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The Rebooting’s Brian Morrissey had me at ‘Putting audience first’ in his latest newsletter. We argue for audience-first publishing all the time at Media Voices, but it’s not always easy to describe what that looks like. So, I was delighted to see Brian have a go here.
You really should read the newsletter to get the full story, but the highlight for me is the focus on what Brian calls the pivot to niche – building a new business focused on specific audiences. Of course, that isn’t easy and publishers will need to park their egos to accept smaller numbers than brands “engineered through random traffic”.
Brian also points out that, although ‘intentional audiences and habits’ are more durable, the tradeoff is that it will take a lot longer than you expect or would like. “There is always a tradeoff,” he says, “and anybody who says there isn’t is a passive-income grifter who will likely try to sell you some kind of online course.”
From our Media Briefs series, we’re looking at access to AI tools. For most publishers who haven’t yet adopted AI, identifying a use case they can start with is usually the biggest roadblock, according to Bridged Media’s Maanas Mediratta. However, he also sees a problem with practical access to the tools publishers could use to support their nascent AI ambitions.
AP, which has historically made most of its money from licensing content, is launching a financial services recommendation site for consumers. The initiative is a partnership with everyone’s favourite content-recommendation engine Taboola. To be fair, Taboola appears to have done a decent job of pivoting from chumboxes to ecommerce. Its ‘Time Stamped’ project with Time magazine generates 3 million monthly users.
Tortoise’s 3-million strong audience is possibly the least interesting part of this story. What got my attention was the fact that the slow-news brand is leveraging its audio output into TV and film adaptations. I remember reporting on this when it was just a good idea. Now, Tortoise has half a dozen stories in development for documentaries and drama. In related news, I can neither confirm nor deny the rumours around ‘Media Voices: The Musical’.
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