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

There's a "new class of creators who’ve emerged recently, garnering large audiences by posting stripped-down, raw content with zero or extremely minimal editing." [Rolling Stone] I think this trend also explains why video podcasts are getting so huge. They’re basically long, unedited conversations, and they allow you to feel almost as if you’re hanging out with the creators.

Many of the OG beauty influencers are now running QVC-like live streams where they try to get their audiences to buy products for which they'll receive a commission. Some of their fans are getting tired of the format and expressing doubt that these are genuine product recommendations. [Business Insider]

Apple had something like a 12-year lead as the dominant podcast player, but it was just so obvious that the company's executives had no interest in investing in the product. This allowed Spotify and YouTube to move in and snatch up a huge portion of the podcast audience. Now that Apple is finally launching new podcast products again — including subscriptions and an improved web interface — it'll be interesting to see if it can claw back market share. [Bloomberg]

"People watched over 30 billion hours of shopping videos on YouTube in 2023." Between this and the $17.5 billion that's expected to be spent on TikTok Shop this year, it's clear that ecommerce is becoming a huge business for video creators. [Passionfruit]

Nate Silver: "Someone should probably write a trend story about what my partner and I have started to call the 'Substack Effect' for book authors. I realize I’m talking to a microfraction of the audience, but if you’re someone who’s working on a book, I’d strongly encourage you to start an email newsletter — just trust me on this one." [Silver Bulletin]

iJustine is one of the OG tech vloggers. 18 years after posting her first video, she's still going strong and filming most of her own videos. [The Verge]

One of the most influential magazines within the art world has 50,000 subscribers and carries glossy ads for many of the world's prominent luxury brands. [Puck]

One of the common perceptions of creators is that they have fewer ethical boundaries compared to traditional journalists. While that's certainly the case for some, many strive to maintain their integrity, even in an environment where they have to manage both their content creation and the business side of their operations. [Publish Press]

How TAPinto sells local ads across 90 news sites

Talk to just about anyone who works in local newspapers, and they’ll tell you it’s getting more and more difficult to convince local businesses to buy ads. Not only are these businesses able to build their own audiences on social media and email, but they also have access to super targeted ad products offered by platforms like Google and Facebook.

But Mike Shapiro hasn’t been daunted by the challenge of selling local ads. He’s the founder of TAPinto, a network of over 90 news websites spread out mostly in New Jersey. Over the past decade, he’s developed a range of ad products and all sorts of unique incentives that allow his network operators to collaborate on selling sponsorships.

In a recent interview, Mike walked through every aspect of his advertising ecosystem including all the different ad products he offers, why they’re superior to Google and Facebook, how his operators collaborate on selling sponsorships, and why every ad unit has a flat rate regardless of the site’s audience size:

We have a press release section. We have an events calendar. We have a classified section. We have a business directory. We have a real estate listing section, et cetera. So that's where that content populates. And when it goes live, well, first of all, it goes to the publisher for publication. So nothing goes live until someone, a human actually sees it and approves it. Once it goes live, it's on the site. It also goes out in the next day's morning newsletter. So the advertisers get email exposure from it and it ranks highly on search. So they get SEO benefits from doing this as well.

And so that's the first content marketing option. The second is where an advertiser can have a featured branded column, where they can write as often as they want about whatever they want to write about. They can actually submit it through that same DIY marketing platform, but only they have the right to submit their own column.

More quick hits

Soren Iverson has gone super viral for his humorous design tweaks of everyday products. Now he's selling them in a coffee table book. [Embedded]

A year ago, four former Vice journalists set off to launch their own writer-owned cooperative. They say it's now fully sustainable. [404Media] FROM THE ARTICLE: "In the last year, we learned that the technical infrastructure exists now for even non-technical journalists to build a sustainable site that can receive money from subscribers. That may sound obvious on the surface, but when you run a site for investigations, and multiple podcast feeds, and send different types of newsletters to different segments of your audience throughout the week, there are several moving parts you and the tools you buy need to link together."

Ezra Klein considered striking off on his own to launch an independent newsletter and podcast, but he liked the idea of working for a larger institution. [New York] FROM THE ARTICLE: “I sometimes feel like a dumbass who’s left a ton of money on the table ... It’s true that I could make more money doing this independently, but if all the people who do what I do decide to go and capture all of their revenue themselves, then what happens to all the parts of the industry that are frankly more important than what I do, but are not self-sustaining in that way? ... The Times is a unique power. If I had done the same pieces from Substack, would it have mattered?”

It's amazing how much staying power Rotten Tomatoes has maintained over 24 years. I don't watch a single TV show or movie without checking its score first. There aren't that many websites that have that level of brand loyalty or trust. [Hollywood Reporter]

I haven't seen a single satisfying explanation of why OpenAI feels it needs to license content from large media companies like Conde Nast but can crawl independent publications like mine without compensation. Is there a large class action lawsuit I can sign onto? [Status]

WashPo developed an AI tool that helps its journalists sift through huge datasets and identify trends. For instance, it can be used to "summarize an hours-long City Council meeting quickly." [Axios] As someone who got his start in local journalism and spent many hours sitting in public meetings, I can definitely see the utility of this for cash-strapped outlets that don't have the resources to send someone to every meeting.

"A common vacation itinerary includes three or four days at Disney World and one or two days at Universal. If Universal can now persuade families to spend one more day at its parks instead of at Disney, it could nab hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue." [WSJ]

The gambling industry has injected a huge amount of revenue into sports media, but it's also transformed the way these outlets cover sports: "The fans’ relationship to athletes is becoming ever more transactional, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the athletes themselves." [Bloomberg]

Why I turn down most consultation requests

At least once a week, I get contacted by an organization that wants to hire me to work with them on a contract basis to improve some aspect of their content operations. I used to make a living with this type of consulting, but now I turn away almost 100% of these inquiries and refer them to someone else. 

Why? Because even though these types of engagements often pay well, they’re also pretty time consuming, which means they would subtract from the amount of time I spend on my newsletter and podcast.

But here’s the thing: the only way I can financially justify turning down this work is if I generate enough revenue through paid subscriptions. After all, I have an obligation to pay the mortgage and put food on my family’s table.

Which is to say that if you want to ensure that my newsletter and podcast remain an ongoing concern, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. Seriously, it’s only $100 for a full year, and if you’re using insights from my content to improve your own business, then that $100 pays for itself. And if you use the link below, you get 20% off for the first year:

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