Tuesday 29th March: Neil Thackray retires after 40 years in media

March 30, 2021

Good morning! Tuesday's roundup is brought to you by Peter.

Forgive us if we lead this morning's news with a look back over the 40-year career of Media Voices' Patron Saint, Mr Neil Thackray.

Retiring, Neil's written a long goodbye to the industry he's worked in since he started at Computer Weekly, hired because he was 'loud and cocky'. Who knew?

Back in The Before Times, Neil was one of our bosses at TheMediaBriefing and it's no exaggeration to say that he set the tone for podcast. As wonderfully opinionated as he is analytical, he gave us the permission to write and say what we thought, so long as we'd thought hard.

We'd just like to add our thanks to everyone that's worked with Neil over the decades, and wish him Bon Voyage as he sets sail into a long and happy retirement.

European marketers, eager to get testing Google's FLoCs audience targeting alternative are going to have to wait a bit because of, yes, GDPR. That's right, the privacy-friendly alternative to third-party cookies doesn't sit well with Europe's privacy protection laws.

In these 'unprecedented' times I don't suppose I should be shocked at news of potential strikes at some of the biggest magazines in the world. But I have to say, the threat of industrial action that includes the New Yorker's fact checkers took me by surprise.

A Kansas City weekly is drawing attention to the struggle local news organisations are having to keep their heads above water. The Northeast News' empty front page is a none-too- subtle peek into the potential future of hyper-local news providers'.

Throwback... Tuesday?

There's no new episode this week as we're on Easter break. Instead, here's some of the episodes of which I'm proudest, The Lessons from Award Winning Publisher Podcast series that we did after last years awards. Properly looking forward to this year's.

We have modest dreams here at Media Voices. We'll never go toe-to-toe with the giants of the media world in terms of scale. But we believe that there's an ever more vital need for independent media analysis - so if you can chuck us a few quid to help us keep going we'll love you forever.