Media
Local Sports Rights Slip Loose From Cable
Regional sports networks were the last thing holding a large number of cable subscriptions together. As teams take distribution into their own hands, the arrangement underneath is coming apart.
Media
Media
The One-Person Video Newsroom Arrives on Main Street
A single operator with a camera, an editing suite and a beat is becoming the dominant local video news format, and the economics finally work.
Media
The Newsletter Economy Enters Its Consolidation Phase
The one-writer newsletter boom created thousands of small media businesses. Now the successful ones are buying each other, hiring staff and turning into what they replaced.
Media
The New Economics Behind America's Independent Media Boom
Solo publications and small newsrooms are multiplying, powered by cheap tools, direct payment rails and an advertising market that finally learned to buy small.
Media
Advertisers Give Up on One Number and Start Using Several
The search for a single currency of audience measurement has been abandoned in practice if not in rhetoric. What replaced it is messier, more honest and better suited to how media is actually consumed.
Opinion
The Quiet Company Is Winning, and Nobody Is Writing About It
The most durable businesses of this decade are not the loudest ones. They are the ones that stopped performing for an audience and started compounding in private.
Media
The Press Release Refuses to Die, and Quietly Runs the News
Declared obsolete for two decades, the press release has instead become the load-bearing document of the information economy, feeding newsrooms, databases and now AI systems.
Opinion
The Local News Vacuum Is a Business Problem, Not Just a Civic One
When a town loses its newspaper, borrowing costs rise, local contracts get worse and small businesses lose their cheapest form of accountability. The market is finally noticing.
Media
Trade Publications Outlast the Magazines That Mocked Them
Narrow, unglamorous and indispensable to the people who read them, business-to-business titles have proven more durable than the consumer publishing that once looked down on them.
Media
Advertisers Quietly Fall for the Niche Podcast
The smallest shows with the most specific audiences are commanding the strongest ad economics in podcasting, and the money is reorganizing around them.
Media
Publishers Rediscover the Ballroom
Live events have moved from marketing sideline to core revenue at publications of every size, monetizing the one asset platforms cannot intermediate: the room.
Business
Inside the Professional Economy of the Podcast Guest
Booking agencies, preparation coaches and clip editors have turned the podcast interview into a supply chain, one that increasingly runs on retainers.