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Mark Allen Group records 'Excellent' 2021 - despite no events — pressgazette.co.uk

Always good to hear of a media business bucking the trends. In this case, its the Mark Allen Group managing to outperform expectations for the the full year 2021 - even though it couldn't run any events. Exhibitions and events usually account for a third of the B2B publisher's revenue for the year but, despite that, it recorded unaudited turnover almost at £60 million.

Charlotte Tobitt writes for Press Gazette: "Citing the war in Ukraine, cost of living crisis, energy and newsprint cost increases, Allen said: 'It’s very hard to know what’s around the corner and how the year will pan out, so 2022-23 could be a much tougher year. However, one thing I know for sure is that our staff will do everything they can to ensure that we keep on growing and succeeding.'"

That lack of certainty is endemic in the media world at the moment. The tumult of the past few years isn't going away and, while chaos is great for outlets from an editorial point of view, it's often bad news for the commercial wing. Fingers crossed we hear more good news about B2B publishers in the near future.

SCMP’s programmatic lead opens up about life after the open marketplace — www.thedrum.com

The South China Morning Post has always been a slightly odd beast, given its status as an English-language title based out of Hong Kong. But its decision to upend its digital advertising strategy by stepping away from biddable ads - and what's happened since - is worth paying attention to.

Spotify's Greenroom Creator Fund closes, after not paying out — podnews.net

Even in 2022, when Spotify is trying to snap up the entire podcast ecosystem, it can still admit defeat on an endeavour. However since this aimed to be a way to compensate creators, this is actually one experiment we'd have liked to have seen succeed.

Joe Kahn named Executive Editor of The New York Times — www.nytimes.com

We almost never cover job moves in this newsletter but given the shadow the NYT casts over the digital news ecosystem this is important. Kahn - who is 57 and therefore has most likely never used TikTok or won a match in Fortnite - will take over a newsroom undergoing enormous change.

This week's episode:

NEW Lessons from award-winning podcasts: Nature’s Benjamin Thompson — voices.media

Springer Nature’s flagship Nature Podcast has been a strong competitor in our Awards. The podcast scooped the Best Science & Medical Podcast in 2020, and in 2021, also won the Best Coronavirus Podcast category with Coronapod. Peter spoke to Nature’s Senior Multimedia Editor Benjamin Thompson about planning a dedicated Coronavirus podcast with a team all working from their homes.

Join us (virtually) at The Publisher Podcast Awards — publisherpodcastawards.com

Time is flying and this year's Publisher Podcast Awards ceremony is just a week away! We've sold out of in-person tickets, but you can still register to watch the online stream over on the Awards website.