At Dotdash Meredith, CEO Neil Vogel remembers sitting around with his management team, after $2 million in “incremental” ad revenue appeared, and wondering, “Have we hit peak Dotdash?” “We had a really great formula: make incredible content, make really great sites and experiences, and have fewer ads that work better,” Neil said. Which brings me back to late 2021, because that’s when IAC plunked down $2.7 billion to buy the storied Meredith brands : People, Entertainment Weekly, Better Homes &am...
Jul 11, 2023•49 min•Ep. 81
Last week, at The New Attention Economy in Cannes, I discussed the notion of “influencer journalism” with Semafor co-founder and editor-in-chief Ben Smith and Puck co-founder and COO Liz Gough. Some highlights from the session: The creator economy is a long term shift: “Every other media industry, starting with Hollywood 80 years ago, made this transition to a connection with individuals. Journalism, because it is the worst of the media businesses, is the last one to get there.” – Ben The legacy...
Jun 27, 2023•34 min•Ep. 80
Christine Cook joined Bloomberg Media in March as global chief revenue officer. We spoke about reasons for media optimism, how AI is an opportunity (and a threat), and how Bloomberg is approaching programmatic as the data landscape changes.
Jun 23, 2023•29 min•Ep. 79
At The New Attention Economy’s final day in Cannes, we turned the spotlight on AI with a closing session featuring Rei Inamoto, CEO of I&Co, and Myra Nussbaum, chief creative officer and president of Havas, assessed the impact AI will have on creativity. Both aren’t quite ready to proclaim a revolution just yet.
Jun 22, 2023•16 min•Ep. 78
For Hearst global chief revenue officer Lisa Howard, the shift to focus mostly on subscriptions at many publishers obscures the reality that advertising will continue to be the dominant monetization form for most media, including Hearst. Lisa discussed the power of ads and the resilience of legacy media during a live podcast recording at The New Attention Economy on Tuesday.
Jun 21, 2023•22 min•Ep. 77
In a live recording of The Rebooting Show from Cannes, Kirk McDonald, CEO of GroupM North America, seemed to wonder whether we’ve all talked ourselves into a downturn that wasn’t, "For the first half of this year, we saw behavior that anticipated a crash,” he said, even if we’ve had a “pretty smooth landing.” “The thing we were worried about didn’t happen,” he added. “But I don’t think we’re seeing the kind of fulsome growth [we’ve seen in the past]”
Jun 20, 2023•29 min•Ep. 76
Anna Palmer is a journalist turned startup CEO. Along with Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan, she founded Punchbowl News in January 2021, just in time for the assault on the Capitol. Punchbowl’s obsessive focus on the Capitol, and business model that combines subscriptions with high-value issue advocacy ads led it to sprint out of the gates with a $10 million first year . Anna is more reticent about its current pace – I tried – but by all measures what Punchbowl is doing is working in a media envi...
Jun 13, 2023•50 min•Ep. 75
This episode is sponsored by Kerv , which uses artificial intelligence to identify objects within video and match them to databases, enabling for, among other uses, the creation of interactive “shoppable video” that embeds commerce in entertainment Kerv CEO Gary Mittman sees AI leading a sea change to the creative process, allowing for a movie franchise, for instance, to create sequels to the original without starting from scratch. For advertising, the changes are poised to be broader, with AI d...
Jun 06, 2023•49 min•Ep. 74
The Rebooting show is sponsored by Kerv Interactive, an AI-powered video creative technology that creates shoppable and immersive experiences within any video content. Learn more . ..... On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, Bob Guterma, CEO of The China Project, to discuss how to maintain credibility while catching flack from many sides, The China Project’s decision to leave Substack, adopting a subscription-first model and its crowdfunding efforts to raise capital from its audience . F...
May 30, 2023•46 min•Ep. 73
Thanks to Kerv for sponsoring this episode. To see Kerv's technology at work, check out Peacock's MustShop TV . If you’ll be on the Cote d’Azur next month. The New Attention Economy, presented by Kerv, will have speakers from the Financial Times, Uber, Paramount, Havas and more. Let’s talk ‘Active Attention’ Economy at Cannes Join us for three days of exclusive thoughtful conversations and cocktails with the industry’s best to discuss the Attention Economy and the future of publishing, stre...
