Tuesday 27th February: Pitchfork's corporate failure isn't the end of independents with attitude

Good morning! Today’s edition is brought to you by Peter.

Magazine megalith Condé Nast has made no secret of it’s mission to become sustainable. CEO Roger Lynch has had some success, shifting the business back into the black over just five years and his vision for sustainability focuses on a number of corporate priorities, including a renewed focus on the consumer.

So why bury iconic music-review website Pitchfork in men’s lifestyle magazine GQ? “This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance,” wrote Condé’s Chief Content Officer Anna Wintour at the time of the announcement. That’s shorthand for ‘it’s not making enough money’.

The literal bottom line here is that Pitchfork couldn’t meet corporate commercial expectations in the age of streaming. That doesn’t mean there can be no more Pitchforks. I find it relatively easy to imagine a thriving ecosystem of much-loved, well-respected expert publications that are commercially right-sized for their niche. Just not inside corporate media.

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Talking of corporate failures, the Vice post mortems have started to appear and this from Defector’s Chris Thomson is a doozy. He pretty much sums up the whole sorry situation in this sentence: “The band of worthless but extravagantly overcompensated executives who seized the Vice ship from its previous regime of worthless but extravagantly overcompensated executives have decided that the business's new direction will be in content licensing and re-emphasized social media channels.” This rogue podcast sneaked on to Motherboard’s Cyber podcast stream pretty much underlines the sentiment.

This seems like a fairly scary headline. The idea that Google would remove the News tab feels like one more kick in the teeth for publishers trying to maintain search traffic. Here’s the thing though, SEO expert Barry Adams says it’s not happening. In a LinkedIn post yesterday he wrote: “The News tab isn't where the game is at. Never has been… Top Stories news carousels and the Discover feed are the two largest traffic drivers - by far - from Google to publishers.” Also, Google has since confirmed that it isn’t actually removing the News tab.

Stack’s Steve Watson recently treated himself to a museum trip to read the first publication to call itself a magazine. It’s longevity is amazing, but what I found fascinating is that the title was basically a reponse to 18th Century information overload. It was set up to give a monthly roundup of all “daily offered to the Publick in the News-Papers… so multiply’d, as to render it impossible… to consult them all.” There is truly nothing new under the sun.

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