Happy end-of-the-week-day! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

Travel media execs outline their post-pandemic plans — digitalcontentnext.org

Over the past year events have been wiped out. A lot of e-commerce stalled as purchase intent waned in the face of lockdown. And spending on entertainment grew rapidly as payments for news and information remained largely static. Small wonder then that travel media has been actively searching for ways to capitalise on those trends coming to an end.

This excellent roundup from Meena Thiruvengadam for Digital Content Next takes a look at what some of the biggest travel publications are betting on. From Condé Nast's Traveller brand investing first in travel information before pivoting back towards features that prime people to book, to Thrillist focusing on helping potentially nervous travellers back into the world, there's a vast array of ideas here.

Perhaps most important, though, is that it's given some publishers a chance to reappraise their purposes: "George Stone, Editor in Chief of National Geographic’s travel coverage, described the pandemic as a bit of a break. It offered a breather, which allowed the publication to shift gears and return to its roots. 'In a way, it gave us the opportunity to do better National Geographic storytelling. We were stepping away from consumer travel objectives, and that was a relief.'"

Publishers add more online education programs following interest spurred by the pandemic — digiday.com

As Peter's fond of saying, you should never let a good crisis go to waste. As this article from Digiday's Sara Guaglione demonstrates, publishers are seeking to capitalise on the rapid take-up of home learning over the past eighteen months by launching online education tools and series.

Sun publisher pays Sir Simon Hughes phone-hacking damages — www.theguardian.com

The publisher of The Sun has agreed to pay a former Lib Dem MP (among others) substantial damages to settle a phone-hacking claim related to the paper revealing intimate details of his personal life. NGN did so on the proviso that no details would be revealed in court and that it would not have to admit wrongdoing occurred at The Sun.

I don't know about you, but when I'm completely innocent of something I too tend to just give away vast sums to say sorry for that thing I didn't do. Makes total sense, totally believable.

‘An octopus climbing a tree’: the future of BuzzFeed’s commercial strategy — www.thedrum.com

Finally, my latest for The Drum looks at the digital publisher's commercial ambitions following the HuffPost merger. I've been critical of how the company handled HuffPost UK's news division and others in the past - but it's interesting to hear that among other things it saw 450% year-over-year growth on Amazon Prime Day 2020.

This week's episode:

Decanter Editor in Chief Chris Maillard on refreshing Future’s wine brand for its loyal readers — voices.media

In this week’s episode we hear from Decanter’s Editor in Chief Chris Maillard about the challenge of refreshing Future’s newly-acquired wine brand – without alienating its incredibly loyal readership

Eurosport’s Aude Baron discusses turning evergreen content into success in podcasting with Podinstall’s Sarah Toporoff — voices.media

For publishers with a well established content workflow, adding podcasts can seem like a daunting task. But, as this Conversations episode demonstrates, those publishers already have what is needed to create and distribute podcasts that add value to your audience and business alike.