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- Monday 19th February: The Paper on print, community, and eating competitions
Monday 19th February: The Paper on print, community, and eating competitions
Good morning! This beautiful newsletter is brought to you by Chris. You might have noticed our bright, shiny new logo up there. We think 2024 is going to be our year, so we’re investing in upgrades and refreshes across the board. As ever, that’s all predicated on the support of our listeners and readers, so please do consider sharing our latest episode or this newsletter. It always helps us out!
The podcast is back, baby! This week we hear from two of the three editors of The Paper, an intimidatingly-sized Welsh indie magazine. Oliver Gabe and Owen Davies take us through the annual publishing plan, why they launched the title with a live variety show, and what makes the title feel truly distinctive in a saturated marketplace.
It’s about the most unique print magazine I’ve ever heard of. As the pair describe it, it has a sort of anarchic, experimental feel — though as Peter interviews them it becomes clear that their audience strategy is extremely well thought-through. There has to be some reason why their sole reader in Iceland chooses to support them, after all!
In the news roundup Esther, Peter and Chris discuss some items of relatively good media news, before segueing into the bad. We ask whether generalist media titles are one end of a seesaw and bespoke local and specialist titles are the other, and discuss why 'distinctiveness' and 'community' are too often used to paper over cracks in media business models.
There’s a fair few little nuggets in here, but the biggest takeaway is that cable television is still haemorrhaging viewership and advertising revenue. Thompson reportedly wants to turn CNN into an American version of the BBC, which apparently begins by undertaking a very BBC-like action: heavily trimming costs.
You have to wonder what an AI model trained on Reddit content would look like. I love the subreddits I’m on, but even I’d admit that content created by any models trained on them would be messy at best. Relatedly, here’s a look at how AI is shaking the foundations of robots.txt, one of the primary building blocks of permissions online.
One publisher is about to embark into the world of podcasting and is looking for some advice from other publishers on getting started. Join the conversation.
This news broke just after we’d recorded this week’s episode, but rest assured we’ll be discussing any developments as they happen. This is a fascinating idea — the marriage of one of the most prominent digital pureplays with a newspaper that went digital-only back in 2016. That’s a potent combination, and makes sense for the Independent’s revenue ambitions. As ever, though, the trick will be making that blend of two distinct properties work.
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