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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Tiktok inspires NYT's vertical video strategy | Newsweek's 'modern era' rebrand
And how journalists going solo on Substack are at risk from hackers
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Welcome to this week’s Press Gazette Future of Media newsletter on Thursday, 6 November.
📻Everyone is experimenting with video at the moment and the mighty New York Times is no exception.
I caught up with director of video Solana Pyne and VP for product Jordan Vita to find out more about the title’s video strategy as they put a Watch tab front and centre on The New York Times app.
The user experience is a little bit like Tiktok or Youtube Shorts. The NYT publishes around 20 short videos per day to the Watch tab offering a round-up of the day’s big news and a selection of lighter content - like recipes or Wirecutter stories.
It is as slick as you would expect but I’m not sold on it. Why give everyone the same curated feed every day? Shouldn’t it at least offer a different selection once you have visited the Watch tab once, and UK readers have very different priorities to those based in New York City.
But what do I know? Kudos to the NYT for sharing their strategy and trying new things. Publishing is always about throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.
And the NYT is riding high after reporting quarterly revenue up 9.5% to $701m and digital subscribers up 460,000 to 12.3 million in the last three months. Digital-only subscriptions revenues were up 14% year on year in the quarter to $367m.
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🗞️Today on Press Gazette we also have an interview with the editor of storied US magazine Newsweek as it relaunches and redesigns its print and online editions.
There is plenty of life left in print, according to Jennifer H Cunningham: “It’s definitely something that we remain really proud of – and it’s also profitable. I think there are some print entities that are no longer profitable and are now publishing digital only, but that’s not the case with Newsweek, and we’re really proud of that.”
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This piece looks at a recent data breach on a big Substack publication and shares advice on what authors can do about it. It’s a useful reminder of cybersecurity basics for any publisher because, as The Guardian and others have found, the price of a single point of security failure can be huge.
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💻There is no Press Gazette daily newsletter tomorrow but we will be sending our weekly Future of Media USA update. You can sign up for that here.
🗞️News In Brief
The Guardian US editor Betsy Reed launches end-of-year fundraising by saying threats to journalism since Trump returned are working: “One of the most chil