Top news sites collectively received 7.5% fewer visits on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the 2024 US election than they did on those days in 2020, data from Similarweb shows.

The Associated Press, Substack and Axios were among the sites with the most growth between the two elections, while Politico, Fox News, The Guardian and The New York Times all lost substantial proportions of their traffic – according to Similarweb.

After aggregator Yahoo.com (130.6 million visits on Tuesday 5 and Wednesday 6 November) CNN was the most-visited news site in the US, drawing 109.1 million clicks. That figure is down 19.4% on the same days in the 2020 election.

The New York Times (62.4 million) was the second most-visited publisher, but its traffic too dropped 36.3%. Fox News, the third most popular publisher on the list, saw traffic drop 46.8% when compared with the 2020 election, the fifth-largest fall among the top 50 most-visited sites.

Among the ten most-visited news sites over election night, Fox was the biggest faller, followed by The New York Times and CNN. The AP (47.6 million visits, up 247.1%) was the biggest gainer, followed by NBC News (44.3 million, up 120.2%) and USA Today (27.7 million, up 70.1%). The rest of the top ten saw single-digit percentage point changes.

The significant declines at the most-visited sites may reflect broader news avoidance trends or the relative speed with which the result of the 2024 election became clear. The 2020 election, in comparison, took days to be called.

Among the broader top 50 election night news sites the fastest grower was Axios, which saw visits grow 291.7% from 1.8 million in 2020 to 7.2 million last week.

Faster growing still was publishing platform Substack (5.1 million, up 423.1%), which hosts publications by numerous journalists and was less than three years old at the time of the last election.

Web culture site The Daily Dot (2.2m, up 287.5%), Al Jazeera (3.3 million, up 204.2%) and People magazine (11.5 million, up 115.5%) also substantially outperformed their 2020 traffic totals.

The biggest fall, on the other hand, was at Politico (8.8 million visits in 2024, down 63.7% from its 2020 total of 24.3 million), followed by Yahoo News (5.4 million, down 54.8%) and Business Insider (4.2 million, down 48.8%). The Guardian (10.6 million, down 45.2%) Google News (11.3 million, down 40.2%) and Breitbart (3.9 million, down 48.5%) were all also significantly hit.

NBC News, Associated Press and climate site The Cooldown saw largest election week traffic surges

Similarweb data also shows that, among the 100 top news sites in the US, NBC News saw the largest week-on-week increase in its web traffic over the week of the election, with visits nearly tripling compared with the week before.

Climate website The Cooldown saw a comparable increase of 209.4% and the AP received 207% more traffic than the previous week.

A handful of sites saw fewer visits the week of the election than the week before, among them Cosmopolitan (down 15.1%), Variety (down 13.2%) and Vogue (down 8%).

The post Top publishers saw less traffic on day of 2024 US election versus 2020 appeared first on Press Gazette.

Could old-fashioned SMS texting be a more reliable alternative to fickle social media algorithms for publishers?

That’s the theory of Subtext, which was founded in 2019 within US publisher Advance Local’s tech incubator Alpha Group. This year it will send an estimated five billion text messages.

What is Subtext?

Subtext operates in 200 countries and works with a variety of media companies, artists, political candidates and sports brands.

US publishers using Subtext include: the New York Post, Forbes, Washington Post, Axios, Conde Nast, Gannett, The New Yorker, Page Six, CNET, Punchbowl News, The Hill, CBC, Hearst Newspapers, Buzzfeed, Pitchfork, Vox, PBS, McClatchy, Morning Brew and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

They use the platform to drive traffic, engage subscribers, reduce churn and even drive affiliate revenue.

In the UK the platform is less well-known, although Subtext chief executive and co-founder Mike Donoghue told Press Gazette: “You’ll see a fair amount of international expansion for us in the media space in the not too distant future.”

“When we conceived of the idea of Subtext, we took a look at – for media companies and artists and creators – the amount of time and money and love and effort and resources that went into building up these big audiences on social channels only for a lot of those same companies to come to the realisation that they were renting the relationship with their audience, as opposed to owning a really meaningful direct line of communication,” Donoghue said.

[Previous Press Gazette platform profiles have included: Bluesky, Whatsapp Channels, Snapchat and Factiva.]

Subtext versus email newsletters

Alpha Group initially looked at email but decided it was “already really crowded”, with Donoghue pointing to the likes of Beehive, Ghost, Substack, Lead and Tiny Letter (which closed down earlier this year).

In addition, he said, email “doesn’t feel all that personal” compared to texting and its efficacy recently “has been waning”.

“Click through rates are down, open rates are down. The ability to monetise them subsequently is down. So we have a lot of clients that will use text as an alternative to email newsletters, with the added benefit – and I think this is cool – of leveraging the bilateral nature of the communication, meaning you can send a message to all of your subscribers and ask a question.

“So like who is your favourite political candidate, or who’s going to win the football game this weekend, or whatever it’s going to be, your audience can respond to you one on one, and you can pull them, you can create participatory experiences for them.”

Donoghue also said email could be affected by AI assistants providing summarised versions of people’s inboxes. He described an “AI-driven distillation and race to the bottom in terms of quality of content”.

Conversely, Donoghue said, texting still has an average open rate of 98% and Subtext has a 32% clickthrough rate which he called “markedly better than email”.

Subtext versus Whatsapp

Meta-owned rival Whatsapp is still a smaller player in the US messaging market, where it hit 100 million monthly active users (almost a third of the population) in July.

But in the UK Whatsapp is the most popular messaging service according to Ofcom, which said in a report last year it had been used by 76% of adults in the previous three months and that it was the main online communication service of 65%.

As a result some publishers have been driving engagement using its Channels and Communities functions which, respectively, allow publications to broadcast articles to any user who subscribes to their feed or to set up groups of up to 2,000 members to share stories and information.

Mirror and Manchester Evening News publisher Reach last year claimed an open rate for messages shared through Communities of around 90%.

Donoghue argued that Subtext has “a couple of meaningful differentiators” from Whatsapp.

Whatsapp’s Communities tab, he said, is “relegated to the back end of the app itself because it creates a lot of static and I don’t even really think that Meta knows how they want to use it at this point”.

In addition, he said, Subtext users own all of their data and can take it to another platform or plug it into another use case whereas Meta owns user data gathered on Whatsapp.

Donoghue said: “Meta, at any time, could change the rules and decide you spent all this time and money to build up this audience in Whatsapp and now you can only talk to 10% of them or you can only talk to 5% of them. So it’s a reskinning of any other social algorithm.

“The other thing I would say, and this is based on real world experience, but Whatsapp if you do it at scale can be a very expensive proposition. SMS isn’t cheap, but Whatsapp messaging at that sort of scale tends to be pretty pricey.”

How Subtext works

Sending SMS messages at scale is “deceptively complicated”, according to Donoghue. Delivering thousands of messages at once requires a relationship with the phone networks and the phone number sending them needs to be registered.

Subtext has a dashboard through which clients can compose messages and add emojis, links, audio and GIFs and choose who to send them to, meaning potentially just a particular zip code or country. It also means people can reply to the messages, with their responses appearing on the dashboard, without creating an unwieldy group chat situation.

“Let’s say the alternative is building up a really big list of phone numbers and then from your phone trying to send a text message to all those people,” Donoghue said. “It turns into a group chat where you have 10,000 people talking all at once and it’s hard to follow the thread.”

Subtext offers two revenue models: publishers are more likely to pay a licensing fee to use the platform with additional costs relating to the total number of messages sent in a month. This model is scalable, Donoghue said, meaning large publishers pay more than tiny outlets with a low number of subscribers.

The second model, which is more popular with creators or other sole practitioners like individual journalists, is a paid subscription model like newsletter platform Substack. For example the personality might charge $10 a month and share a cut of that revenue with Subtext. This is a similar model to Substack, which UK local long-read publisher Mill Media has just decided to leave because the platform’s 10% revenue cut would mean the publisher losing more than £100,000 next year.

“It’s proven to be really popular with creators because it creates a financial annuity and an audience that they can own versus having to monetise social platforms through, like, brand sponsorships, which could be really fleeting, and it has a drag on your community,” Donoghue said.

Subtext has done a deal with News Revenue Hub, a US non-profit that works with newsrooms to help them develop sustainable revenue models without paywalls in an attempt to keep quality information free and accessible to all. The deal gives a 50% discount on use of Subtext to more than 100 newsrooms that are in a paid relationship with News Revenue Hub, whether through the use of their fundraising software or their consulting services.

News Revenue Hub chief of staff Sarah Bishop Woods, who previously used Subtext when she worked at Vox Media, told Press Gazette why texting is attractive to their publisher partners: “News means something different today. It’s much more engaged in a person’s life. It’s much more a service than just a broadcast…

“We know that traffic declines to websites have been ongoing and there’s some expectation that changes with artificial intelligence and SEO declines that it might be more difficult for people to discover news in the same habit that they’re used to discovering news over the last decade. But habits change, and we need to change with the times, instead of against them. And we’ve always encouraged our newsrooms to develop a deep and loyal relationship with the people they serve. A lot of that product can be, you know, newsletters or events, really smart and strategic social media distribution, but increasingly, it also means literally going reaching someone where they are.”

But she also warned: “When we’re thinking of audience diversification, SMS texting with tools like Subtext is really important but it does not diminish the importance of doing on the ground, community engagement as well.

“It’s something that creates a whole picture, but it’s certainly not something that you can remove something else and expect to have success. So we’ve really been encouraging our newsrooms to develop a whole strategy instead of piecemealing ideas.”

How news publishers are using Subtext

Caitlin Petrakovitz, senior digital editorial manager and director of messaging experiences at Gannett, told Press Gazette the USA Today Network is using Subtext in different ways “from SMS sports focused groups to local weather alert groups and beyond”.

This year USA Today launched Your Vote, a free text group via Subtext that promises to “help you cut through the noise of TV ads and spam calls and talk about how this year’s elections will impact you”.

Petrakovitz said: “With nearly 5,000 current subscribers, we aim to inform people in a more personal and authentic way, answering questions in real time directly from our reporters and receiving feedback from readers that helps improve our coverage.”

Here are some specific use case examples:

Driving traffic and getting stories out quickly

Donoghue noted that many people do not sit all day in front of a computer and might miss breaking news updates.

“If you wanted to break that news on X [formerly Twitter] or something, you can share that, but it means, one, that user needs to be on X, two, the algorithm needs to decide that it gets delivered immediately, and, three, they need to be part of that audience cohort that’s actually going to see the message,” he said.

“Whereas with text messaging, for example, it’s going to get delivered to 100% of the audience within less than a minute.”

Public service information

Texting is a resilient tool that can be used to get information out even during internet and power outages, according to Donoghue.

More than 8,000 people signed up to receive updates on curfews, food and school openings from McClatchy titles Miami Herald and Bradenton Herald or Gannett’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune when millions were left without power due to Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022.

