In the last five years, newsletters have become essential for news outlets, writers, and anyone who wants to get their content out there. Some companies, like The Wall Street Journal, have dozens of newsletters; others, like The Skimm, base their whole business on one email. As information overload grows, newsletters have gained success. Emails synthesize […]
What Facebook’s latest attempt to court the media means
Just after Apple revealed its grand plan to ‘save’ the media with its News+ offering, Facebook returns to the fold. This week, The Wall Street Journal reported the tech company is in conversations with publishers to relaunch yet another Facebook News Tab. The Menlo Park-based company will pay publishers as much as $3 million to […]
2019, the year when Big Tech may shrink
2019 is likely to be an uphill year for Silicon Valley. This week, lawmakers held hearings on Capitol Hill questioning whether Big Tech should continue being big. It seems that Washington DC is ready to uphold stringer antitrust laws to limit the market power of the Four (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google.) Antitrust has surprisingly, […]
Luminary dreams of becoming the Netflix of podcasting
On a slow morning in the New York subway, you can read through the handful of billboards that decorate the wagon. This past month, we could only see the podcast startup Luminary’s advertising, covering New York City’s subways. With its bright yellow banners and its enticing slogan (“Original podcasts with original ideas for original people,”) […]
What the almost 3,000 journalism job cuts tell us about the media industry
The US economy is growing, companies are hiring, and the unemployment rate is the lowest since 1969—a meager 3.6%. It’s a party for almost everyone, except for journalists. In the first half of 2019, nearly 3,000 people were let go from newsrooms all over the country, traditional and digital media alike. The scarcity of revenues, […]
The Spanish-language podcast Radio Ambulante shows us a path to success
In 2012, the podcast industry was taking off in the United States, although mainly in English. It was hard to find long-form podcasts in what already was the second most spoken language in the country—Spanish— until Radio Ambulante came along. Radio Ambulante, a weekly 30-60 minute podcast in Spanish covering Latin American stories, has garnered […]
Mobile consumption is up… way up
When was the last time you watched traditional TV? Maybe you have recently turned it on to tune in the Democratic debate or the news. What about your cell phone? You’ve probably read or watched something on it just a couple of minutes ago. It’s not only you. According to the latest forecast released by […]
No more subscriptions, please
In 2019, subscriptions are everywhere. If you want to read the news, you may subscribe to a couple of outlets, like The New York Times and The New Yorker. If you are watching a show, you’ll get one or two streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu. And if you listen to music, you’ll probably have […]
The Weekly, the NYT’s latest show, is all about branding
The New York Times has started the summer off by releasing its latest product—a docuseries called The Weekly. On June 2nd, the pay television channel FX, property of The Walt Disney Company, aired the first episode telling the story of the Louisiana school T.M. Landry College Preparatory and the moral struggles of the Times’ reporters […]
How The Guardian capitalized its membership model
For most digital news outlets, advertisements are the business’ bedrock and for some others, paywalls (and thus, subscriptions) have become a significant revenue source. Yet for a few, donations through membership models, fuel the newsrooms. The Guardian belongs to this last group of outlets and has recently proved that memberships can be profitable—members donate whatever […]
