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All the ways to make money in media without ads — mjrawth.medium.com

This by Michael Rothman is a heartening read. Rothman was on the founding team at Thrillist, started Fatherly, and has worked in the media space for almost 20 years.

Here, he's compiled a list of successful revenue models which don't include advertising, as a way of highlighting what else is out there in a world where a predictable advertising business is increasingly out of reach for everyone but the largest publishers.

He argues that periods of "creative destruction" like the current ad market decimation provide lots of opportunities for those with passion, and a capacity to embrace uncertainty.

"One characteristic of healthy media companies is that they can monetize each piece of content three times," he says. "What revenue model you choose and how to operationalize each approach is a question that you can expect to revisit every six months as your company scales and new vendors enter the market."

There may be silver linings, but print’s long-term future still looks distinctly cloudy — voices.media

Certain corners of the print market have had a better pandemic than anyone would have predicted, but for every story of screen-weary readers picking up a print subscription, there’s at least one more of a print closure. Peter Houston rounds up the year as part of our Media Moments 2020 report.

How Wired leveraged Cyber Week readers to increase subscription revenue — digiday.com

Cyber Monday and Black Friday ended up being the second and third biggest days for subscription sign-ups of the year respectively for Wired, with each being approximately three times the daily average for the month of November.

As ecommerce surges, publishers turn to certification to cement trust — digitalcontentnext.org

With competition in the ecommerce space increasing, some publishers are looking to certification and branded seals as a way of cementing that trusted relationship between them, their audience, and the products they recommend. I spoke to Conde Nast's SELF magazine about their two new seals.

This week's podcast:

Special: Highlights from Media Moments 2020, and how publishers are preparing for 2021 — voices.media

This special episode includes the audio of our launch presentation for the Media Moments 2020 report. We examine one key stat of each section within the report, from diversity and advertising to platforms, trust and more. In the second half, the team is joined by a panel featuring The Atlantic's Jemima Villanueva, Permutive's Aly Nurmohamed and The Week Junior's Andrea Barbalich.

Buy the team a festive beverage — ko-fi.com

We’ve been (especially) busy recently aside from this newsletter and the weekly podcast. Keep us going through the last few weeks of the year as we work through Publisher Podcast Awards submissions and planning for 2021 with a virtual coffee (now with an option to caffeinate us monthly) ☕