The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices

Immediate Media have featured numerous times on the shortlists and as winners of categories both for 2020 and 2021's Publisher Podcast Awards. Olive magazine podcast was the winner of 2021's Best Sponsored Podcast . We spoke to Immediate Media's Head of Podcasts Ben Youatt. He works across the publisher's whole portfolio of podcasts, including the olive magazine podcast and 2020 winner History Ext...

In this week's episode we hear from Hannah Storm, founder and director of the Headlines network, an organisation working to improve the mental health of people working in the media. She tells us about why mental health can be bad among media professionals, what organisations and individuals can do to make things better and about Headlines’ new podcast and their incredible first episode featuring L...

Over the past few years, we've seen the renaissance of email as publishers and brands have rediscovered the benefits of a direct relationship with audiences. The power of email can be seen from sky-high valuations of newsletter platforms, in addition to the amount of time that has been spent iterating on existing email strategies. But at the same time, the format has yet to truly deliver on its po...

The winner of the Publisher Podcast Hero of the Year award in 2021's Publisher Podcast Awards was Theodora Louloudis, Podcast Editor at The Telegraph. She was praised for the exceptional work produced with limited resources, including spearheading the launch of five new podcasts over a particularly challenging year, as well as her leadership in shaping strategy at the publisher. We caught up with...

This week we hear from Stephanie Mehta, CEO & Chief Content Officer of Manseuto Ventures, parent of Inc. and Fast Company. She talked about going from an editorial career to the CEO role, the changes in leadership attitudes to publishing over the last decade, and what the revenue models for Inc. and Fast Company look like post-pandemic. She also explains why print is still important in bringing pr...

In this week's episode we hear from founder of local newsletter network 6AM City Ryan Heafy. He tells us why the network is very close to having a million subscribers across its 24 daily newsletters, about his unconventional route into media - he used to fix Black Hawk helicopters - and how it helped 6AM launch in 16 cities in a year (spoiler: it's all about operations and scale). If you care abou...

This week we hear from Abbianca Makoni, a 22-year old journalist who, after completing a four-year apprenticeship at the the Evening Standard, decided to go it alone with own online publication Awallprintss. It shares the voices and stories of under-reported communities around the world, as well as platforming the creative work of different groups across culture, news, arts, music and more.  In th...

On this week's episode we hear from Jakub Parusinski, founding editor at The Fix, a trade magazine for media professionals. He and Peter spoke about Jakub’s background across journalism and management consulting, and how that has informed the nuts and bolts approach the Fix takes to ‘cracking the media management puzzle’. In the news roundup the team discuss crypto's incursions into legacy media....

In this episode we hear from Sophia Waterfield, editor and founder of Paranting Magazine. It’s a magazine for parents, but for parents that don’t have time for some of the aspirational BS that a lot of lifestyle magazines cover. We spoke about the name, funding a start-up with the aim of actually paying freelancers - oh, and accents. In the news roundup the team discuss the collateral damage of th...

This week's guest is Alastair Brian, fact-checking lead at The Ferret. He spoke about out the realities of modern fact-checking (it’s like Sisyphus on steroids), how to win over new readers who don’t have a pre-existing trusted relationship, and how community is at the heart of any sustainable revenue stream In the news roundup the team discusses the battle for Spotify's soul, Google's latest plan...

This week’s guest is Rob John, MD of the Content Marketing Association. He discusses what the CMA does and who its members are, how content marketing might fit within a publisher’s revenue mix, and the panel they’re running at  The Publishing Show  in London in March. In the news roundup the team discusses the realities and unrealities of the metaverse for publishers, German publishers' latest att...

The narrative that local news is dead is widely accepted in the media industry. The rise of digital advertising has cut off local news organisation's main source of revenue, leading to decades of cuts and managed decline at once-lucrative publications who have struggled to adapt. But over the last few years, there have been glimmers of hope. Although there are still vast news deserts with no cover...

