This week, we hear from Julia Dennison, the Executive Editor of Meredith’s parenting brand Parents.com. She talks about how they’re supporting parents who are trying to juggle childcare and their own jobs during the pandemic, how they use SEO to anticipate their audience’s needs, and their explanatory approach to polarising topics. She also highlights the recent launch of their podcast on diverse families.
In the news roundup the team discusses why the Guardian is cutting its weekend edition, Twitter’s no good very bad week, and pit Pink News and Cosmo against one another in the first ever Membership Smackdown.
Key stories:
- The Guardian has announced plans to cut 180 jobs with both editorial and commercial roles affected
- LGBT+ publisher Pink News is launching a membership scheme to help reduce its reliance on ad revenue
- Cosmopolitan US has introduced a paid membership programme, and a metered paywall on its site
News in brief:
- Twitter had a cataclysmically bad week this week after hackers hijacked prominent accounts to promote a cryptocurrency scam, including the accounts of Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Apple’s official account
- It’s been another terrible week for media layoffs, with Vox and The Guardian announcing a raft of cuts. Josh Sternberg in his Media Nut newsletter calculated there had been 11,027 media layoffs so far this year
- News Corp is preparing to launch more than a dozen new digital-only titles in major centres of regional Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. They’re hiring local journalists with the aim of launching the first 15 of 50 potential new titles by the end of September
- Apple News got a big update this week, with the option to listen to premium Apple News+ ‘Audio stories’, a local news section and a daily recap podcast that’s available to everyone
- The Washington Post has also launched audio versions of all its articles on its app. They first expected people to use it on their commutes, but have been “surprised and pleased” to see steady adoption and use as people continue to work from home
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]
