Monday 31st July: Bauer's Stuart Forrest on clickability vs clickbait

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

P.S. There are too many good pieces for me to dedicate a full slot to this, but in the interests of fairness after including the story on Friday, the British Podcast Awards have issued an update saying they’re introducing tiered ticket prices.

Thanks to Glide Publishing Platform for sponsoring this newsletter and our ‘Big Noises’ season. Glide is an industry-leading SaaS tailored to let publishers do more and spend less by removing CMS costs and problems. Publishers using Glide direct more resources at their audiences and products, and focus on building things that make them money. You do the content, Glide does the management.

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On this week’s episode of Media Voices – the final edition of our Big Noises series – we hear from Bauer’s Global SEO Director Stuart Forrest. As Peter makes clear in his intro, Stuart has worked at most of the major publishers in the UK in a variety of different roles, which has granted him a unique insight into the good and bad practices of the industry.

He tells us about all the changes he’s seen over his career to date, why the publisher-platform tug-of-war is inevitable but subject to change, and how ‘clickability’ differs from ‘clickbait’.

That’s it from us on the podcast until our autumn season, but the newsletter will keep going as will our written content, so stay tuned!

After sending 16 issues of his newsletter Typographic & Sporadic, Designer Elliot Jay Stocks has put together something of a ‘manifesto’ for sending it that benefits both his readers and his own publishing process. Apart from the advice to keep it loose (as a daily newsletter, we’re big fans of having a predictable schedule!), there are some real gems in here worth taking note of.

Despite the best attempts of the pandemic to convert us all to virtual, it seems like in-person gatherings have regained their foothold as a key pillar in the strategies of some of the most valuable publishers. “Events are a test of whether a brand has an audience or a community, and you have a far better shot at them if you are deep in a specific area,” Brian Morrissey notes.

Okay this technically has a publish date of last month but I only read it yesterday in the latest print issue of InPublishing (my fault, it’s been sitting in the to-read pile for a month) and I wanted to share it. Six years ago, the last rites were read for the Eskdale & Liddesdale Advertiser as the owners decided they could no longer support the loss-making venture. But the community had other ideas.

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