May 23, 2023•55 min•Ep. 72
Last week, I was in Chicago to attend the Omeda OX6 conference, where I recorded a live version of The Rebooting Show podcast. Jessica Sibley, CEO of Time, joined me to discuss her first six months at the 100-year-old publishing brand. Among the issues we discussed: The benefits of being a “legacy” brand The importance of a brand clearly standing for something Why taking down a paywall was right for Time’s strategy How Time is building a diversified business strategy Why commerce content needs t...
May 18, 2023•41 min•Ep. 71
Will Hayward, the CEO of Private Media, an independent publishing company in Australia that publishes several titles, including politics-focused Crikey , recently faced the intriguing and likely slightly terrifying experience of being the subject of a defamation lawsuit filed by Lachlan Murdoch over a Crikey opinion column that held the Murdochs were “unindicted co-conspirators” of the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol. Murdoch withdrew the lawsuit in the aftermath of Fox settling its case with Dom...
May 16, 2023•43 min•Ep. 70
When I sent over topics for the latest episode of The Rebooting show to Axios’s Sara Fischer and Vox’s Peter Kafka, Peter replied with an editorial note: “maybe something deliberately upbeat to counteract a very gloomy pod.” Listeners, we tried, but journalists don’t naturally do upbeat. Some highlights: This is a good time to be niche: “Niche media is thriving in an era where generalist media seems to be declining,” Sara said. “Companies that launch with a little bit of money, but in a targeted...
May 09, 2023•45 min•Ep. 69
The Bitter Southerner began as a passion project for a group of natives to the South who were, well, a bit bitter about how it was often caricatured or reduced to its historical legacy as the birthplace of American slavery. That’s a past that is unfortunately still alive and is an indelible part of the American story. The Bitter Southerner confronts such issues head on but while telling a more nuanced and expansive story of this unique and yes complicated part of the world. Kyle Tibbs Jones, a c...
May 02, 2023•37 min•Ep. 68
News on its own is often not a great business. Advertisers want to avoid it, and the humans required to recreate the product every day drive up costs, and subscriptions can only go so far. New York University journalism professor and media analyst Jay Rosen sees the need to discover new sources of subsidies to maintain a healthy news ecosystem. In this discussion, we cover that issue as well as the end of BuzzFeed News, the prospects for The Messenger and Semafor, why Trump hacked conventional p...
Apr 25, 2023•53 min•Ep. 67
Brian Hanly, CEO of Bullish Studio, is creating media brands from memes, working with a stable of finance meme accounts in particular to build media properties. I got to know Brian over the pandemic, and quickly became fascinated by Bullish’s business. No doubt much of the fintech media segment was helped along by ZIRP and crypto craziness, but the use of memes as the starting point for lightweight media businesses is a good template as we enter into what’s sure to be another crazy cycle for the...
Apr 18, 2023•45 min•Ep. 66
Last Thursday, I spoke to Substack CEO Chris Best to get a better understanding of where the company is going. We recorded the interview before Elon Musk threw a temper tantrum over Substack's coming Twitter competitor. Chris and I spoke about a couple of important issues to me: ads and bundling. On ads, Chris explains that Substack is trying to occupy a part of the market on an opposite pole from the attention grabbing part of digital media defined by platforms like Facebook and TikTok. But he ...
Apr 11, 2023•47 min•Ep. 65
Joe Ruffalo was recently named senior vice president and general manager of Nexstar's NewsNation digital operations and The Hill. At both, Nexstar is looking to occupy a lane of "non-partisan" news outlets, betting on a middle ground that seems to have disappeared from the news landscape, as personality-driven opinion has proven far more lucrative and scalable.
Apr 04, 2023•38 min•Ep. 64
Claire Atkinson, chief media correspondent at Insider, has long experience covering the ins and outs of the media industry. In this episode, we discuss the state of affairs as different parts of the media business are between eras. What’s next for Vice and the other ailing big digital publishers? The usual answer would be more consolidation, but this time might call an bundling of assets to realize more value. Streaming’s next phase. Disney’s shifts after Bob Iger’s return indicate a new era of ...
Mar 23, 2023•46 min•Ep. 63
Dave Finocchio was CEO of Bleacher Report, one of the success stories of the last era of digital publishing. Dave is back in publishing with The Cool Down, which aims to be a mainstream publishing brand for climate conscious consumers. We discuss the lessons from Bleacher, how to strike the right tone to avoid both alarmism and lecturing, and how publishing business models have shifted.
