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

Was there any actual data to justify Hollywood's pivot away from romantic comedies and other female-focused genres? Recent box office numbers suggest there's still robust demand for this type of storytelling. [Puck]

You've probably noticed that the official social media accounts of Kamala's campaign are now responding to events almost in real time. The campaign has empowered a group of Gen Z social media managers to create native content tailored to each platform. The philosophy behind this approach is that social media has more collective reach and influence than traditional media. How long until the term "mainstream media" becomes an anachronism? [CNN]

It took years for Mark Thompson to help turn the NYT into the media behemoth it is today. Will his WBD overlords afford him the same runway to transform CNN? [CJR]

Why is Playboy relaunching its print magazine? Well, its primary revenue driver right now involves licensing its brand to other companies. But that model only works if the brand maintains its value, hence why it needs to reinvest in a media product that will hopefully reinvigorate its brand. [WSJ]

There's a social media platform in Vermont that claims to have half the state's adult residents as members. [WashPo] FROM THE ARTICLE: “While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user post before it’s published, rejecting any that break its rules against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.”

Several conservative media pundits tried to launch their own book publishing companies, only to find that it’s extremely difficult to operate in such a crowded market. [Semafor]

The economics of ghostwriting books

I’m sure just about everybody has had the experience of looking at a celebrity memoir and wondering: did they actually write that? In many cases, they didn’t, at least not by themselves. There’s actually an entire shadow economy of ghostwriters who do the bulk of the work on these books — not just for celebrities, but all kinds of public figures ranging from big-name CEOs to politicians.

But how does one go about hiring a ghostwriter? And what’s it like to work with one? Dan Gerstein, the founder of Gotham Ghostwriters, an agency that specializes in connecting clients to professional ghostwriters, recently answered these questions in an interview:

What we typically recommend is that the writer spend a fair amount of time upfront before anything is written talking about the vision for the book, make sure they're on the same page in terms of the process they're gonna follow. There's clarity about who's gonna do what. And then secondly, there's an opportunity for the ghost writer to, in casual settings, hear how the author talks, right? Because it's one thing to get their voice from tape recorded interviews, but that's kind of like book speak. And if you really want to be able to kind of tap into the author's voice, you also wanna augment that to some extent with kind of just hearing how they are in kind of more relaxed, informal settings. And that's why, you know, one of the big changes coming outta Covid was that there were a lot of in-person interviews pre covid and then, you know, follow ups via phone.

More quick hits

Dirt started out as a scrappy Substack newsletter but has steadily grown in cultural influence. Its founder wants it to be thought of as a next-generation Conde Nast. It benefited from the NFT boom, raising $1.2 million that way, but then easily pivoted to traditional subscription payments once the "Web3" bubble popped. Now it has over 30,000 paying subscribers. [NYT]

It just seems so absurd to me that Apple would take 30% from Patreon and Substack creators when it does absolutely nothing to help us find an audience or convert it into customers. Apple is basically just a toll collector that takes a cut from all mobile commerce simply because it achieved duopoly status in the smartphone market. Does it offer some extra efficiency through one-click purchases? Sure. But it also doesn't allow app makers to offer alternative payment methods that might have slightly more friction, nor does it even allow them to inform customers that they can make purchases within their web browsers. Just seems like such an absurd, anti-consumer stance that actively stifles innovation. [On Substack]

I was interviewed about the pros and cons of hosting a newsletter on LinkedIn. [Journalism]

It used to be that Reddit would outright ban publishers that posted too many of their own links to the platform. In fact, I remember working at a mainstream magazine back in 2012 and being on a conference call with a Reddit admin who threatened to ban our domain if our reporters kept posting links to their articles. Today, however, many publishers have their own dedicated subreddits and see it as important traffic driver. [Adweek]

Like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss has figured out that it can be extremely lucrative to position yourself as a liberal while almost exclusively publishing content that will appeal to a conservative audience. The Free Press has 100,000 paying subscribers — so $8 million in revenue from subscribers alone. [NYT]

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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