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Let’s jump into it…

Do you live in New Orleans?

I’ll be in the city between 10/18 and 10/22 for a conference. Drop me a line if you want to get together for food or drinks.

Instagram proves it still doesn’t understand the Creator Economy

Instagram is the only major social platform that's pivoted away from sharing revenue with content creators, as evidenced by the fact that it recently ended its Reels bonus program that paid creators based on the number of views they accrued. And its reason for doing so is absolutely insane:

"The Meta reps just keep saying to use the tools given (stars, subscriptions, etc.) which are just begging followers for money, making Meta money in the process," MacCannell told Fortune.

At a creator and press event at Meta on Friday, Oct. 6, Instagram head Adam Mosseri opened it up for questions to the audience. Tisdale asked about why the tool went away, and Mosseri said the entire point of the program was to encourage creators to post their videos on Instagram at a time when they only wanted to post on TikTok. And the program worked — but cost the company a lot of money. He said Instagram was "putting way more money into the program that was coming out of the program, and we're a business at the end of the day. That kind of program can't last forever." The program just didn't seem to work that consistently. At first, creators saw massive payouts but those payouts began to shrink.

Instagram’s entire business is built on the backs of creators; the fact that he could dismiss these payouts as some kind of frivolous business expense shows that Mosseri and his colleagues still don’t understand what motivates creators to invest in a platform.

It’s not a coincidence that Instagram and Facebook have virtually no cultural relevance when it comes to video. Think of your favorite video creator for a moment; I’d be willing to bet they didn’t get their start on either of those platforms. In fact, the vast majority of viral video content that comes across my Instagram feed has been repurposed from traditional TV, film, TikTok, or YouTube. That’s not a coincidence.

Speaking of Instagram being bad for creators

Instagram doesn't make it very easy to drive your followers off its platform. Substack interviewed several Instagram influencers about how they leveraged the platform to drive newsletter signups.

For instance, here’s creator Rachel Karten explaining how she promoted the launch of her Link in Bio newsletter to her 70k Instagram followers:

Having worked in social for 10 years, I understand how important a launch moment is. When announcing Link in Bio in 2021 I knew it needed to really make a splash. I partnered with my good friend and talented designer Bryan Fountain to come up with a visual identity for the newsletter pre-launch. I also lined up a lot of interviews ahead of announcing so I could tease what was to come. This announcement post led to over 8,000 newsletter subscribers on day one. After two years, I wanted to refresh the brand and decided to line that up with “going paid.” The refresh and new paid tier was announced on Instagram along with some really amazing portraits of the Link in Bio community. The visual identity of the newsletter has always been really important to me—I want it to feel cool and fun and not like your typical professional resource.

ICYMI: How Taegan Goddard built a thriving paid membership for Political Wire

He already had a robust advertising business, but he wanted to foster a deeper connection with his audience.

News publishers are increasingly embracing TikTok

Press Gazette published a good breakdown of how the Daily Mail became the largest news publisher on TikTok:

The Daily Mail has 18 social video producers based in London, New York, LA and Sydney with, Harvey said, plans for "further growth to build engaged audiences on other short-form video platforms beyond Tiktok".

This team, which is "reflective of [their] target audience", has grown over the past six months and is made up of 50% journalists and 50% social media specialists some of whom previously built their own communities online, Harvey said.

After investing in that team, Harvey said they are "able now to produce a lot more content, but produce that in a more structured way", pointing to the use of data to guide editorial decisions and the development of different storytelling formats.

TikTok is increasingly becoming a destination for news consumption, which is why more and more publishers are finally investing in the platform. The question is whether TikTok will ever be a significant revenue driver for those publishers or just another marketing vehicle.

Lots of news consumers enjoy audio versions of articles

Over the last few years I’ve come across several case studies indicating that embedding an audio player at the top of article pages increases audience engagement and retention significantly. Many outlets utilize some sort of AI program to scale these players, while some have invested in voice actors for narration.

Press Gazette profiled a Norwegian newspaper that experimented with a novel approach: training an AI on the voice of one of its popular podcast hosts:

The robot voice, which is based on that of Aftenposten podcast host Anne Lindholm, gives audiences the option to listen to individual articles.

Comparing the number of unique listeners of Aftenposten’s podcasts with those who have used the AI-generated listen-to option on its text articles, the publisher found there was little difference between the two – with younger audiences in particular being drawn in by the audio option.

To train the voice, Lindholm recorded herself reading 2,000 articles, from which AI voice and audio publishing platform Beyondwords extracted 7,000 sentences to use in the AI model.

The rise of a right-wing media behemoth

NBC published a great deep dive explaining how a fringe group in China grew the Epoch Times into one of the most influential outlets in American right wing media:

“The dynamic for The Epoch Times changed in 2020, partly because of their criticism of China around Covid,” said A.J. Bauer, an assistant journalism professor at the University of Alabama who studies conservative media. “An entire new kind of ecosystem of Covid deniers and skeptics overlapped with right-wing media and were citing and drawing heavily upon The Epoch Times.”

The Epoch Times’ subscription page began hosting glowing testimonials from Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck and the far-right Arizona congressman Paul Gosar. The organization became a reliable source for misinformation around Covid, its treatments and the vaccines.

A sneak preview of what’s coming

As I mentioned at the top of this newsletter, I’ll be in New Orleans for the rest of the week at a conference, so I probably won’t be sending out the Friday edition. In the meantime, I’m hard at work producing case studies of some incredibly successful media businesses. I’ve already recorded interviews with the founders behind these outlets:

1. Tangle, a politics newsletter that’s grown to 77,000 subscribers and $624,000 in annual revenue.

2. GameDiscoverCo, a newsletter that covers video game marketing and generates six figures in annual revenue

3. The Sunday Longread, a newsletter that curates longform journalism, generates over six figures in annual revenue, and is read by 25,000 subscribers.

4. Freetrail, a booming sports media company that covers the growing trail running scene.

5. Living Cozy, a product review website that’s built a massive ecommerce business.

6. Pitchcraft, a thriving online community that charges thousands of dollars a year to PR pros.

7. Wake Up to Politics, a hugely successful daily newsletter that was founded by its author when he was only 11 years old.

8. Early Morning Media, a B2B newsletter empire that’s operated in the UK.

9. Next City, a nonprofit news org that’s built a hugely successful membership program.

10. Berkeleyside, a local news startup that’s generated millions of dollars through memberships, advertising, and large grants.

11. The Best One Yet, a company that started as a newsletter, expanded into podcasts, was acquired by Robinhood, and then split off into an independent media outlet.

12. GAMURS Group, one of the largest gaming media companies in the world (I was extremely surprised I had never heard of it prior to the founder reaching out to me).

13. The Daily Aus, the largest youth media company in Australia.

14. Mostly Metrics, a finance newsletter with over 39,000 subscribers.

And these are just the interviews I’ve already recorded. For each interview, I have the entrepreneur walk me through, step by step, how they built their companies. I’m super excited to share their insights with you.

Also, some of you may have noticed that the podcast has been on hiatus since September. Don’t worry, new episodes will start appearing in November.

In case it isn’t apparent yet, I take great pride in delivering actionable insights that media operators and creators can utilize in their own work. If you want to reward me for these efforts, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Subscribing not only grants you access to an extensive archive of case studies, but it also gets you a half-hour introductory 30-minute phone call with me. I’ve really enjoyed the subscriber calls thus far. Subscribe at the link below and get 10% off for your first year:

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