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

The BuzzFeed News App is going away — www.buzzfeednews.com

BuzzFeed News hasn't been a huge part of the conversation for a while now - or at least not how it might like. Despite the recognition it has rightly earned for its journalistic work in the past, over the past few months BuzzFeed has instead been the subject of stories about its IPO being bad for its employees, and for the closure of various branches and Huffington Post UK.

Despite all that, there's still a lot of work being done internally to serve its core audience (even if Peretti doesn't care). This update from Sara Yasin, managing editor of BuzzFeed News, and its global news curation director Brandon Wall, explains why it's transitioning to a strategy of distribution on the main BuzzFeed app:

"At the start of 2016, BuzzFeed News formed the News Curation team, which combined the mobile, social, and homepage teams. The mobile team’s dedication to clarity, transparency, and telling it like it is became central to that new team’s strategy. That same voice lives on through all of the places where you can find BuzzFeed News — whether that’s in our social media posts, newsletters, and, of course, push notifications."

Substack’s ideology — every.to

Substack took some flak the other day for its change in direction. It was accused of effectively trying to ringfence email, putting a final nail in the coffin of the open internet. But as Nathan Baschez argues here, there's more to it than that - it's about navigating between a series of difficult choices for the platform. He's wrong about push notifications though, nobody needs those.

Dysfunctional dynamics continue to blight ad tech’s prospects — digiday.com

It's not a shocker that ad tech still isn't delivering on its promises. From the total opacity of segments of the buying process to still extant issues around measurement, it's not a particularly friendly market. This piece on Digiday attempts to explain why.

Publishers reveal how podcast pennies are now turning into big money — pressgazette.co.uk

This piece on Press Gazette includes insights from our very own Peter Houston on how we've turned Media Voices into a viable business on the back of a smallish but valuable audience. And if you so happen to be one of that audience - thank you so much! We love you.

New Conversations episode:

The next steps for publisher email: Passendo's Andreas Jürgensen and Anders Rasmussen talk monetising inventory and protecting privacy with Access Intelligence's Michael Ring — voices.media

Building audience engagement with email is high on every publisher’s agenda. But building revenue with email doesn’t get nearly the same attention. In this special Conversations episode, Chris is joined by Passendo's Andreas Jürgensen, Anders Rantzau Rasmussen, and Access Intelligence’s Michael Ring to discuss how publishers are growing their bottom line by optimising and automating in-email ad serving.

Lessons from award-winning podcasts: The Telegraph's Theodora Louloudis — voices.media

The winner of the Publisher Podcast Hero of the Year award in 2021’s Publisher Podcast Awards was Theodora Louloudis, Head of Audio at The Telegraph. Peter caught up with her to explore how Covid changed The Telegraph’s audio strategy, what it’s like working with columnists and journalists, and how they decide which podcasts to make.