Happy Friday! Chris here. We know there's endless discussion happening about Google and Facebook in Australia - and we'll yell about it on next week's podcast. But there are other things happening, too, so this particular newsletter is a Duopoly-free zone. Mostly.

The movers and shakers of US local news — www.mediapost.com

In the US, VC firm Alden Global Capital has acquired local news group Tribune Publishing for a $630 million all-cash deal. The big worry is that Alden continues its long-running strategy of gutting newsrooms for cost savings, even at newspapers that are outperforming industry averages. It comes as a collaborative project between The Post & Courier and smaller newspapers explicitly names news deserts as a cause for the team-up - news deserts that cuts inflicted by Alden and others have created.

Two years ago, Alden failed in its hostile takeover of Gannett, the U.S.' biggest newspaper publisher by circulation. Since then, Gannett has quietly launched some new endeavours that indicate its willingness to experiment. The most interesting is an advertising team-up with McClatchy to offer access to a combined 300+ local audiences.

Writing for Poynter on the deal, Rick Edmonds said: "Both sides of the deal stand to benefit. Digital national sales have been a strength for Gannett in recent years. With USA Today’s online content still free, traffic volume is huge... Could this lead to bigger and better things, wedding bells even, for the two chains? Maybe. But it makes a whole lot of sense even if not."

Capitalizing on context: What if the value of news isn’t what’s new? — digitalcontentnext.org

Oh hey, I wrote this one. Based off news that Kenya's largest national titles is putting a paywall behind anything on its site over a week old, I ask if the industry is too focused on 'breaking' news which is important but fundamentally valueless to audiences. What if, instead, we focus on getting people to pay for what really matters - context.

The podcast wars will come down to ad tech, not exclusive content — www.theverge.com

Another week, another huge podcast acquisition: iHeartMedia acquired Triton Digital for $230 million, giving the company deeper roots in the podcast advertising space. Writing for The Verge, Ashley Carman argues that adtech will ultimately determine who reigns supreme in podcasting, not exclusive content. Bad news for Spotify.

After keyword blocking, what’s next for brand safety and the ‘asshole of the internet’? — www.thedrum.com

Great headline here. We've spoken about keyword blocking on the podcast fairly regularly, but as John McCarthy asks - what if that's just the tip of the iceberg? The tools that allow ad-blocking don't take context into account, and when that collides with a growing belief that 'brand-safety' trumps every other consideration, we have a big problem.

This week's podcast:

Director of the Reuters Institute Rasmus Kleis Nielsen on why we get news subscriptions wrong — voices.media

This week Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Director at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, tells us where newspapers are going wrong in their subscription marketing, why there’s no easy solution to the need for internal change in newsrooms, and why Nordic countries outperform when it comes to the membership mentality.

Want to know how we built the Media Voices Podcast? — creatorcollabhouse.substack.com

Simon Owens has interviewed Esther about how we got started and how we grew the podcast into the amazing media juggernaut you see before you. She's talking growth, guests, business models... all the cool stuff you want to know about your favourite media focused podcast. Check it out and ask Esther a question.