Mar 16, 2023•46 min•Ep. 62
Patrick Trousdale started The Daily Upside in 2019 after working in investment banking at Guggenheim. Patrick saw the success Morning Brew and The Hustle had with newsletters that produced business, finance and entrepreneurial news for younger audiences. He started The Daily Upside with the idea there was space for a newsletter that catered more to investors as a lens instead of general business and finance. The Daily Upside is now at the point where it can incrementally expand. It started that ...
Feb 28, 2023•43 min•Ep. 61
Axel Bard Bringéus is co-founder of Informed , a Berlin-based company with $5.3 million in backing that’s building a service for subscribers to pay for access to paywalled content from top tier publishers like Bloomberg, The Economist, The Financial Times and more. Informed is focused on people in non-English speaking countries who graze on English-language news content yet not enough to consider a subscription. This is a smart approach. Publishers always struggle to make money from internationa...
Feb 21, 2023•45 min•Ep. 60
On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, I spoke to Darren Samuelsohn, a longtime politician reporter who was most recently head of Insider’s ill-fated DC bureau. Darren and I spoke about his new newsletter devoted to journalism , the decision to take an independent path, and the topsy-turvy career that’s journalism.
Feb 14, 2023•36 min•Ep. 59
Bill Bishop likes to make clear he’s not a journalist. Instead, he’s a China analyst who brings his deep understanding of the country to an English-speaking language through his newsletter, Sinocism . In 2017, Bill became the “original Substacker” after teaming up with Substack’s co-founders to be the first newsletter on the platform. On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, Bill and I discuss his independent path, and how a subscription model has created different dynamics as opposed to hi...
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 58
The Dispatch is a three-year-old publication focused on bringing fact-based politics news and analysis from a center-right perspective. Steve Hayes, CEO of The Dispatch, joined the podcast to discuss how it's managed to climb to near 40,000 paying subscribers with a healthy 17 percent conversion rate from its free email list. Steve discusses the importance of aligning the editorial mission and business model, occupying the middle ground between the institutional media brands and the so-called cr...
Jan 31, 2023•56 min•Ep. 57
I had a conversation with Krystal Olivieri, global chief innovation officer at GroupM, about whether advertisers would conveniently forget all those promises they made during flush times to support local news. The takeaway: Advertisers will cut here and there, and that’s outside of the control of publishers, but news publishers can help themselves by having better ways of showing the value they’re creating for advertisers. Check out the full conversation on this week’s episode of The Rebooting S...
Jan 24, 2023•39 min•Ep. 56
Substack’s Reid DeRamus talks about growing newsletter audiences. Reid and I have spoken for the past two years on this topic, going back to before Substack bought his company Yem, which was focused on building a growth engine for newsletter writers. The thing about growth, at least I’ve found, is it takes a long time for most people. It’s taken me over two years to get 12,700 subscribers. I always tell people to take with a grain of salt the overnight success stories of newsletters that amass 2...
Jan 10, 2023•54 min•Ep. 55
Scott Brodbeck got into local news a dozen years ago, after working in local broadcast news in Washington DC. “I looked at the direction of the industry and didn't love where local was going and ended up leaving and just on a total impulse to start my own site,” he said. “it was like a one day thing.” After this prototypical shower inspiration, Scott launched a local site to cover Arlington, Virginia. Since then, Scott has built Local News Now into a clutch of local news sites for the Virginia s...
Jan 03, 2023•55 min•Ep. 54
In 2016, Max Kabat and Maise Crow moved to Marfa, a small arts town in west Texas, and a couple years later made a bold call. They bought the local newspaper, The Big Bend Sentinel. Ever since, they've been building out their take on a sustainable local news model by pairing the weekly newspaper with a cafe and events space. Max and I discuss the model, the challenges of operating entwined but separate businesses, and whether this could be a blueprint that could work in towns with similar charac...
Dec 20, 2022•49 min•Ep. 53
There’s the understandable urge to “do something” to fix the difficult situation the news business finds itself in. Government intervention in markets has historically been less common in the U.S., but we’re in a time of aggressive industrial policy becoming the norm with measures like the Chips Act and the climate bill. Enter the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a bill that was attached to the defense bill winding its way through Congress . The JCPA would force big tech platforms to...
Dec 13, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 52
