Wednesday 5th October: Is hard news on its last legs?

October 05, 2022

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

Today the entire Media Voices team is at our inaugural Publisher Podcast Summit. We'll be producing plenty of content off the back of all the insight that our speakers will be sharing, so please do stay tuned for that in the near future! Follow along at the official Twitter.

Yesterday's top story was publishers' potential retreat to cat gif content, as keyword blocklists prevent the monetisation of real news. This follow-up from Amedia notes that the problems surrounding hard news actually lie deeper still, with audiences choosing not to seek out that news at all. Jacob Donnelly argues that we're just burned out from four years of constant sirens going off, and it's going to get worse before it gets better:

"Another thing is that we’re in a different economic climate. A year ago, the economy was much more robust, we had only just peaked in the stock market, and people were getting jobs left and right. Now, we have inflation, and there’s concern about going into recession. So, people’s focus is on more pressing things than the news."

I would love to see evidence to the contrary, so please do send me any analytics you have about a sustained interest in the news. But between keyword blocking, exhausted audiences, adblocking and news avoidance, I think this is actually an opportunity for publishers to demonstrate their worth to the public. Now more than ever.

Another excellent entry from Brian Morrissey's Substack. In this issue Bonnie Kintzer, CEO of TMB (home to Readers Digest and other lifestyle brands), explains what it means to both reader and writer to reinvent a magazine brand. Click through - and do check out the accompanying podcast episode if you can.

Meta will be shutting down Bulletin, its newsletter subscription service, by early next year, a spokesperson confirmed. Meta closing down a service that it said would be a long-term project designed to help its users find an audience? I'm shocked, shocked. Well, not that shocked.

I refuse to give this attention-seeking manchild and his dalliance with Twitter the top slot in today's newsletter. For one thing, he's too dull to be worth it. And for another, this might well all change again anyway by the time this newsletter goes out. So that's your lot.

New episode:

On our second episode of the new season, we're joined by Insider's Lara O'Reilly to explore how the advertising market has had its post-pandemic recovery dented by economic uncertainty, and how publishers, platforms and brands are adapting.

Check out what you're missing at today's Publisher Podcast Summit - and get planning what sessions you'll pitch to host next year.