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…

Is Substack becoming a hotbed of local news experimentation?

Two columnists launched their own Substack newsletters shortly after leaving their roles at a California newspaper, and they’re already generating more income than they did at their old jobs:

[Bob Dunning] said he had been paid $26 an hour for his 40 hours of work a week at the Enterprise, amounting to a little over $54,000 a year. A month and a half on, his annualised salary now stands at approximately $92,000 before the 10% cut taken by Substack …

… Dunning told Press Gazette he has “around 4,200 subscribers”, of whom around 1,100 pay. [Wendy Weitzel] said her figures look approximately the same, giving her Substack revenue of around $50,000 per year.

How Ira Glass became the podfather

Ira Glass is arguably the godfather of audio storytelling as it exists today. The New Yorker published a great Q&A with him where he reflects on his craft and legacy:

I think a lot of my aesthetics were shaped by the Broadway shows that my mom took us to in Baltimore. Those old-school shows like “Fiddler on the Roof,” which start off funny and then get more serious, and then, by the end, they’re tragedies about something big and sad. I always had that in my head. In retrospect, I wasn’t interested in journalism. I happened to get a job at NPR when I was nineteen, and I started to do documentary on “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition,” and I always had this feeling that a story could be more—could have more feeling, more something!

And what I did was push everything that I was learning about making true stories into a format that had the emotional beats and structure of “Fiddler on the Roof.” A prototypical “This American Life” story gets the characters onstage, makes you like them, moves them through all their emotional paces, and then takes you to a place where there’s some thoughtful, sad, reflective beat at the end. Somebody says something that gets you in your heart, and then you bring up some music and you’re out, you know? And so I think of that stuff as very formative.

Meta still doesn’t understand the Creator Economy

Meta still thinks the best strategy for getting creators to use its platforms is to hand out arbitrary cash "bonuses" that do nothing to help those creators build a sustainable business.

Case in point:

In April, Instagram content creators began receiving in-app notifications that they could earn cash bonuses for generating engagement on Threads. “Make a profile and post threads or replies that get 10,000 or more views to earn money,” the notification read.

However, by July, some creators claimed that it was possible to maximize Meta’s payouts simply by posting generic replies to low quality meme posts going viral on Threads, instead of formulating new, thoughtfully crafted content.

How Philip Taylor built FinCon, the leading conference for personal finance creators

Today, the personal finance content niche is absolutely ginormous. You can’t open up YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram without encountering an influencer who gives advice on how to make and save money.

Philip Taylor anticipated this content explosion all the way back in 2011. That’s when he launched FinCon, a conference specifically designed for personal finance content creators. That first year he attracted around 250 attendees, but over the next decade it grew into the largest conference in this niche, with over 3,000 tickets sold.

In a recent interview, Philip walked through how he got into the personal finance space, his strategy for growing the conference, and his ambitions for launching similar conferences in other niche categories.

You can find the interview over here.

The alluring simplicity of the “lifetime” subscription

More and more publishers are experimenting with "lifetime" subscriptions to see if they can get their audience to opt for a large upfront sum instead of monthly credit card payments:

Jason Walker bought a lifetime subscription to Rolling Stone magazine in 2004 for $99, when he was 18. Most of the 400-plus print issues he has received sit on his basement shelves. Rolling Stone today charges $59.88 for a year’s print subscription, meaning Walker has long since earned his money’s worth.

In May, Rolling Stone said it was switching lifetime subscriptions from print to digital-only. Walker was annoyed.

He said a lifetime subscription might not be worth it to him again: “I don’t know if there’s anything I really want that bad.”

Can Alex Cooper become the next Oprah?

Alex Cooper grew her podcast into one of the largest in the world. Now she's trying to build a media empire:

Last August, Cooper launched Unwell with two signed TikTok stars, Alix Earle and Madeline Argy. Both are hosting podcasts, and Earle has already seen success with a line of T-shirts, sweats and baseball hats; Cooper says two recent merchandise drops sold over “seven figures” apiece. In February, Unwell announced its first male star: Harry Jowsey, an Australian reality-television personality from the Netflix shows “Too Hot to Handle” and “Perfect Match.” More recently, TikToker Hallie Batchelder, known for sharing her unapologetic NYC dating and partying escapades, and the actor and comedian Owen Thiele have joined the Unwell roster.

Can the Wall Street Journal appeal to a non-Wall Street audience?

Vanity Fair profiled Emma Tucker, the WSJ’s newish editor who’s been attempting to revamp the newspaper so that it’s more nimble and broadly appealing:

Tucker, a personable and somewhat irreverent Brit, took over the Journal in February 2023. In a little over a year, the 57-year-old journalist has brought color, voice, and a renewed metabolism to America’s business newspaper of record. Sure, you’ll still find stories about interest-rate cuts and investment income. But you’ll also find investigations into Elon Musk’s unusual relationships with women at SpaceX and drug use, the succession battle for the luxury empire LVMH, and messages that Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar sent to compatriots and mediators. (An attorney for Musk told WSJ that he’s never failed a drug test at SpaceX.) Tucker’s goal is to make the paper “audience-first” and “to grow and retain subscribers,” she told me. It might not sound like the most visionary mission. But the Journal today is, well, better—a more compelling product that a wider swath of people might pick up and read.

I’m looking for more media entrepreneurs to feature on my newsletter and podcast

One 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:

• Niche news sites

• Video channels like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels

• Podcasts

• Newsletters

• Affiliate/ecommerce

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. )

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