily paying subscriber. For years I was content to read headlines but with the recent change of ownership/leadership I felt a need to go deeper. (I’ve always been slow to the party.) I feel more connected and informed than ever. Thank you. I sincerely hope others will join me with a paid subscription. I would love to keep this valuable resource.
Thank you for that…really appreciate it!
Mr Bembenek misses the biggest reasons news companies are failing: the catastrophic drop in advertising revenue caused by the emergence of the internet (subscriptions & newsstand sales used to cover the cost of actually printing and distributing a paper, but those days are long gone). The web can also be ‘blamed’ for the infinite number of information sources that now compete for our eyes and time; there are still only 24 hours in a day so it’s mathematically challenging for any one source to win enough of our overstretched attention to make money. That said, I subscribe to MND and hope it can buck all those trends.
Thank you Mark. You are correct, advertising revenue has been absolutely obliterated which makes us rely almost exclusively on subscription revenue.
You provide a great perspective of the news of Mexico. You have significantly improved the News from the past owners and it is much appreciated particularly for a gringo whose Spanish is definitely not adequate enough to read the Mexican newspapers. Thank you.
Thank you Alexander…appreciate that!
I became a paid subscriber after I saw the improved content and have since enjoyed many article’s written by new and existing contributors to this platform. Keep up the good work! If you build it they will come!
I am a paid subscriber for about 6 years.
Having a comment section at the end is essential, It is highly appreciated that one does not need to have a user and password to comment. I am sick and tired and completely ignore any site which requites passwords. congrats to MND. This is progress. Now on to the next step.
Far more important is that Every author should be required to sign off with an email. The day is over when authors are the smartest people on the block. Authors make many mistakes and have much to learn from readers. MND will become a powerful media once it learns to be interactive , much the same way that Wikipedia has become the world’s encyclopedia. Travis , get on top of it. Publish an email in which readers can get back to you. So, send me a confirmation that you have read this reply!
When I used the term “email” above, I was actually referring to an author of an article signing off with their “email address”, so feedback immediately is received by that author. This is how they can learn and improve their writing and knowledge, how we all become more informed.
Thank you Jim for your feedback. Our feature writers always include their names, as do I when I write my weekly column. Our news writers, in part to protect them in a world where unfortunately news writers need some protection, use “MND Staff”. We have the comment section precisely to encourage respectful and insightful discussion and debate.
I am a paid subscriber because I enjoy most articles with the exception of articles written by right wing hacks from the Reforma, Financiero, and and El Universal. If you’re going to continue this right wing slant I will opt out. Thank you for giving readers an opportunity to comment. By the way, it would be great if you would include articles from La Jornada and Nancy Flores an award winning reporter from Contralinea. A professor at UNAM, on investigative reporting.
Thanks Diego. We are working on getting more opinion writers across the political spectrum…coming soon.
Thank you MND!
Thank you Lupita!
Thank you Travis!