Good morning! This newsletter is brought to you by me, Chris.

What The Verge covered in its first 120,000 stories — www.theverge.com

The Verge has consistently been a great tech site, and more importantly doesn't appear to be losing steam. As it reaches its 10th anniversary, it's published this lengthy data-based breakdown of its first 120,000 stories to track its priorities - and what kept the audience members coming back for more.

As you'd expect the tech giants received the lion's share of coverage, with Apple, Google and Microsoft far out in the lead. There's a great chart in there which shows how much they came to dominate coverage, with 'other tech' companies shrinking in importance over the course of the decade. As the site mentions, it's "very much the story of consolidation", reflecting the growing dominance of those companies:

"But where a world of other hardware companies — like Nokia, Motorola, and HTC, to name just a few — once made up more than 1 in 4 of our tech stories, they’re now less than 1 in 6, having struggled to keep up with bigger brands. Meanwhile, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter have roughly doubled in prominence. The biggest shift in the tech space? Streaming, which now gets a bigger chunk of headlines on The Verge than Facebook did in our first year."

Innovation in practice: 5 ideas in action at successful media companies around the world — whatsnewinpublishing.com

As ever we always like to get some insight from Damian Radcliffe, and this look at how a number of outlets from Euronews to The Ferret are finding time to iterate and experiment is well worth a read. I particularly love the quote on collaborative experimentation from Patricia Torres-Burd.

No subscriptions, big money: how free streamers are changing TV’s business model — www.vulture.com

Free streaming apps like Buzzr, Pluto, and Tubi are shaking up the streaming wars. While the subs-based services like Netflix rely on creating originals, the free services have to find other ways to stand out. And from a personal perspective, you can find so many so-bad-it's-good movies on them.

Pinterest hops on the live shopping trend with Pinterest TV — www.theverge.com

The ecommerce boom has been a lifeline for publishers over the past 18 months - but do they risk falling behind? Affiliate links are all well and good but they seem old-hat compared to the social shopping and instant purchases enabled by some of the platforms like Pinterest.

This week's podcast:

CMQ Media Founder & Analyst David Adeleke on the media scene in Nigeria and beyond — voices.media

This week we hear from David Adeleke, Founder of CMQ Media and creator of the Communiqué newsletter. He outlines the complexities of using African media as a catch-all term, how podcasts are growing across the continent, and why an acquisition last year by Stripe has provided a lightbulb moment for technology investors.

We put a ton of work into last year's virtual Publisher Podcast Awards, and were very happy with it! 2022's awards ceremony, though, will be in person and bigger and better than ever. Get your entries in now so we can party together in person.