The Business of Content

A New Jersey based media company called TAPinto has launched 81 local news sites and is still growing. While most of those sites are located in New Jersey, the company has recently branched out into Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Florida. I recently interviewed Mike Shapiro, TAPinto’s founder, and asked him about why his model seems to be working. We also discussed other failed local news projects and whether Facebook’s efforts to boost local news are actually working.

Brands now often use software like HypeAuditor, which scans an influencer’s account in search of automated and fraudulent activity. HypeAuditor recently leveraged its data to generate a report on the current state of Instagram influencer fraud. I interviewed Yaro Pat, HypeAuditor’s product owner, about the results of the report and how Instagram fraudsters are getting more sophisticated in how they game the Instagram algorithm.

In 2012, John Yedinak officially launched the Aging Media Network, a constellation of sites that cover the businesses that service the aging population, from hospice care to senior housing. I recently sat down with Yedinak to talk about how his team built the audience for the publications, how they monetize the sites, and why they focus on advertising instead of paid subscriptions.

Overseeing much of the video production at The New York Times is Nancy Gauss, executive director of video. I recently interviewed Gauss about her team’s approach to video creation and how it fits in with The Times’s larger goals in driving brand loyalty and paid subscriptions.

A few years ago, Advance Publications launched Alpha Group, an incubator meant to launch brand new tech products and grow them into fully functional companies. Rather than acting like a traditional media company, Alpha Group takes a much more expansive view as to what constitutes a 21-century media company, and its products span a wide range of functions, from a social polling app to a Facebook chat bot.

I recently sat down with Sara Kenigsberg, MoveOn’s senior video producer. I asked about why MoveOn’s videos aren’t designed well for YouTube, how she chooses her video topics, and which social platform is best for broadcasting live video.

I recently sat down with Chas Edwards, co-founder and president of Pop-Up Magazine. I asked him about the logistics of creating a live magazine from scratch, how the company makes money, and what the future holds for it now that it’s been purchased by the Emerson Collective.

Since 2012, The Atlantic has been running an in-house creative agency called Atlantic 57. The idea is simple: let’s take the editorial insights we’ve gleaned from running a magazine for 160 years and use that to launch online publications for major brands and non-profits.

I Ben Collins interviewed Collins about how he designed his course, how he marketed it, and how he decided on how to price it.

“The only way publishers can address this inexorable threat is by banding together. If they open a unified front to negotiate with Google and Facebook—pushing for stronger intellectual-property protections, better support for subscription models and a fair share of revenue and data—they could build a more sustainable future for the news business.”

Many studies have shown that a crowd of everyday people will, on average, make better predictions than the experts who work in that particular field. That’s why a lot of attention has been paid lately to betting markets, which can provide real-time odds for any particular outcome ranging from a presidential election to winner of the best picture Oscar.

Researcher Mary-Katharine Phillips surveyed 4,000 news consumers across Europe and the U.S. to gain a better understanding of how they consume the news and what drives their news diet. I interviewed Phillips about what percentage of news consumers are willing to pay for digital news, what drives them to subscribe, and what kind of news formats they prefer.

I interviewed Brian Alvey about what it was like to run a blog network in Web 2.0’s early days, how he ended up in a 45 minute meeting with Jeff Bezos, and why the iPad failed to save the media industry.

I interviewed Substack's cofounder Hamish McKenzie about the rise of paid newsletters, how to convert readers of a free newsletter into paying subscribers, and why his service is preferable to other membership platforms like Patreon.

Monica Reinagel had no background in broadcasting or radio when she launched a podcast called Nutrition Diva in 2008, but she was a trained nutritionist, had published several books, and was writing a regular column at a popular health website, and this was just the sort of background that Quick and Dirty Tips, a podcast network run by the book publisher Macmillan, was looking for when she reached out to it to ask if the company would consider taking her on.