Every traditional media outlet is launching a creator division
PLUS: Tiktok newsfluencers are the new TV news anchors.
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Sara Kehaulani Goo named President of the Washington Post Creator Network
It'll be interesting to observe how the Washington Post works with creators. Will it allow them to own their IP? Will it share revenue with them? Will it seek out up-and-coming creators or only work with those who already have established brands? How will it monetize their content? And lastly, will journalists in the traditional newsroom be allowed to collaborate with the creators? [WashPo]
Disney Inks Webtoon Deal to Bring 100 Titles Featuring Characters From Marvel, Star Wars and More to Webcomics App
Webtoon continues to be a fascinating company to follow. It seems to have cornered the web comics market by attracting both user generated content and professional talent. The fact that Disney, which owns its own comic book company, is willing to partner with Webtoon is a testament to the latter's scale. [Variety]
Running a 6-figure newsletter part-time
From Creator Spotlight:
Suraj Kapoor hasn’t tweeted since March 2023. His newsletter’s LinkedIn page features fewer than 10 posts this year, and he’s posted even less on his personal account. Even with a bare-minimum social presence and no personal brand, he’s built a six-figure-revenue newsletter [called Pointer] with over 40,000 subscribers …
From the beginning, Suraj designed Pointer to exist independently of his persona, and deliberately modeled it editorially after The Economist's anonymous bylines …
His success challenges a core assumption in navigating the creator economy: that you need to be the product. Instead, he made the uniqueness and precision of his curatorial skill the product and let’s it speak for itself, which allows him to build something that works without him being "on" all the time.
Generally, I think it can be difficult to build a solo media outlet without leveraging one's personal brand, but I understand the appeal of it. It not only makes it easier to sell the company down the road, but you can also hire other writers to produce content in your stead without the audience even noticing.
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At this point I’ve probably interviewed over 1,000 media entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses.
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This Is the News From TikTok
From the Atlantic:
[Social media influencer Aaron Parnas] wasn’t adding elaborate detail or original reporting. What he had to offer was speed—plus a deep understanding of how to reach people on TikTok …
Parnas’s TikTok model relies heavily on reporting by other outlets. And Parnas’s 24/7 information blitz may be jarring for those whose media-consumption habits are not already calibrated for TikTok. There’s no “Good evening” or “Welcome.” But he’s reaching an audience who other media don’t: Many of his viewers, he thinks, are “young people who don’t watch the news and never have and never will.” He added, “They just don’t have the attention span to.”
A lot of journalists like to point out that TikTok "newsfluencers" rarely do their own original reporting and are instead merely summarizing news reported elsewhere — sometimes with their own analysis dashed in — but that describes the role of just about every TV network newscaster. A lot of local and national news broadcasting consists of a host merely reading rewritten AP copy off a teleprompter. How is that any different from what these TikTokers are doing?
So, Who Gets the Credit for Warner Bros.?
It was as recently as January that the trade press was labeling the Warner Bros movie studio a massive failure and predicting that David Zaslav was on the verge of firing its two top executives. In the short time since, Warner Bros broke a Hollywood record for the number of movies to generate north of $40 million in their opening weekends. [Puck]
[BTW, I used a gift link so you can read that article for free. If you want to reward me for helping you bypass paywalls, feel free to become a paid subscriber to this newsletter.]
Crooked Media launches a Substack
Crooked Media definitely has the resources to build out its own subscription tech stack, and yet it chose to launch paid subscriptions on Substack. My guess is this is a recognition that Substack is generating clear network effects that aid media companies in audience growth. We're going to see more and more media outlets experiment with the platform. [Crooked Media]
ICYMI: How Hubspot built a massive newsletter and podcast audience
The SaaS company bought the business newsletter The Hustle in 2021, and Brad Wolverton was in charge of driving synergies between the two.
Boardroom Plans Print Magazine Launch as Kevin Durant-Backed Start Up Branches Out
This is yet another example of a digital-only media outlet moving into print. As usual, the goal here isn't to scale a print business, but rather to differentiate the outlet in a crowded media market. Print magazines are now serving as either an extra perk for paid subscribers or an add-on for large ad buys. Hell, I've even contemplated launching a semi-annual print zine for my paid subscribers. [Hollywood Reporter]
The Food52 Executive Who Used the Company Credit Card for Everything
Apparently this media executive read all those new memoirs about 90s-era Conde Nast and decided to recreate the experience for herself. She found out though that that kind of lavish lifestyle is only sustainable when your company is generating 90s-era profits. [New York]
Podcasting's 'Serial' Era Ends as Video Takes Over
Serialized, narrative podcasts will never completely go away, but it's clear that the industry vastly overestimated how much audience appetite there was for them. It's not a coincidence that the few companies that do specialize in creating serialized shows position them as IP that can be then adapted into television and films, because otherwise the economics just aren't that great. It also just doesn't help that it's incredibly difficult to create a video version of a narrative show — you'd basically have to shell out the cost of producing an entire documentary. [Bloomberg]
[BTW, I used a gift link so you can read that article for free. If you want to reward me for helping you bypass paywalls, feel free to become a paid subscriber to this newsletter.]
My other newsletter: The best longform journalism we consumed this week
Last Call for Late Night
Late night hosts used to be cultural titans, not only drawing huge audiences but also able to mint brand new stars. While today's cohort still has enormous reach, much of it comes from viral social media clips that are tough to monetize. Some industry veterans believe podcasters — who can operate at a fraction of the overhead — are the natural heirs to late night's cultural influence. [Hollywood Reporter]
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Simon, you ask how newsfluencers summarizing others' reports is any different than broadcasters ripping & reading AP reports. It's wildly different. Broadcasters pay AP to report. The news services is supported by the outlets that use the results and present the news to the public, and that sustains the reporting expense so the public gets that info. TikTokers create huge value in connecting news and the public. That's a really positive development and genuine in its own value. But the link connecting that presentation value with the cost of reporting is broken. Most newsfluencers present without taking on much reporting cost, or financially supporting the reporting they use from others. That's profoundly different than the broadcast/AP ecosystem. It has parallels to the way platforms expand the reach of news while returning no or a fraction of the value generated to fund the reporting. The debate tends to get (over) simplified: is it morally right or legal fair use or na na na, or muddled between whether influencers verify or actually report anything they convey (some do, many don't). The bigger issue isn't whether influencers (or platforms) are right or wrong to do this, but it's the result we're all living: there is less and less news reporting when presenter value doesn't flow to or support reporting costs. That just an economic reality. The result is the public has less info, and influencers end up recycling the same limited scope of reports, often the most simple to politicize. It isn't that they are wrong to do it. They probably don't make more money if they invest in reporting. But ultimately they may want to in order to have a unique value vs. other newsfluencers, and it would be in the public interest to try to fix the value link so that reporting is supported when it's the basis of generating new kinds of media and value.
The creator network thing feels like an MCN. I don’t understand what the revenue incentive is, and why it can’t a la cart mutually beneficial creator models? Is the revenue incentive for WaPo (A. to sell the network at a premium with a media plan for one advertiser that includes a bundle of creators (B. Wrap up all the bonus money from the platforms for all those creators and accounts with hope there’s enough of a spread / impact to break even on costs (C. sell all the pre-roll / mid roll for those in-network creators and self-service it on YouTube like a classic mcn. Or (D. bet on a combination of all three of those things, plus have them drive optics to other revenue centers… like subscription CAC, affiliate channels, and events? Just curious what the actual business play is here, besides the optics of cool for being creator-forward?