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The roaring 20s of publishing has begun with several new brands launching, each with their own twist on dealing with the challenges of audience growth and sustainable business models. What’s notable is most publications are not promising to build massive audiences. Instead, most are focused on high-value audiences that lend themselves to high-priced ads and subscriptions.

Grid is one of this crop of newcomers. Laura McGann, a Vox.com editorial director who is running Grid’s editorial side, saw an opportunity to build a news brand premised on a new newsroom model that seeks to tell a more complete picture of news stories through a collaborative approach that taps into different areas of expertise. The end result: a “fuller picture” of the news.

“We're trying to create our brand around the idea that we can create additive value where one plus one equals four by putting really smart people together.,” said Brad Bosserman, Grid’s CRO who joined the company following seven years leading brand partnerships at Politico. 

Brad and I discussed the current boom of publishing startups, journalism-led innovation and building a sustainable business model around targeting influential readers.

The new cycle of publishing innovation

My view is we’re at the start of a multiyear cycle of innovation in publishing, as legacy publishers look to consolidation and efficiency while a new class of upstarts spring up to move faster to capture new  opportunities that inevitably spring up with the macro environment changes. Brad points out that media is a reactive business.

“Media companies tend to be born in generations. When you look at that 2005-2007 period, you had all sorts of companies that were born in that same window. And now 15 years later, you're seeing another one of those generations where a new breed of companies is being born. A lot of times media companies are downstream of larger changes in the culture, consumer behaviors, business models and technology platforms. As those things change, media companies react to those [changes]..”

The pivot to direct connections

During the last period of publishing innovation, platforms were at the heart of most companies’ distribution plans, at a minimum. The idea was simple: Facebook was connecting the world, might as well hitch a ride to grow alongside a once-in-a-generation company that’s adding millions of users a day. Easier to swim with the tide than against it. These days, you’ll rarely hear mention of platforms in the pitches for new publishers. You’re more likely to hear about how important email newsletters are.

“There's a lot more skepticism around the platforms [and] the idea that you could get a lot of audience quickly from Facebook. There's a big push toward owning audiences in a much more authentic way. That’s at the core of everything that's being launched: the idea is that you really need to own your audience. That's because of all the experiences that folks have had over the last 10-15 years. [Platforms] did allow for a lot of companies to acquire large audiences at various points, but they found that they were renting them. That’s behind a lot of the push toward subscription models and the push to first-party [data].”

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Journalism-led innovation

New entrants to a market typically lead with a product innovation. In the news publishing bu