What do you think is the biggest mistake the media has made in the last 20 years?
https://simonowens.substack.com/p/the-media-industrys-original-sin
Simon Owens
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I'm a media industry journalist. You can reach me at [email protected]
I don't think there's another newsletter out there that regularly gives you direct access to the world's most successful media operators.
https://simonowens.substack.com/p/lets-talk-to-stephen-hayes-and-taegan
Let's talk to Stephen Hayes and Taegan Goddard about monetizing political news
Hello there! If you’re reading this, you’re probably a paying subscriber to my newsletter. Several times a month, I host a live “Office Hours” session for my subscribers. My hope is that this not only gives you the opportunity to interact with me, but also each other. I’ve been consistently amazed by the caliber of my subscribers’ expertise — in fact, I’ve featured many of my subscribers in the newsletter and podcast — and my ultimate goal is to cross-pollinate that expertise through these Office Hours.
So I've been posting to Mastodon for several months but haven't seen much growth or engagement here. It's probably not a great fit for my stuff. If you want to read my daily commentary, you should follow me on Substack Notes.
Twitter is now letting its creators to lock their content behind a paywall. The question is whether creators will trust their monetization to a platform that doesn't let them own their audience.
I want to experiment with asking an open-ended question and then curating the answers in my Friday newsletter. So here's my question:
What's your #1 piece of advice for converting your free audience into paid members/subscribers?
During the era of low interest rates, media holding companies were vacuuming up lots of smaller outlets with the hope of creating business synergies across their entire portfolio, but now we're seeing more and more of those outlets being spun off or shuttered.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/business/media/vox-nowthis-accelerate-change.html
This is a more optimistic take on AI content creation that I mostly agree with -- that it'll take over the mindless copywriting that's meant solely for search engines and free up human writers to focus on more creatively-fulfilling work.
https://slate.com/technology/2023/04/chatgpt-buzzfeed-ai-seo-superbowl-journalism.html
Lots of media companies are admitting to experimenting with AI capabilities, but very few still have jumped in head first. I think they all know that it takes just one plagiarized or inaccurate article to generate a PR nightmare.
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/13/insiders-newsroom-will-start-experimenting-with-ai
Twitter has been surprisingly resilient in fending off competitors even though many of its power users profess to hate Elon Musk. But with Substack Notes, it may have met its match.
https://simonowens.substack.com/p/substack-notes-could-be-the-twitter
Given what happened on this week's episode of Succession, it's perfect timing for Vanity Fair to go deep on the Murdoch media empire and its own bumpy road toward naming a successor.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/04/rupert-murdoch-cover-story
