Monday 29th March: The uphill battle for media businesses gets steeper

March 29, 2021

Good Monday morning! Today's roundup is brought to you by Chris.

It's unsustainable. We're creaking at the seams. There's a future in pliant, client journalism perhaps, where the media buoys up the government that buoys up the oligarchies that dictate the government, and are financially rewarded in turn. But for independent media outlets, dependent on scant subscription and temperamental ad revenue, the future is far from assured.

It's shit scary. We might want to avert our gaze but soon there'll be nowhere left to turn where the scars of these cuts and failures aren't evident. On his Substack (which is its own story) Josh Sternberg sets out the number of journalism job losses and posits the worst is yet ahead of us:

"One of the questions going forward for all the digital darlings: when your journalism is a commodity (as in: strip away the byline and masthead, and you can’t differentiate), how do you attract ad and subscription dollars?" Happy Monday everyone!

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are being heralded as the future of funding original content. For the sake of not having a huge row, let's just say that's doubtful and also ignores some serious issues with how they're powered and managed. Despite that, the NYT has seen some success with them so far. At least monetarily.

No, we don't understand it either. This is a head-scratcher.

Everyone needs to do more to amplify the voices of the communities we need the most. That's why - almost shockingly after the cavalcade of terrible news lately (see above) - we're delighted to see Poynter putting its money where its mouth is.

Throwback... Monday?

There's no new episode this week as we're on Easter break. Instead, here's one of the episodes of which I'm proudest - a podumentary looking at the realities of being a freelancer at a time when rates haven't increased but the pressure to generate story ideas has intensified.

We have modest dreams here at Media Voices. We'll never go toe-to-toe with the giants of the media world in terms of scale. But we believe that there's an ever more vital need for independent media analysis - so if you can chuck us a few quid to help us keep going we'll love you forever.