Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Esther.
We’ve got a very busy week here at Media Voices. Tomorrow (Tues) Peter and I will be at the PPA Festival, and Chris will be hosting Google’s Local News Summit. Then on Wednesday afternoon we’ll be hosting the fourth Publisher Podcast Awards. If you’re planning to be at any (or all) of them, do say hello!
If you’re looking for a new podcast editing tool, we can recommend Hindenburg, a professional-grade audio editing system made for simplicity, speed and agility. It’s built for podcasts and audio storytelling, with lots of features like auto levelling which help streamline the process. will get you an extended three month trial of Hindenburg PRO for business.
Today’s Media Roundup is brought to you by . (Book this ad slot)
Journalism – a reality check
I found some time this weekend to catch up with the latest InPublishing magazine, and loved this blisteringly honest feature from Liz Gerard. She neatly picks apart the issue with so much of today’s ‘journalism’, and how it leaves whole sections of society disregarded.
“Is it any wonder that newspaper readerships are shrinking faster than one of Sunak’s cashmere jumpers on a boil wash?” she asks, arguing that with so many people now cast as ‘the other’ and excluded from editorial consideration, papers retreat to what they think matters to their core audiences. “A medium that was once a source of information, entertainment and even delight has become a vehicle for hate and resentment.”
It’s not a cheery read but is a very necessary one. Brands will find their reputations slowly eroded if editorial isn’t sufficiently invested in – and setting staff targets of writing 6+ stories a day isn’t going to produce quality, trusted output, no matter how talented they are.
Magazine editor sacked over AI-generated ‘interview’ with seven-time F1 champion
Good. This was an utterly appalling lapse of judgement which saw magazine Die Aktuelle claim to run a ‘first interview’ with the injured Formula 1 legend, with the article using quotes generated by an AI programme. No doubt we’ll see more incidents like this (there’s already a Joe Rogan/Steve Jobs AI podcast) but publishers need to hold themselves to a higher level of accountability than this.
Benchmark: how 3 successful British publishers are onboarding subscribers
We’ve seen a few reports out this quarter that have highlighted just how much of a priority retention now is for subscription publishers. If you fall in that camp, then this piece from The Audiencers should be on your reading list. Madeleine White has analysed the ‘aha moments’ from 3 successful British digital publishers to inspire your own efforts.
The internet of the 2010s has ended
This is more than just a post-mortem of BuzzFeed News, although there are some great annecdotes from Charlie Warzel about what it was like working there in its heyday. “It seems likely that a zombified form of BuzzFeed will become the embodiment of everything the previous version wasn’t: terrified, obsessed with squeezing every ounce of shareholder value from its employees, and constantly bending to the forces of new technology like artificial intelligence, rather than harnessing and growing alongside them,” he writes.
More from Media Voices
Practical AI – Lessons from local media
Our special Practical AI podcast documentary explores how local media organisations have got started with AI projects, the benefits they’re seeing, the challenges they’ve faced and what advice they would give to other publishers looking to get into AI. This episode and our corresponding report have been made possible with the support of United Robots.
Download Practical AI for Local Media for free
Our Practical AI report sidesteps the myths and misconceptions surrounding AI to find out what practical applications there really are for publishers. It spotlights use cases from publishers using AI to turn massive structured datasets into local news reports, updates on local sports teams and the insights inside property listings.
