Wednesday 6th April: The Tab paid back 70% of its purchase price in a year

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According to new owner Digitalbox, student news website The Tab made back most of its £750,000 price tag in just over 12 months. The Daily Mash owner bought The Tab in October 2020 and had put it into profit within a month. Digital boss chief exec James Carter told Press Gazette the company was now planning to invest in The Tab.

The priority is to increase editorial resources to help maximise campus engagement. Then the plan is to broaden the content mix including the addition of a political channel focused on comment and opinion around youth politics.

Digitalbox is a mobile-first business focused on primarily advertising revenue, with Carter saying recent growth of 124% in user session values has been driven by data. "It's not because we've got any good salespeople, because we haven't got any salespeople at all," he said.

I really don't trust myself to comment on the mean-spirited market dogma that underpins our so-called culture secretary's 'plans' to sell off Channel 4. Better that you read Liz Gerard writing about the whole shoddy affair in the New European. You'll absolutely get the picture but with far less swearing than if I tried to paint it.

Seems like everyone wants a slice of the podcast pie and Substack has actually grabbed itself a few slices. The company announced yesterday that three Patreon-hit podcasts are jumping ship to join the erstwhile newsletter platform. If you're thinking of moving your own podcast, Substack has put up a couple of blogs explaining why you should consider it as your next podcasting home.

This is interesting from the Reuters Institute. If you want to get disengaged online readers back, good reporting and writing isn't enough. You need to grab them quickly with headlines, comments, graphics and photos. It seems old-school publishing tricks still have a place within the perpetual scroll.

This week's episode:

This week we hear from President and GM of Consumer at Yahoo Joanna Lambert. She talks about the changes at Yahoo over the last few years and how Covid forced them to adapt, its 900 million users including a growing Gen Z audience, and Yahoo’s revenue strategies outside of advertising.

For two years running The Week Unwrapped has scooped the ‘Best News Podcast’, fending off competition from some of the biggest names in publishing. The Week’s Digital Editor and podcast host Holden Frith discussed how their signature three story format had to evolve during the pandemic, the importance of varied points of view within the episodes, and why the podcast is addressing an audience in its own right.