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Grab a pint, and join this fine group of magazine people on May Day as we ask them how they’ve survived and thrived in this messed-up modern media landscape.
For many young journalists, a job at the BBC would be one of their ultimate career goals. For Sophia Smith Galer it was a step on the road to becoming a successful content creator and freelancer.
She told our columnist Charlotte Henry that striking out on her own wasn’t quite the leap into the unknown that it might seem. “I wasn’t necessarily in a workflow that involved a massive team,” she explains. “I almost always was the one-woman production unit.”
Charlotte says Smith Galer’s journalist-author-creator role is the perfect example of our current multi-hyphenate media environment. “She makes her own content, writes books and successfully collaborates with existing media institutions. It seems to be a win-win for all concerned and a route that many are likely to have to follow in the very near future.”
Toolkits’ Jack Marshall writes that commoditised content is becoming increasingly difficult to monetise sustainably, whether through advertising, subscriptions, or any other means. He says, “publishers are now recognising that their futures hinge on the ability to uncover new information and contextualise and present it in ways that artificial intelligence cannot” and we 100% agree.
And just in case you doubt the conclusion in the Toolkits’ story, here’s a cautionary tale from the Wall Street Journal in which a reporter got a developer on Fiverr.com to build a site that could autonomously rewrite and publish articles from mainstream news outlets according to specific political preferences. It took two days and just over $100. Customer relationships built on quality content are the only way forward.
Left-leaning online magazine The Lead is beginning its second wave of new local newsletters and newspapers as it seeks to build a “Northern newsroom”. The Lead, launched in autumn 2022, first began the newsletter project in December with the announcement of plans for ten local weekly newsletters in the North of England. This announcement brings its launch total to seven.
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