#MediaRevenue - David Clinch

Happy Friday! Welcome to my weekly #MediaRevenue newsletter.

I have included a story on some hopeful signs for what a new form of digital news outlet can look like...not completely dependent on advertising and leaning into diversified revenue streams.

Some updates as well on the latest Tech vs the News Industry dynamics. Who is doing deals, and who is not??

I'm excited for the Mather Symposium next week. I hope to see many of you there! Contact me if you need a discount code!!

And this week's partner profile is for Mather. Don't go out without your Mather on in the current media economy: Maximizing Revenue for Publishers since 2002!!!

Sprouts of Hope in a Gloomy Media Landscape: A small cohort of for-profit digital media companies that sprang up during the pandemic have found success — at least for the moment — by taking the opposite approach of many predecessors, such as BuzzFeed and Vice, which fatefully relied on huge amounts of investor money to prioritize growth. - New York Times.

New York Times denies OpenAI's 'hacking' claim in copyright fight: "OpenAI's true grievance is not about how The Times conducted its investigation, but instead what that investigation exposed: that Defendants built their products by copying The Times's content on an unprecedented scale — a fact that OpenAI does not, and cannot, dispute," the Times said. - Reuters.

OpenAI Inks Deals With European Publishers Le Monde, Prisa: OpenAI has inked licensing deals with two major European publishers, French paper Le Monde and Spanish media conglomerate Promotora de Informaciones SA, or Prisa — agreements that will bring French and Spanish language news content to ChatGPT and help train the startup’s models. Bloomberg.

Google's Gen AI Search Threatens Publishers With $2B Annual Ad Revenue Loss: potential declines ranging from 20% to 60%, according to media executives and search engine optimization experts interviewed for this story. - AdWeek.

Meta to Replace Widely Used Data Tool—and Largely Cut Off Reporter Access: The social-media giant said it will decommission CrowdTangle in five months and is replacing it with a tool called the Meta Content Library, which will be available only to academic and nonprofit researchers, not to most news outlets. - WSJ.

Microsoft still supports Australia's media code as rival Meta shuns the news: it says it still supports the framework, which compels its Big Tech rivals Meta and Google to strike deals with news providers and is designed to redress a bargaining power imbalance between platforms and publishers. - Capital Brief.

Google in negotiations to strike new media deals: Google’s Australian boss, Melanie Silva, has committed to renegotiating future payments to local news companies, under the government’s media bargaining code, but said it was too soon to strike similar deals for content used to train artificial intelligence models. - AFR.

Sports Illustrated’s Employees Are Told Print Edition Will Close in May: Its operators made a newsroom announcement, but the outcome is uncertain since the owner has signaled it wants the magazine to endure. - New York Times.

Who are Deadspin’s new owners?: There has to be a way to determine who Lineup Publishing is. - Tedium

A company linked to a large “pink slime” network is being hired by big publishers: The largest newspaper chain in the United States has an ongoing business relationship with a company linked to a sprawling network of over a thousand “pink slime” publications — sites that profess to be local but have no local staff and do not disclose funding they’ve received from political sources. - Nieman Lab.

The Buffalo News was the crown jewel of Warren Buffett’s news empire. Now it’s just another Lee paper.: Lee cut budgets, pushed out veterans and outsourced design and print production at a paper that had been spared the worst of the industry’s decline. - Poynter.

Yahoo News is launching a creators program to publish lifestyle content: The platform is starting off with a small group of selected creators. Eventually, anyone will be able to apply to the program. - Fast Company.

AP launches e-commerce site with Taboola: It's part of a broader effort by the AP to diversify its business by adding more consumer revenue. - Axios.

New York Times Audio exceeds one million downloads: the NYT Audio app, which requires a New York Times news or “all access” subscription to log in, was billed at launch as a way for the publisher to expand beyond its success and “get every second of your day”. Commercially, the app appears to be primarily an enhancement to help grow and retain the title’s more than ten million subscribers. - Press Gazette.

National Trust for Local News buys a “mission-driven” printing press in Colorado: The group recently purchased a used printing press from Canada, and is set to transport it in the coming weeks from the state of Washington to a rented facility in a warehouse district in Denver; a press operator recruited from New York will run it. - Nieman Lab.

Offering iPads to subscribers increased digital revenues, saved newsroom jobs and the bottomline: By 2020, 27,000 iPads were distributed. The early results were positive, generating a 78% subscriber retention of the existing subscriber base before the conversion. Six years later, WEHCO Media has expanded the program to all its daily newspapers, except the Jefferson City (Missouri) News Tribune. - Editor & Publisher.

Elections pose crucial opportunities for nonprofit newsrooms to bolster democracy: When local news organizations close, fewer candidates run for political office and fewer people vote. Fortunately, a wave of nonprofit news outlets are helping to fill gaps in local and regional reporting in this pivotal election year. - INN Blog via Jonathan Kealing