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Spotify is Joe Rogan's publisher — www.garbageday.email

The Spotify saga continues. Late Sunday evening, the platform released their rules and approach to Covid-19 misinformation (labels and a hub, ladies and gentlemen). Rogan also published a response. But we won't get into that here.

What's important is this 'when is a platform a publisher' debate. As the row escalates, Spotify will have to face some uncomfortable truths about what it now is. But its label scheme won't cut it in this situation, and shouldn't be compared to those of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (which I've been guilty of), as ex-Buzzfeed reporter Ryan Broderick explains:

How the Seattle Times hit 81,000 digital subscribers while avoiding ‘deep discounting’ and the ‘volume chase’ — pressgazette.co.uk

The Seattle Times is the latest publisher to say they are focusing on revenue rather than subscriber numbers, but are nonetheless seeing strong growth for the latter. "There are all kinds of terrible things that you can do to your long-term viability and sustainability that will drive that volume number," said the Seattle Times' senior VP of Product Kati Erwert, explaining why they aren't oriented around subscriber numbers.

The rise of science-based investigative journalism — gijn.org

The idea of non-scientists digging into complex scientific data and tools to draw their own conclusions makes me incredibly twitchy, especially given some of the behaviour from the media we've seen during the pandemic. Despite that, there are some interesting case studies in here of journalists diving in to scientific findings and using tools to carry out investigative reporting.

What does Google’s new ‘page experience’ metric mean for publishers? — www.journalism.co.uk

From February, pages that load quicker will be ranked higher on search engines. Joseph Cummins looks at what this will mean for news publishers. I particularly enjoyed his conclusion: "If readers can find content that speaks to them such as podcasts, newsletters and exclusives, that is a more powerful tool than a strong SEO ranking."

This week's podcast:

The Ferret's Fact Checking Lead Alastair Brian on truth, the media, and trust — voices.media

This week’s guest is Alastair Brian, Fact Checking Lead at The Ferret. He spoke about out the realities of modern fact-checking (it’s like Sisyphus on steroids), how to win over new readers who don’t have a pre-existing trusted relationship, and how community is at the heart of any sustainable revenue stream.

Analysis — voices.media

We wrote many, many words at the end of last year rounding up the key media moments of the year. If you haven't got round to reading our report yet, you can dive into the individual topics in our analysis archives. We may be well into January but taking a moment to look back can be a useful reminder of how far the industry has come in everything from subscriptions and video to NFTs and print.