#MediaRevenue - David Clinch

Welcome to my weekly update on all things #MediaRevenue.

As I continue to advise CEO's and Publishers at news organizations about how to optimize their business for reader revenue, attention and contextual advertising revenue, and the revenue opportunities from AI, I am also helping many of them think about how best to manage all these strategies while keeping journalism, and their newsrooms, at the core of their mission.

DM or email me if you want to meet to discuss subjects related to media revenue or AI and the news industry while I am in New York next week.

A short list of #MediaRevenue stories this week (including news about some news sources used by millions of Americans some of which have been posting AI-created fabrications, and another that was apparently laundering money!)

LinkedIn’s publisher revenue share program is entering its next phase: The test period over the past several months has yielded ad revenue for some of the publishers. Prior to its launch in beta, execs from Bloomberg, Reuters, Forbes and The Wall Street Journal all said they sold ads through the program, signing on anywhere from three to 35 clients. There are no concrete plans at the moment for when the Wire Program will open up to more publishers. - Digiday.

Post publisher draws more scrutiny after newsroom shakeup: Post publisher draws more scrutiny after newsroom shakeup, and pushes back at media outlets’ accounts of events leading up to Post editor Sally Buzbee’s abrupt departure on Sunday. - Washington Post.

OpenAI is paying publishers big money for content. That could be a lifeline — or blow up in their faces.: The deal details haven't been released, but some of the publishers that made them tell me the deals have the same general shape: OpenAI offers them millions of dollars in cash over the course of the deal — typically three to five years — plus some credits to help them build and operate their own products using OpenAI's software. And the deals include promises to feature their content — along with links back to their sites — in OpenAI's products. - Insider.

Guardian CEO Bateson ready to ‘do a deal’ with AI companies ‘on the right terms’: Asked whether The Guardian would do the same, Bateson said: “Would we do a deal? Yes — but only on the right terms and for the right value. And I think that’s easy to say and it’s very hard to actually deliver. - Press Gazette.

It Looked Like a Reliable News Site. It Was an A.I. Chop Shop.: BNN Breaking had millions of readers, an international team of journalists and a publishing deal with Microsoft. But it was full of error-ridden content. - New York Times.

NewsBreak: Most downloaded US news app has Chinese roots and 'writes fiction' using AI: NewsBreak, which is headquartered in Mountain View, California and has offices in Beijing and Shanghai. - Reuters.

What will become of The Epoch Times with its chief financial officer accused of money laundering?: The arrest of an executive at The Epoch Times in a money-laundering scheme this week has drawn attention to a media outlet that has lived largely in the shadows since its founding in 2000 and a transformation during the Trump administration. - AP.

Robert Allbritton’s new mission is creating more journalists. Why?: The Politico founder says the decline of local news has cut training opportunities for journalists — whom he wants to nudge out of their ideological silos. - Washington Post.

The New York Times Passes 2m International Digital Subscribers: The New York Times Company has surpassed two million digital subscribers outside the United States, more than a third of which are in Europe, including the United Kingdom. Canada and Australia have also seen subscriber growth in recent years. - New York Times.

CNN's data push: CNN has begun testing an expanded registration wall that requires heavy site users to create an account with a username and password to continue assessing content when they hit a certain threshold of daily articles. The registration gateway doesn't require payment, but it gives CNN access to first-party data that it could use to improve its ad products or eventually sell subscriptions. - Axios.

Bloomberg Media rolls out website upgrades as it hits 540,000 subscribers: Bloomberg Media is betting on increased website functionality and deeper reporting to keep it ahead of generative AI-based information providers. Press Gazette spoke the US-based brand’s chief digital officer Julia Beizer who revealed the site now has 540,000 subscriptions (up from 500,000 six months ago). - Press Gazette.

Vice’s Shane Smith Is Returning to the Spotlight, With Few Regrets: Smith, who stepped out of the spotlight when Vice fell into financial distress and careened toward bankruptcy, has been appointed editor in chief of Vice News.??- WSJ.

A brutal week for Oregon newspapers with more sales, closures: Two family-owned publishing companies announced Monday that they are selling or have sold nearly half the state’s newspapers. First Pamplin Media, a group of 24 papers including the Portland Tribune, announced that it sold to a Southern newspaper chain. Then Salem-based EO Media, a fourth-generation publisher of a dozen titles, disclosed that it’s closing five papers, laying off 28 of 185 employees and putting the company up for sale. - Seattle Times.