The Independent looks for acquisitions as profit grows PLUS Regional-local news groups look to newsletters for engagement and growth

February 24, 2022

The Independent is going from strength-to-strength, and the Press Gazette is reporting that it has posted a record operating profit. They note that these strong results come after it turned off the presses, and now with cash in hand, it's looking for targets for acquisitions. This definitely fits in a trend of publishers who have successfully executed digital transformations such as Nordic pioneer Schibsted, Germany's Axel Springer and the New York Times. Once their digital strategies start to pay off, they are in a position to remake their businesses through acquisitions.

Speaking of digital transformations, regional and local newspaper groups are leaning into newsletters as a powerful way to engage audiences. Reach in the UK has just launched a newsletter team, which I'm very excited to see having worked with the group on several engagement projects between 2016 and 2018. And in the US, the Columbia Journalism Review has a case study of a local newspaper in New York that is using Substack to grow its digital strategy.

PLUS LinkedIn is launching its own podcast network. I've included a couple of pieces about Web3, one from Mind the Product about how product managers can leverage this suite of technologies and another very sceptical look at the trend. (I'm of the sceptical camp.)

There is a piece about a local news project that failed. The lesson for me is that you can't ignore the business side of a news startup. It's sad, but it happens too often.

And Interhacktives looks at the rebranding of the Facebook news feed.

Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.

We can rebuild the local journalism industry by having the government give people the means to pay for news.

It's the latest investment the company is making to lure professional creators to its platform.

Press Gazette has been reporting on British journalism without fear or favour since 1965. Our mission is to provide a news and information service which helps the UK journalism.

As part of our ongoing research program into platforms and publishers, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism is examining the impact platform-funded initiatives are having on local newsrooms. This report is the first in a series. Over the past seven years, philanthropic support from platforms has become a feature of the news landscape. Programs offering […]

Yesterday I had a quasi-viral tweet about how I cannot for the life of me find an explanation as to why Web3 and the blockchain are so inevitably the future. Charlie Warzel, ever the optimist for no given reason suggested the following: Instead of a technology achieving mass adoption and creating a culture in its wake, much of the crypto movement is a durable culture that is waiting for its mass-adoption product and trying to spin up technologies that augment the culture.

In this blog post, Paul Shustak summarizes the main cultural, technical, economic, and UX differences in Web3.

When Diana Tittle retired to Sierra County in southern New Mexico in 2012 with her husband, she never imagined she would be working eight-hour days, seven days a week without ever taking a paycheck.

Meta has renamed the Facebook News Feed to Feed, reflecting the changing nature of the platform as it shifts.