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"Empower readers to become ambassadors for their city": SoGlos' model to rescue local media — whatsnewinpublishing.com

As the story about Reach below demonstrates, the local news industry is in trouble pretty much across the board. But as this story from WNIP demonstrates, cost cutting alone doesn't actually change the model of local news all that much. So it's really interesting to me that SoGlos is attempting to create an entirely new model - one predicated on using its readership as something other than a teat to milk subscription revenue from.

Other than the small-scale experiments with newsletters like the Manchester Mill, very few outlets are actually bringing the readership in as an asset to help the title grow. But SoGlos is doing exactly that, by turning its members into 'ambassadors' for their local communities:

“We have a free membership feature that allows members to create lists of their interests and save favourite stories. Members can create a profile and sign in to MySoGlos to co-create their own lists, such as ‘new restaurants to try’, ‘things to do with the kids this summer’ for example – in addition to favouriting and saving news, events or hot lists."

“This is a digital business masquerading as a print business:” As the dust settles on the Dotdash Meredith merger, what’s the outlook for its print magazines? — voices.media

Digital publisher Dotdash’s merger last year with magazine company Meredith may have made a lot of business sense. But Dotdash, which has no print experience, is now part of over a century of US magazine history. How are the print titles settling in and what could be their long-term future at the digital-focused company?

Reach interim results H1 2022: Share price plummets on falling revenue — pressgazette.co.uk

The local news publisher is blaming a rise in the cost of print for its multi-million pound drop in profits in the first half of the year. As a result it is raising the cover price across much of its stable - but that doesn't seem like an especially viable long-term strategy to me.

Kylie Jenner’s Instagram criticism sparks scramble to fix platform — www.thedrum.com

Peter's lead story in yesterday's newsletter was about how TikTok was providing a new news destination for young audiences. That's undoubtedly true - but it's worth bearing in mind that social platforms aren't designed to share news. As with Instagram, they can change focus whenever they want, and suddenly the channels that provide news will just vanish into the algorithmic ether.

This week's podcast:

Medium VP of Content Scott Lamb on the platform’s evolution and vision for the future — voices.media

In our final episode of the season, we hear from Medium’s VP of Content Scott Lamb. Scott leads the content and creator relations teams at the platform, so we talked about Medium’s famous pivots, the importance of putting creators at the core, competing with Substack, and Ev Williams’ departure.

Save on tickets to our Publisher Podcast Summit with your exclusive discount - EXPIRES AT THE END OF THE WEEK! — publisherpodcastsummit.com

Tickets to the inaugural Publisher Podcast Summit are on sale! Take advantage of an exclusive pre-agenda discount code just for our newsletter subscribers: enter MVNL20 at checkout for 20% off all ticket types. We'll be releasing some speaker details over the coming weeks, so keep an eye on @mediavoicespod or @pubpodawards for more.