Wednesday 31st July: Media Voices final daily news roundup

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Peter. This is our last daily newsletter, but it’s not goodbye. Catch you on the flip!

À bientôt!

Peter - Right that’s it... the very last ever Media Voices daily. I’d be lying if I said I’ll miss it, but the process has been invaluable. If the 10,000-hour rule is right then our media-expert badges must be in the post. Of course, this is Au Revoir not Adieu. We’ll be back in September, fresh, fired up and raring to embark on the next phase of the Media Voices journey. Travel with us… it will be a blast seeing where we all end up. Until then, sing Gouranga and be happy 🧡

Esther - There are things I'll miss about writing to you 2-3x a week. I'll miss the discipline of staying constantly on top of media news, and the opportunity to inject a bit of personality into a daily newsletter. But I won't miss realising at 10pm on a Sunday evening that it was, in fact, my turn to write the next day's edition. I'm really looking forward to the next phase of this newsletter and to bringing you all on that journey with us, and a huge thanks for being with us up until this point. Have a brilliant summer 🌻

Chris - All good things must come to an end. Over the years of doing this newsletter we learned a lot about tailoring content to audiences, experimenting without alienating your readers, and collaborating with a small team. We also learned how hard it can be to produce a newsletter day-in and day-out. But while it's been difficult at times, I don't think we regret having launched the daily briefing: it helped us stay abreast of news, it let us be cheeky and subversive about the industry, and it kept us in contact with all of you. And on that hard-built foundation, we're going to build something new.

Nice to sign off with a positive look at developments in the UK’s local news scene. I don’t think the Manchester Mill existed when we started our daily newsletter, but over the last couple of years it’s expansion and the forthright opinions of founder Joshi Herrmann have featured frequently. This piece in the Observer looks out from Mill Media HQ to consider the wider local news landscape, and while it’s not all rainbows and unicorns, there are signs that an alternative local news ecosystem emerging.

I couldn’t go without giving you one more reminder that magazines are a brilliant part of the media mix. So, here’s a round up from the wonderful Amanda ‘Wig’ Wigginton of some of the most effective magazine advertising campaigns she’s seen recently. She highlights how trust, context and positivity all come into play for brands that choose magazine advertising as well as increased attention and campaign amplification. Magazines FTW 🙌

And to finish on a high, Press Gazette's monthly ranking of the top 50 newsbrands in the UK shows the Mail Online slipping down the news website rankings. While we’ve always worked hard to be objective about the strategies employed by the media organisations we cover, I’ve made no secret of my dislike of the Mail titles’ worldview. From Brexit to the culture wars they have sought to exploit division for their own own ends and it’s satisfying to see the Mail Online’s prominence slip.

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