Hello to everyone who has followed Unpacked so far:
Welcome to Unpacked 2.0!
You might have noticed a slight change to our newsletter masthead in this week’s issue – it’s part of a refresh we’ve worked on ahead of Parliament’s reopening.
If you’ve received this e-mail you are a loyal reader of Unpacked. Whether it’s been just a week or since the beginning, we are really happy to have had you along for the ride. It’s been great fun and very rewarding for the both of us, and we are excited to say that we’ve got some new stuff planned.
This e-mail will cover some changes we are making to the newsletter, which we have teased for months since the GE (sorry not sorry!):
What’s new: Formats, content
What else we’re thinking about: Community, Asks, experimentation
What we’ve done so far: Subscribers, graphics, engagement
We’ve timed our refresh to align with the re-opening of Parliament on Sept 5 – a new Unpacked along with a new five-year term of Government.
With the pace of political news slowing after the May 3 election, we had many discussions on how we can continue to put out weekly content that would be useful and relevant to you.
In the larger scheme of things, Unpacked fits our wider political coverage at The Straits Times – which the team is also looking at refreshing in this new term.
1. What’s new
Post-GE, the political calendar centres around Parliament sittings that are about once a month (though there will be months with multiple sittings).
The sittings are usually during the first week of the month – this will be the anchor for our schedule.
Our plan is to put out a Deep Dive for the first issue of the month, looking at a topic that we expect to be discussed in the coming Parliament session. (You would have received your very first Unpacked Deep Dive today on the President’s Address.)
The second week’s issue follows the same Unpacked formula that we have used so far – with two or three news items and the take – this will cover highlights of the Parliament session as well as other political news that may have happened over the past two weeks.
The third issue will be more of a wildcard. We are looking at putting out Unpacked Explains, Interviews, or Special Editions, depending on the news cycle that month.
The fourth issue will return to the usual Unpacked formula, this time picking out the policy highlights of the month.
This is our plan for now, though it is subject to the ever-changing news cycle (who knows, a scandal might break?). We will keep you updated along the way and are always open to feedback, so let us know what works and what doesn’t.
2. What else?
Apart from continually tweaking our main product (the newsletter) to better serve your needs and interests, we also want to build this community.
E-mail may not be best to foster connections, and we are exploring other platforms. This includes in-person stuff – whether organised by us or someone else. We know nothing beats face-to-face interaction even as we spend so much time online (our politicians seem to know this too).
Even as we do that, we plan to continue with a section called Unpacked Asks where we put out questions that you can respond to (e.g. Who is your favourite politician and why? What is your biggest municipal problem? We’ve seen this in other newsletters and find it quite engaging and sometimes amusing.).
We’re also thinking about how we can promote our newsletter to a larger audience (it’s grown organically so far). If you’ve shared Unpacked to your friends, tell us why.
We want to better understand the demographics of our subscriber base (you guys). We have tried putting out some user surveys in the past, but take-up was mid (we understand, surveys can be a drag). Going forward, we plan to ask every new subscriber to fill in some basic demographic information when they subscribe. If you would like to share with us anyway, fill in the survey here.
3. What we’ve done so far
To round off this e-mail, we thought we’d take a short trip down memory lane, from issue #1 to today’s issue #30 on Sept 1.
Unpacked’s gears began turning in December, before we sent out the first issue on Feb 10 to all of 10 people (mostly our bosses). ST’s social media channels helped to spread the word of our launch, and we gathered about 500 subscribers in that first month.
A month later, we introduced the Community section to hear directly from you. Since then, this section has experimented with different ways of doing so. We’ve answered reader questions, put out polls, shared more about the behind-the-scenes of Unpacked, and even tried sharing some news-related puzzles.
In end-March, we hit 1,000 subscribers. We introduced some new graphics (the cute cardboard box graphics, and the swanky subheads for Second Reading and Community).
As at this e-mail, we have just over 1,700 subscribers. We’re so grateful for all of you and your interest in our newsletter.
Our best performing issue was from April 14, when we predicted that the general election would be on May 3. It remains by far our most-viewed issue and was also an exciting moment for us to stick our necks out to say something that wasn’t 100% certain, based on our reporting and sources. We’re both glad it turned out to be right.
What’s next? We hope you’re as excited as we are.
