Friday 4th December: The roadmap to a successful digital transition

December 04, 2020

TGIF! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Chris.

We've said it before - 2020 has accelerated all the trends we expected to take years to play out. That means that any publisher that had already begun the transition to a digital-first operation has hugely benefited, while those that were still overly-reliant on diminishing revenue sources have been left in the dust. That's true in the English-language markets, but as this deep dive into Mediahaus' fortunes proves, it's true in Europe as well:

"Revenue from subscriptions increased 4 percent from 2015 to 2019. Meeusen said Mediahuis will probably end up with another 4 percent increase from 2019 to 2020. Due to COVID, the increase was much higher than expected."

That's not to say that Mediahaus just happened to be in the right place at the right time. As the article by WAN-IFRA's Brian Veseling makes clear, it was a long and arduous road to success. It picks out five key lessons, relevant to any legacy organisation, in order to provide a map to anyone looking to emulate its success.

Yesterday we launched our Media Moments 2020 report, a look back all the most important media trends of the past 12 months. Our very own Esther has condensed some of those findings in this article for The Drum - well worth a read (as is the whole report, if we do say so ourselves).

Better late than never! No matter how genuine you believe Facebook is about removing misinfo (and given the leaks about it turning a blind eye to statements from Trump for expediency's sake) we can all agree that the less vaccine disinformation is shared on there, the better.

We've big fans of PressPad's campaign to diversify the media industry - we had its co-founder on the podcast last year. Now, though, it's been hard hit by the pandemic and is looking for £15k to prop up its campaign. Please do click through if you think you can help them out - and stick around tomorrow for our special Saturday edition curated by the PressPad team.

This week's podcast:

This week, we talk to Prima's Editor Jo Checkley about what factors led to the decision to increase the frequency of the magazine, how their content has encouraged a community feel among their readers, and what lessons they'll be taking from producing magazines in lockdown.

We've had an amazing raft of entries again this year, but we know there are still loads of deserving podcasts out there. If you own or produce one, get your skates on and enter at this link. We can't wait to see you at the event itself.