Friday 7th October: What happens next in the Twitter takeover saga?

October 07, 2022

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

Apologies for skipping the newsletter yesterday. We were in London running our inaugural Publisher Podcast Summit. The good news is we'll be releasing all sorts of content from the event over the coming weeks. Stay tuned for updates.

Chris refused to give Mr Musk the top slot in Wednesday's newsletter, but I have no such qualms. The will-he-won't-he Twitter-buyout is the biggest media story at the moment and besides... I've almost made enough on the stock-price bounce to buy Chris and Esther lunch.

The big headline in this whole debacle is that Twitter still hasn't let Musk off the hook for reneging on his original offer. Although the billionaire's people say that Twitter must stop a Delaware court for the revived deal to go through, it looks like Twitter is holding out until it can be sure Elon 'Lucy' Musk won't pull the football away again.

The serious point in all of this is the harm it is doing the workforce at Twitter. Being treated like Charlie Brown's football can't make for a very relaxed or productive working environment.

Press Gazette says Axios has demonstrated that start-ups grounded in quality journalism can make serious money in the digital world. From a standing start in 2017, the business was sold to Cox Enterprises for $525 million this summer and Will Turvill has been talking to founder Jim VandeHei about what we can expect next.

The Drum's Kendra Clark says Meta is 'in a bit of a pickle', with users leaving Meta-owned platforms 'in droves' and Apple’s privacy-centric iOS updates eroding the company’s ability to serve targeted ads. The company hopes that new advertising formats on Instagram will help it claw back ad revenue losses. Users might have something to say about that.

The media company Recurrent Ventures, which operates a portfolio of editorial titles ranging from Popular Science to Field & Stream, eliminated the roles of 52 employees last week in a surprise round of cuts. The cuts come just two months after the firm abruptly shut Mel magazine and not much more since we spoke to CEO Lance Johnson about the company's acquisition strategy. Former staff are saying company infrastructure couldn't keep up with the speed of the company's growth.

New episode:

For this next season of the Media Voices Podcast, kindly sponsored by Poool, we’ll be publishing ten episodes exploring the biggest trends of 2022 and how they affect publishers. For this episode, we're joined by by Lara O'Reilly, senior correspondent at Insider to discuss the ad market rollercoaster ride over the past 12 months.

Media Moments 2022 - sponsored by membership & subscription suite Poool - will bring together the key events which have shaped the media and publishing industry this year. We’ll be launching it at a virtual event on November 30th. Pre-register here to get sent the report as soon as it lands.