- The Publisher Newsletter
- Posts
- Wednesday 22nd September: The Big Issue at 30
Wednesday 22nd September: The Big Issue at 30
Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.
The Big Issue celebrates its 30th birthday this year. That's not a bad milestone for any magazine, but for a title that's print presence has been its raison d'etre for the vast majority of three decades of digitisation, it's approaching a miracle.
Or maybe not.
Over those 30 years, 220 million magazines have been sold, mostly by street vendors holding on to the hand-up the magazine offers them. The Big Issue brand is now way bigger than its weekly page-count, but as Editor Paul McNamee writes:
We have a responsibility to work for our vendors, to produce something they can take to the street every week and have the best chance of earning a living through selling.
That's not a bad motivation to last 30 years and beyond.
Fortune has appointed the first female editor-in-chief in its 92-year history. Alyson Shontell was previously co-EIC at Insider where she's been since she was 22. Alan Murray, Fortune CEO described Shontell, 35, as a 'digital-media veteran who plans to focus on increasing the business magazine’s online readership'. God, I feel old.
Minute Media has raised “tens of millions of dollars" in a previously unreported funding round. The deal strengthens a years-long partnership with FanDuel, letting Minute Media invest more in sports betting and FanDuel develop their content play and increase traffic. Everyone's a winner (except maybe some punters).
This is not a cheery piece to end today's newsletter on, but it rings so true. The forward looking message buried in the piece is, “We have to find a way to make this industry more sustainable”. The less edifying lead, “The pandemic has drained the life out of [these journalists]. My answer to them is to quit your fucking job.”
On this week’s episode of Media Voices we hear from David Floyd, MD of Social Spider, a community interest company that publishes five community newspapers in London. He tells us about finding a new model for local news – one that’s maybe commercially viable enough – and about why local news matters.
In this sponsored episode Cecilia Campbell of United Robots helps myth-bust some of the common fallacies about what robot journalism can – and can’t – do. To help illustrate what is possible we’re also joined by Ard Boer, Product Manager for Sport at NDC Mediagroep, who tells us how their sports team is making the most of robot journalism.