This week, we hear from Tobi Oredein, Co-Founder and CEO of Black Ballad, a UK-based lifestyle platform for Black British women. She talks about what drove her to found the site, why they decided to launch memberships ahead of the curve in 2016, and the impact of their recent HuffPost takeover. She also outlines how their Future of News Funding will help them better serve and grow their audience outside London.
In the news roundup, the team goes deep into Trump v. TikTok and its implications for publishers, looks at what good news means for The Telegraph around subscriptions, and discusses the BBC failing to close its gender pay gap. A slip of the tongue leads ‘directors’ to become ‘dictators’.
See the full transcript here, or edited highlights below:
What drove Tobi to set up Black Ballad?
It really came from a place of passionate frustration…I was freelancing a lot, and I couldn’t get a permanent job. I didn’t quite have the language to think of why…but being completely honest now, I just didn’t fit what a staff writer at a women’s magazine looked like at that time.
I was kind of like, if no one can see what I’m offering, if I can see that everybody looks alike and I don’t look like these women who are getting these jobs, I need to change tactics. I need to, a phrase we use in media, I need to pivot! And I decided to start Black Ballad because I wanted to give myself a job. I thought, if no one’s going to take a chance on me, I might as well take a chance on myself.
On starting a media company rather than a blog
I realised that my opinions didn’t represent every black woman. And that was why I knew that it needed to be a fully fledged media company. It couldn’t just be based on my opinions and values as a black woman, because with all categories of women, or identities, there’s always nuance.
So I was like, it can’t just be me, it just can’t be my thoughts or feelings and opinions. I want it to be a diverse range of black women who are speaking to another diverse range of black women.
Launching memberships ahead of the curve
We weren’t getting anything in advertising, because advertising, especially back then, was about scale, how big is your audience. Black people make up 3% of the country, if black women make up half of that, that’s 1.5%…people didn’t see the scale, they didn’t see the value. So we knew that advertising was not going to bring us money, especially at that time, because we had a much smaller community then.
So [co-founder Bola Awoniyi] was like, ‘The only way we can make money really, at this point is to have a membership.’ The membership gave us a sustainable income that didn’t rely on brands, but actually put black women first in terms of, we have to make the membership the best it is, so black women actually pay us. And then the flip side of that is by having a paywall, we’re actually protecting black female writers who don’t get opportunities to write about their stories or interview people that they want. They get to do that in a safe space as well.
Proving the doubters wrong
We were so early [to memberships], and if I’m honest, people didn’t think it was going to work. There was a thing of like, this small, independent brand led by a black woman is having the balls to make people pay for content. People did not think it was going to work. But three years on, we are still standing and the membership has grown so, so much.
On the importance of their business directory
Media functions as a platform to advertise businesses, and black businesses don’t often get those opportunities to advertise to customers, because they don’t get funding for their businesses to pay the rates that you would have to pay to be a mainstream magazine.
So for us, that’s our version of advertisement in terms of, we create very fair prices for black-owned businesses to be in that directory, and hopefully do some content with them and around their business to advertise to members. And then it doubles up as a nice lifestyle perk. It’s nice that black women, or whoever’s a member can see this black-owned business and be like, ‘Oh okay, that’s a great product for my hair,’ or ‘That’s a great service.’
Finding voices outside London
One thing that I’ve been very clear on to the team is that I’m not going to repeat the mistakes of mainstream media. And what I mean by that is, there’s not going to be one dominant voice in this publication, and that dominant voice is the black female Londoner.
So for nine weeks later on in the year, we’ll have an editor from a specific region in the country take over Black Ballad with all content from their area…from Scotland, Wales, the North West, East of England, South West, South East. And the stories and content that’s being produced, I’m just so excited for it.
I want to be clear, this isn’t just the beginning and the end of us doing content that really puts a spotlight on black women outside London. It’s just the beginning.
Key stories:
- Trump has given his blessing to last-minute revisions of a TikTok-Oracle-Walmart deal in order to keep the social media app operational in the US
- Trump said at a rally on Saturday that the approved deal includes a $5 billion education fund. TikTok owner Bytedance have said they know nothing about it
- Oracle and Walmart said they were together investing to acquire 20% of the newly formed TikTok Global business
- WeChat ban blocked by federal judge in ruling against Trump Administration
- I don’t understand this whole TikTok thing
- With dance challenges and explainer videos, publishers invade TikTok to court Gen Z
News in brief:
- Apple has officially announced its Apple One subscription bundle, bringing together its Music, TV+, Arcade and News+ products. News+ is only included as part of the priciest bundle though, so it’s unlikely to hugely boost subscription revenue for News+ publisher partners.
- News Corp has accused Google of misleading Australian regulators, according to documents filed with regulators in Canberra. News Corp have taken particular issue with Google’s claim that it made $10m (Australian dollars) in revenue on ads against news queries in Australia last year
- Google have just announced a global programme to help news publishers navigate the complexity of digital transformation. The GNI Digital Growth Program is free, and is aimed at helping small and mid-sized news publishers around the world “develop the capabilities required to accelerate the growth of their businesses online.”
- The New York Times and Facebook have struck a multi-year partnership to develop augmented reality filters and effects on Instagram to help users access and contextualise the NYT’s journalism
- PWC’s Media Outlook report for 2020-2024 is out, and predicts that global newspaper advertising will decline by more than a quarter over the next 5 years. It also suggests that global circulation and subscriber revenue will fall from $58.7bn in 2019 to $50.4bn in 2024, a decline of 6%
- The BBC has failed to reach its ambitious target to close the gender pay gap by 2020. Its median pay gap currently stands at 6.2% (the national average is 17.3%)
- The Telegraph Media Group have grown their digital subscription revenues by half to £17.8m in 2019, and attribute the growth to the success of its focus on a subscription-first strategy, and investment in journalism
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