Donoghue said: “SMS is a really vital communication tool to those users and because it operates without an internet connection, it can be a really important way to keep people safe and keep them informed. Whereas email newsletters would not be able to do that. The general website, social, would not be able to do that.”

Donoghue also raised the example of LA Taco journalist Lexis-Olivier Ray who primarily covers the unhoused population in Los Angeles and has a text group of about 100 people sharing information about services they might need.

“He doesn’t have 100,000 subscribers, and it’s not a commerce use case, not making a ton of money off of it. But what he does is communicate really crucial updates…” Donoghue said.

Subscription strategies

Of the potential for subscription-based businesses, Donoghue said: “In this scenario, maybe you have a paid digital offering and the ability to text with individual journalists or to receive texts on a subject that is really of interest to you is a value add, and the goal there for media companies, for publishers, is to differentiate their paid subscription offering.

He added: “It’s also meant to engage what we would call normally zombie subscribers, so people that sign up for a subscription, they don’t come to the site every day and read stories, so they’re not getting the requisite value, and it’s really only a matter of time until they remember that they’re paying for it, and then they cancel. So it’s a churn reduction effort. It’s a subscriber engagement effort.”

The Washington Post told Press Gazette its longest project on Subtext has been Texts with Tumulty (pictured, top), through which opinion columnist Karen Tumulty shares updates with her most engaged readers (dubbed Tumultexters) while she’s on the 2024 US presidential election campaign trial, and occasionally answers their questions.

A Post spokesperson said: “We’ve seen great success by building a solid core community in the thousands of ‘Tumultexters’, with a high engagement rate of people opening and engaging in these snackable updates. Highlights from Karen include her insights on Super Tuesday and on-the-ground at the conventions, with updates continuing through the election.”

According to Subtext, USA Today newsletter The Short List sends a headline and link to the full read each day and found that text message subscribers spend longer on the articles.

It can also be used to help with acquisition: Donoghue said for example media companies could make it free to sign up for updates about big tentpole events like the Olympics or the US election in the hope of converting users into paying subscribers.

Affiliate revenue

Donoghue described e-commerce as an “emerging popular use case”.

The likes of Wirecutter at The New York Times, Forbes and CNET which have large affiliate businesses put out messages like daily product round-ups and flash sales, he said.

A Buzzfeed case study on the Subtext website states: “Buzzfeed Shopping used Subtext to great effect during the holiday shopping rush, learning from subscribers about what products were on their holiday wish list. Subtext helped them gain valuable audience feedback and increase final conversions and overall customer satisfaction.”

The post The joy of text: Publishers use old tech to reach new readers appeared first on Press Gazette.

The local news problem is simply stated: fewer people want newspapers because their phones are better at providing them with information on demand. And the economics of providing local news digitally are all but impossible: local audiences are too small to generate the page views needed to fund them via advertising.

As a rule of thumb, an individual reporter needs to drive millions of page views per month to generate enough ad revenue to cover newsroom costs. And even if a local publication could get that level of traffic, local advertisers don’t have big enough budgets to sustain them.

The result: hundreds of local newspapers have closed in the UK since 2009 and in the US, two local newspapers close every week, on average.

Yet a small number of digital-only local newsrooms are starting to thrive and grow.

We talked to three bosses at flourishing local digital newsrooms — Axios editor-in-chief Sara Kehaulani Goo, who runs 30 Axios Local news brands in the US; Joshi Herrmann, editor of The Mill (Manchester), The Post (Liverpool) and The Tribune (Sheffield); and Scott Brodbeck, founder of Local News Now (LNN), which runs three sites in Arlington, Fairfax and Alexandria, all in the US state of Virginia — to ask them how they succeeded where everyone else seems to be failing.

In our conversations, a set of themes emerged: the financially stable future of digital local news will probably be small, highly focused, and based on email, they told us. And although the finances are sustainable, the margins are thin.

‘Reader habits die much harder’

LNN’s Brodbeck summed it up: “It’s a notoriously shitty business. I probably would be a lot wealthier if I just owned a series of Airbnbs or something.”

That said, LNN’s three sites — ARLnow, FFXnow, and ALXnow — get about one million page views a month and generated about $1.25 million in revenues last year. He’s pacing 10% ahead of that this year.

Brodbeck estimates 75% of his revenue comes from direct sales to clients and 20% comes from programmatic. Some 36,000 readers subscribe to his emails, and he has just ten employees.

Crucially, his top source of traffic is neither Google nor Facebook, both of which have dialled down the presence of news in their rankings. Rather, it’s direct: people pulling up the homepage from their bookmarks or tapping into it from an email newsletter.

“What Vice and Buzzfeed were doing was relying on social algorithms to get people to their sites and that worked for a time,” Brodbeck says. “But obviously, when you do that, you’re at the mercy of those companies and their algorithms, and there’s no guarantee that that’s going to last. Reader habits die much harder.”

Axios Local is much bigger: it has 30 local email newsletters with 1.6 million subscribers, served by 100 staffers. The top six cities have more than 100,000 readers on each list. All of Axios Local’s revenue comes from ads in those emails. Axios Local booked $8.6m in revenue last year and $7.5m through May of this year, the company confirmed.

“What we are seeing is progress in terms of building an audience and building revenue. And we definitely are confident now that we’re two and a half years into it that it will work if you just play out the numbers and the scale over time,” says Goo.

Both Axios and LNN run incredibly lean operations: typically, they employ no more than two reporters per city. Those writers focus closely on what readers want and what they can actually deliver. This has had some counterintuitive results.

Traditionally, local papers in America heavily cover high school sports because parents love seeing their kids’ names in the paper. But Brodbeck has banned youth sports coverage from his sites because he was irked by the number of reader complaints it generated.

“We used to get all these emails [which said]… ‘why aren’t you covering my kid’s team?’ And with all that aggravation didn’t come a ton of readers to the stories we were publishing. So, I figured out pretty early on that that it was pointless to try to cover high school sports,” he says.

Page views metric has ‘disappeared from my life’

Likewise, the mantra at Herrmann’s The Mill is to reduce quantity and focus on quality.

“My hunch was people probably would get on board with local journalism again, and reading it and trusting it and paying for it, if they were given extremely high-quality stuff but in very low volume,” he says.

The Mill doesn’t even send its newsletter every day. On the days it does, there is often only one story in it — and that story might be 3,000 words long. For instance, The Post recently published an investigation into why Liverpool began building a bridge in a park which no one seems to want and discovered that one city councillor seems to have a conflict of interest in its construction.

“We’ve just reached 5,000 paying subscribers overall at three cities,” Herrmann says. He’s on course for £400,000 in annual revenues, with eight people on the payroll. The Mill has 35,000 subscribers, The Post 16,000 and The Tribune 17,000. He’s looking to open titles in Birmingham and Leeds next.

The audience and revenue numbers at these companies would look like rounding errors at somewhere like News Corp or Gannett. But there is evidence that the future of local news will indeed be small, focused, and based on email. Earlier this year, Reach relaunched nine of its local brands as newsletter-first properties.

And there’s another revolution on the horizon: None of these brands care about amassing traffic to their websites. Instead, it’s the number of paying and registered users who sign up for an email, because that is what drives their revenue.

“I never look at traffic,” Herrmann says. “I don’t look at page views so that metric has just completely disappeared from my life. We all look at one number, which is paid subscribers. How many new paid subscribers do we have?”

The post Why the future of digital-only local news may be small, focused and based on email appeared first on Press Gazette.

The story of digital media in the last two decades has been one of both promise and pessimism.

Many of the companies established since the turn of the millennium continue to thrive with large turnovers and in many cases profits. Others have come and gone, casualties of a digital age in which competition for online advertising revenue is fierce.

Below we rank 25 media companies established since the year 2000 based on revenue. We’ve focused on news media companies and start-ups involved in the news media space and have a big impact on it, such as Facebook and Twitter.

As our ranking reveals, the biggest media start-ups of the new millennium are the tech giants of Silicon Valley and beyond – although with revenues in the 11 or 12 figures, it would hardly be apt to call them start-ups anymore.

Topping our list is Facebook owner Meta, which along with Google has turned the news industry on its head. Tiktok owner Bytedance comes in second, while Spotify, Snap and Twitter round out the top five. This reflects the multi-faceted role that these platforms play as conduits for news, partners for publishers and serious competitors for revenue.

One of the most talked about shifts in the news industry in recent years has been the emergence of Facebook. The platform has been both a blessing and a boon for post-2000 media start-ups.

Some of the biggest new names of the millennium such as Buzzfeed and Vox Media built a significant chunk of their businesses around viral Facebook content, which led to large influxes of VC capital and eye-watering valuations. Changes to Facebook’s algorithm, which downgraded content from publishers in favour of posts from family and friends, hit such businesses hard.

Nevertheless, despite recent layoffs at both Buzzfeed and Vox, both companies still rank in the top ten of our list for revenue. Buzzfeed comes in at ninth position, while Vox, which in a bid to compete with the tech giants recently merged with fellow digital publisher Group Nine, comes in at seventh.

Despite the challenging environment for the industry, many companies continue to generate tens or hundreds of millions in revenue. BDG (formerly known as Bustle) brought in a reported $165m last year and ranks 12th, while Ladbible publisher LBG Media is set to see year-on-year revenue growth in 2022.

Other post-2000 companies such as Red Ventures continue to successfully operate some of the better-known specialist information brands on the internet such as Healthline Media and CNET. Last year the South Carolina-based company brought in a reported $2bn.

Google and Facebook’s dominance of advertising revenue has also led to a new crop of digital media start-ups that have decided to instead base their models on reader revenue. Among them are news and magazine curation app Readly (rank 18) and politics news newcomer Punchbowl (rank 25).

Since many companies are privately held and chose not to disclose revenue data themselves, we have also included companies for which we found reputed revenue information in reliable third party sources – such as articles in quality media outlets.

This inevitably means that some interesting and potentially very lucrative media companies set up in the last 20 years are excluded from our list as there was no revenue information available, whether via company channels or other reputable reports. Tokyo-headquartered news aggregation app SmartNews, which was valued at $2bn in 2021, may for example have made our list. Newsbreak, another news aggregator set up by Yahoo co-founder Jeff Zhang, might also have been featured.

In cases where we have had to rely on revenue information cited from third-party sources, we contacted the companies concerned to check our figures. In most cases, we did not receive a response. However, if you think that the data or information in this article can be improved in any way or if there is a company that you think should be included in our ranking, please email aisha.majid@ns-mediagroup.com.

Other companies such as newsletter platform Substack narrowly missed our list based on reported revenue despite making a big splash on the new media scene in recent years. Substack turned over $9m in 2021 according to a report in the New York Times, despite its hefty $750m to $1bn valuation by investors.

