Wednesday 7th February: Evolving company culture and practice

Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Esther.

It’s Wednesday which means it’s time for the third instalment of our futureproofing local news podcast series! In this episode, we speak to some local news organisations about getting company culture to the best possible place.

To build a sustainable – and successful – publishing business requires staff to be on board with changes, as well as a collaborative environment with good communication. For local news organisations, external relationships with audiences also need work.

There’s so much practical advice packed in here for publishers of all shapes and sizes, not just local newsrooms. From preparing staff for constant change and evolution to really putting audiences first, getting these processes right can bring tangible benefits to publishers.

Like Joey from Friends, Apple has a reputation for not sharing, at least when it comes to customer information. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a first-party data play for publishers on Apple News. Peter Houston speaks to FlatPlan’s CEO Kieran Delaney about how publishers can use the platform to support their own data strategies.

If you send newsletters to Gmail and Yahoo accounts - which is probably all of you - there are some changes both companies have made to how they handle emails which means you almost certainly need to make some tweaks. This piece on Mx3 explains what the changes are, and how they potentially impact you.

Know a good sales freelancer with a bit of capacity? Singletrack World is looking. More details on our (fledgling) recruitment board in our community forum.

Personally, TikTok is not somewhere I would recommend publishers invest huge amounts of time and energy building an audience. But if it’s a platform you’d like to get smarter about experimenting with, Deutsche Welle’s Erika Marzano has shared some of the things her team has learned about growing on TikTok.

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