Audience size and subscription performance often rank as the most closely watched measures of digital news performance. Sometimes they move together. Sometimes they point in different directions. This raises a critical question for publishers: Does the journalism that attracts the largest audiences also generate the greatest subscription value? 

New research from the National Bureau of Economic Research examines that question using data from a large U.S. metropolitan newspaper. The researchers analyze 605 million article visits, approximately 1.2 billion user sessions, more than 55 million paywall events, and over 126,000 articles published between 2020 and 2023. 

Traffic and subscription value do not measure the same thing 

The study finds that traffic and subscription activity often point to different types of journalism. Subscription purchases cluster around public health, economics, and local politics, while audience traffic spreads more broadly across the newspaper’s content portfolio. 

The distinction becomes particularly visible in Local News. The researchers estimate that readers’ willingness to pay for a typical Local News article is roughly twice that of a typical Entertainment article. Local News coverage includes schools, local government, and economic issues. 

The paper also finds a negative relationship between article popularity and subscription conversion. The analysis shows that as article traffic increases, subscription conversion rates fall. More popular articles attract a larger share of readers with a lower propensity to subscribe. The authors describe this pattern as a tradeoff between maximizing traffic and maximizing subscriptions. 

To better understand those differences, the researchers classify articles using the Federal Communications Commission’s Critical Information Needs framework. The framework includes public health, education, civic affairs, political life, public safety, transportation, and economic development. Several of these categories outperform less-critical topics on subscription measures. Health coverage stands out, producing some of the strongest subscription responses in the dataset. 

The researchers test these patterns using regression analysis, which measures relationships between variables while accounting for other factors that may influence results. The results remain consistent after controlling for differences in reader engagement and reading behavior. 

Subscriptions change how readers engage 

The study also examines how reading behavior changes after a reader subscribes. Engagement rises across several measures. Within the observation window, subscribers average 8.65 additional site visits and 14.2 additional articles read. Words consumed per visit increase by 336 words, and average scroll depth rises by nearly 25 percentage points. 

The mix of reading changes as well. Before subscribing, readers allocate a larger share of their reading to Critical Information Needs content. After subscribing, they read more overall and spread that reading across more categories. The report attributes the resulting decline in the share of Critical Information Needs content to broader consumption rather than reduced interest in those topics. 

Revenue models create different newsroom incentives 

The gap between traffic and subscription value also appears in the paper’s staffing model. The researchers compare two objectives while holding the overall staff budget fixed. One model maximizes traffic, and the other maximizes subscription revenue. 

The traffic-maximizing model shifts staffing toward Entertainment while reducing staffing in Local News, Local Events, Business, and Sports. The subscription-maximizing model moves in the opposite direction. It expands Local News, Local Events, and Sports while reducing Entertainment. 

The beat-level pattern reflects the same demand signals identified elsewhere in the study. Health, Business, and Local News rank among the strongest subscription-performing beats in the model. These same beats also produce much of the newspaper’s Critical Information Needs and investigative reporting. 

Subscription demand does not cover newsroom costs 

Even the strongest subscription-performing beats remain net revenue negative once staffing costs are included. The paper reaches a similar conclusion when examining investigative reporting. Researchers estimate that expanding investigative journalism without increasing net revenue losses requires about $11,000 in annual subsidy for each additional investigative article. 

The cost is nearly $25,000 per article for the first 20 to 30 additional investigative stories. The estimate reaches roughly $50,000 per article at 35 additional stories and more than $100,000 per article at 55 additional stories. Local News and Health show the strongest relationship between added staffing and additional investigative output in the model. 

Subscription activity concentrates around local reporting, public health, economics, and other Critical Information Needs topics. Entertainment and other high-traffic content play a larger role in audience reach than in subscription generation. Reach has long been the currency of digital advertising. But in subscription-based models, the more important question is not how many people a story reaches, but how many readers it compels to pay, stay, and engage. These research results show that audience traffic and subscription activity often point to different types of journalism.