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Vox Media acquires drinks publisher Punch, complementing Eater — www.adweek.com

Vox Media has acquired spirits and cocktail publisher Punch. It will remain an independent editorial brand within Eater, the Vox Media title covering food and restaurant culture.

This is a smart acquisition that will level up Punch's audience (Punch currently has 550,000 monthly uniques compared to Eater's 15 million) whilst rounding out Eater's drinks coverage, as well as opening up new revenue opportunities around product licensing and book sales.

It's worth reading down this piece to see Stenberg's analysis of how alcohol brand spending is shifting. TV and out-of-home advertising was the majority spend for alcohol ad spend. However, post-pandemic, this is all shifting to digital, which puts publishers like Punch in a potentially very lucrative position. Bottoms up!

Data journalism: five ideas for more effective industry–academic collaboration — www.journalism.co.uk

An excellent piece from Damian Radcliffe and Seth Lewis looking at how closer relationships between journalists and academics could be mutually beneficial. There are some really useful, practical tips here, which draw on the successes of sites like Nieman Lab and The Conversation.

Substack is now accepting Bitcoin payments on the Lightning Network — www.prnewswire.com

Substack has integrated OpenNode's Bitcoin API to offer Bitcoin payments on its platform. We have no guesses about how popular an option this will be, but there aren't many other publishers or platforms offering crypto subscription payments. I certainly won't be using it until they support Dogecoin.

Rupert Murdoch sells failed website Knewz to "trashy tabloid king" Dylan Howard — www.thedailybeast.com

NewsCorp will offload the failed news aggregator onto the infamous tabloid editor who played a major role in covering up scandals for Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein. "Let's give it a second chance," NewsCorp CEO Robert Thomson confirmed in a call. Let's hope it comes with a non-migraine-inducing redesign.

Podcast throwback:

Decanter Editor in Chief Chris Maillard on refreshing Future’s wine brand for its loyal readers — voices.media

I couldn't lead with a story about alcohol publishing without throwing back to our recent episode with Decanter's Chris Maillard. He talked to us about the challenges of refreshing the brand (recently acquired by Future) without alienating its incredibly loyal readership. Vox-ers, take note.

Help us cover our costs with a Ko-Fi subscription — ko-fi.com

Unfortunately we can't take cryptocurrencies yet, but if you have some good old-fashioned pounds or dollars, we'll happily take them instead. We love one-offs, but we've also introduced a monthly subscription option to make it easier for our lovely listeners to contribute regularly. It's just like buying us a virtual coffee but you can hit the 'Monthly' button to make use happy over and over and over. 💛💛💛