This week on The Publisher Podcast we hear from Tim Huelskamp, CEO and co-founder of 1440, a daily curated newsletter that now reaches over 4 million daily readers. He tells us about finding white space in the newsletter market, the forecast for newsletter advertising, whether the claim to be ‘unbiased’ is a selling point for audiences, and what it means to be an employee-owned media organisation.

Tim was involved in the private equity game for around a decade prior to founding 1440, spending time as co-founder of venture philanthropic funds and as an angel investor. In this episode Tim takes a very nuanced view – some might say pleasantly cynical at times – of the subject. He was very honest and forthright about when private equity works for the media, and why it often doesn't.

This season of The Publisher Podcast & Newsletter is sponsored by Memberful, a best-in-class membership solution for independent publishers and journalists who want to diversify their revenue stream and connect with their audience. 

Memberful lets you offer membership perks and exclusive content to your loyal audience, giving you full control over who has access to your articles, newsletters, podcast episodes, private community chats, and more.

Take control of your publishing business this new year with Memberful. Visit memberful.com/publisherpod and get started with a free trial.

We’re kicking off 2025’s first season of The Publisher Podcast by talking to Jim Bilton, Managing Director at Wessenden Marketing and Brandlab Research. Jim produces bimonthly research and updates on the business of content distribution through WessendenBriefing, and has decades of experience consulting for media businesses.

In this episode, we explore the standout publisher product trends from 2024, what publishers are investing in this year, and how optimistic everyone is feeling. Jim also highlights some B2B and B2C publishers to watch this year from his surveys, which surprisingly are almost all legacy companies.

This season of The Publisher Podcast & Newsletter is sponsored by Memberful, a best-in-class membership solution for independent publishers and journalists who want to diversify their revenue stream and connect with their audience. 

Memberful lets you offer membership perks and exclusive content to your loyal audience, giving you full control over who has access to your articles, newsletters, podcast episodes, private community chats, and more.

Take control of your publishing business this new year with Memberful. Visit memberful.com/publisherpod and get started with a free trial.

This episode of The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices – our last for this season – was recorded at the White Swan in Aldgate, London on November 27th in front of a live audience.

In the absence of our usual annual Media Moments report*, we took a fun look back at some of the pivotal publishing moments of the year, and what 2025 might have in store. The audience were invited to participate so we’re able to include contributions from wiser folks than us!

Esther is hopeful that next year will see a revival of news print. Not newspapers, but news print; weekly or monthly magazine-style editions. Newspapers are clearly in a long-term decline that is unlikely to reverse. But a look at what’s happening with the magazine print revival shows that there is hope for the format, albeit different to what it was a few decades ago.

At the PPA’s Independent Publisher Conference, Sift’s Chief Strategy Officer Louise White pointed out that the industry has got too absorbed with multiple revenue streams. “The obsession with diversifying revenues is dangerous,” she said on Linkedin. “That’s a bigger media play. Most independents don’t have the expertise or bandwidth and it leads to mediocrity at many rather than excellence in few.”

So the ‘mix of six’ saying we’ve been fans of for years should perhaps be revised for 2025. The key is…three?

In this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast, we hear from Emma O’Brian, SVP Strategy for Dow Jones. Everyone knows Dow Jones – or at least a few parts of its portfolio, even if they don’t know it as part of the greater organisation. But as the company moves from a portfolio-based business to a vertical-oriented publishing and information one, how is that impacting its back room strategy, and how it seeks new acquisitions?

The company is more than simply the index that bears its name, as our guest this week makes clear right from the off. However, much of what underpins its success is the same focus on providing tangible insights to audiences, as and when they need it. Increasingly, its stable of publications under the Dow Jones Portfolio – including the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and many more – are just as integral to their audiences as the index is to stockbrokers and traders. It seeks to deliver relevant information to its audiences, no matter where they may be.

In this episode, the final of this season, Emma sets out how a change in strategy that occurred when Almar Latour came into the role ultimately changed how those publications are aligned and operated behind the scenes.

This season is sponsored by BlueConic, the customer data operating system that makes your data work harder, so you don’t have to. Whether it’s capturing valuable audience insights or activating them with precision, the possibilities are endless with BlueConic’s all-in-one platform.

See how companies like yours are turning understanding into action and driving real business growth.

This week on The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices, we're joined by Will Hayward, journalist, author and columnist specialising in Welsh politics. He also writes The Will Hayward Newsletter, which he relaunched in September after running it for nearly a year as one of Reach plc's Substack experiments, where it won Best Politics Newsletter at this year's Publisher Newsletter Awards.

