Wednesday 3rd November: Charlie Warzel's Galaxy Brain is moving to The Atlantic

November 03, 2021

Good morning. Today's newsletter is brought to you by Peter.

So... remember all that solo-preneur, one-man-band, 'individual creators taking over publishing' stuff? Yeah forget that. The Atlantic has recruited Substack poster boy and ex-NYT Opinion writer Carlie Warzel into its new newsletter portfolio and brands are back baby.

Yes it's only nine writers that are joining The Atlantic programme, but these are nine of the biggest. And if they're bailing for the relative comfort of a big masthead, you can bet there are many more independent creators that will be thinking really hard the next time someone offers to bankroll their swashbuckling newsletter endavours.

The Atlantic's been very clear about why it's doing this. The nine newsletters will be free until the end of the month, but after that they'll be available only to subscribers of The Atlantic. Charlie apologised for the 'couple of extra emails from The Atlantic' his subscribers are going to get, but he'll get a cut of any subscriptions that come in, so you know...

Meanwhile, in a metaverse far, far away, emperor Zuck is panicked that the youth are abandoning his platform. His answer has been to go after the youngesters with his shiny new virtual utopia, but Esther reckons the solution is much simpler. Facebook needs to double down on its aging user base because nothing, real or virtual, will convince Gen Z to share a social platform with their parents and grandparents.

DMGT, owner of esteemed magazine and podcasting powerhouse the New Scientist (and the Daily Mail) has acquired Entale Media for £2 million. Entale's technology delivers related content to podcast listeners and aids podcast discoverability. For that alone we applaud the deal, but Entale were one of our first awards sponsors and we are delighted for them.

We were talking (somewhat bemusedly) about NFTs again this week on the podcast and as if by magic this Non-Fungible-Token explainer popped up. If you struggle to see why any of this might actually matter, have a read. This piece has a bias to the book business, but the basics are completely fungible.

This week's podcast:

This week we hear from David Adeleke, Founder of CMQ Media and creator of the Communiqué newsletter. He outlines the complexities of using African media as a catch-all term, how podcasts are growing across the continent, and why an acquisition last year by Stripe has provided a lightbulb moment for technology investors.

We're so happy to announce Terri White as the Chair of the Publisher Podcast Awards juding panel. Terri's work on the podcasts for Empire and Pilot magazines speaks for itself, but she's also done a lot of behind the scenes development to move publishing's podcast ouput forward and we're absolutely thrilled to have her support.