Welcome back to the latest season of The Publisher Podcast, bringing you the best of the main stage sessions from The Publisher Summit.

This week's guest is Sarah Donaldson, co-founder of news start-up The Nerve. In a bit of a twist, this isn’t actually audio from the Summit. We scheduled a 20 minute interview slot on stage with Sarah and barely scratched the surface of what we wanted to discuss as it’s such a fascinating case study, so we caught up with her again over the summer as The Nerve nears its first birthday for an extended interview.

The Nerve was launched last September by a group of five former Observer journalists. In less than a week after launching, it had hit 8,000 sign-ups and more than 1,000 paying members, all without a paywall. As they turn one, they’ve continued to go from strength to strength, and significantly are now on the brink of sustainability.

Sarah talks about the opportunity they spotted to launch a news and culture brand, which audience touchpoints they decided to focus on, and why they’ve seen such early success.

Thanks to the Summit's premium sponsors; Pugpig and Beehiiv, and to the digital sponsors; qwoted, Adestra, Woodwing and Warners for their support.

For publishers and event organisers, knowing where to start with AI is a common conundrum. For Bridged Media’s clients, the starting point is always a problem to be solved.

Welcome to the latest in our Media Briefs series of short, sharp sponsored episodes, this time featuring a senior executive working with a vendor that is making their businesses better.

In this episode, we hear from Sharon Roessen, Chief Operating Officer at global B2B events business Terrapinn, working with Bridged Media to develop a series of AI agents designed to streamline customer experience.

She spoke about the development process - from identifying a problem to developing a solution - and how one agentic AI experiment has led to a suite of agents that are increasing event attendance and easing registration bottlenecks.

This Media Briefs episode is sponsored by Bridged Media, democratising AI for publishers. Through no-code AI solutions, Bridged lets publishers access the power of machine learning and Gen AI to meet their engagement and revenue objectives.

Learn more about Bridged Media’s no-code AI tools on their website.

In this special Conversations episode of The Publisher Podcast, sponsored by Pugpig, we hear from CEO and founder Jonny Kaldor about the data that proves apps are engagement and retention powerhouses.

Pugpig has just released their annual 2026 Media App Report, packed with benchmarks and insights from 140 media brands and 440+ live apps. Jonny looks at some of the publisher app trends from the report, why direct consumer relationships are the highest priority right now, and the deeper levels of engagement shown by app users compared to web visitors.

He also explains why apps are now surprisingly being used for subscriber acquisition, not just retention, and how publishers can identify gaps in their conversion strategies using apps.

In the final episode of this season of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by Lily Barclay, the first Content Director of Immediate's Food Group covering BBC Good Food and olive magazine.

Lily has been with Good Food for over 18 years and has seen the brand's evolution from print only to a multiplatform and multi-brand specialist publishing group.

She talks about what separates their food brands, Immediate's new Good Food Kitchen to support digital content creation and real-world recipe testing, and leveraging ratings and reviews to build trust. She also takes us inside olive's successful print refresh, where a reduced frequency, higher quality stock and price point has rewarded them with a 40% increase in newsstand sales and 400% increase in subscriptions.

Read the key takeaways from this interview, find our weekly newsletter and more on voices.media

This week's guest on The Publisher Podcast is Heather Dietrick, Chief Media Officer at Outside Inc. 

Heather talked about the evolution of the company from 'just' a magazine to what she calls a fully integrated outdoor ecosystem, encompassing 15 media brands, events, consumer apps and travel services. What ties everything together is a mission to inspire and enable people to get outside.

She also discusses Outside Inc's revenue mix, with recurring revenue tiered around paid content and app subscriptions, which now makes up 60% of the business.

Read the key takeaways from this interview, find our weekly newsletter and more on voices.media

This week's guest on The Publisher Podcast is Toby Moses, Head of Newsletters at The Guardian. Toby has been in charge of newsletters at The Guardian since 2021 - the first person in the role.

Just five years ago, there was no real unified newsletter strategy at The Guardian. Now, after many launches and relaunches, newsletters are a key part of how the publisher builds relationships with its readers, with journalists front and centre, and newsletters as content in themselves rather than as just a referral tool.

Toby talks about which metrics signal success for them depending on the type of newsletter, what they've learned from a variety of pop-up series, and how newsletters are playing a strategic part in their US growth.

Read the key takeaways from this interview, find our weekly newsletter and more on voices.media

This week's guest on The Publisher Podcast is Gemma Ware, Head of Audio at The Conversation UK. She joined as the publication was launching in the UK as Education Editor, but soon spotted an opportunity to develop a podcast offering.

Over the years, The Conversation's podcasts have grown in sophistication, earning them two trophies at last year's Publisher Podcast Awards. Gemma takes us through their journey in audio, from early experiments in monthly shows to the full portfolio of limited series on a wide range of topics, as well as their weekly show.

She also explains what they've learned about podcast best practice, how they put together narrative shows, and what podcast success looks like for The Conversation as a nonprofit.

Read the key takeaways from this interview, find our weekly newsletter and more on voices.media

At Flashes & Flames' recent Monetising B2B Information and Events conference in London, leading B2B publishers shared their priorities, opportunities and concerns across the day. 

Held at London’s historic Stationers’ Hall, the event featured more than 30 industry-leading speakers and 210 delegates from three continents. The speakers showed that the B2B industry is going through another transformation, moving away from passive information delivery towards becoming essential to the workflow of their customers. 

This episode draws out the common points discussed from some of the main stage speakers. Three common themes emerged: building 'moats' to protect businesses against AI disruption, publishers building intelligence ecosystems, and becoming indispensable infrastructure to customers.

See more coverage from Monetising B2B at flashesandflames.com 

What is zero-click search, and does it really pose an existential threat to the publishing business?

Our new report, The Zero-Click Content Shift, aims to answer exactly that question. Produced in association with Woodwing and authored by MediaVoices' Peter Houston, the report gauges the impact of Google's AI Overviews on publisher traffic, and tries to get a sense of how big the threat really is. We also take a closer look at the reality of zero-click search for the publishing business, from its effect on content discovery to brand visibility, referral traffic, and revenue.

This episode is a special accompaniment to the report, featuring interviews with Barry Adams, SEO & Audience Growth Consultant at Polemic Digital, Clara Soteras, SEO for News Publishers and Audience Growth Consultant, and John Fong, Managing Director of APAC and Digital Services at Woodwing.

The podcast explores:

Download The Zero Click Content Shift report for free at voices.media/zeroclick

This report and podcast episode is sponsored by WoodWing.

WoodWing empowers publishing ecosystems by uniting technology with deep industry expertise. For 25+ years, we’ve helped teams create, manage, and deliver content across print and digital channels with greater efficiency and consistency. Our portfolio spans multi-channel production, digital assets, quality, knowledge, and information management. Founded in 2000, we operate globally from our headquarters in the Netherlands.  

Learn more about WoodWing’s publishing solutions at woodwing.com

In this episode of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by Lauren Holleyoake, Publisher of Bauer magazines Grazia, Empire and Mojo, and also the lead of Bauer's bookazine business.

Bauer has a strong portfolio of print specialist titles in areas like golf, classic cars and angling. They have made bookazines in the past, but part of Lauren's job has been to formalise the process, from coming up with standard ways of working to exploring the market opportunity for these titles.

Lauren talks about using bookazines as a chance for editorial teams to show off their passions, why high production values and premium content still matter for making content pay, and the surprising success of Bauer's bookazines abroad.

Read the key takeaways from this interview, find our weekly newsletter and more on voices.media