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Quick hits

The Guardian launched a vertical to cover non-UK European countries and saw a 45% lift in contributions from people living in those countries. [The Guardian]

It’s kind of strange that the entire newspaper industry hasn’t banded together to host its own advertising upfronts — why is this something that’s mostly been exclusive to the TV industry? Seems like a great way to get in front of big brand advertisers to pitch a publisher’s value add. [Adweek]

“Broadcasters are losing as much as $28 billion in potential annual revenue” as a result of illegal streaming of live sports — something that’s hard to police because copyright filters can’t really detect piracy of live programming. [Bloomberg]

Lots of publishers tried to take the publishing tech they built in-house and license it out, but most of these ventures haven't been very successful. [Axios]

Vice is joining a stable of other legacy publishers that are relaunching their print magazine in an effort to boost paid subscriptions. The idea is that a digital subscription will be made slightly more enticing if it includes a quarterly print product. [Adweek] I'm pretty skeptical though that Vice will invest enough in its online content to build a robust subscription business.

The Daily Beast has always punched far above its weight in terms of journalistic impact, but it still struggled to reach profitability. Its new leaders seem focused on bringing on more celebrity writers while simultaneously keeping overhead relatively low. [Variety]

For news publishers, what's the value of a mobile app? Some think it may be a valuable churn reduction tool, making it easier for paid subscribers to build habits via push notifications and a cleaner, customized reading experience. [Media Voices]

How Tim Burrowes helped build Mumbrella into a $7 million media brand

Like a lot of journalists in the mid-2000s, Tim Burrowes grew frustrated with his employer’s print mentality and its tendency to treat online publishing as an afterthought. At the time, he worked for an Australian trade magazine that covered that country’s media industry.

So in 2008, he and two co-founders decided to launch Mumbrella, a competing blog that published upwards of 15 times a day. Its gossipy comments section quickly attracted an audience of bored office workers, and within a few years it was hosting multiple industry events that collectively generated millions of dollars.

In a recent interview, Tim explained how Mumbrella made such a big splash so quickly, why he and his co-founders decided to sell it, and what he’s doing differently with his newest media startup:

Yeah, look, in terms of editorial momentum, it came along very, very quickly. If not weeks, then certainly months, it felt like it was a conversation. I remember chatting to the CEO of a media agency and he kind of said, when I walk around in the office, I can just see it's open on everyone's screens. And so much of that actually was the comments underneath the story. Because one of the things about the Australian marketing industry, and particularly the agency side of things, is they're just really horrible people to each other. They're really outspoken which does make for an intriguing comment thread. One of the first kind of transitional moments for us was having to switch to pre from post moderation, just because the defamation risk was getting so high as we began to find the audience. One of the things that I think got us so much momentum was the two established trade titles were both broadly still in print. They both still did weekly editions in print and their daily editions were so edition based. If one or the other of those titles had a really good story, they would just sit on it and not send their day's newsletter until the other one had sent. And they get involved in these standoffs where they both go later and later if they both had the same good story. And sometimes it'd be four or five o'clock in the afternoon. So we just came through in the middle and we sent our newsletter at lunchtime each day. And it was a good year before either of them reacted to that and started sending it at about the same time. So there was just this gap open for a while that we were lucky enough to jump into.

More quick hits

"Audiences no longer go to the movies—instead, these days, they go to see a specific film. Positive factors like good word-of-mouth, solid reviews, and prerelease viral marketing barely factor into the equation if the film itself doesn’t possess some other intrinsic appeal." [Puck]

Nate Silver was one of the first left-leaning pundits to call for Biden to drop out, and even though he's been largely vindicated, many Democrats haven't been able to forgive him. [Vox]

Several publishers have invested in WhatsApp as a channel for driving traffic to their stories; some are even creating original videos for the platform. [NYT]

Casey Newton writes about how his business fared after leaving Substack. He says that his revenue is slightly up, mostly on account of no longer having to share 10% of his revenue with Substack. He’s finding it harder to convert free subscribers into paid, but also says his churn rate has gone down. Overall, a mixed bag, at least from a business perspective. [Platformer]

The Bulwark, the never-Trump outlet that's become one of the biggest political publications on Substack, has grown its YouTube following by 600,000 in just the last year. Most of the videos consist of short clips from its longform podcasts. [Semafor]

Niche media companies are increasingly trying to position themselves "more as lifestyle brands than just content publishers." The tennis magazine Racquet, for instance, wants to open up SoHo House-like tennis clubs and associate itself more with the luxury side of the sport. [NYT]

Publishers spend a lot of time fretting over the advertising dominance of Meta and Google, but they should be increasingly worried about the trend where virtually every tech platform that's sufficiently scaled user attention is turning into an advertising company. [The Media Leader]

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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