Near the beginning of each year, Northern Woodlands Communications and Circulation Director Emily Rowe shares reports with the rest of our staff, offering a comprehensive look at website traffic, magazine and e-newsletter subscriptions, and social media followers and engagement. These reports reflect Emily’s hard work – in the compiling of the data, of course, but also in the robust efforts she has led to boost our outreach and to grow our circulation in the first place. This year, the metrics give us reason to feel positive about the health of our nonprofit and about meeting our mission to educate the public about forests.
Website views per visitor, average engagement time per session, e-newsletter subscriptions, gift subscriptions, and social media followers and interaction all have increased in the past year. High demand exists for reporting and creative content connecting people to the woods, which our magazine fulfills, and with its freely available content, our website remains a go-to place for answers about the northeastern forest – regardless of readers’ subscription status or financial ability.
While hundreds of thousands of people still reach our site annually, traffic declined in 2025. We can attribute much of that decline to artificial intelligence tools siphoning off visitors who would otherwise reach us by way of search engines – our biggest discovery pathway. Most prominently, the “AI Overview” dominates what users see on Google results pages, and fewer and fewer people seeking information on forests navigate past it to get to Northern Woodlands – even if that AI response relies upon Northern Woodlands material or it produces an inaccurate or incomplete answer.
Fortunately, unlike so many for-profit media companies with digital advertising, we don’t depend on “clicks” for revenue. Paid print subscriptions and advertising have held steady, and numerous people like you continue to support our nonprofit financially. The AI boom hasn’t changed that.
Nevertheless, the technological leaps in the past few years generate questions about what the futures of journalism, art, and education look like – and what Northern Woodlands can provide within those futures. In a time of shortened attention spans, quick and easy answers, and a de-emphasis on rigor in research, we believe that Northern Woodlands offers substance, reason to slow down, and incidental encounters with fascinating things people didn’t set out to find. The data, reader feedback, and our own confidence in what we do bear this out. You may open an issue of our magazine for the wildlife content or your favorite column, say, but then learn something about innovative forest products in passing. And the same may be true when you visit our website, which hosts an extensive archive of past magazine and online-only content. As Anthony Chapman notes in his letter to the editor in this issue of the magazine, “I accidentally came across this very pleasing article – you know, one click leads to another, and then you’re here somehow.” The numbers – including the numbers of clicks such as Mr. Chapman’s – tell us how we’re doing, but they only tell us part of it. You tell us the rest.