Friday 7th May: Katherine Viner on how The Guardian has lasted 200 years

May 07, 2021

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

It wasn't that long ago that very few people would have bet on the Guardian reaching its 200th anniversary. But happily, here we are.

This week the paper (can we still call it a paper?) enters its third century and is in better shape that anyone would have predicted - about £1 billion in the bank and annual losses down to a manageable £10 or £20 million. More importantly it has more than 1 million paying readers and is the sixth biggest news website in the world.

This Press Gazette interview with editor Kath Viner gets into why she thinks the publication has lasted and what it needs to do to last another 200 years. Spoiler: it's all about reliable journalism.

Twitter's latest acquisition is Scroll, a subscription service that supports ad-free reading across a network of premier publishers, including Vox Media, Insider and The Atlantic. The deal deepens the rumours that Twitter is gearing up to develop a supercharged content consumption and discovery hub.

Netflix and Spotify might have made subscriptions mainstream, but smaller independent publishers have been having to come up with unique selling point for as long as they have existed. Here are five things we can all learn from indie innovators that have been surviving on reader revenues forever.

Apple's new privacy controls have stoked the advertiser-tracking bonfire, says Jamie Gavin at FIPP. The iOS opt-in shift that brought strong reactions from publishers and advertisers and Jamie has rounded up the most interesting to figure out what the changes really tell us about the state of the digital advertising industry.

This week's episode:

This week Twitch’s Creative Strategy Lead Jack Woodcock tells us about the opportunities for publishers around livestreaming, what lessons we can learn from the success of individual streamers, and how the team at Twitch looks to the community when creating new features.

We're looking to establish a regular meetup (virtual at first, but hopefully face-to-face in the future) for people working on podcasting in publishing companies to come together and share tips, learnings, and help each other with challenges. Our first group call is on Wednesday 26th May at 16.00 BST - learn more and RSVP on this link!