GlobalPost Media Seeks Funding for Expansion Following Merger

GlobalPost Media, formed last year by the union of World Politics Review and DailyChatter, is seeking to raise $3 million to build up its subscriber base.

The two publications focused on global affairs are said to be non-partisan. They’re also complementary, with World Politics Review geared toward institutions and the DailyChatter newsletter, since renamed GlobalPost, aimed at a mainstream audience.

WPR has about 2,000 subscribers—though many thousands more actual readers since it’s distributed through universities—while GlobalPost has about 350,000 total subscribers to its daily newsletter.

Hampton Stephens, who founded WPR in 2006, sees demand for GlobalPost content in markets that may be neglected by bigger news outlets. Think local newspapers that reduced their international news coverage. In fact, the company already has deals with Gannett and McClatchy to use its stories across their newspapers.

“We find that these people in Middle America, once they discover GlobalPost, they are so excited about it, because they don’t get a lot of it… Most people might think the people who are interested in global news are only going to be in New York and Los Angeles and Chicago,” Stephens told AMO. “That’s one reason that McClatchy wanted to partner with us.”

The companies merged because they thought they’d be stronger together since they cover similar topics, but for different audiences. But they need to get in front of that audience, and that’s where the new funding comes into play. The company plans to pour money into marketing to help readers discover them.

They aren’t looking at private equity to raise the cash, but instead an entity or person interested in a good financial return who also buys into their mission to increase knowledge about global affairs in the U.S. and around the world.

“We just think there’s a big opportunity now with the importance of global news,” Stephens said. “There’s just so much going on in the world that’s important, and there’s not, at least in the U.S. media, there’s a lot of people that aren’t covering it and ignoring part of the world. So we think there’s an opportunity for us to sort of double down on our mission and accelerate our growth, and that’s why we’re looking to raise money.”

Find Us, Please

GlobalPost Media revenue should reach close to $1 million this year while the company also turns a profit. WPR’s revenue comes almost 100% from subscriptions, with 70% coming from institutions and 30% individuals. Subscriptions cost $112 a year. It partners with EBSCO Information Services to sell primarily to academic libraries. The content is also read by government agencies, non-governmental organizations and a small number of corporations.

GlobalPost, which publishes Monday through Friday, has about 5,000 paying subscribers with the rest coming from the licensing deals like those they have with McClatchy and Gannett, including USA Today. GlobalPost costs $46 a year.

“We’re looking to grow their advertising revenue because they have a large newsletter audience,” Stephens said.

The companies, which have a combined staff of about nine, had been bootstrapping their respective business for years and now need the money to invest not only in marketing, but also in technology and personnel.

Some 80% of WPR’s content is commissioned from expert contributors who are academics or work at research organizations and think tanks, and readership is split down the middle between the U.S. and the rest of the world. GlobalPost, which is primarily consumed in the U.S., is more a product of aggregating and curating information.

WPR already has a metered paywall in place while Global Post has primarily been a newsletter and hasn’t had a destination website for people to discover.

“We need to get that in place for Global Post, we’ll be doing testing in terms of onboarding, price testing, trying to optimize every aspect of the conversion funnel from a new reader who lands at our website, to signing them up for free newsletter, to converting them,” Stephens said. That will be followed by online ads to bring those new readers in.

He said once they get a reader, they get great reviews and strong loyalty.

“The people who know about us love it, but we need to reach that tipping point of awareness,” Stephens said. “And it’s not as easy as it used to be. Everybody’s talking about Google traffic declining, social media traffic declining, so we want to raise money, do it in a thoughtful way where we get a lot of bang for our buck. We’re not going to go out there and blow millions of dollars on Google ads. In a few months, we’re gonna make sure we’re getting a positive return on our investment.”

GlobalPost Media is being judicious with costs and GlobalPost/DailyChatter founder Phil Balboni said even without an investment he believes the company would be a sustainable business.

“I’ve created financial projections for the investment period that we foresee. They really look very good,” Balboni told AMO. “We have scars, we have successes, and we feel that we know how to take advantage of an opportunity. But sometimes you just need money in order to gain the awareness of consumers. You cannot do it entirely organically.”