Since going it alone, he's built up more than 3,000 subscribers in just seven weeks, with revenues and subscriber numbers now exceeding its previous iteration. He talks about his journey into covering all things Wales, what he's learned working at the UK's largest regional publisher, and what opportunities he spotted in going solo, even if it meant having to restart his newsletter from scratch.

See how companies like yours are turning understanding into action and driving real business growth.

Third-party cookies aren’t going away any time soon, but many publishers have already reduced dependency on them as a revenue stream. As the landscape continues to shift, what should publishers looking towards the longer term be thinking of when it comes to their own data strategies, and how can various types of first-party data play a part?

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 Patrick Crane, Director of the Core Sales Team at BlueConic, the customer data operating system that makes your data work harder, so you don’t have to.

Patrick explains the current state of the market when it comes to third-party cookies, and where it still has a place in strategies, as well as how publishers can plan their audience data strategies around industry uncertainty. He also sets out exactly what first-party data means, and how publishers should approach it as a process rather than a project.

This episode is sponsored by BlueConic, the customer data operating system that makes your data work harder, so you don’t have to. Whether it’s capturing valuable audience insights or activating them with precision, the possibilities are endless with BlueConic’s all-in-one platform.

This week on The Publisher Podcast, as part of the product-oriented remit we’ve set ourselves for the series, we hear from Ludovica D’Angelo, Director of Publishing Operations for the Total Politics Group. As we discuss in the episode, that’s a very specialised publishing business – and a commensurately specialised role.

But for Ludovica, who has previously worked for publications as varied as news magazine The Week and luxury food and drink magazine Il luogo ideale, it has been another opportunity to discover best practice around managing product teams, launching timely new newsletters and titles, and finding new revenue opportunities.

Ultimately, her work - and that of all product teams within media businesses - is about rediscovering the primary of product in a shifting media landscape.

This season is sponsored by BlueConic, the customer data operating system that makes your data work harder, so you don’t have to. Whether it’s capturing valuable audience insights or activating them with precision, the possibilities are endless with BlueConic’s all-in-one platform.

See how companies like yours are turning understanding into action and driving real business growth.

On this week’s episode of The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices, we hear from Kat Craddock Editor-in-Chief, CEO and owner of Saveur magazine, a 30-year old publishing brand that returned to print this year after a 4 year hiatus.

Kat’s announcement that Saveur would be returning to print, is one of the best, most honest explanations I’ve seen of how print publishing has changed. She explains to readers that the magazine will cost more than it used to, frequency will drop to twice a year and supermarket distribution would be swapped out for sales direct-to-readers through Saveur’s own website.

This season is sponsored by BlueConic, the customer data operating system that makes your data work harder, so you don’t have to. Whether it’s capturing valuable audience insights or activating them with precision, the possibilities are endless with BlueConic’s all-in-one platform.

See how companies like yours are turning understanding into action and driving real business growth.

On this week’s episode of The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices, we hear from Daniel Smith, Managing Director of the Mark Allen Group’s Agriculture division, which includes brands like Farmers Weekly, Pig World and Poultry Business. His team are behind the Farmers Weekly podcast, which was shortlisted in the Best B2B Podcast category at the Publisher Podcast Awards earlier this year.

Farmers Weekly have been really smart about monetising a niche podcast topic and audience, so we discussed creating a podcast that would fit into a farmer’s lifestyle, where the podcast fits in terms of subscriber acquisition and engagement, and collaborating with sponsors to create a sale-able proposition.

This season is sponsored by BlueConic, the customer data operating system that makes your data work harder, so you don’t have to. Whether it’s capturing valuable audience insights or activating them with precision, the possibilities are endless with BlueConic’s all-in-one platform.

See how companies like yours are turning understanding into action and driving real business growth.

On this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices, we speak to Brandon Grosvenor, Chief Revenue Officer at Torstar Corporation, home of The Toronto Star. Over the summer, The Toronto Star became one of the first large publishers in North America to announce they were rolling out micropayments. It's a feature audiences frequently request - especially with the rise of paywalls - but for a myriad of reasons, few publishers have experimented with.

Brandon discusses why they decided to try micropayments out alongside their subscription offering, the thinking behind their pricing and day pass strategy, and the challenges of audience growth in Canada. He also explains why he doesn't think micropayments will be a significant revenue stream, but still has an important part to play in a publisher's acquisition strategy.

More than 500 businesses worldwide rely on BlueConic to unlock their full customer data potential, including Forbes, Heineken, Mattel, Michelin, Telia Company, and VF Corp.

blueconic.com