At the end of the article, we have also included a number of big-name companies established post-2000 that did not make the main list as they are now subsidiaries of pre-2000 businesses having been bought out. Since these companies are now owned by larger entities most do not break out their own revenue figures. We have used reliable third-party sources for these companies’ revenues.

Among them is Huffpost, which built up a name as a go-to left-of-centre news site not long after its launch in 2005 under its original name Huffington Post.

Another is Politico, which specialises in politics and policy. Set up in 2007, the company was brought under the wing of German publishing giant Axel Springer in 2021. Its Playbook series of newsletters are indispensable reading for followers of politics.

Another Axel Springer acquisition, Insider Inc, also makes this list, as does Axios which was bought out by US cable and telecommunications provider Cox Enterprises in 2022 for $525m six years after it was founded.

1. Meta

Top news/information brands: Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp

Founded: 2004

Total revenue: $116.6bn

News/information/ media revenue: $113.6bn (all advertising revenue)

Source: Full-year 2022 results

Since Facebook‘s early origins as a social media network popular among students and other young people, the company has grown to become the biggest digital media company started since the turn of the millennium. (The world’s biggest media and information company, Google parent Alphabet, did not make this list as it was set up in 1998). Known as Meta since its rebrand in 2021, the company’s platforms, which now include Instagram and Whatsapp, are estimated to be used by around three billion people.

While all of Meta’s platforms remain an important source of news and information, Facebook began moving away from news in 2015, showing less journalistic content in its News Feed, subsequently hitting the traffic of several digital media businesses built on the back of Facebook. This year, Facebook will retire Instant Articles, a proprietary mobile format to quickly load news articles on the Facebook app, while in 2022 the company terminated Bulletin, its newsletter platform for journalists.

Despite this, the company, along with Google, dominates online advertising and continues to pose a threat to news industry revenues prompting pushbacks in places such as Australia and the EU.

2. Bytedance

Top news/information brands: Tiktok

Founded: 2012

Total revenue: $58bn

News/information/media revenue: $58bn

Source: 2021 data reported in Reuters

Video-sharing app Tiktok is one of the world’s fastest-growing social media networks. Owner ByteDance saw its total revenue grow by 70% year-on-year to around $58bn in 2021, according to Reuters – although growth had slowed compared to the previous year.

Initially shunned by some big names in news including the BBC, publishers are increasingly turning to the platform in a bid to win over coveted Gen Z audiences. While there has so far been no clear path to monetisation for news outlets on Tiktok, the company is expected to start sharing ad revenue with publishers on its platform later this year.

3. Spotify

Top news/information brands: Spotify, Gimlet, Anchor, Parcast, Ringer

Founded: 2006

Total revenue: $11.7bn

News/information/media revenue: $11.7bn

Source: Full-year 2022 results

With over 489 million monthly active users (including 205 million paid subscribers), the audio streaming and media services provider remains one of the largest music streaming service providers in the world.

Since 2019, the company has made a big move into podcasting, hosting major news podcasts while it also owns podcasting networks Anchor and Gimlet. Among the company’s big-name podcast sign-ups have been Prince Harry, Joe Rogan, and Louis Theroux. At the same time the company has laid off podcast employees and cancelled some shows as, despite hefty revenues, the company has also reported large losses.

4. Snap

Top news/information brands: Snapchat, Discover

Founded: 2011

Total revenues: $4.6bn

News/information/media revenues: $4.6bn

Source: Full-year 2022 results

Another digital media company popular with younger users, Snap is the parent company of social media platform Snapchat. In 2015, the company launched Discover, the section of the app that features curated content from Snapchat’s publisher and creator partner bringing on board US publishers such as Vice, CNN, Cosmopolitan and DailyMail.com as early partners.

While Snapchat is still not a major platform for news, data from social media management platform Hootsuite shows that 39% of Snapchat’s audience is aged between 18 and 24, making it a big draw for advertisers. The company has, however, faced stiff competition from Tiktok which has eaten into its market share with Snap announcing a net loss of $1.4bn in 2022.

5. Twitter

Top news/information brands: Twitter

Founded: 2006

Total revenue: $5.1bn

News/information/media revenue: $4.5bn (all advertising revenue)

Source: Full-year 2021 results

There has been no shortage of controversy surrounding Twitter since Elon Musk’s purchase of the platform in 2022. While Musk’s takeover of the platform has cast doubt on how useful it might be for journalists and other news purveyors and consumers in the future, it still remains a major source of news and information for the industry.

6. Red Ventures

Top news/information brands: CNET, Healthline Media, Lonely Planet, ZD Net, The Points Guy

Founded: 2000

Total revenue: $2bn

News/information/media revenue: $2bn

Source: 2021 data reported in the New York Times

Originally a digital marketing company, today Red Ventures is one of the US’s biggest digital media companies, although its name remains relatively unknown.

The company owns a suite of specialist media in areas such as travel, tech and health, making its money by taking a cut of purchases readers make through affiliated sellers. According to the New York Times, the company employs 4,500 people, is worth at least $11bn, and averages 751 million visits a month (Comscore).

7. Vox Media

Top news/information brands: Vox, The Verge, Now This, Pop Sugar

Founded: 2011

Total revenue: $700m

News/information/media revenue: $700m

Source: Expected 2022 revenue reported in the New York Times

From its sports media beginnings, Vox has expanded into many other verticals, including technology, general interest news and opinion, pop culture and food. In February 2022, the company completed its acquisition of Group Nine Media bringing Thrillist, The Dodo, Seeker and social-first publisher Now This into its stable of brands.

8. ZPG

Top news/information brands: Zoopla, Money.co.uk, Uswitch

Founded: 2007

Total revenues: $469.1m (£387.7m)

News/information/media revenue: $469.1m (£397.7m)

Source: Full-year results to December 2021

Zoopla owner ZPG is part-real estate company and part-online publisher. It is the best-ranked British company on this list. In 2009, Zoopla acquired property website Thinkproperty.com from the Guardian Media Group and PropertyFinder website from News International.

9. Buzzfeed

Top news/information brands: Buzzfeed, Buzzfeed News, Tasty, Huffpost

Founded: 2011

Total revenues: $430.4m

News/information/media revenues: $430.4m

Source: 2022 results for Q1 to Q3 revenue added to expected revenue for Q4

Established a decade ago, the company was once best known for its viral listicles and cat videos. By the mid-2010s, Buzzfeed and other new digital media startups such as Vice were given hefty valuations and attracted eye-watering VC investments, backed by the promise of digital advertising dollars and Facebook traffic.

Buzzfeed later made a move into more serious journalism picking up a Pulitzer Prize along the way, although the company has since made large cuts to its news teams. In 2021, the company was listed publicly, however, it has been a bumpy ride for the publisher since. Its latest report shows that costs outpace revenue, affecting its market cap.

10. Rightmove

Top news/information brands: Rightmove.com

Total revenue: $368.9m (£304.9mn)

News/information/media revenue: $368.9m (£304.9mn)

Source: Full-year results to December 2021

The company operates rightmove.co.uk, the UK’s biggest online property portal. The company generates income by listing estate agents on its website and charging for advertising.

11. Reddit

Top news/information brands: Reddit

Founded: 2005

Total revenue: $350m+

News/information/media revenue: $350m+

Source: 2021 data reported in The Information

The communication and discussion platform relies on users to socially curate and promote content in topic-based forums (subreddits). While not a big platform for news, some publishers such as the Washington Post are experimenting with Reddit as a way of connecting their reporting with audiences and building loyalty.

12. BDG Media (formerly Bustle)

Top news/information brands: Bustle. Elite Daily, Mic, Romper, ScaryMommy

Founded: 2013

Total revenue: $165m

News/information/media revenue: $165m

Source: Company spokesperson

The company publishes a number of well-known brands, mostly targeted at millennial readers. Acquisitions have included Elite Daily, which the company bought from DMG Media in 2017, and Some Spider, parent company of Scary Mommy and Fatherly.

13. Wikimedia Foundation

Top news/information brands: Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikimedia Commons

Founded: 2001

Total revenues: $154.7m

News/information/media revenues: $154.7m

Source: Full-year results 2021

The non-profit which aims to discover and share information is mostly funded through millions of individual micro-donations. Its flagship project is online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia but the non-profit also publishes Wikinews, a platform which provides free news content that purports to be neutral.

14. Epoch Media

Top news/information brands: Epoch Times, New Tang Dynasty (NTD) US

Founded: 2000

Total revenues: $121.5m

News/information/media revenues: $121.5m

Source: 2021 revenue from ProPublica’s non-profit database

Epoch Media Group, said to be affiliated with the Falun Gong religious movement, publishes a number of print and digital titles including the right-wing print and digital title Epoch Times. The group also runs New Tang Dynasty (NTD), which the company says is the largest Chinese TV network in the US.

15. National World

Top news/information brands: National World, The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and various city sites under the World brand

Founded: 2018

Total revenue: $104.1m (£86m)

News/information/media revenue: $104.1m (£86m)

Source: Full year accounts to January 2022

David Montgomery’s National World bought JPI, the UK’s third biggest regional publisher by number of titles, in 2021 for £10.2m. National World counts some 150 titles, including seven city websites under its own “World” brand. It also runs the national news website National World and legacy title The Scotsman, the company’s largest sites.

16. Daily Wire

Top news/information brands: Daily Wire

Founded: 2015

Total revenue: $100m

News/information/media revenues: $100m

Source: 2021 revenue reported in Axios

The American conservative news website and media company was founded by political commentator Ben Shapiro and film director Jeremy Boreing in 2015. According to data from social analytics company Newswhip, the Daily Wire is one of the top news publishers on Facebook. The company also publishes well-known US conservative podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, The Matt Walsh Show and Morning Wire.

17. LBG Media

Top news/information brands: Ladbible, Unilad, Sportbible

Total revenue: $76.2m expected (£63m)

News/information/media revenues: $76.2m expected (£63m)

Source: LBG Media 2022 expected revenue reported in Marketwatch

Manchester-based digital media and youth content publisher LBG Media reported a very successful 2021. Turnover for the group, which was floated on the London Stock Exchange in December last year, soared by 81% while pre-tax profit was almost double that of the previous year. The publisher is also the biggest news outlet on fast-growing social media platform Tiktok with a follower count of 11.6m people on its main account.

18. Readly

Top news/information brands: Readly

Founded: 2012

Total revenues: $56.8m (SEK 466.3m)

News/information/media revenues: $44.7m (SEK 591.6m)

Source: Full-year results for 2022

Digital magazine and newspaper app Readly originally launched in Sweden before expanding into markets including the UK and Germany. Revenue and subscribers continue to grow although the company told Press Gazette last year that its key focus is on engagement – Readly’s publisher clients are paid according to reader dwell time. The company has also branched into new products such as podcasts.

