Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media industry newsletter. If you've received it, then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you.

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Let’s jump into it…

Quick hits

"Publishers can turn off the ability for bots to crawl their content, but it’s difficult to distinguish AI bots from the ones coming from search engines like Google that allow pages to get indexed and appear in search results." [Digiday]

How to grow your sponsorship revenue. [The Business of Content]

The New York Times adds more paid subscribers per quarter than 99% of other publishers have in total. It really is in a league of its own. [NYT]

How to build a paid community. [The Business of Content]

Digital media companies are acting more and more like talent agencies — finding up-and-coming creators and helping them with distribution and monetization. [The Rebooting]

How to build a successful local news outlet. [The Business of Content]

The Atlantic is slowly closing in on hitting 1 million paid subscribers. [Axios]

Does the CEO of your company need a ghostwriter?

I happen to know several good ones. Just reach out and I’ll connect you.

More quick hits

Publishers got a little too aggressive about launching new podcasts, and they're now consolidating their efforts to focus on growing the shows that actually found traction. [Digiday]

How to sell your content business. [Business of Content]

It's difficult to quantify, but local news outlets probably save tax payers billions of dollars a year by reporting on wasteful spending and corporate malfeasance. [The Atlantic]

How Sean Griffey built Industry Dive into a B2B media empire. [Business of Content]

Dude Perfect, one of the largest YouTube channels, is building its own theme park. This further supports my prediction that the next Disney-sized media giant will likely come out of the Creator Economy. [WSJ]

How to drive paid subscriptions without a paywall. [Business of Content]

I'm on the record as being bullish on Puck because of its approach to talent acquisition and its focus on quality over quantity. I'll probably grow less bullish as it raises more and more outside capital, since that's usually a leading indicator that a digital media company isn't focused on sustainability. [Axios]

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