Happy Friday! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Esther.

Medium’s Scott Lamb looks at the trends driving digital platforms and media — www.fipp.com

This is a great write-up of one of my favourite FIPP Congress sessions. Scott Lamb has an incredible CV, having worked at companies like Salon and BuzzFeed, and now Medium as the company's Vice President of Publisher Growth and Strategy.

Lamb discussed the opportunities for individual creators, the role of platforms in changing consumer behaviour, and what a decade working at BuzzFeed taught him about how content impacts people's lives and what they find useful.

He also talked about where Medium sees itself in the platform-publisher world. “I don’t see Medium as a threat to publishers,” he said. “The pitch to them is we have an audience you can reach and directly monetise and maybe even attract into your funnel... We want people to feel that they are in the brand experience of the publication they are reading, not that Medium is this intermediary between the two. We see Medium as being additive."

For me, the jury is still out on Medium's long-term subscription strategy and its benefits for publishers. But with Lamb's rich insights from working in publishing so long, this is a thought-provoking write-up.

Alan Rusbridger on how to manage perpetual newsroom change: 'I'm your leader, trust me - is not going to work' — www.pressgazette.co.uk

Alan Rusbridger sets out what he learned from trying to steer The Guardian through 20 years of an 'unrelenting force ten blizzard of change'. "All change is difficult. Perpetual change is twice as hard – as well as being exhausting and, at times, quite frightening," he comments. Good lessons for leaders at businesses of any shape and size.

How Vox Media uses its Podcast Network to grow franchises — digitalcontentnext.org

My latest for DCN. The Vox Media Podcast Network is well-established. However, there is a great deal of strategic thinking and consideration that goes into developing new shows. This has been highlighted recently with the launch of a new narrative podcast, Go For Broke, from Epic Magazine.

Father-daughter duo rebrands Bedford magazine, doubles ad-page count — nypost.com

Michael Kaplan and his daughter Casey took over Bedford, a tiny magazine named after Martha Stewart’s hometown in New York, changed its name to Bedford and New Canaan and doubled its ad-page count in the first issue. I love success stories, especially ones where people have spotted smart windows of opportunity like this.

This week's podcast(s):

Platformer founder Casey Newton on going solo with a paid newsletter covering the tech giants — voices.media

This week, we hear from Casey Newton, founder of Platformer. He talks to us about what made him decide to take the plunge, how his first week with his new newsletter has gone, and what a Platformer podcast model would look like.

Nature’s Benjamin Thompson, new on Lessons from award-winning publisher podcasts — voices.media

Benjamin Thomson, host of the Nature podcast, talks about putting storytelling at the heart of your podcast, supporting commercial objectives by making really interesting podcasts and launching Coronapod to cover COVID-19 developments.