19. On the Market

Top news/information brands: Onthemarket.com

Founded: 2015

Total revenue: $36.8m (£30.4m)

News/information/media revenue: $36.8m (£30.4m)

Source: Full-year results to January 2022

On the Market was set up in 2015 by a consortium of estate agents including Knight Frank and Savills as a direct competitor to industry leaders Rightmove and Zoopla. A strong property market in the second half of 2021 helped the relative newcomer turn a profit and increase its revenue last year.

20. A Medium Corporation

Top news/information brands: Medium.com

Founded: 2012

Total revenue: $35m

News/information/media revenue: $35m

Source: Insider reports of 2021 revenue in The Verge

A Medium Corporation is best known for its eponymous publishing platform, Medium, developed by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. The company is in turn co-owned by William’s Venture capital firm, Obvious Ventures.

While the publishing platform can be used by anyone, its foray into quality original journalism has seen mixed success. In 2018, the company made a push into original reporting hiring a team of editors, however by 2020, it had already offered buyouts to all of its roughly 75 editorial employees, according to The Verge.

21. Merit Group

Top news/information brands: Politics Home, Dods Parliamentary Companion, The House, Civil Service World

Founded: 2001

Total revenue: $33.2m (£27.4m)

News/information/media revenue: $33.2m (£27.4m)

Source: Full-year results to 31 March 2022

Data and intelligence company Merit Group covers political, regulatory, and business information. Its Dods division publishes well-known political titles including Politics Home and the annual Dods Parliamentary Companion. Merit’s Data & Technology division serves largely UK-based customers with industry intelligence and marketing data.

22. The Skimm

Top news/information brands: Daily Skimm, Daily Skimm: Weekend, Skimm Money and Skimm Your Life newsletters

Founded: 2012

Total revenue: $20m (as reported in media in 2019 so likely to be changed by now)

News/information/media revenue: $20m

Source: Axios

The Skimm is a digital media company focused on women. According to its figures, it reaches a cross-platform audience of 12m people. As well as its suite of newsletters, the company also produces podcasts, a mobile app, runs the virtual course series SkimmU and owns Skimm Studios.

23. The Conversation

Top news/information brands: The Conversation UK, The Conversation US and various other geographic editions.

Founded: 2011

Total revenues: $14.2m (AUD20.6m)

News/information/media revenues: $14.2m (AUD20.6m)

Source: The Conversation in email to Press Gazette

A not-for-profit network of sites, The Conversation publishes news stories and research reports with opinion and analysis. Articles are written by academics and researchers under a Creative Commons licence. There are 12 editions of the site covering various geographies and languages, including a UK edition.

24. 1440 Media

Top news/information brands: 1440 newsletter

Founded: 2017

Total revenue: $10m+

News/information/media revenues: $10m+

Source: 1440 email to Press Gazette

1440’s business is built around a general news daily newsletter that also contains content in several verticals. Although the company counts some subscribers, most revenue is generated from advertising.

25. Punchbowl

Top news/information brands: Punchbowl

Founded: 2021

Total revenue: $10m

News/information/media revenue: $10m

Source: 2021 revenue reported in The Rebooting

Set up by three former Politico journalists, Punchbowl News is an online political news daily centred on covering developments on Capitol Hill.

In its first year, the company is said to have generated revenues of $10m and has quadrupled its staff from four to 16. Alongside a free morning newsletter and podcast, Punchbowl sells premium membership, which includes access to paid-for newsletters, polling and events hosted by Punchbowl. Looking ahead, the company is planning to focus on growing its revenue from subscriptions.

Major new millennium media startups bought out by legacy media

1. Linkedin

Top news/information brands: Linkedin, Linkedin News

Founded: 2003

Parent company: Microsoft (bought in 2016)

Total revenue: $10.3bn

News/information/media revenue: $10.3bn

Source: 2021 revenue information from Global Data

The business and employment-focused social media platform was bought by information behemoth Microsoft in 2016, which also owns news aggregation portal MSN.

Last year Linkedin announced that it would be tripling the number of editors it employs in the UK as part of wider investment in its journalism. The platform’s editorial director for international Sandrine Chauvin said the expansion was "part of our ongoing efforts to bring our members quality, useful journalism". While data from analytics firms such as Chartbeat indicates that the site drives low level of traffic to publishers (compared to other referrers), the platform helps B2B publishers in particular connect with niche interest communities.

2. Politico

Top news/information brands: Playbook, Politico Pro, Politico.com

Founded: 2007

Parent company: Axel Springer (bought in 2021)

Total revenues: $200m

News/information/media revenues: $200m

Source: 2021 revenue reported by the Financial Times

The Virginia-based company primarily covers politics and policy through a series of newsletters and its website. Its Politico Pro products provide policy intelligence and specialist verticals news aimed at professionals and are priced at premium rates. German publishing giant Axel Springer acquired Politico in 2021 and has confirmed to Press Gazette that it does not share brand-level revenue.

3. Axios

Top news/information brands: Axios, Axios Pro

Founded: 2016

Parent company: Cox Enterprises (bought in 2022)

Total revenues: $100m

News/information/media revenues: $100m

Source: 2022 revenue reported in Digiday

Axios is a newsletter-first business that specialises in local news and around 20 industry verticals, including media. Its newsletters reach an audience of around 2.7 million people. The company has grown quickly since launching in 2016 and generates revenues through advertising, subscriptions to its Pro newsletters, Axios HQ software, events and its content studio.

4. Huffpost

Top news/information brands: Huffpost, Huffpost News

Founded: 2005

Parent company: Buzzfeed (acquired in 2021)

Total revenues: $45-50m (in 2020 so likely to have changed)

News/information/media revenues: $45-50m

Source: 2020 revenue reported in New York Post

Buzzfeed acquired Huffpost from its owner Verizon Media as part of a larger stock deal in 2020. Huffpost remains one of the iconic names of digital media since its founding in 2005 as a commentary outlet, blog, and alternative to conservative news aggregators. The progressive news website continues to publish various local and international editions.

5. Industry Dive

Top news/information brands: A suite of Dive specialist newsletters such as Banking Dive, CFO Dive, Food Dive

Founded: 2012

Parent company: Informa Plc (bought in 2022)

Total revenues: $110m

News/information/media revenues: $105-110m

Source: 2022 estimated revenue reported in What's New in Publishing

Another newsletter-first business, B2B specialist Industry Dive was acquired by information giant Informa for $389m (£323m) so does not officially break out separate revenue data. The company covers 25 industry verticals through 28 newsletters that reach around 2.5 million subscribers and is mostly funded through advertising.

6. Insider Inc

Top news/information brands: Insider, Business Insider

Founded: 2007

Parent company: Axel Springer (bought in 2015)

Total revenues: $100m (from 2018)

News/information/media revenues: $100m

Source: 2018 revenue reported in Digiday

Acquired by Axel Springer in 2015, American media company Insider Inc started life as a financial and business website. Its best-known brands include Insider and Business Insider. In 2020, Insider Inc acquired a majority stake in another recent digital startup, newsletter-first business, Morning Brew.

The post The biggest news media start-ups from the post 2000 era appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette asked a host of UK and US news industry leaders to share their predictions for 2023 and reveal how they plan to tackle the big challenges that lie ahead.

No less than nine CEOs answered the call, among 18 leading executives: from Aja Whitaker-Moore at Axios to Will Lewis at the News Movement. What follows is an indispensable guide to how news businesses can succeed in 2023.

We start with four key themes and then break down all 18 comments.

Quick links here to all 18 contributors:

Aja Whitaker-Moore, Axios executive editor
Benjamin Cohen, Pink News chief executive
Charles Yardley, Evening Standard chief executive
Christian Broughton, The Independent managing director
Cristina Nicolotti Squires, Sky News director of content
David Higgerson, Reach chief digital publisher
David Skok, The Logic chief executive
Erika Allen, Washington Post head of audience strategy and growth
Greg Williams, Wired deputy global editorial director
Jon Birchall, Ladbible Group director of editorial strategy
M Scott Havens, Bloomberg Media chief executive
Nick Hugh, Telegraph Media Group chief executive
Rachel Corp, ITN chief executive
Rebecca Miskin, DC Thomson chief executive
Sean Griffey, Industry Dive chief executive and co-founder
Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, New York Times president, international
Victoria Wakely, Bloomberg UK national editor
William Lewis, The News Movement chief executive and founder

1. ‘Investing in good journalism is good business’ – even during a recession

The global news industry is under no illusion: we are in challenging times economically and things could get worse in 2023. But news publishers we heard from are confident they have ways of surviving and thriving through this period.

Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, president, international, of The New York Times spoke of his publisher’s desire to make itself “the essential subscription”. In 2022, the NYT added to its offering and brand by acquiring Wordle and The Athletic. Another selling point, said Dunbar-Johnson, is news. “Good journalism is good business – they are mutually reenforcing,” he said. “That will not change in 2023 and we believe strongly that the continuing investment in our newsroom will be integral to our ability to grow our digital subscription base and to continue to engage and retain the considerable number of subscribers we already have.”

The chief executive of Bloomberg Media, M Scott Havens, also spoke of the need to retain a good product through economic turmoil. “As we head into 2023, customer retention – brand partners, viewers, readers and and subscribers – will become media’s primary challenge,” he said. “In the case of a prolonged recession, publishers must position themselves as ‘must have’ or ‘must run with’ not a ‘nice to have’ or ‘nice to include’ – showing real value to advertisers and consumers. Ultimately, only those media companies that can achieve this will be able to grow, or in the longer run, exist.”

Nick Hugh, the chief executive of Telegraph Media Group, said: “Whilst growth will be harder won, we will continue to offer subscribers real value from their subscription through quality journalism,and we will look to grow our base in the UK and beyond. Our investment in our journalism and our product portfolio will continue.”

2. News avoidance may be bigger challenge than recession and big tech

As reported extensively by Press Gazette in 2022, news avoidance is a growing issue with which the media sector must contend. This problem is on the minds of several large publishers as we head into 2023.

Rachel Corp, the chief executive of ITN, which makes news programmes for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, said that to tackle news avoidance, “we must continue to deepen our connections with the many and diverse communities around the UK in order to authentically reflect their stories; we must dig out the positive stories and we must continue to use our familiar onscreen faces and our trusted journalism to ‘bring the truth to life’.”

David Higgerson, chief digital publisher of Reach, identified news avoidance as a bigger issue than a recession and dealing with tech giants. He said: “My attempt to solve it means paying more attention to, well, attention. As in attention time. We know people are spending more time than ever online, but research constantly tells us more and more people believe they are actively avoiding news.

“Worryingly, I found myself doing that at one point this year and I know other journalists who did the same. The world is gloomy and sometimes the gloom can become too much. It’s impossible to avoid the news, but it is easy to stop inviting it into your life so often.

