Howdy! Today's Media Roundup was put together by Chris.

Covid-19 has ravaged American newsrooms. Here’s why that matters — www.niemanlab.org

Given the sheer scale of job losses caused by Covid's acceleration of negative media trends, it's easy to lose sight of the wood for the trees. While we tend to focus solely on the impacts of the pandemic on media businesses, it's worth reminding ourselves every now and then that it will be the public who really suffer if they can no longer access high-quality journalism.

While we're seeing that happening already in the UK and some countries across Europe, that slow-motion crisis is most apparent in the US where many communities simply do not have a local newspaper at all. Writing for Nieman Lab, Damian Radcliffe puts the potential consequences of that in stark focus:

"The irony is that while battering journalism, the pandemic has also underlined the need for reliable local news — access to accurate information tailored and relevant to your community can be crucial during a public health crisis."

Mercury Capital axes eight former Bauer magazines, including Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Men's Health — amp.theguardian.com

Nor is the acceleration of trends confined to news titles in the US. Mercury Capital, the new VC owner of Bauer Media Australia titles, has decided there is effectively no future for some of its new magazines as a result of the coronavirus. As with Q, it seems that mass-market titles are to be the first on the chopping block when cuts need to be made.

Spotify fans can better connect to creators with new video podcasts — newsroom.spotify.com

Another day, another new podcast product from Spotify. Not content with hoovering up talent and promoting exclusive shows, the platform is now leaning heavily into podcast tech by... effectively becoming a video platform you can listen to. It's not a brand new idea, and enhanced podcasts never really took off, but we'll keep an eye on this one. Just don't expect Media Voices to go video-only any time soon.

INMA: London’s Evening Standard reaches global audiences with audio content — www.inma.org

It's fair to say that I'm not the biggest fan of the Evening Standard's owner, Editor-in-Chief or current Editor. What's galling is that the nepotism and troubling associations with the powerful often overshadow the good work from other members of the team. This article, then, highlights some of the paper's ongoing investment in audio content. It's applying lessons learned from editorial more widely, by "experimenting with repurposing our single topic tech stories into a longer, bulletin-style podcast".

This week's episode:

Parents.com Executive Editor Julia Dennison on creating content to support families — voices.media

Julia talks about how Meredith's parenting brand are supporting parents who are trying to juggle childcare and their own jobs during the pandemic, how they use SEO to anticipate their audience’s needs, and their explanatory approach to polarising topics.

Start your own Conversation 📣 — voices.media

We don’t run ads in our weekly podcast episodes (you're welcome), but we have created a sponsored podcast series to help media vendors get the message out about their solutions to our listener’s problems. These episodes are held to the same high standard of our regular episodes, so get in touch to find out how your company can sponsor a Media Voices Conversations episode.