The Digiday Podcast

Skift CEO Rafat Ali is vocal about his beliefs about building sustainable media businesses -- and the advantages of focusing on more narrow niches than broad, general audiences. Skift is now six years old, with 60 people and revenue that’s set to cross $10 million this year, Ali said. As the company grows, Ali said he focuses more on the long term. He talks about the media trends he loves and especially the ones, he hates, going into the wellness space, why he’s making an acquisition and the recipe for success in media today.

CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth discusses how they approach the coverage of crypto and where the road lies ahead.

The Guardian has stuck to its “open” mantra by asking readers for donations instead of putting up a paywall. They have 800,000 paying members, putting The Guardian on the path to profitability. The Guardian CEO David Pemsel says while this model is working at the moment, they can’t get complacent and assume that this will be recurring reader revenue.

TV is changing in front of our eyes. From cord-cutters to cord-nevers, people are increasingly are getting their TV through streaming services like Apple TV or Roku. The future of cable TV has been in flux but Roku’s gm of Roku’s platform business says the cable operators are here to stay.

Martha Stewart was an influencer before social media influencers existed. Elizabeth Graves, the editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living, says modernizing brand is work in progress but doesn’t need too much effort. In our latest podcast, Graves reveals how she retains the audience who has stuck with the brand over the years while onboarding the younger demographic, taking a brand beyond personality and more.

Business Insider launched BI Prime in January 2018, and chief content officer Nicholas Carlson said it has a business as well as editorial incentive. Carlson also talked about their recent editorial reorganization between the BI and Insider brands, and measuring reporters’ performances.

Publishers are coming up with a variety of ways to support content and encourage direct reader revenue. But it all starts with building a brand that people want to pay for. Brit Morin, founder of Brit+Co and a former Google employee, has been working on that for about seven years now. But every brand’s sustainability and elasticity has to go beyond a founder’s career span. Morin discusses revenue, differentiating content and more on this episode.

Hunter Walk, a partner at early stage venture firm Homebrew, says reactions around brand safety are overblown. He talks advertising, investing and the problem of platforms in this show.

Hodinkee has built a media brand around those passionate about watches. It started as a Tumblr page by Ben Clymer, who was working on Wall Street at the time. Clymer turned Hodinkee into a leading source of content related to watches and the business model has evolved from entirely depending on ad dollars to making 65 percent of its revenue from e-commerce.

When Jessica Lessin founded The Information in 2013 with subscriptions as its only revenue stream, people called the idea absurd. But fast-forward five years, and the model appears to be working. Over 90 percent of The Information’s revenue is now from subscriptions. It just had its most successful Q2 yet, expanded its team to 23 reporters and has pushed its coverage beyond tech.