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Thursday 19th January: Look after your editorial staff
Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther.
Haymarket's new podcasting brand PodPod have produced some excellent features and episodes over the past few months - I can highly recommend this episode with The Guardian’s head of audio Nicole Jackson as a good place to start if you're interested in the work publishers are doing with podcasts.
Their most recent episode with the Empire Film Podcast team is also very good. But when I was listening to it yesterday, I was sad to hear that issues of crushing workload that ex Empire EiC Terri White discussed with us over a year ago are still a real issue for the team. I very much doubt it's a question of affordability - the Empire podcast appears to be phenomenally successful.
I love the Empire team and what they produce. But the sort of workload Hewitt describes here is a key reason why parents and caregivers get pushed out of this industry. Passionate staff are an asset to publications, but if editorial isn't properly resourced, burnout and a loss of talent is inevitable.
Dan Oshinsky started out a decade ago as BuzzFeed's new Newsletter Editor. Since then he has worked at The New Yorker and launched newsletter consultancy Inbox Collective. This post rounds up his lessons from a decade of building email teams, running tests, and sending thousands of newsletters.
Tech news site CNET has been publishing articles for generated by an unspecified AI engine for a few months. They claim that every story published under the programme has been reviewed, fact-checked and edited before being published. But there are some very basic factual errors making their way in. "If these are the sort of blunders that slip through during [this] period of peak scrutiny, what should we expect when there aren't so many eyes on the AI's work?"
As well as investing in 100 new editorial roles, Reuters is returning to its plans for a consumer-facing paywall. It's an idea they announced in 2021 before a dispute with financial data provider Refinitiv about whether introducing subscriptions would breach their news supply agreement. Refinitiv owners LSEG have since come to an agreement with Thomson Reuters about a way forward they're both happy with.
We're back! Our first guest of 2023 is Richard Reeves, CEO of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP). We spoke about the issues, roadblocks and initiatives surrounding diversity and inclusion in the media.
In the news round-up, we take a look at the Reuters Institute's latest journalism, media and technology trends and predictions. We talk about where the smart money lies, which tech trends are non-starters, and ask to what extent AI is changing the landscape of journalism.