How The Independent Built a Subscriber Acquisition Model and What It Told Them PLUS Dotdash Built Its Tech Infrastructure to Accommodate Remote Working

October 04, 2021

What’s New in Publishing has a great Q&A with Jo Holdaway from the Indy about how they built a subscriber propensity model. The piece is rich with data and discusses how to use the Indy’s registration scheme supports their first-party data play and how audience segmentation based on loyalty has been key in supporting their digital subscriber growth.

We also have a piece from Nieman Lab on the growth of single-topic niche news sites and also how Dotdash built out their infrastructure to protect their business and their employees from hackers.

We also have some of the post-mortems about Ozy. In retrospect, it really does seem like this was a house of cards in which founder Carlos Watson was using his personal charm and network to fund a media traffic buying network. Some are already trying to use this episode to tar digital media writ large, but that is not fair on so many levels. Watson launched Ozy when VCs and funders were throwing money at digital media outlets. The money spigot from VCs to digital media startups was shut off several years ago, and many founders have had to bootstrap their ventures in the last few years. Also Watson’s strategy was his own. The responsibility lies with him and his co-founder - YouTube exec impersonator Samir Rao.

Dotdash CTO Nabil Ahmad shares how they protect their employees and tech infrastructure from hackers, and how other publishers should do the same.

The Independent, the online-only British news brand reaching 23M readers per month, won the AOP’s ‘Best Use of Data’ award at last month’s AOP Awards for its subscriber acquisition strategy. The judges noted that The Independent is “constantly evolving, using data really effectively to evolve the brand in its business model.” The Independent’s success hinges around its …

The number of single-topic nonprofit news organizations has quadrupled since 2008, according to a series of new reports from The Institute for Nonprofit News released this week. INN counted 51 outlets that focus on a single topic, including The Water Desk (water issues in the Western U.S.) or The W…

Frances Haugen, a Facebook product manager who left the company in May, revealed that she had provided internal documents to journalists and others.

Exploring the art and craft of story

The company was built on years of lies that together created a woefully false narrative about its business, financials and culture.

The story behind the story is about the elite investors who plowed millions into a media dream without much due diligence, persuaded by the charm of Ozy’s head, Carlos Watson.