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

The New York Times and the unending blizzard of takes — www.cjr.org

News content is, to some extent, generic. Facts are facts and straight reportage is often interchangeable between newspapers. To stand out amid the sea of competitors many newspapers rely on their star columnists and the allure of the Opinion section - a situation that has arguably been exacerbated by the state of digital publishing. But what happens when the Opinion section tips from draw to drawback? This piece from CJR examines just that:

"The opinion section was producing less than 10 percent of the Times’ total output, yet opinion pieces represented 20 percent of all stories read by subscribers—which meant that the takes were punching well above their weight." However, as the piece makes clear, that success has led to conflict between the opinion and news desks, and some brand damage has occurred as a result.

I wrote about this for DCN back in the summer, and the situation has only become more acute since. There is considerable incentive for columnists to be controversial or deliberately strident on some arbitrary issue, because they are rewarded for driving views. That controversy may be good for newspaper businesses in the short-term. However, when it undermines trust in the news side of the house, it undermines the business as a whole.

What has 2020 done to print magazines? — wwd.com

If you've kept up with the podcast over the past year you'll know how surprised we were to hear that Hearst UK's Prima magazine was increasing its publishing frequency. This article from WWD highlights what an anomaly it really is, with 58% of US magazine titles reducing its frequency. There are other good insights in here, well worth checking out.

5 things you need to know about those ‘explosive’ Disney+ numbers — www.thedrum.com

There's lots to dig into in the recent raft of announcements from Disney, five of which are examined in this article from John Glenday for The Drum. The most obvious takeaway is that Baby Yoda* (pictured) has accelerated Disney's plans to dominate the streaming video landscape - potentially at the expense of cinemas.

Axios diversifies with a new tool to help companies communicate (paywalled link) — digiday.com

Axios has quietly become one of the most interesting publishers around, with its raft of newsletters fuelling experimentation and investment. It is now launching a SaaS offering aimed at helping companies "communicate better". We'll watch this latest effort at diversification closely.

This week's podcast:

The Economist’s Deputy Editor Tom Standage on why newspapers should predict the future — voices.media

As well as its flagship paper, The Economist also publishes future-gazing issues looking at what to expect the next year and even further into the future. This week Tom Standage, its Deputy Editor and Head of Digital Strategy tells us about the reason why it believes doing so is central its mission, what needs to happen to prevent journalists revisiting familiar mistakes in the near future, and why blaming the Duopoly for revenue doldrums is unhelpful.

You can buy us coffee every month (if you want) — ko-fi.com

Between The Publisher Podcast Awards, this newsletter, the podcast every week and our other projects and full-time jobs, we can sometimes feel a little exhausted. If you want to kick in to buy us a brew, we'd really appreciate it ☕

*yes I know his name isn't actually Baby Yoda, please do not email me about this, I just didn't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't watched the show yet