This week UK Editor of The Big Issue Paul McNamee tells us about the Big Issue’s Breakthrough scheme, paying disadvantaged young people to get into journalism. He also talks about why the magazine needed a redesign to make everything important and necessary, working with designer Matt Willey, their relationship with subscribers, digital-first news and balancing campaigning with making a properly e...

This special episode of Media Voices includes the audio of our launch presentation for the Media Moments 2021 report. Chris, Peter and Esther each outline which media moment of the year they found interesting, before being joined by an expert panel of media analysts to dissect the year. The team are then joined by The Rebooting's Brian Morrissey, Press Gazette's Charlotte Tobitt, The Reuters Insti...

Noema is a magazine looking at some of the biggest issues of the 21st century - AI, the climate crisis, the future of democracy and capitalism. Its Executive Editor Kathleen Miles tells us about the challenges of publishing in what seems like a very high-brow niche, commissioning and editing writers like Yuval Harari and Francis Fukuyama - and how interests outside of publishing feed back into her...

This week we hear from Tara Lajumoke, Managing Director of FT Strategies, the Financial Times' consulting firm. We discussed how FT Strategies fits into the FT's wider goals, what her role involves as MD, and how they're building a robust playbook for other subscription businesses. We also talk about how publishers' subscription strategies are holding up after the pandemic. In the news round up, P...

This week, we hear from Blair Tapper, Senior Vice President at The Independent US. She talks about what her priorities have been since the brand's US launch, what an Independent reader looks like across the pond, and why their new commercial offerings are more mission-based. She also explains why block lists create huge missed opportunities for advertisers as well as publishers.   In the news roun...

In this special Conversations episode of Media Voices, sponsored by Permutive, we explore the ‘Great Privacy Reset’. The tension between advertising and privacy has hit a boiling point in recent years. Invasive tracking across the web and increasingly aggressive ways of building data profiles of consumers has been seen as standard in the industry, with companies racing to get more data than ever a...

This week’s interview is with James Fahn, Global Director of Internews’ Environmental Programs and its Earth Journalism Network. Internews trains journalists around the world in support of a free press - James spoke with us as he sets out with a group of journalists from the global south to cover COP26 from their own perspectives. In the news roundup the team discuss the return to the magazine fol...

This week we hear from David Adeleke, Founder of CMQ Media and creator of the Communiqué newsletter analysing the intersection of the media, content ecosystem, and the digital economy in Africa. He outlines the complexities of using African media as a catch-all term, how podcasts are growing across the continent, and why an acquisition last year by Stripe has provided a lightbulb moment for techno...

This week we hear from Sean Conboy, Executive Editor at The Players' Tribune; a sports-focused site that publishes first-person stories from professional athletes. He talks about the process they use to get content from elite athletes, and why the site doesn't shy away from difficult stories and human rights issues, like the ones around the Qatar World Cup. In the news roundup Chris and Peter take...

For our 200th episode, we hear from Duncan Tickell, Chief Revenue Officer at Immediate Media. He talks about why he rejoined Immediate and what his focus is now with diversification, how their podcasts are becoming a seven figure revenue business, and what he’s doing to help the publisher maintain the gains it made during the pandemic. He also explains why sourdough webinars have been such a hit,...

On this week's episode we hear from The New Republic's Literary Editor Laura Marsh. She tells us about what makes working in an audio format especially rewarding, best practice for evolving your audio product, and why non-news content is such a good touchpoint for audiences. In the news roundup the team discuss why Facebook's outage isn't necessarily the best news for publishers, the needless and...

This week we hear from Kaya Yurieff, The Information's Creator Economy Reporter. We talked about how she covers an industry that is so new and sprawling, some of the challenges of being a creator, and how it fits with The Information's other coverage. She also explains why businesses should take creators seriously, and why she expects to see more Creator Economy reporters at other outlets in the f...

The Manchester Mill is a subscription-based newsletter for the modern age. In this interview its founder Joshi Herrmann tells us why good local journalism demands having boots on the ground, how the sins of the past are impacting the journalism of today, and how he plans to expand into new cities and new revenue streams. In the news roundup we're joined by founder of The Business of Content Simon...