“The answer lies in being part of the solution. How can we be useful in people’s lives? Useful doesn’t win many awards (other than maybe at SEO awards). But if you’re useful, you’re relevant. And if you’re relevant, you can strike up a conversation about the things you think people need to know about as well as the things you know they’re interested in.”

Erika Allen, head of audience strategy and growth at The Washington Post, also spoke about techniques for attracting time and attention from readers. “Audiences value authentic connections that feel relatable and relevant to their lives,” she said. “As newsrooms look to attract new readers and compete for their time and attention, they must look to build connections by listening to what they want and seeking them out natively. More specifically, this means introducing them to our talent, processes (when appropriate) and meeting them where they are at, whether it be in their own inbox with voice-y newsletters or on social media or other emerging platforms where people are looking to connect or be informed.”

3. Reaching Gen Z vital for future of news

While the urgent need to reach young, increasingly disengaged audiences has been discussed for years now, it has felt like there has been some innovation on that front this year and several of our respondents raised it as something they are thinking keenly about right now.

Ladbible Group director of editorial strategy Jon Birchall suggested diverse businesses and smarter audience intelligence are key: “For us to build a media that is essential, inclusive, and as such commercially viable, for 2023 and beyond, we must listen to youth audiences and empower young talent to fundamentally redefine what news is and the role it plays for the next generation.”

William Lewis, chief executive of start-up The News Movement, said it was “vital” to get “factual and trusted news” to Gen Z (currently aged up to 25) on the platforms where they spend their time as the next US election approaches.

4. Changing relationships with tech platforms will be key

This year has been a turbulent time for the biggest tech companies and this will have an impact on publishers in 2023.

Pink News chief executive Benjamin Cohen said: “2023 will be one of continued changes to the relationship with the social platforms, particularly Twitter,” pointed to turmoil at the microblogging site since it was bought by Elon Musk. Twitter has axed its trust and safety council and since Cohen submitted his answer to our question, Musk has been criticised for suspending journalists and briefly banned links to competitor sites.

“As Twitter’s moderation policies change, PinkNews like many other publishers will need to consider the brand reputation risks of our content being potentially seen alongside content that doesn’t align to our mission or the LGBTQ+ community,” Cohen said.

Others pointed to the changing use of the social platforms. David Skok, chief executive of The Logic in Canada, said: “The drop in tech companies’ ad revenue reflects a fundamental shift in user behaviour. The fourth wall has been broken.”

Reach’s chief digital publisher David Higgerson and ITN chief executive Rachel Corp both flagged the need to speed up planned legislation to rebalance the relationship between platforms and publishers. Higgerson said: “Platforms which command significant attention time – like Meta, or Apple – need to be compelled to promote honest, accurate news and support the publishers who provide it.” Corp said the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill, which would take a stance on platforms’ market dominance, together with the Media Bill and Online Safety Bill would have “the power to shape the fortunes and future of public service media in the UK for decades to come”.

Scroll down to see the full answers from all 18 participants:

What do you think the biggest challenge of 2023 will be and how do you plan to tackle that?

Aja Whitaker-Moore, Axios

Executive editor

• Challenge: The war for attention and against misinformation is only intensifying. This isn’t a new problem but it is getting worse. We are seeing this play out daily in the battle for the soul of Twitter as the defacto town square.
• Solution: Axios is ruthless in our commitment to Smart Brevity in our journalism by providing only essential and distinctive news on our website, newsletters and podcasts. We’re also committed to being an unbiased and fact-based media organisation
• Challenge: Rebuilding trust in media
• Solution: Axios is making a massive bet that we can transform local journalism by creating a sustainable and trusted model that no one else has been able to achieve. Doing so means meeting people where they are, where they live, where they work and building trust that Axios can help guide them. We have the same mission in building Axios Pro where we can build trust with subscribers who rely on our essential journalism to make career decisions. And all of that comes full circle to build trust with our National audience.

Benjamin Cohen, Pink News

Chief executive

2023 will be one of continued changes to the relationship with the social platforms, particularly Twitter. As media, we are going to have to decide what exactly our relationship with Elon Musk’s Twitter should be. PinkNews is acting very much ‘business as usual’ and continuing to post news content on Twitter but we have had to pause some commercial campaigns due to run for partners on Twitter. Going forward, will brands reallocate these budgets to our channels on Snapchat, Meta and Tiktok or will they decide to still run on Twitter and end the current pause?

As Twitter’s moderation policies change, PinkNews like many other publishers will need to consider the brand reputation risks of our content being potentially seen alongside content that doesn’t align to our mission or the LGBTQ+ community.

Charles Yardley, Evening Standard

Chief executive

While it feels refreshing to be going into a new year with more certainty about the ability of our audience to move around London, there’s no doubt that we’re operating in a challenging industry environment. With a bleak economic outlook for the early months of 2023 it remains incumbent upon all news brands to develop strategies to diversify revenue streams beyond solely print. One of the most pressing challenges I see is how to continue to do this, while also ensuring that the multi-platform environment remains relevant, authentic and aligned to our master brand and mission.

Amid the unpredictable landscape of the past three years, we’ve accelerated the diversification of the Evening Standard’s revenue model to help shape our future. We have made significant investment in our diversified offering which has included rebuilding the CMS, expanding our newsletter strategy and improving distribution, improving dwell on video and audio content.

Digital revenues have increased by 9% year-on-year and our award-winning in-house creative content agency Studio 27 is going from strength to strength with revenues up 50% year-on-year, due to major campaigns with the likes of AXA and Berghaus. ES Magazine specifically is also showing a 66% growth in revenue year-on-year and the Standard’s podcasts were listened to over 5.5 million times between January and November 2022.

Elsewhere, our Live events business also continues to provide alternative touchpoints for our audience. The launch of SME XPO brought our business credentials to the fore and will be back in 2023, bringing together thousands of business leaders at ExCel London, in April. In November, we continued our drive for a cleaner, greener London by hosting our Plug It In Summit with Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as part of a multi-channel campaign around electric vehicles, backed by major commercial partners including Uber and Polestar.

This has resulted in growth in our cross platform reach, with 5.4 million people now engaging with Evening Standard content on a weekly basis. Importantly, each weekday the Evening Standard reaches twice as many 25–44 year olds as its closest national competitors.

But with all these exciting new initiatives we are constantly questioning how we can remain aligned with The Standard’s core identity and mission – to deliver the quality content that our audiences demand. For nearly 200 years, The Standard’s purpose has been to act as a voice for London and to tell the stories of this incredible city on both a local and a global stage. As long as everything we do across all our platforms reflects that north star, I know that our brand will remain resilient in 2023 and beyond.

Christian Broughton, The Independent

Managing director

I can’t wait for the New Year challenge of taking Independent TV to the next level. The Independent always feels at its most exciting when it’s charting new waters and developing our TV proposition is top of the list.

From a journalistic point of view, Bel Trew’s video work in Ukraine for our world affairs strand, On The Ground, has been outstanding, and a bigger documentary is in the works. That will look great on our new CTV channels – we’re live on three platforms, Amazon Firestick, Google Playstore and Android/Sony, with Apple, Roku, LG and Samsung to follow in 2023.

So many people across the newsroom have embraced the move towards TV, from Miguel Delaney in Qatar, to the culture team’s series Binge or Bin, reviewing the programmes on streaming services. I have a soft spot for that show, as it was born in lockdown, when we were all desperate to find another great thing to watch. It was the point in time when Independent TV really began. In the year ahead, we need to build our US video team.

Commercially, our multichannel pitch – digital, TV and social media reach – is at the core of our most exciting partnerships, and we have some major new collaborations to unveil, starting in Q1. Big brands – such as E.ON, ITV and TikTok – have embraced our fresh approach to video, and appreciate that the creativity in our Independent TV programming comes right from the heart of the organisation, both editorially and commercially.

Cristina Nicolotti Squires, Sky News

Director of content

Who could have guessed what 2022 had in store for us? Global recession, war in Europe, the end of the Elizabethan era…

What I do know that 2023 will bring is more ways of delving into the numbers and taking a forensic look at the events shaping our lives. Bringing clarity in an uncertain world is part of our mission statement at Sky News. We are going to build on the excellent award winning work of our Data and Forensic Journalism team, adding more experts in data and OSINT to uncover what’s really going on for our consumers on screen and online. And with a lot of skill plus a little bit of luck we might win the British Journalism Awards News Provider of the Year again!

David Higgerson, Reach

Chief digital publisher

It is easy to focus on the probable recession and what that means for journalism when looking ahead to 2023, or to obsess about what the big traffic referrers will do next, but I think news avoidance is the bigger issue which trumps both.

The Reuters Institute has been flagging this for some time, and it’s a hot topic at conferences on both sides of the Atlantic. But solutions are few and far between. Perhaps there is no big-bang resolution we can all get behind here – but the challenge is very real.

My attempt to solve it means paying more attention to, well, attention. As in attention time. We know people are spending more time than ever online, but research constantly tells us more and more people believe they are actively avoiding news.

Worryingly, I found myself doing that at one point this year and I know other journalists who did the same. The world is gloomy and sometimes the gloom can become too much. It’s impossible to avoid the news, but it is easy to stop inviting it into your life so often.

The answer lies in being part of the solution. How can we be useful in people’s lives? Useful doesn’t win many awards (other than maybe at SEO awards). But if you’re useful, you’re relevant. And if you’re relevant, you can strike up a conversation about the things you think people need to know about as well as the things you know they’re interested in.

Useful doesn’t have to mean utility. We’re not talking just the chemist’s rota here. So much of what we do can be useful, we just need to make sure we’re trying to make it useful. Useful often serves as a gateway to other sorts of journalism too.

As an industry, we still spend too much time knocking lumps out of each other. Popular too often is dismissed as clickbait. Niche or in-depth lamented as indulgent. It doesn’t really matter what we think – it’s what readers, viewers, listeners (please, anything but users, a term which surely set us off in the wrong direction in the first place!) think which matters.

And the best way into that is by being useful. Get that right in 2023 and we will have gone a long way to solving the platform dilemma too.

But equally, we need support here too. The BBC’s plans for local news – allowing BBC Local Radio to begin withering on the vine while shifting around 100 jobs into digital to create the veneer of an improved local news service – has the potential to be very damaging to commercial news providers big and small. When the BBC is dominating search, thanks to its fast, ad-free pages, it will force out local publishers who invest far more in each and every community they serve than the BBC ever could – or would. The Government needs to act.

The balance between platforms and publishers – of all sizes – is still out of whack. The reward sits with the distributor, not the creator. Meta, in particular, seems unsure of what its relationship with news should be. To me, it’s simple – Meta’s platforms are richer, better experiences for all when honest, accurate information is supported to flow around it. Hopefully, the company will return to that view soon too.

The Government’s long-awaited Digital Markets Unit can play a big part here too, supporting news organisations of all sizes to get a fair deal. Platforms which command significant attention time – like Meta, or Apple – need to be compelled to promote honest, accurate news and support the publishers who provide it.

