The Digiday Podcast

Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini believes Barstool can be a $100 million revenue company "within the next year and a half." That will have to come from growing channels of revenue and not depending on any one of them, especially advertising. Nardini discussed how Barstool is building out these revenue streams, why personalities matter, how podcast revenue is lucrative for Barstool and more.

The Mueller Report confirmed a lot of reporting already done around the Trump administration and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. One of the many newsrooms whose reporting was vindicated in the process is The Daily Beast, a mid-sized publisher that seized the opportunity to compete with big news organizations like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Noah Shachtman, editor-in-chief at The Daily Beast, discussed how the Beast approaches scoops, the progress on its membership model and more.

In this special four-episode series of the Digiday Podcast, we invite executives from bootstrapped media companies to talk about how they run a sustainable and profitable media business. Courier, a London-based, bimonthly magazine, is focused on modern business and startup culture around the world. The bootstrapped media company is about six years old and has 12 people on staff with a network of contributors globally. On this episode, Jeff Taylor, the founder of Courier magazine, talks about why he never went down the venture capital route.

Meredith, which acquired Time Inc in 2018, is home to a stable of female-focused media brands like People and Every Day with Rachel Ray. The company's long relied on print revenue, but like everyone else, is now looking to diversify revenue streams, especially in digital. Jon Werther, president of National Media Group at Meredith, discusses their roadmap to revenue diversification, competing with platforms and more. 

Programmatic advertising is playing a larger role in the future of publishing. Recent Digiday research found that over half of publishers now generate more revenue from programmatic advertising than any other channel. On this episode of the Digiday Podcast, Mike Smith, chief data officer at Hearst, joined Digiday editor-in-chief Brian Morrissey in an attempt to break down the current state of programmatic advertising.

The pivot to paid is not on the cards for Group Nine, the holding company founded in 2016 that houses brands including The Dodo, NowThis and Thrillist. The goal for the media company: Use advertising, including branded content and entertainment, to build a sustainable media business. At a live recording event of the Digiday Podcast, Group Nine president Christa Carone said the strategy has paid off. Sign up to subscribe to Digiday Plus for three months for only $49. Use code INTRO at checkout.

IMGN Media, the digital media company that owns Daquan, the meme account with 12.3 million Instagram followers, is focused on creating content for teens and young adults primarily on Instagram and Snapchat. Barak Shragai, co-founder and CEO of the company says the company isn't just a social media account but also a media brand. On this episode, Shragai makes a case for why Instagram accounts with massive audiences are not just a cultural phenomenon but also sustainable and profitable media brands. He also also talks about creating video for Snapchat and Instagram when most other publishers have cooled off on video for platforms. Get Digiday+ for three months at only $99. Enter code INTRO at checkout.

2018 was a year of organizational restructuring at Condé Nast, followed by a decision to offset the decline in print business by focusing on the growth areas, including on longform video and of course, implementing a paywall at all of the publisher's properties by the end of 2019. Pamela Drucker Mann, Condé Nast CRO, discussed how the subscription plan across all Condé Nast properties in the U.S. will roll out, why Conde is putting its Snapchat efforts on pause and more. Get Digiday+ for three months for only $49. Use code INTRO to subscribe.

Local journalism is in crisis. Emily Bell, director of Tow Center at Columbia University, sees hope in policy and regulation to provide a solution. Sign up for the three-month Digiday+ subscription plan. Use code INTRO. Offer available for a limited time only.

Whether big tech platforms need to be broken up in order to rein them in is now a matter of public debate -- and will be a big topic during the U.S. presidential election next year. Dina Srinivasan is an academic, who went from being an ad tech entrepreneur to writing about the anti-trust case against Facebook, most recently for the Berkeley Business Law Journal. She doesn’t think breaking up big tech is the answer. Instead, she advocates for the anti-trust approach. Srinivasan discussed why antitrust is the way to deal with Facebook, how the dominance of Facebook and Google is different from the fleeting power of Myspace and Yahoo and what a likely federal regulatory remedy would look like. Sign up for the three-month Digiday+ subscription plan. Use code INTRO. Offer available for a limited time only.