Jeff Bezos is a drag on the Washington Post's business
PLUS: The “media is dying” narrative is oversimplified
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Jeff Bezos is a drag on the Washington Post's business
WashPo editor Matt Murray took the Trump administration’s 100-day anniversary as an opportunity to sit down with an AP journalist and brag about all the great stories the paper broke during that time period:
Dan Diamond, Hannah Natanson, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Lena H. Sun are among the reporters who have dug into specifics about Department of Government Efficiency-inspired cuts and what they've meant for medical research and services for Social Security recipients. Natanson, Rachel Siegel and Laura Meckler have explored the use of government data to go after undocumented immigrants.
Adam Taylor and John Hudson have dug into proposed cuts at the State Department. Maria Sacchetti and Artur Galocha showed how half of the people the White House reported as immigration enforcement arrests were already behind bars. Jacob Bogage wrote about a Trump appointee asking the IRS to review an audit of conservative personality Mike Lindell.
The Washington Post has published some fantastic reporting and will likely see a bump in traffic and subscriptions as the outlet continues to break news about the Trump administration's corruption and incompetence. I went on record after the election predicting there wasn't going to be a "Trump bump" in media subscriptions, but that prediction was based on the assumption that we'd mainly get a repeat of Trump's first term, which in hindsight was fairly muted compared to this time around.
The problem for WashPo going forward is that its owner Jeff Bezos keeps creating bad PR headwinds for the outlet. First he pulled the Kamala Harris endorsement. Then he donated to and attended Trump's inauguration. Then he pivoted the op-ed page in what many felt was a pro-conservative direction. And then just recently he capitulated to Trump by backing away from plans to disclose tariff fees on Amazon purchases.
At this point, Bezos's ownership is more a distraction than anything else, and he'll probably serve as a counterweight for anyone contemplating a subscription to access WashPo's excellent journalism. That’s a shame!
No, LinkedIn isn’t sharing revenue with creators
Bloomberg published an article titled “LinkedIn Shares Advertising Revenue With Creators In Video Push”:
In June, the company rolled out BrandLink, a system that helps businesses place ads next to the video content from news publishers such as Bloomberg, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal, which in turn get a cut of the resulting revenue.
At the outset, LinkedIn will share a percentage of its advertising revenue with 30 business-to-business creators, including podcaster Guy Raz, Steven Bartlett, the host of Diary of a CEO, and Shelley Zalis of the Female Quotient, a business community for women. Adweek, Conde Nast, the Washington Post and 10 other publishers will also join BrandLink.
I think it's kind of a vast overstatement to position this as LinkedIn "sharing revenue with creators." These are deals being offered to a very small, invite-only group of creators who have already achieved massive success on other platforms. There is no clearly defined way to gain access to this cohort, and LinkedIn hasn't said anything about opening this up to all creators at some point in the future.
This is no different from the special revenue deals platforms have been offering media companies for over a decade, and it's nothing like the revenue sharing program on platforms like YouTube and Twitch, where you know exactly what it takes to get into the program and how the money is divided.
Also the fact that it's only sharing this revenue with video creators — thereby excluding all text content from the arrangement — shows that LinkedIn doesn't really value creative work; it's just trying to boost a very specific KPI that it thinks could be lucrative.
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Laid-off Polygon staffers should start a writer-owned cooperative
Several Polygon staffers took to social media today to share the devastating news that Vox Media had sold the publication to a buyer that immediately implemented mass layoffs:
“I’ll say more later, but I no longer have a job,” shared Senior Reporter Nicole Carpenter. “I’m looking for work, as are so many of my amazing colleagues. I have lots of ideas and things I’d like to write. I’m really in shock.” “I had a great time working at Polygon,” posted Senior Writer Michael McWhertor. “Please let me know if you have any cool job openings!”
It would be amazing to see these laid-off folks band together and launch their own writer-owned cooperative like Defector or 404Media.
In fact, mass layoffs are the perfect time to launch such a project, since you can basically ride the wave of public sympathy to drive attention to the new outlet. Everyone in gaming media would rally around these laid-off workers and give them a huge signal boost that would drive email signups and even quite a few early paid subscription conversions.
Speaking of partnering with other creators…
I've started to really contemplate what it would be like to bring in a partner to focus 100% on the revenue side of my business. I think I'm pretty decent at creating content and engagement, but I'm not only bad at the business stuff, I also just don't have enough time to focus on it.
What would this partnership look like? I'm definitely open to ideas. One scenario I've been thinking about is having someone who's mostly responsible for helping to create the content that goes behind the paywall so I can be freed up to work mostly on free content that helps expand the top of the funnel.
I could also envision it being someone who helps me in selling sponsorships — though I've definitely gotten a lot more bearish on ads over the last year.
Anyway, I think to make this partnership work I would need to offer a pretty decent revenue share — that way whoever this person is starts making money on Day 1 and then we work together to grow the revenue pie.
If any of this sounds interesting to you, shoot me an email. My email address can be found on the "about" section of my newsletter.
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