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On this week’s edition of Media Voices we hear from The Economist’s executive vice president of marketing Nada Arnot. Marketing isn’t something we talk about a lot on the podcast, but as Arnot makes clear it’s an integral part of media companies’ ability to address, convert and retain audiences. The Economist has just launched its largest brand campaign since the early 2000s, so Arnot tells us about how the news-focused magazine is seeking to attract younger readers, why she believes long-term brand building is vital in today’s news ecosystem, and the future plans for marketing The Economist.
Arnot says: “Once you get into a world where you start explaining, ‘oh, we have x number of new articles a day or a week, and you get these three benefits, and you get it all for this price’… you suddenly commoditize what what you’re selling and it’s really hard to show the true value because all a consumer will do is eventually comparing you to another publisher.”
In the news roundup the Media Voices team discuss the news that a group of 32 European media organizations, including notable names like publishing giant Axel Springer and media heavyweight Schibsted, have jointly filed a Є2.1bn ($2.3 billion) antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet-owned Google. We ask why no adults ever get round the table to discuss a realistic approach to solving these issues before they arise – and whether it will all matter in a few years given the rapid rise of Amazon’s ad capabilities.
Relevant to today’s podcast! Following the news that Meta is to cease Facebook’s payments to news organisations, Australia’s prime minster is reportedly threatening ‘action’. News Corp has apparently said the move “threatens the viability of small media groups” — but don’t you go believing that’s their true motivation for a second. If they cared a jot about independent media organisations, they’d have lobbied for transparency around the news media deal to begin with. This is a naked cash grab at its most blatant.
Great article here from Luba Kassova from journalism.co.uk on a GenerativeAI threat that’s been bubbling under. Because everyone in the media game is desperate for cash, the focus has been on GenAI’s threat to media business models — but as this article brings back to the fore, unconscious biases around both journalism and AI are far from being eradicated. As such, without examination of both in tandem, the problems associated with those biases could be exacerbated by the rise of GenAI. Must-read.
Finally, this was a fascinating read in light of the recent eulogies for Vice. The perception is that lads’ mags — your Loadeds, FHMs and Nutses — were almost fanatically male in terms of their demographics and staff. As this article from Samira Shackle makes clear there were a number of women writers who either got their start in journalism or furthered their careers on the mags, and their stories — good and bad — are snapshots of a very particular time in British magazine publishing.
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