That’s why being useful matters. If readers find journalism useful, it becomes part of their daily life – and a compelling ingredient for any platform seeking to command a greater part of a person’s online day.

David Skok, The Logic

Chief executive

We are in a period of immense uncertainty and change, particularly for traditional news outlets. Our colleagues in the newspaper business face a challenging few quarters. With the price of newsprint up dramatically, increasing home delivery prices alongside inflation is causing consumers to rethink subscriptions. Publishers that have relied on digital-display advertising are also affected by an industry-wide slowdown in programmatic advertising, as reflected in the most recent Big Tech earnings reports.

The drop in tech companies’ ad revenue reflects a fundamental shift in user behaviour. The fourth wall has been broken.

People are recognising that:

• Twitter is less a town square than a gladiator arena, overseen by a private company trying to sell advertisements and $8 checkmarks against a discourse that’s increasingly angry and hateful;
• Facebook is no longer the place to share birthday wishes and news articles but now best serves as a marketplace for selling your couch to your neighbors;
• Alphabet is facing a decline in the volume and quality of the third-party cookie data vital to its programmatic advertising business. Once able to organise the world’s information through the web, it is also facing the threat of artificial intelligence able to answer questions and convey information better than a Google search.

A pessimist would argue this is all bad for letting readers discover new journalism. I would argue that as users grapple with these challenges, there’ll be a renewed interest in human-powered reporting, journalistic standards and practices and a flight to quality from readers seeking trustworthy journalism, well-edited and curated. I also believe there will be an increase in “ethical advertising” as brands look to get out of the social media mud.

Erika Allen, Washington Post

Head of audience strategy and growth

Newsrooms must foster real relationships with their readers, lean into their personalities.

Audiences value authentic connections that feel relatable and relevant to their lives. As newsrooms look to attract new readers and compete for their time and attention, they must look to build connections by listening to what they want and seeking them out natively. More specifically, this means introducing them to our talent, processes (when appropriate) and meeting them where they are at, whether it be in their own inbox with voice-y newsletters or on social media or other emerging platforms where people are looking to connect or be informed.

By giving readers a chance to connect with our personalities, it creates genuine bonds. After all, people connect with people and not with brands – these personalities don’t have to be bombastic but hearing from a person instead of a brand is a great way to develop trust, foster loyalty and support further connection with our readers.

Greg Williams, Wired

Deputy global editorial director

It’s become a cliche to say that it feels like the news cycle is speeding up every year, but 2022 really has been a year of seismic events. Putin’s war in Ukraine, spiralling inflation, surging energy costs, supply chain bottlenecks, the global semiconductor shortage, Sino-US relations, sluggish growth, constrained labour supply, populist demagoguery, the shifting future of knowledge work, Tory party farce, economic inequality and – acting as a drumbeat to every topic – the urgency of the climate crisis have all acted to shift expectations and agendas.

While Wired has been trying to make sense of many of these changes over the past year, the news cycle has gone into overdrive over just the past few weeks courtesy of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, the release of new ‘generative’ AI products that create plausible, machine-generated text and images, and large-scale layoffs at many of Silicon Valley’s largest companies.

A lot of what’s important for 2023 follows what has already been crucial for the past few years – a focus on reaching audiences where they are (meaning digitally) while delivering quality, distinctive journalism and design that helps readers make sense of the world. Owned and operated products, such as curated newsletters are essential to this, as is taking a global approach to the distribution of content across multiple markets while ensuring local relevance. Diversification is also crucial – for instance telling stories in fresh media-specific ways across platforms such as events, books and social channels. Publishers have to be as innovative as the hungriest startups. At Wired, given the high-level of our audience, we’ve built a thriving B2B content brand, WIRED Consulting, which helps businesses understand what’s coming next and prepare for it.

As global events continue to feel increasingly chaotic, media brands must strive to build trust and ultimately cut through the noise of the chaotic swell of information. At Wired, this means we don’t merely report on what’s wrong; we show how it might be fixed while telling the stories of the people trying to fix it. We report on current developments in the world of tech and business but always spin out their consequences, showing people how to think about the future ramifications. Echoing these principles, I believe that 2023 will be a good year for those that can help audiences grasp what’s important (and what isn’t) and acknowledge that, even in the eye of a storm, if they double down on quality, they build value for their audiences and commercial partners.

Jon Birchall, Ladbible Group

Director of editorial strategy

Let’s start with the solution and work backwards.

For us to build a media that is essential, inclusive, and as such commercially viable, for 2023 and beyond, we must listen to youth audiences and empower young talent to fundamentally redefine what news is and the role it plays for the next generation.

Through a combination of smarter audience intelligence and the development of more diverse businesses, we can better serve a wider range of journalism consumers and build a compelling future for the industry.

Youth audiences are in dire need of powerful voices and meaningful advocacy from media publishers going into what is likely to be an extremely challenging new year. Through our Stealing a Living campaign on the private rental market to our coverage of Roe vs Wade in the United States, we have seen young people deeply engaged with the issues that are impacting their lives.

Yet, as noted in the Reuters Institute’s outstanding recent Kaleidoscope report, too narrow a definition of news has continued to fail both publishers and audiences in creating content which resonates. Understanding that sport, culture, tech, celebrity and a myriad of other passion points across a variety of platforms can, and should, form part of news output is critical when speaking to generations of audiences for whom personalisation and algorithmic learning are simply part of what makes their media. And it is very much theirs.

At a time when so many young people are actively avoiding the news due to its impact on their mood and mental wellbeing, it is on us as publishers to work with them to cultivate trusting relationships and content that is meaningful and above all beneficial to their lives.

Many say that it has never been harder to reach young audiences. I’d say it has never been easier to listen to them.

M Scott Havens, Bloomberg Media

Chief executive

As the Oracle of Omaha reportedly once said, ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who has been swimming naked.’ Now that media has come down from the pandemic ‘high,’ recording several quarters of growth since beginning in 2nd half 2020, the water is most certainly receding. Ongoing recession, layoffs, budget cuts, consolidation, revenue/earnings downgrades are highlighting which organisations have built a truly sustainable and diversified business with an audience that is deeply connected with their products.

As we head into 2023, customer retention – brand partners, viewers, readers and subscribers – will become media’s primary challenge. In the case of a prolonged recession, publishers must position themselves as ‘must have’ or ‘must run with’ not a ‘nice to have’ or ‘nice to include’ – showing real value to advertisers and consumers. Ultimately, only those media companies that can achieve this will be able to grow, or in the longer run, exist. And, if I dare say, retain their ‘dignity’ as the tides ebb.

Nick Hugh, Telegraph Media Group

Chief executive

The rising cost of living will be the central theme for many businesses in 2023 – both in terms of inflation in costs as well as pressure on consumer spending. The most successful businesses will be those that have resilient business models that can adapt swiftly to the changing economic conditions – and indeed, find the opportunities that arise from those challenges.

At Telegraph Media Group we continue to be cautiously optimistic about the future. Whilst growth will be harder won, we will continue to offer subscribers real value from their subscription through quality journalism, and we will look to grow our base in the UK and beyond. Our investment in our journalism and our product portfolio will continue. The Telegraph has a broad offering across all its platforms from our app, to newsletters, podcasts and the many ways our readers engage with our journalism. In 2022 we relaunched our puzzles offering and launched Telegraph Wine Cellar, our first commercial subscription offering and further investments will follow in 2023. Our subscription model is central to the long term growth and sustainability of our business and that requires ongoing and permanent investment.

Rachel Corp, ITN

Chief executive

As we approach the end of 2022 with the news cycle still in full spin, the strikes and weather promise to see us peddling full throttle through to the New Year. Nothing new for journalists, who have had to become accustomed to the relentless news agenda, from a pandemic to Partygate; the war in Ukraine to an energy crisis. And our audiences? There is some cause for optimism. Whether it’s the boost to 5 News with a new hour-long programme; younger Channel 4 News viewers engaging with our online coverage of Ukraine, or the masses tuning into ITV News’ coverage of the Queen’s funeral – it’s clear that when it matters, people of all ages turn to us for our trusted, impartial reporting, wherever and however they choose to consume their news.

Next year however, we will all be challenged with the task of engaging audiences and tackling so-called ‘news avoiders’ as the cost of living crisis and other crisis escalate. To do this, we must continue to deepen our connections with the many and diverse communities around the UK in order to authentically reflect their stories; we must dig out the positive stories and we must continue to use our familiar onscreen faces and our trusted journalism to ‘bring the truth to life’. ITN’s new mission statement, part of our recent rebrand, reflects the purpose-driven nature of our organisation, something of increasing value to audiences as mis-and disinformation continue to drive doubt and division.

As an industry we await three pieces of legislation: the Media Bill, the Online Safety Bill and the Digital Markets and Consumer Bill. It’s the first major legislative agenda from DCMS in decades, and combined, the three bills have the power to shape the fortunes and future of public service media in the UK for decades to come. Our challenge is to continue to demonstrate the vital role of well-funded journalism in a functioning democracy; to ensure news is digitally prominent; and that we are able to extract fair value for our digital news content from platform providers. Meanwhile, I am really excited to see how ITV News on demand via ITVX develops over the next 12 months. It’s innovative, genuinely the first news service of its kind on a PSB streaming platform, and marks an evolution in our broadcasting beyond the traditional news bulletins.

Rebecca Miskin, DC Thomson

Chief executive

Over the last few years, we’ve been going through a massive transformational change at DC Thomson and one of our biggest challenges in the year ahead would be to think that, as economic headwinds become ever stronger, that now is the time to hunker down and wait out the storm. If anything, we should be accelerating that change.

This time last year, under the One DC Thomson strategy, we brought all our media trading business together. Since then, we’ve focused on integrating and aligning teams and creating more opportunities across the business to work collaboratively. It might seem like a small thing but having all our people pulling in one direction has been immensely powerful.

Crucially, this has given us valuable insight into where growth is happening, where we’re more challenged, where we need to be investing more and what we want to prioritise – in addition to addressing duplication or misaligned processes.

It has also given us clarity in how we build and reinforce our communities. It has shown us that the more we know about them (particularly through our investment in data and insight tech), the better we can serve them.

Many will face challenges next year and our communities need to know that we’re there for them. We have an active role to play – it’s about having their backs when times get tough and being reliable, reputable, authentic and inspirational. It’s for us to face into the headwinds. That means hearing more from our brands not less.

Sean Griffey, Industry Dive

Chief executive and co-founder

It’s clear that we’ve entered a period of economic uncertainty. Budgets are being cut, spending decisions are being delayed, and consumers are navigating the impacts of persistent inflation. This is putting media models of all types under economic pressure. It doesn’t matter if your business is built on subscriptions, advertisements, events, research or a mixture of all; all media companies will feel the impact in 2023.

