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Australia's news bargaining law one year in: money covers more jobs, but deals are murky and riches aren't spread equally — www.cjr.org

For those of you in Canada and the UK, this is a glimpse into our future. Australia's News Media Bargaining Code has enabled Aussie news orgs to extract more than $200 million from the tech giants over the past year. Some publishers are using the money to fund up to 30% of their editorial salaries.

It may look like a success story, but "it’s a murky deal, with critical details guarded like they’re nuclear launch codes," writes Bill Grueskin. If you want to find out how much money has gone to various news organisations, or indeed to check that money is going on journalism rather than executive salaries, you're out of luck.

The cash isn't spread equally either. SBS, one of Australia's two major public broadcasters, was shut out by Facebook. A not-for-profit providing valuable info on Indigenous medical issues got nothing at all. “It’s like a brown paper bag gets stuffed with money, is shoved across the table, and then the platforms can say, ‘Now just shut the fuck up,’” said one executive.

This is bad legislation poorly executed. I have no doubt we'll see the fallout from it for many years to come.

Reach plc launches new minimum page view targets for reporters — www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk

Talking of terrible policies, this news made my heart sink. Reach have apparently learned nothing from the past fifteen years and has announced a scheme giving news reporters minimum benchmarks of between 80,000 and 850,000 page views per month, depending on their title. Page views are a bad primary metric for local news organisations to rely on, as it incentivises clickbait and non-local stories to drive traffic.

Twitter Spaces: Pros and cons of the community-building live audio platform — pressgazette.co.uk

A comprehensive platform profile by Press Gazette. This explores the details (so far) of Twitter's live audio feature, and which publishers have been using it. We'd be interested to hear your experiences too, either of joining Twitter spaces or hosting one for your audience - just hit 'Reply' to this email to reach us.

Tortoise's Katie Vanneck-Smith on podcasts, subscriptions, and the company's growing intelligence division — www.fipp.com

Katie is always excellent, and this interview is no exception. Of note is Tortoise's growing Intelligence division, which is a more b2b-focused proposition than their 'main' consumer product. This idea of vertical memberships is really interesting and I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out for them.

This week's podcast:

Mansueto Ventures CEO Stephanie Mehta on leading a modern media business — voices.media

This week we hear from Stephanie Mehta, CEO & Chief Content Officer of Manseuto Ventures, parent of Inc. and Fast Company. She talked about going from an editorial career to the CEO role, the changes in leadership attitudes to publishing over the last decade, and what the revenue models for Inc. and Fast Company look like post-pandemic.

Lessons from award-winning podcasts: The Telegraph's Theodora Louloudis — voices.media

The winner of the Publisher Podcast Hero of the Year award in 2021’s Publisher Podcast Awards was Theodora Louloudis, Head of Audio at The Telegraph. I caught up with her to explore how Covid changed The Telegraph’s audio strategy, what it’s like working with columnists and journalists, and how they decide which podcasts to make.