Thursday 7th September: Introducing a new media community

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Launching this has been on our wishlist for years, and I’m so excited it’s finally happened. I had the realisation we just needed to get on and do it - the UX is far from flawless, but getting stuck on making it perfect would mean we’d never get there.

So here we have it: a good, old-fashioned forum. I’ve set out the reasoning about what we want to achieve, why now, and how you can get involved. But most importantly, we really want it to be useful, whether that’s by connecting you with fellow industry professionals or finding you your next great listen.

There’s already some good chat in there about everything from Google Analytics 4 to the new Blur album and whether local news giants should be allowed to die. Come join in!

The surprise for me here was that the rollout of the News tab in the UK had happened at all - despite being a daily user, I had to actively go hunting for it this afternoon to confirm its existence. It looks like Meta’s payments to publishers to appear in the tab were merely a short-term appeasement.

If you like the sound of this game, I can highly recommend you add the board game ‘Codenames’ to your Christmas list as an ‘IRL’ version excellent for playing with groups. The NYT’s Head of Games talks to Nieman Lab about the rules he has for new games and why success is so important to them.

For creators, yes. For publishers, no. Every major platform - Snap, TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube - now offers payouts for creators. Don’t get too excited though - only 12% of creators earn more than $50,000 a year from online platforms.

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