While boom times are periods of great innovation, the challenge for the first half of 2023 will simply be about precise execution. How do we keep teams focused on functioning at a high-level? How can we operate without stubbing our toes? How do we make the most of every opportunity? Most importantly, how do we continue to drive growth in our long-term plans?

One thing is certain – any economic downturn won’t last. Inevitably, we’ll find boom times again. But this year is an opportunity for premier publishers to separate themselves from their competitors. It’s hard to differentiate yourself when things are easy but now is the time to prove your value to your audience and clients. At Industry Dive, we’ll continue to focus on the future, continue to invest in our long-term growth, and continue to launch into new markets. Now, more than ever, is the time to stay true to your vision and strategy.

Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, New York Times

President, international

The past year has been especially turbulent given the war in Europe and the post pandemic fallout and we have continued to see much change across politics, society and industry. The economic headwinds facing the global economy will almost certainly continue to have an impact in 2023. Having a sustainable business model is therefore essential for maintaining a vibrant organisation to continue to cover this news and focusing on revenue, retention and engagement is a central part of this.

At The New York Times, we’ve continued our commitment to invest in our journalism. Good journalism is good business – they are mutually reinforcing. That will not change in 2023 and we believe strongly that the continuing investment in our newsroom will be integral to our ability to grow our digital subscription base and to continue to engage and retain the considerable number of subscribers we already have.

Our ambition is to leverage the power of our brand and news audience reach to also become a category leader in other areas that can occupy a big place in people’s lives, like games, cooking, shopping advice and sports.

That is the reason we acquired the wildly popular word game Wordle. It joins our portfolio of original, engaging puzzle games that delight and challenge solvers, and it gives them reasons to come to The Times every day. (And, no, we haven’t made it harder.)

We also acquired The Athletic this year, as we continue to pursue a broader portfolio of products to meet more needs for more people.

Our aim to continue leading in news and building strength in other categories is about unlocking our potential to become “the essential subscription”. A central part of this strategy will be offering a single, high-value New York Times subscription – or bundle – of interconnected products. We believe this will create an even more compelling value proposition for the enormous audience of potential consumers of our non-news products, and, this diversity of value will give people multiple reasons to engage with us every day, whatever the newscycle.

To attract the widest audience, we will continue to offer standalone subscriptions to each of our products. But by focusing on the bundle, we are providing the most value to our customers, and in turn, building the best opportunity to monetize the entirety of our platform.

Victoria Wakely, Bloomberg UK

National editor

Without turning to hyperbole, 2022 has simply been an extraordinary year for the UK and for people all around the world. But for us at Bloomberg News it’s been a very important year of significant investment in the UK and the major expansion of our team here.

Looking ahead, the issues around the global financial situation, the war in Ukraine and the resulting cost of living crisis will remain ever-present in 2023. The biggest challenge for all of us, whose job it is to educate and inform about what’s going on, will be to cover those issues in an innovative way that remains relevant for readers. This is not a typical journalistic plea for ‘more news’ but people naturally tire of the ‘crisis’ and look for positive, fresh approaches.

At Bloomberg we have unique access to data and analysis, and we will need to build on our new wealth and personal finance offers, as well as our expertise in others fields such as energy, or business, to give news subscribers content in the multiple formats that they need to navigate their lives, at home, at work and on the move.

The other challenge of 2023 is that I am not sure that we – as ordinary consumers – have fully absorbed the ways in which so many things we need are going to stay much more expensive than they were last year. The same might be said for the Government, with every part of the public sector trying to wrestle open the public purse. Covering this will require depth, skill, as well as sensitivities to the problems that people will face.

News needs to tell the straight, unvarnished truth but also find ways to keep people engaged, rather than switching off. Our aim is to help our readers feel informed, act objectively, and respond to a rapidly changing environment as they navigate through 2023.

William Lewis, The News Movement

Chief executive and founder

With the campaigning for the November 2024 US general election gearing up in 2023, it’s going to be vital to reach out to Gen Zs as many of them get ready to vote for the first time.

The News Movement’s team of young journalists in London and New York are going to meet that challenge by ensuring that young adult audiences have factual and trusted news on the platforms they use the most, from Tiktok to YouTube.

The post 18 global news industry leaders share their tips for success in 2023 appeared first on Press Gazette.

The 17th episode of Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast features an in-depth interview with Jim VandeHei, the co-founder and chief executive of Axios.

VandeHei, a former Washington Post journalist, set up Axios in January 2017 from scratch and the business was acquired by Cox Enterprises for $525m in August.

In this episode, VandeHei, also a co-founder of Politico, speaks to William Turvill, Press Gazette’s associate editor (interviews and investigations), about the rise of the journalist-entrepreneur in the United States.

He also speaks about the future of Axios, other exciting American media startups, and a new book from his company, Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less.

Listen to episode 17 of Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast here:

How to subscribe to Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast

1. In your browser

You can use the player above to listen in your browser right now. Future of Media Explained is published every week.

You could bookmark the Future of Media Explained homepage on Acast.

And if you sign up for our Future of Media newsletter you will receive an email link to the latest show every Thursday.

2. In a podcast app

The Future of Media Explained is available on all major podcast apps including: Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Acast.

Or search for Future of Media Explained wherever you get your podcasts.

3. On your smart speaker

If you have an Amazon Echo, Google Home or Apple HomePod smart speaker, ask it to “play the latest episode of the Press Gazette Future of Media Explained podcast”. The same command also works with virtual assistants on mobile devices.

Photo credit: Axios

The post Podcast 17: Axios CEO Jim VandeHei on how to be a journalist entrepreneur appeared first on Press Gazette.

Over nearly six years, Axios has demonstrated that start-ups grounded in quality journalism can make serious money in the digital world. Started from scratch in January 2017, Washington, DC-headquartered Axios sold to Cox Enterprises for $525m this summer.

For chief executive Jim VandeHei, who co-founded the business with journalist Mike Allen and president Roy Schwartz, it’s just the beginning.

“Axios is probably 1-2% as big as I think it can be,” he tells Press Gazette’s Future of Media Explained podcast. “That’s how enormous I think this can be.

“If we execute – that’s a lot of ifs, there’s a lot of things that we have to get right – but there’s no reason that a couple of years from now, we’re not thousands of employees, with tentacles deep into every community in America, and we’re starting to expand internationally.”

‘Starting a profitable media company is very difficult’

Before Axios, VandeHei, a former Washington Post political journalist, was a founder of Politico, which itself was bought by Axel Springer for $1bn in the summer of 2021.

VandeHei believes there have not been enough success stories in the digital news media sector. But he’s hopeful that a new crop of entrepreneurs – perhaps inspired by Politico and Axios – can succeed.

“Starting a profitable media company is very difficult,” says VandeHei. “If you look at the history of the internet, at least in America, you can count on one hand really the number of successful media companies that have sold and have really been able to derive real value from it.

“You had obviously Insider, Business Insider at the time [which sold to Axel Springer for around $450m in 2015]. The Athletic sold to The New York Times [for $550m in January 2022]. Politico sold to Axel Springer. And now we sold to Cox. Vox has been successful, but there’s not that many successful media companies.”

Where other businesses have struggled, says VandeHei, is in finding a balance between building a good business and a good editorial proposition. “To have a really successful media company you have to have as good of a business as you do an editorial product,” he says. “And when you think about editorial products, you have to think about the business. Those two have to work in synchronicity.

“I think so many of the media companies of the digital era that failed did one well and the other poorly. And so they might have had a really interesting editorial product, but they didn’t think about the business.”

We have ‘opened the door’ for journalist-entrepreneurs

VandeHei believes it is rare to find journalists with appropriate entrepreneurial skills, but he believes this might be changing. “There haven’t been that many journalists who successfully started media companies,” he says. “You’re seeing more of it. I think it’s one of the most promising trends.

“If you look in the US, if you look at Puck, if you look at Punchbowl, if you look at Semafor, which is about to launch, if you look at Jessica Lessin at The Information – those are all journalists turned entrepreneurs. So I love that trend.

“I think the advantage that I personally found, being a journalist who then became an entrepreneur who became a CEO, is just the ability to be able to sniff out what’s real and not real – the ability to pick up the phone or to the research to figure out how do you actually fully understand and master a given area.”

Asked if he sees these startups as offspring of Politico and Axios, VandeHei says: “I do. In a good way. I think Jessica Lessin has been very clear that she mimicked a lot of the work that we did at Politico to create The Information, and she’s created an amazing company and she should be very proud of what she’s built.

“If you look at the group that started Puck, we’ve talked a lot with them, I think they drew a lot of inspiration for how they run a company and how they think about content from us.

“Punchbowl – Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, John Bresnahan – they all worked for us [at Politico]. We’ve been helpful in trying to help them think about how to do their company. And they’ve been extremely successful.

“Ben Smith, who’s part of the team that going to do Semafor, worked for [Politico], he’s a friend of ours. So, yeah, I would like to think that we have had an effect on how people think about running these companies.

“But more importantly, hopefully the effect that we had – and I think it goes back to the work [Politico co-founder] John Harris and I did early on – is I think we opened the door to the possibility that journalists can be entrepreneurs.”

The smart brevity book

Axios has firmly established itself as a major player in the US national news market across several sectors, including politics and business. At the core of its success, believes VandeHei and his team, is the concept of “smart brevity”.

In January 2017, Axios launched with “smart brevity” as a slogan, setting itself the goal of delivering “the clearest, smartest, most efficient and trustworthy experience for audience and advertisers alike”.

The Axios founders used the concept to create a specific form of article – using bolded font and bullet points – that is used by all of its journalists.

Now VandeHei, Allen and Schwartz have written a book about it, Smart Brevity: The power of saying more with less. VandeHei believes the book can be used by journalists, communicators and businesspeople to help them sharpen their message.

“Smart brevity is a sort of way of rethinking how you communicate,” he says. “It’s based totally on the data and the science and the trends about where the human mind is going. It teaches you how to be much more effective, much more efficient, both in writing and verbal communications. It shows the power of using short words, sharp words, smart words – getting rid of acronyms and the business speak.”

‘I’m never starting another media company’

What next for VandeHei? Often when an entrepreneur sells their business, they step down from day-to-day duties. VandeHei has stayed on as chief executive of Axios.

“This is all I want to do,” he says. “I don’t have any other tricks in the bag. I start and I run media companies, and I love it, and I would do it for free, and I want to do it with Axios.

“And I think Axios has all the ingredients that I want. There’s no other media company that I would ever want to run, and I’m never starting another media company.”

Top photo: The Axios newsroom (credit, Aha Concepts)

The post Axios CEO Jim VandeHei on why zero to $525m in six years is just the start for news brand appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette has listed the biggest newsletter-based publishers in the world and spoken to several about how to build an email-based news business.

