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Be wary when media executives extol the importance of print in their portfolios — www.mediapost.com

This has been an interesting read, particularly because we've actually covered a fair amount of print stories in this newsletter over the past year - some of them even good ones. The Manchester Mill launched a print edition to mark its success, and beyond the one-off iterations many of our magazine focused guests have found a level of stability when it comes to balancing costs with the appeal of a print product.

But writing for MediaPost, Tony Silber points out that for the mass market print's future is not so rosy: "It is not news to anyone that there has been a pronounced shift in readership and advertising from print to digital, and as a result, for a few important brands, print is no longer serving the brand’s core purpose. More than anything else, that accurately signals print’s future. If print no longer serves a brand’s core purpose for some of Dotdash Meredith’s most important titles, how will it serve the remainder?"

Anyone writing in media gets pushback when we talk about the decline of print, both from print idealists and from cynics that doth protest too much about their own portfolios. But as with Reach Plc's results, the long tail of print decline isn't suddenly going to be reversed across the industry, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

Can newspapers ever be “essential” apps on smartphones? — digitalcontentnext.org

My latest for DCN asks if smartphone manufacturers would ever consider news apps 'essential' and unable to be deleted in the same way that, say, Samsung considers TikTok to be essential. The long and short of it is - news isn't all that high up hardware manufacturers' priority lists...

BuzzFeed Studios plans next major podcast push, inks deal with Acast — www.hollywoodreporter.com

BuzzFeed Studios and the podcast company Acast have struck a multiyear deal for a slate of six podcasts. It's a recognition of the fact that audio is increasingly lucrative, particularly when underpinned by good adtech - but also of the fact that the space is getting ever more competitive, and you need a provider like Acast on side.

The war in Ukraine doesn’t need your ‘likes’ — www.washingtonpost.com

There's a lot in this column I disagree with, not least the idea that people shouldn't be allowed to deal with vicarious trauma however they're able. What it does do, though, is demonstrate that there are many clout-chasers out there - and that newspapers are competing with individuals using the war for their own ends for attention.

This week's podcast:

6AM City Co-Founder Ryan Heafy on creating a local newsletter launch playbook — voices.media

This week’s guest is Ryan Heafy, Co-Founder and COO of 6AM City, which is just about to hit 1 million subscribers across its 24 daily newsletters. We spoke about his unconventional route into media (via Black Hawk helicopters), and how it helped 6AM launch in 16 cities in a year.

Buy the Media Voices team a virtual coffee — ko-fi.com

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