The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices

Welcome back to the Publisher Podcast, and the first in our special season bringing you the best sessions from the Definitive AI Forum for Media, Information and Events, which we held with Flashes & Flames in London at the end of last year.

This week we’re featuring a panel discussion on AI and the future of trusted media; how to balance the efficiencies offered by AI with much needed editorial integrity.

On the panel - moderated by Chris Duncan of Seedelta - were Piers North, CEO at Reach Plc, Henry Faure Walker, CEO at Newsquest, Emily Shelley, CEO, PA Media Group and Joanna Levesque, Managing Director at FT Strategies.

The panel discussed how the tension between efficiency and trust is not a zero sum game, citing the opportunities to do more things quicker with AI from new product development to journalistic research and content distribution, but also how to mitigate potential risks to publisher trust by always placing accuracy ahead of speed and firmly fixing the ‘human in the loop’.

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

In our end-of-year episode, we talk through a busy year at MediaVoices, and outline what our favourite interviews from the year have been and why.

Peter highlights chats with DC Thomson's Rebecca Miskin and Immediate Media's Sean Cornwell, who shared their strategies for managing disruption and transformation. "You control what you can control. You experiment as much as you can," said Miskin. "You learn from the experiments, and then you place bold bets."

Esther chose a recent interview with Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis. Nizet is focused on finding the answers to questions about engaging not just the next generation, but currently disengaged audiences too, which is something more publishers should have as a priority.

Younger audiences will pay for games, entertainment and travel, from the latest Fortnite skin to an Instagrammable holiday. "So how can we make our news so interesting, or so relevant, or so representative for them that they want to pay for it?” Nizet asks.

We also share our outlook for 2026, and why we think it's going to get worse for the industry before it gets better.

Most publishers know they should be doing more with AI, but the gap between strategy decks and the reality of nightly, weekly or even monthly publishing deadlines is huge.

This is the latest in our Media Briefs series of short, sharp sponsored episodes with a senior executive from a vendor working with publishers to make their businesses better.

In this episode, we hear from Jeroen Goemans, MD for EMEA at content management solutions provider WoodWing. After 25 years working with content-heavy brands, Woodwing’s publishing clients have already automated huge chunks of their production process, but they are already seeing real ROI from AI integrations in its established content and asset management platforms.

This Media Briefs 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 AI innovations on their website: https://www.woodwing.com/solutions/content-orchestration

This week's guest is Rebecca Miskin, CEO of family-owned Scottish publisher DC Thomson. Peter caught up with Rebecca at FIPP Congress in October ahead of her presentation, titled The Gnarly Reality of Transformation.

One of DC Thomson's iconic brands is The Beano, a children's comic-magazine that's been published since the 1930's. Gnarly is very much a Beano word, so Peter asked Rebecca why she describes transformation the way Dennis the Menace might, and maybe more ominously as a cross between chess and Russian Roulette.

We spoke about the pressure and the privilege of working to transform a family-owned business that has a 200 year legacy, and the secrets of a successful transformation project (spoiler: it's all about people).

Get the write-up of the key points of this interview in your inbox by subscribing to The Publisher Newsletter, over on voices.media

Our guest on The Publisher Podcast this week is Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis, a media group with a presence in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Luxembourg.

In her role, Liesbeth is focused on next-generation audiences, and helping build future-proof business models that bridge editorial purpose and commercial potential.

We talked at FIPP Congress about stereotypes around young people paying for news, to what extent demographics are helpful when understanding behaviours, and what she’s doing at Mediahuis to encourage younger audiences to engage with news content.

Get the write-up of the key points of this interview in your inbox by subscribing to The Publisher Newsletter, over on voices.media

In this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by Megha Garibaldi, Chief Growth Officer at The Atlantic. Megha leads the consumer revenue vertical, including consumer marketing, and she helped lead The Atlantic to its milestone of 1 million paid subscribers and reaching profitability in 2024.

She spoke to Esther at FIPP Congress about the changes she’s seen in audiences’ willingness to pay over the years, the differences and similarities of working on membership and subscriber-driven publications, and where she’s looking for audience growth in the current challenging landscape.

Megha also discussed the differences and similarities of marketing free versus paywalled publications from her work previously at The Guardian, and their respective member and subscriber approaches.

Get the write-up of the key points of this interview in your inbox by subscribing to The Publisher Newsletter, over on voices.media

Launched on November 11th 2021, just three months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kyiv Independent (KI) is four years old. The award-winning English-language media outlet covers Ukraine and Eastern Europe for the rest of the world, and is celebrating its birthday with a campaign designed to boost its membership from 22,000 to 25,000 by the end of the year.

This week's guest is the Kyiv Independent's Chief Operations Officer Zakhar Protsiuk. KI has reporters on the frontline of the war and an investigations unit covering Russian war crimes, but also covers Ukrainian business, culture and even travel.

What struck Peter this week in speaking with Zakhar, is how focused he was on what we might consider the normal elements of building a media business. Of course we spoke about the war, but we spoke just as much about audience acquisition and retention, trust and churn. 

Listen now to hear Kyiv Independent's origin story, whether it's possible to separate everyday media operations from the impacts of Russia's invasion, revenue diversification, and the brand's shift from donations to a membership model.

Get the write-up of the key points of this interview in your inbox by subscribing to The Publisher Newsletter, over on voices.media

In this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by David Adeleke, founder and CEO of Communiqué, a media business that analyses African media and its creative economy.

Communiqué started out as a newsletter, but now runs live events and publishes research about the scope of the creator economy across the continent.

We last spoke with David four years ago on the podcast, and a lot has changed since he set up his newsletter as a side project. He talks to Peter about how he always wanted Communiqué to be more than a newsletter, his vision for a 'proper' media business, and how he is hiring to build a culture that can be replicated elsewhere. He also talks about community and the importance of bringing what he does online into physical spaces.

Get the write-up of the key points of this interview in your inbox by subscribing to The Publisher Newsletter, over on voices.media

Over 500 media and publishing professionals gathered in the beautiful Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid to hear leading speakers discuss their strategies for thriving in today’s landscape.

ChatGPT, AI overviews and traffic challenges are certainly top of mind for many delegates, but the on-stage conversations haven’t been quite as dominated by AI as we’d expected. Rather, there seems to be a doubling down on good, ‘old fashioned’ publishing principles like investing in high-quality content and products in order to secure growth.

There were some really strong themes that came out across the two days - too many to include them all here - so we've focused on the top four. Hear speakers from TIME, The Economist, Hearst, Semafor, The Atlantic and more discussing transformation, new opportunities, brands vs personalities, and how they're using AI.

Get a write-up of the key learnings from this episode online at voices.media or straight to your inbox by signing up to The Publisher Newsletter.

This week's guest on The Publisher Podcast is Juliet Riddell, Head of New Formats at the Financial Times. Her focus is on telling stories using video, and she spoke to Peter following the September release of the 13-minute film, Recall Me, Maybe, written by comedian David Baddiel and starring Stephen Fry and Gemma Whelan.

Juliet talks about why a news organisation like the FT is making this type of drama, the other films in the FT's Standpoint series, and the power of external collaborations in bringing new perspectives to big issues.

Get a write-up of the key learnings from this interview online at voices.media or straight to your inbox by signing up to The Publisher Newsletter.