The prickly relationship between news publishers and tech platforms appears to be improving. Look no further than recent moves by both Apple and Facebook to pay publishers directly.

"We are seeing better commercial opportunity coming from the [social media] platforms than we ever have," said Josh Stinchcomb, CRO of The Wall Street Journal and Barron's Group. "We've done a couple of big deals this year with platforms and I think the general environment is one where they are valuing -- or they're being forced to value -- quality journalism and recognize they have to pay for it in some way."

Stinchcomb joined the Digiday Podcast to discuss the company's digital ads business as a whole ("growing, absolutely growing"), the importance of its events division and how to convince advertisers that news and brand safety go together.