We learned the wrong lessons from the "pivot to video"
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. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Let’s jump into it… We learned the wrong lessons from "the pivot to video"Many media executives use the phrase “pivot to video” as a shorthand to refer to the industry’s tendencies to chase ephemeral business models that never quite live up to the hype. But as a new study from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism spells out, consumers actually are increasingly relying on digital video for everything ranging from entertainment to news:
I feel like many publishers took the wrong lesson from the "pivot to video" fiasco. It wasn't that audiences and advertisers don't value video more than text; the real problem was that most of the publishers weren't doing anything substantive with video —they were just doing the video equivalent of news aggregation. They'd slap together some text with some stock footage and then let the Facebook algorithm take care of the rest. The publishers that actually invested in longform, differentiated video did see returns on that investment. How TPM pioneered digital journalismThis is a great profile of Josh Marshall, one of the first bloggers to prove that online-only media could have a profound impact on national politics:
Did Hollywood actors and writers actually win?Remember last year when the unions representing both actors and screenwriters shut down all of Hollywood? Who doesn’t? And when those strikes finally ended, the union organizers patted themselves on the back with claims that they’d forced significant concessions from the studios. But Scott Galloway recently went on The Town podcast with the spicy take that those concessions were a pyrrhic victory and that the strike only accelerated the consumer embrace of digital video;
Not exactly how I would have phrased it, but it does align with my piece on why YouTube will continue out-competing Hollywood. How The Ankler converts its free audience into paid subscribersWhen Richard Rushfield launched his Hollywood industry newsletter The Ankler in 2017, he ran every aspect of the business, from the content creation to the customer service. Today, The Ankler resembles a more traditional trade magazine, with a seasoned editor-in-chief and multiple staff writers. But even though Richard took on a small amount of VC investment, most of the company’s growth has been organic, fueled in large part by an extremely successful paid subscription model. In a recent interview, Richard walked through The Ankler’s comprehensive strategy for converting its free audience into paid. The conversation included:
You can find the interview over here. The advertisers are coming for SubstackBrands are getting increasingly interested in sponsoring Substack newsletters despite the fact the platform hasn't built out any ad-related tech:
The shifting role of the book launchAuthors published by major publishing houses are increasingly investing their own money into book promotion:
A new career path for entry level journalistsA few months ago I interviewed Gabe Fleisher, a Georgetown senior who grew his politics newsletter to over 40,000 subscribers. Fleisher recently graduated from Georgetown and just announced he plans to run his newsletter full-time:
It's pretty cool that we now operate in a media environment where a kid can graduate college and immediately begin a career as an independent journalist. When I graduated college in 2006, this would have been pretty much unthinkable. I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcastOne of the things I really pride myself on is that I don’t just focus this newsletter on covering the handful of mainstream media companies that every other industry outlet features. Instead, I go the extra mile to find and interview media entrepreneurs who have been quietly killing it behind the scenes. In most cases, the operators I feature have completely bootstrapped their outlets. In that vein, I’m looking for even more entrepreneurs to feature. Specifically, I’m looking for people succeeding in these areas:
Interested in speaking to me? You can find my contact info over here. (please don’t simply hit reply to this newsletter because that’ll go to a different email address. ) Want a daily dose of media industry news?I only send this newsletter out twice a week, but I curate industry news on a daily basis. Follow me on one of these social platforms if you want your daily fix: Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. |
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