On this 150th episode of Media Voices, Cathy Olmedillas, founder of independent children’s magazines Anorak and Dot, explains how she learned about the collectability of magazines from her time at The Face and turned that into a style of publishing that owes more to books than disposable magazines culture. She also explains how in the time of COVID, she’s found a new respect for digital, and what success means to her as an indie magazine publisher.
In the news roundup the team discusses France’s tax credits for news subscriptions scheme, the launch of Skift Pro and the NYT pulling out of Apple News. Yeezy 2020.
Key stories:
- France is giving tax credits to news subscribers in an effort to rescue the sector
- The New York Times is opting out of Apple News to focus on building its own direct relationships with readers
- Skift has launched Skift Pro, a new daily news membership service designed to give travel industry readers unlimited access to news coverage and ‘directly support Skift business and growth’
News in brief:
- The Silicon Valley elite have been discussing how journalists have too much power to “cancel” people and wondering what they, the titans of Silicon Valley, could do about it.
- Google upended plans by European media companies to block it from harvesting data about their readers
- Facebook is changing its algorithm to boost original reporting, joining Google who made a similar move a few months ago. It will demote stories in News Feed that aren’t transparent about who has written them
- In case you’re wondering how the ad boycott of Facebook is going, an internal meeting at the platform was leaked where Zuckerberg was heard telling employees that “my guess is that all these advertisers will be back on the platform soon enough,” and that it was more of a “reputational and partner issue” than an economic one.
- There were 133,171 new shows in Apple Podcasts in June, according to MyPodcastReviews: that’s the highest amount of new shows ever to be added in just one month.
- Times Radio launched with an exclusive Boris Johnson interview. Forget BOJO, what’s the radio like?
- The BBC has cut 450 staff from its regional programmes as part of cost-cutting measures to save £25m
- The Wall Street Journal has launched Noted, an Instagram-heavy news and culture magazine for 18- to 34-year-olds in a push to attract younger audiences to the Journal.
Sign up to The Media Roundup – our new daily newsletter bringing you the top 3-4 stories you need to know each day
[revue_subscribe]