Monday 27th July: Silver linings and Scandinavian media launches

July 27, 2020

Happy Monday! Today's Media Roundup was put together by Chris.

Here's a relevance double-whammy: our latest episode (see below) features the Conversation UK's chief executive, and we discussed these cuts to the Guardian last week. In last week's episode we speculated about the reasons why it should be the Guardian's weekend issue to bear the brunt of the cuts. Now, writing for The Conversation, journalism lecturer Lee Marlow argues that doing so will effectively hamstring the Guardian's efforts to build a membership:

"A diet of news alone is not enough to grapple with the complexities and nuances of what is happening around the world. There is real value in features. The figures for the Saturday Guardian show that."

He does note, however, that features are typically more expensive to produce than straight reportage, which is likely to be the main reason the Guardian is cutting back here (in addition to sports and arts writers having counterparts in the Observer anyway). Who knows quite what impact this will have on the Guardian's membership drive, but our hearts go out to everyone affected by this latest spate of job cuts and the audience that will miss those features.

It's not just print titles that are feeling the pinch. Between a constriction in native ad spend and Amazon's cutback in affiliate revenue, BuzzFeed has announced yet more pandemic-related job cuts - despite its push for revenue diversification.

At a time when every new magazine launch has to have an ostensible socially-conscious mission, we appreciate the reasons given for Vogue Scandinavia's development: there are tons of millionaires there and everyone's very stylish. Boom.

We like to play Armchair CEO at Media Voices. This piece, featuring insight from Bustle's EVP of revenue Elizabeth Webbe Lunny, is an in-depth exploration of where the group is putting its money - and why.

This week's episode:

This week Chris Waiting, chief executive of The Conversation UK, tells us about the lessons his team is taking forward from its record-breaking corona coverage, why newsletters and live events are its focus for the near future, and what other news publishers can learn from its policy of marrying journalistic flair with scholarly insight.

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