Good morning. Thursday's Media Roundup is brought to you by Peter.

JPI Media reports pre-tax loss of £47.7m — pressgazette.co.uk

In its first financial statement since buying Johnston Press assets out of administration in 2018, regional press group JPI Media has shown a loss of £47.7 million.

After selling the i to DMG for around £49 million, the new group paid off £45 million in outstanding debt and spend about £6 million on restructuring. Following significant cost cutting, the plan now is a “digital acceleration” across three divisions – North Midlands and South Yorkshire, North East, and Scotland.

With more than 1 million registered users the group has already put paywalls up on 12 of its websites, with improved audience engagement and, ultimately, subscriptions seen as the way forward for whoever ends up running the properties (JPI is currently searching for a buyer for the rest of its assets).

In the statement, JPI director David Duggins said the business is investing in growing digital, “while protecting its revenue and cash flow from print publishing operations”. Important given print advertising and circulation remain 70% of the publisher's revenue.

Immediate Media’s first-party data strategy — www.thedrum.com

Talking of scale, Immediate Media prefers niche and, in the approaching cookieless future, the company looks well placed to monetise its audiences directly. Matthew Rance, head of commercial data at Immediate Media, has been telling the Drum how it built its own first-party data ad business.

Insider Inc. set to buy Morning Brew newsletter startup — www.wsj.com

Business Insider parent Insider Inc. is close to acquiring a controlling stake in Morning Brew, a five-year old email newsletter publisher. The terms being discussed would value the business at over $75 million - that's about $30 for every subscriber to the company's flagship Morning Brew newsletter.

Hyperlocal magazines merged to make it through lockdown — www.journalism.co.uk

Returning to the local press, seven hyperlocal titles in Brighton and Hove have been merged into two to offer local businesses increased reach for less money and give the merged titles a better shot at making it to the other side of the pandemic. Maybe scale, so long as it stays at a hyperlocal level, can work.

This week's pod:

Platformer founder Casey Newton on going solo with a paid newsletter covering the tech giants — voices.media

This week, we hear from Casey Newton, founder of Platformer. He talks to us about what made him decide to take the plunge, how his first week with his new newsletter has gone, and what a Platformer podcast model would look like.

Nature’s Benjamin Thompson, new on Lessons from award-winning publisher podcasts — voices.media

Benjamin Thomson, host of the Nature podcast, talks about putting storytelling at the heart of your podcast, supporting commercial objectives by making really interesting podcasts and launching Coronapod to cover COVID-19 developments.