Should publishers bother launching their own mobile apps?
PLUS: Why CNBC is the most sustainable cable news brand
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Should publishers bother launching their own mobile apps?
Adweek reports that People magazine is launching a standalone mobile app that features a TikTok-like, scrollable feed:
Built entirely in-house over the past year, the app is designed to mirror the swipeable, immersive experience of social platforms while layering in People’s original reporting, breaking news, and video storytelling.
The experience is image-heavy, visual-first, and populated with stories formatted specifically for the app—many of which won’t appear on the website or in print …
To support the effort, nearly 70 full-time staffers across editorial, tech, and product are focused solely on the app.
If you had asked me in 2018, I would have said it's a complete waste of time for publishers to build their own mobile apps. That's because back then we were still in the scale era of media — when we were still naive enough to think that a premium publication could become sustainable if it just reached enough eyeballs — and I just doubted any media outlet had enough marketing reach to drive significant consumer interest for an app.
But now that we're in the post-scale era, where business models are more dependent on high quality engagement, I'm more sympathetic to the argument that publishers should invest in apps. It's the same logic many of these companies are using to relaunch their print products: it enhances the cachet of the brand.
That being said, I still think owned-and-operated mobile apps are a complete waste of time for smaller publishers. They're better off investing their limited resources in growing their newsletter and homepage engagement.
The cockroach of social media
This type of person is the cockroach of social media:
They provide no information of value; they just go around whining all day whenever they encounter a paywall and consider it a personal insult whenever someone links to a paywalled article. Whenever you point out that paywalls help fund journalism, they just throw their hands up and demand an alternative business model. I guarantee you that a sizable percentage of these people also have ad blockers installed on their browsers.
Engagement bait comes for Substack Notes
If you regularly spend time on Substack Notes, you’ve likely seen several posts like this over the past few weeks:
They all use very similar wording, which makes me think this tactic was recommended by some shitty Substack “growth hacker.”
So what’s going on here? My guess is this is similar to a problem that plagued Threads in its early days, namely that its algorithm was extremely easy to hack by simply posting engagement bait designed to generate a lot of comments. After Business Insider reporter Katie Notopoulos published a funny piece showing how easy it was to game the platform, Threads tweaked its algorithm and made its For You page much more enjoyable.
As for Substack, it’s not a surprise that a considerable portion of its user base consists of writers who are desperate to grow their following on the platform, hence why these posts do well. I do think this is a real problem the company needs to address, since this type of content just doesn’t serve much of a purpose other than to generate engagement for the person posting the thread. Certainly no one commenting on these posts is seeing any uptick in followers.
My hunch is that the fix for this is as simple as assigning less algorithmic weight to comments. In the mean time, whenever I come across one of these posts I immediately mute the author so I never have to see anything from them again.
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How the biggest creators are appealing to a global audience
Taylor Lorenz interviewed Dhar Mann, the video creator who has massive reach across platforms like YouTube and Facebook, and he had some interesting thoughts on the opportunity for international expansion:
One thing he said to me while we were on stage that I found so interesting, is that, though he has always had a global audience, for years it never made sense to cultivate fandoms in secondary markets because the CPMs are so much lower outside of the U.S. and English speaking countries. He said that just a couple years ago it cost him $200,000 annually to dub his content into another language.
Now, thanks to AI, it costs less than $2,000 to dub his content into myriad languages. Soon, he said, based on his convos with Facebook and YouTube, dubbing might be done on the platform level, making it easy for anyone in the world to watch any content online in their local language.
With most big Hollywood films generating upwards of half their box office revenue outside the US, it make sense that that the biggest creators are also beginning to think about how they can court global audiences.
Usually, Hollywood targets these audiences by setting movies in multiple foreign locales; that's certainly why major action flicks like Mission Impossible have their characters traverse across Europe and Asia.
Similarly, I've certainly noticed more and more creators incorporating travel into their videos. The most prominent example is IShowSpeed, who's currently in the midst of a China tour, but everyone from MrBeast to Ryan Trahan are staging their videos outside the US.
The logic behind Publishers Weekly’s submission fee
Publishers Weekly shook up the book world recently when it announced it’ll start charging a fee for any book submitted for review consideration:
Beginning March 24, 2025, Publishers Weekly charges $25 for every book submitted for PW review consideration.
Book publishers who are PW site license subscribers do not pay the per submission fee. Site licenses are available to any book publisher, and pricing starts at $950. Anyone within, or working on behalf of, a book publisher with a site license can submit a title for review consideration without paying the $25 fee.
I know there are lots of cynics who think this is a cheap pay-for-play, but the logic does check out.
We live in an age when anyone can not only self-publish their book, but also use AI to literally pump out hundreds of books per day. With that kind of volume and no real sorting method, it becomes almost impossible to find the signal in the noise unless you close off submissions for everyone except established publishers. But that would be pretty unfair for self-published writers.
If you've legitimately written a book, then the $25 is trivial, even in cases when your book isn't reviewed. Obviously, this fee wouldn't be worth it for some tiny literary magazine, but Publishers Weekly seems to have real clout within the industry. While the average consumer doesn't subscribe to PW, they're still likely to see its review on the Amazon page when they're contemplating a purchase.
Also, I sincerely doubt this is a big revenue play for Publishers Weekly. Even if 1,000 books are submitted each month, that's only $300,000 in annual revenue.
I guess the worry for authors would be that this becomes the norm at all the major media outlets that review books. If the average publisher prints, say, 200 galleys, then that would start getting pretty expensive for any small press with razor thin margins.
Crowdsourcing story ideas
This is a cool concept: a Christian streaming app basically cuts trailers for movies that don't exist yet and then collects feedback from its subscribers on which films should be put in production. This method supposedly led to the app greenlighting a film that ultimately pulled in $250 million at the box office:
Angel calls these concept reels “torches,” and guild members are asked to rate them not on whether they seem promising or intriguing, but on whether they seem to “amplify the light,” a term with roots in Angel’s foundational Christianity. Angel prides itself on producing uplifting, “faith-friendly” programming. Not all of it is overtly religious: “Rule Breakers,” in theaters now, is about Afghanistan’s first competitive robotics team. The studio, Neal explained, is interested in “backing stories that align with universal principles,” which he defined as “truth, honesty, nobility, justice, authenticity, loveliness, admiration and excellence.”
I've occasionally seen news organizations play around with this concept by polling their audiences on which longform journalism projects to pursue. I think this strategy is particularly effective in the nonprofit news space, where the goal is to make an audience more emotionally invested in financially supporting your journalism. I remember talking to one news leader a few years ago who talked about citing these voted-on stories in their annual fundraising letters, and they claimed the approach led to higher conversions for paid memberships.
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Behind the paywall
Why CNBC is the most sustainable cable news brand
Is Digg’s relaunch just a nostalgia play?
Is Substack’s 10% cut worth it?
The business logic behind Substack’s events strategy
Let’s jump into it…