When hosting the world's most popular podcast is not enough

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

Alex Cooper Is Blowing Up: “I’m a Motherf***er When It Comes to Business”

Alex Cooper doesn’t just want to host the biggest podcast in the world. To loosely paraphrase Walter White, she’s in the media empire business. —Hollywood Reporter

The key decisions that saved the Boston Globe

The Boston Globe has 260,000 digital subscribers paying $360 a year — so about $93 million in annual subscription revenue. It operates two different sites: a free one that consists of general news and lifestyle content and then a paywalled site with more in-depth coverage. It's arguably the most successful regional newspaper in the US. — Press Gazette

A year in, The Guardian’s European edition contributes 15% of the publisher’s pageviews

The Guardian launched an edition dedicated to covering European countries other than the UK, and it hired 10 additional staffers to run the vertical. This resulted in a 45% increase in one-time donations and 8% increase in paid subscriptions from readers who live in the expanded coverage area. — Nieman Lab

To Fight Churn on Its 740,000 Subscribers, Bloomberg Media Debuts Weekend Edition

Bloomberg Media "now has 740,000 paying subscribers ... At the last tally, in July, the publisher reported having 590,000 subscribers, and it hopes to top 1 million subscribers by the first half of next year." So that means it's generating upwards of $296 million in subscription revenue alone. Still nothing close to the revenue thrown off by the Bloomberg Terminal, but that's still a nice side business that only strengthens the value of the terminals. — Adweek

In Melrose, an experiment in hyper-local AI podcasting

There's a new Google tool that allows you to upload a document, and then the tool will analyze the words and spit out a convincing-sounding podcast of two hosts discussing the contents of the document. One enterprising person is uploading the transcripts of government meetings in his town.

My guess is that the outcome is underwhelming, but this is an interesting approach to filling in the gap left by retrenching local newsrooms. Given that so many government meetings can now be attended via Zoom — a carryover from the pandemic — then I wouldn't a surprised if a media startup emerged that just plugged these recordings into Otter.ai and published the summaries. It probably would be at least better than no coverage at all. — Commonwealth Beacon

Seven Data Points That Explain the ‘Podcast Election’

Is it safe to say at this point that podcasting is "mainstream"? If you incorporate video versions of podcasts into that calculus, which you should, then I'd say the answer is yes. There are probably very few Americans under the age of 60 who haven't at least encountered podcast clips on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. — Bloomberg

News Email Startup 1440 Hits 4 Million Subscribers and Launches First Web Product

The daily newsletter 1440 "will generate more than $20 million in revenue this year across its 19-person team." That's over $1 million per employee — though I'm guessing there are probably contractors who aren't included in that calculus.

Now it's expanding into creating original content, mostly in the form of evergreen web articles that it can send its subscribers to: "We want to be the Pinterest for knowledge—like if Reddit and Wikipedia had a baby. The goal is for Topics to be the go-to place to learn more about a specific subject, like the gut microbiome, Burning Man, or the Federal Reserve.” — Adweek

The internet is obsessed with watching pretty girls eat

There's an incredibly popular genre of social media content that involves thin, attractive women eating gargantuan amounts of food on camera. — Adhoc

Democracy dies on Instagram

It'll never stop being strange that the company that's arguably the largest content distributor in the world actively suppresses any content that can be considered even remotely political. In effect, it's basically taking away political influence from individual users and placing it back with mainstream media companies that have access to alternative means of distribution. — Usermag

How Keith Pepper turned an Atlanta newspaper chain into a digital-first media company

When Keith Pepper bought a chain of print newspapers back in 2020, he received an email from a columnist at the Atlanta Journal Constitution that basically asked if he was crazy. But Keith had a plan for taking a company that generated 98% of its revenue from print advertising and converting it into a digital-first media company.

And he’s done just that. Today, Rough Draft Atlanta generates 27% of its revenue from digital ads, and it managed this feat without seeing a significant decline in print advertising. This has allowed Keith to reinvest in the business by hiring more journalists, and it’s now stronger than ever.

In a recent interview, Keith explained how he consolidated all the newspapers under a single brand, his strategy for attracting online ads, and why he’s avoided placing his content behind a paywall.

You can watch, listen to, or read the interview over here.

More quick hits

For the reporters of Hell Gate, heaven is covering Mayor Eric Adams

WashPo checks in on Hell Gate, a worker-owned media cooperative that's capitalized on Eric Adams's growing list of scandals: "Hell Gate now has 5,368 paying subscribers and has exceeded $500,000 in annual revenue from subscriptions ... Combined with limited advertising revenue and $300,000 in funding from foundations and individuals ... Hell Gate brings in enough to cover operational costs and pay a modest salary of $60,000 " — WashPo

Why Shopping Livestreams Are Taking Over TikTok

Wow. TikTok Shop is supposedly on track to do $17.5 billion in US sales this year. That's been almost entirely driven by its own creators. This leaves me wondering how much its creators have generated in commissions. — The Information

20VC closes new $400M fund to ‘make Europe great again,’ says Harry Stebbings

A podcaster who achieved success by interviewing venture capitalists has raised $400 million for his own VC fund. — TechCrunch

The FTC puts an end to “click to subscribe, call to cancel”

It'll be interesting to see what happens to the New York Times' churn rate now that the FTC is mandating click-to-cancel. One of the Grey Lady's underdiscussed strategies for achieving its subscription success involved requiring people to call a phone number to cancel their subscriptions. Obviously, this created an added layer of friction that likely reduced its churn rate. — Nieman Lab

A Twist on the Celebrity-Interview Podcast: Add Two Civilians

This is cool. Podcrushed differentiated itself from other celebrity interview podcasts by focusing its interviews almost exclusively on the celebrity's teen years — a period of time when most of them weren't yet famous. — NYT

Substack has been ramping up in-person events, with creators hosting readings, debates, and more

I'm pretty skeptical that Substack has any interest in building an events business. These bespoke events are really more of a marketing strategy to raise awareness within the creative community about Substack. Maybe at some point the platform will launch some kind of ticket purchasing feature, though I think it's much more likely to expand into ebooks and courses first. — Business Insider

Spotify paying audiobook publishers hundreds of millions annually

It's clear that Spotify has already captured a substantial share of the audiobook market, further vindicating CEO Daniel Ek's decision to turn the app into a one-stop-shop for all kinds of audio content. It's not a coincidence that Spotify has been consistently profitable in recent quarters after nearly a decade of being in the red. — Axios

The internet’s homepage

I vividly remember the first time my blog made it to the front page of Digg. First came excitement, but then it quickly turned into horror as I realized that my host was crashing under the weight of all those visits. Digg really did represent the introduction of the social web — when a mass collective of internet users could propel obscure content into the mainstream. — The Verge

Eater, Finally, Launches an App

I feel like mobile apps are quietly making a comeback within the media industry. They were largely abandoned after outlets realized that most consumers don't want to fire up a bunch of different apps to consume their news, but now there's growing recognition that a well-designed app can serve a publisher's most loyal userbase. It's less about mass appeal and more about creating user habits. — Adweek