How commerce is being wed to content creating another revenue pillar beyond ads and audience PLUS Responding to hedge funds owning media

April 12, 2022

My friend Damian Radcliffe has been writing a lot about how commerce is becoming a major revenue driver for a lot of media companies, and we have a couple of excellent examples of this in the newsletter today. It makes a lot of sense for a range of review sites - like the New York Times' Wirecutter - and consumer mags. The FT (£) looks at how Future has added affiliate marketing links to its stable of magazines, and it seems like such a logical fit and application of this strategy with titles such as PC Gamer, Digital Camera and Home & Garden. No brainer rally.

Digiday looks at how Refinery29 is showing the next step in this trend with a test of a product that they are calling 'live shoppable video'. In writing that, I kind of cringe because it feels like the Home Shopping Network coming to the web, but hopefully, the product is more organic and less schlocky. But they are also getting into gaming and improving their affiliate marketing play. We'll see a lot more experimentation here.

There are also a couple of pieces about the role of hedge funds in the US local news market. Often referred to as a vulture fund for its asset stripping, newsroom destroying methods, Alden Global Capital, has been the been the biggest bogeyman for journalists in the US. For those interested in this issue, there is an online discussion with a filmmaker who is doing a project called Stripped for Parts - Thursday 14 April at 7 pm US ET.

One interesting response to the hedge fund driven consolidation of many local titles has been shifting to non-profit status, and that just happened in New Jersey as a group of local newspapers moved to that model.

PLUS Forbes is launching NFTs in a big way. TikTok has passed Snapchat as the fave app with US teens while Facebook and Twitter have become teen ghost towns. Tips for student journalists on how to pitch. And some radical questions that might help your product brainstorming sessions, which were really thought provoking.

TikTok Surpasses Snapchat As Teens' Favorite, Facebook And Twitter Barely Register - 04/08/2022

The Vice Media Group-owned women's lifestyle publication plans to start testing live shoppable video this spring, its global editor-in-chief said in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

Social Media Today

Forbes Launches 'Virtual Billionaires' NFT Collection, Expands Into Metaverse - 04/11/2022

We’d like to share an upcoming online event that we think you won’t want to miss. “What To Do About Hedge Funds in Journalism?” is a panel discussion and film fundraiser that addresses the central question of Rick Goldsmith's film-in-progress, Stripped for Parts: American Journalism at the Crossroads.

The nonprofit Corporation for New Jersey Local Media (CNJLM) has assumed ownership of the New Jersey Hills Media Group, ensuring the future of the quality community journalism that this newspaper

By age and party, Americans rely on and trust different sources for their news.

Plus thoughts on teaching about corrections, a new social media app that begs for authenticity and news for your classroom

It is difficult to brainstorm fresh, transformative ideas. Telling everyone that “no idea is a bad idea” isn’t enough of a prompt. These questions will stretch you beyond your daily experience; if you’re lucky, they could even lead to a unique business model and a long-term competitive moat.