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How to reach 3.5M readers in a year? Here's Romania Insider's story — whatsnewinpublishing.com

Eleven-year-old English-language publisher Romania Insider has just four full-time journalists, but managed to attract 3.5 million unique readers over 2019, with yearly traffic growth of 60%. That's not bad for such a lean outlet. But what I enjoyed about this case study is the number of different revenue streams Romania Insider is juggling in order to bring in the money.

They've branched out to produce an English-language Romania travel guide, a Romanian media briefing for C-Suite executives, and also run a community membership program which provides exclusive content, information tools and data to members. On top of that, the publisher has a mobile app, which is entirely paywalled except for one free article per month.

It just goes to show that even with limited resources and a small core market, tools like apps can be excellent subscription drivers if used in the right way.

Australian tycoon to help small publishers strike deals with Google, Facebook — www.reuters.com

Australian small publishers will get a leg up in their fight to secure licensing deals with Google and Facebook. The Minderoo Foundation, owned by Andrew Forrest, chairman of iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group, plans to help 18 small publishers by applying to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on their behalf so they can negotiate together without breaching competition laws. If only the UK had such generous billionaires...

Thirty ex-Kyiv Post staff start own title after sudden closure of city's oldest English-language newspaper — www.pressgazette.co.uk

Thirty journalists who were abruptly fired from the Kyiv Post this month have started their own publication and promised to block any attempts to influence their journalism from the outside. The English-language Kyiv Independent was announced on Monday with the launch of a crowdfunding Patreon page, which already has nearly 400 supporters.

The unwritten contract between podcast publishers and apps — blog.james.cridland.net

This is a really helpful rundown if you're not quite sure (or need a refresher) about the basics of how podcast feeds work. PodNews' James Cridland walks through what an RSS feed is, how podcast apps ingest them, some historical missteps from apps, and what they can change about your podcast (in short, pretty much nothing).

This week's podcast:

FT Strategies MD Tara Lajumoke on building a robust playbook for subscription businesses — voices.media

This week we hear from Tara Lajumoke, Managing Director of FT Strategies, the Financial Times’ consulting firm. We discussed how FT Strategies fits into the FT’s wider goals, what her role involves as MD, and how they’re building a robust playbook for other subscription businesses.

Launch event: Media Moments 2021 — voices.media

Join Media Voices, What’s New in Publishing and Sovrn in a virtual event to launch this year’s Media Moments report this coming Wed 1st Dec. We've got a smashing panel with Brian Morrissey, Charlotte Tobitt, Prof Lucy Kueng and Dominic Perkins joining us to discuss how publishers have fared this year and how they can navigate the challenges and opportunities of 2022.