"One of our most exciting mini-companies inside is called #Newspack. It’s led by #KinseyWilson, who used to be chief of digital at The New York Times. He’s sort of taken everything he learned there and is bringing that to these small newspapers with this product called Newspack, which you can think of as distribution for #WordPress. So, it’s WordPress plus hosting, plus a bundle of plugins that enable all the things that these small-town papers need, like classifieds and all that sort of stuff. The fun thing about it is they’re learning from all of them and sharing the business #bestpractices. So, porous paywalls, or I mentioned classifieds already, but people really love #localnews. It’s just that it couldn’t support some of the old business models."

https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/693052/automattic-ceo-matt-mullenweg-wordpress-drama-wp-engine-open-source

Why Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg went to war over WordPress

The head of web publishing company Automattic on the WP Engine and the future of WordPress.

The Verge