This year, less than six years after it was founded, Virginia-based publisher Axios was sold to US cable giant Cox Enterprises for $525m (£435m), while B2B specialist Industry Dive was acquired by Informa for $389m (£323m). Both companies are set to make at least $100m revenue in 2022 and have a focus on newsletters.

“Five years ago, people thought this was a ‘mom and pop’ type business,” says Tim Huelskamp, a former venture capitalist and co-founder of 1440, a daily newsletter company with a staff of nine . “Now you’re starting to see pretty big exits like Industry Dive.”

While B2B players such as Industry Dive and Future-owned SmartBrief built up their newsletter-led publishing businesses over a decade ago, more publishing startups are now jumping on newsletters as a way to reach targeted audiences through relatively low overheads. Many of Axios’ local news sites in the US employ just a handful of journalists in a city.

"What's different is the way in which disruptors, in particular, have seized upon email because it doesn't require you to have all that expensive keeping your website up to date. It's a much lower cost model to produce two or three emails and I think that really opens up lots of new opportunities, not for mainstream brands, but for alternative brands or even individuals as we've seen with the Substack and Revue phenomenon," says Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

What makes the newsletter format so valuable?

In an industry that has seen advertising revenues swallowed up by tech platforms and traffic at the mercy of social media algorithms, owning the audience relationship is valuable.

"With email there's no platform risk," says Huelskamp. 1440's newsletter reaches 2m subscribers directly through its email of "impartial" news and claims a 55% open rate.

Huelskamp adds: "[Email] is the original killer app."

Use of email for news is particularly popular among older, more wealthy readers. According to the 2022 Digital News Report an average of 17% of readers across 42 markets used newsletters for news each week.

Newsletter-first publishing makes talking to niches financially worthwhile

Targeting reader niches is where newsletter-first publishers come into their own. US media company The Skimm publishes The Daily Skimm newsletter whose 7.5 million readership are largely millennial women. Recent Hubspot acquisition The Hustle reaches some 2.5 million (mostly) men in business and technology.

While a few startups such as 1440 say they have managed to generate "an eight-figure revenue" through a generalist product, most newsletters focus on smaller demographics who can be sold premium subscriptions for specialist information or who make up verticals valuable to advertisers.

Niche does not however have to mean small. Both Axios and Industry Dive built multi-hundred-million dollar businesses out of dozens of specialist newsletters.

The Skimm meanwhile has grown through adding podcasts, a mobile app, and online courses to its four newsletters.

"What you'll see is a lot of these businesses that have started out as newsletter-first or newsletter-only will then push into other areas. So they'll start to have website presences and other channels that they'll look at as part of the growth story," says Newman. "Once you've got that loyalty and that little community, you can build additional models on top of it and everything can kind of start to scale."

6AM City: $1m in revenue on $250,000 costs in each market

For local news-focused newsletter publishers, expanding horizontally is a natural option to scale.

Fast-growing startup 6AM City is one example.

The newsletter-first publisher, which launched with a single newsletter in Greenville, South Carolina in 2016, currently covers 25 cities. The company added 18 new markets and almost tripled its subscriber base to over one million people in just six months.

The company, which has a policy against covering local politics or crime, makes around 85% of its revenue through ad sales, the overwhelming majority of which is local.

"It's important for us to maintain a balance of local, regional and national advertising for the sustainability of the product and for market acceptance. People locally really want to see what resonates with them. They want to see their local stores and brands elevated over national products," says co-founder and chief operating officer Ryan Heafy.

Educating local advertisers on buying placements in newsletters has been a challenge, says Heafy, because most people are used to buying TV, billboards and print radio. The company’s avoidance of crime and politics however, he says has appealed to a lot of buyers.

"A lot of folks are coming to us because they don't want to advertise with TV stations anymore, because they're between a homicide, a sexual assault and a car accident."

Last year 6AM City made $3.5m in revenue which was lower than hoped as a result of the pandemic, but it expects to hit just under $10m this year with profitability coming in early 2023.

Heafy says its revenue model will allow the company to easily expand its newsletters into dozens more small and mid-sized markets.

"There's probably about 75 markets in the United States that we could go into and easily operate with our unit economics," says Heafy. On ad sales alone, he says that the company can make a million dollars in annual revenue in each city within three years. Operating costs average around $250,000 per market. The company fixes its costs per city at around the equivalent of four full-time employees.

While the company is exploring additional ways to increase the margins on its newsletters such as through selling digital classifieds, an e-commerce store and a membership programme, Heafy says that newsletters will remain the core of the business.

"It was newsletters from day one. We didn't even have a website until almost 18 months into the company,” he says. "What we'll probably do is evolve with technology - building strong user profiles and data behind things that help inform our content, decisions and our advertising placements and being positioned for the future as things continue to evolve."

While the company is looking to explore video and other animated content that can bring in subscribers, it's not tempted to throw its resources at the video-based social networks that are popular right now.

Email remains unpopular with younger news consumers - just 3% of 18–24s in the US use email as a main news source compared with 41% who say social media. 6AM City however has even dropped its Twitter presence entirely in favour of Linkedin where it says it can build better connections with business leaders in its markets.

"The conversion with email is pretty significant," says Heafy. "Email is not going to go anywhere and we feel very safe in that space for the foreseeable future."

Press Gazette is hosting the Future of Media Technology Conference. For more information, visit NSMG.live

Picture: taken from the 6AM City website homepage

The post How world’s biggest news-based emails became $100m+ business appeared first on Press Gazette.

Axios, the US news website which prides itself on “smart brevity”, has been sold to Cox Enterprises for $525m (£435m) some five years after its launch.

The three founding members of the company – Jim VandeHei, Roy Schwartz and Mike Allen – will all become minority shareholders in Axios and stay on to oversee day-to-day decisions

Chief executive and chairman of Cox Enterprises Alex Taylor will also join the Axios board. The Axios software arm Axios HQ will become a stand-alone company run by Schwartz.

Since its launch in 2017, Axios has become an established voice in America’s news landscape regularly landing political and business exclusives. 

The site’s goal upon launch was to deliver “smart brevity” and “the clearest, smartest, most efficient and trustworthy experience for audience and advertisers alike”. This approach can be seen in the way stories are reported, with a reliance on bullet points and formatting designed to make it easier for readers to grasp the important information. 

In January, Axios launched Axios Pro which included three premium newsletters for a subscriptions of $599 a year. The newsletters cover mergers and acquisitions news in the fintech, health technology and retail sectors. 

Axios is also in the process of expanding its local reach, with VandeHei declaring his 2022 resolution was to “save local news”. Axios currently has an Axios Local brand in 24 cities and has said that the sale to Cox Enterprises will ensure investments into local news will continue. 

Cox Enterprise CEO Taylor said: “A big part of this investment is to expand the number of local markets we serve. Local watchdog journalism is so important to the health of any community, and no one is more focused on building that out nationally than Axios.”

The deal sees Axios sold at five times its projected 2022 revenue of $100m.

VandeHei said the decision to sell was spurred by Cox’s commitment to journalism and fair price.

Cox Enterprises is also the owner of The Dayton Daily News and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The deal is the latest in a string of big news mergers and acquisitions this year, notably including The New York Times’ $550m acquisition of The Athletic. 

Last month, UK-based business intelligence publisher Informa paid $389m for ten-year-old US B2B publisher Industry Dive, a ratio of just under four times its annual turnover.

The post Axios sold to Cox Enterprises for $525m five years after launch appeared first on Press Gazette.

Axios, the five-year-old publishing startup that has established itself as a leading source of national news in the US, has launched three premium newsletters that will sell subscriptions for $599 a year.

Axios Pro’s first three newsletters cover mergers and acquisitions (M&A) news in the fintech, health technology and retail sectors. The company plans to launch titles for media deals and climate deals by the end of the first quarter of this year.

Following a free two-week trial, a subscription to any individual newsletter costs $599 a year. Readers can instead choose to subscribe to all Axios Pro content for $1,799, or $2,499 after its initial offer period ends.

In addition to individuals, Axios is preparing for corporate subscription interest. A spokesperson told Press Gazette: “We are developing corporate group rates in response to demand. These will be offered on a sliding scale percentage based on the number of total subscribers.”

Axios expects Pro to appeal to senior executives within industries, as well as investment bankers, venture capitalists, private equity employees, and other deal professionals (more detail in Q&A below).

Axios Pro newsletters will be published daily, while subscribers will also receive access to exclusive Pro events.

The Pro team currently consists of 16 Axios employees. The editorial team is led by senior editor George Moriarty, who joined from InvestmentNews, and editor Michael Flaherty, who previously worked for communications agency Gladstone Place Partners.

The new subscription service was in part inspired by the success of the free Axios Pro Rata newsletter, which covers deals and investment across different sectors and has around 200,000 subscribers.

Overall, Axios currently reports having 2.4m free subscribers and an email open rate of around 40%.

In addition to its national newsletter brands, Axios is also in the process of expanding its local newsletter business. Axios Local plans to be active in 25 cities later this year.

Q&A with Axios Pro senior editor George Moriarty

Q: How will Axios Pro interact with the free side of Axios? Will there be much collaboration?

A: “Nick Johnston, the publisher, and I share the mindset that the worst way to run a subscription component in a newsroom is to have any silos.

“We want the doors to be open, we want to be sharing ideas, leveraging the best of the talent we have at Axios. So it’s definitely going to be collaborative.”

Q: Will news stories be shared and promoted between the premium and free sides of the business?

A: “Yes, absolutely. We would expect [that with] some of the deals that get scooped by our deals folks, we’ll want to get some of those in front of the paywall.”

Q: Who do you expect to subscribe to Axios Pro?

A: “Certainly, in terms of early interest, we’ve heard a lot from some of the larger firms that are the deal-making organisations.

“I think it’s going to be reflective of the deal-making community. So there will be enterprises that are purchasing deals, but there will also be some individuals who follow it…

“Beyond the obvious, you always get that second ring of the community that people don’t always think of – some independent recruiters, some lawyers. There will be a blend, I would imagine.”

Q: How many verticals will Axios Pro ultimately cover?

A: “Long term, we certainly believe there are a number of areas within the Pro deals world that could be met with an audience. But we want to see how these do first before we get ahead of ourselves…

“But I can say confidently that we all expect it to be more than five.”

Q: What do readers get from a Pro subscription?

A: “There’s a daily newsletter that will go out every business day, and that’s where the journalists are going to be sharing their insights and reporting on deals across the spectrum – so not just publicly-announced deals that have closed, but finding deals that are in-market or coming to market. Or if deals are in trouble [we’ll cover that]. And also identifying trends.

“Beyond that, we will be doing community events. And those will be some in-person, some reactions to spot news. I believe strongly that one of the ways a publication like this can really succeed is to give folks an opportunity to hear from experts in the field.”

The post Axios launches $599-a-year Pro newsletters: Q&A with senior editor George Moriarty appeared first on Press Gazette.