“Most media had a terrible year”, Brian Morrissey wrote in December in a column for his media trade publication The Rebooting that’s widely read in the US and other English-speaking markets. “Mass media is facing a raft of challenges, from traffic deflation to ad targeting changes to increased competition for ad dollars not just from tech platforms but also from retailers and others”.

Yet, even though general news publishers are struggling in the US and elsewhere, the past years have given rise to lots of interesting niche publications that zeroed in on valuable audiences like 404 Media in tech or Punchbowl News in politics.

“There are a lot of companies who are not trying to be general news publications, who are focused on specific areas that are high value”, Brian Morrissey told The Fix. “I’m very excited by the new crop of publications that are springing up out of newsletters”.

Morrissey is trying to build his own sustainable media business by thinking about how to build other sustainable media businesses. We spoke with him about the launch of his membership program, the woes of general news publishers, interesting niche players, and advice for established news players hoping to survive ongoing turmoil.

Why general interest publishers are struggling and where to look for optimism

The past several months have been full of bad headlines for legacy media and digital publishers in the US. The Los Angeles Times laid off 20% of its newsroom, several news outlets were forced to close, Vice shut down its website and laid off hundreds of people, to give just a few examples.

Morrissey traces many current struggles back to general interest publications losing competitive advantages with the rise of the internet.

“General news is a really difficult business. It has long been a difficult business. It was supported for a long time through subsidies, and also competitive advantages in the marketplace that were kind of unearned. If you look at newspapers, they were the only game in town, so to speak”, he says.

“There were a lot of bad decisions that got made. But a lot of this was baked into the fact that the internet simply wiped away many of the competitive advantages that publishers had. Those competitive advantages went to the technology companies that created the system… I don’t look at that as evidence of some sort of moral failing. That’s just incentives”, Morrissey believes.

Another core issue is that people want less news overall – a demand curve no business in any other industry would ignore. “In any other market, I would think the companies would say, well, we got to change what we’re producing”, Morrissey says.

What gives him hope? Apart from The New York Times and a handful of other big players, successful players are smaller and more flexible. “You’re seeing people who are able to create sustainable models, and they’re smaller. They are not trying to own the waterfront, cover everything. They are looking at specific areas, and they are building businesses around those specific areas”.

In the US, interesting new players include worker-owned 404 Media and Defector, as well as Punchbowl News, Puck and other new players that have successfully capitalised access to wealthy niche audiences, while staying nimble and cost-effective.

“I think we’re seeing broadly similar models pop up in Europe too, with mixed results. For instance, I really like what Joshi Herrmann is doing in the UK with local news sites that he’s springing up out of Substack newsletters. He started in Manchester, went to Birmingham, and they are in other cities now. They are making it work with actual reporting. I think a lot of the local news efforts have been in aggregating other people’s work. That’s fine, but that’s a thin value. So I’m very hopeful for models like what Joshi is doing”.

Advice for established news publishers: doing more with less and diversifying revenue

What can help established news outlets? Lobbying for money from the governments and negotiating with big tech companies might be useful to a handful of big publishers, but most news organisations won’t survive a strong growth agenda and a sharp focus.

A throughline in Morrissey’s writing is the advice to do “more with less”, learning how to stay lean and use resources effectively while focusing on what’s important. “A lot of it is really, first and foremost, examining the reason for existence and what the audience needs are from you and what they do not, and stopping doing a lot of things that you don’t need to be doing”, Morrissey says.

“I read a lot of people lamenting when The Washington Post gave up on its gaming vertical. [But why does The Washington Post need a gaming vertical?] I don’t think that makes sense. The Washington Post is sitting in Washington DC, which has this sprawling government apparatus that has an impact not just in this country, but all over the world, and has been growing exponentially. Meanwhile, [it has been losing its competitive advantages in covering politics and policy to] Punchball News, Axios and Politico. The Washington Post just fumbled it. That doesn’t mean not being ambitious, but it means being very hard-headed about where you’re going to focus on and where you have competitive advantages”.

Diversifying revenue is another important piece. Subscriptions or advertising alone are unlikely to save a publisher, you need a healthy mix of different streams. Morrissey himself is walking the talk. After leaving Digiday in late 2020 to found The Rebooting he started with relying on advertising as the core revenue stream, but over the past years he started doing events, research reports, and other ways to monetise his work. (He says he recently left Substack because of the platform’s sole focus on subscriptions as a revenue model).

Most recently Morrissey launched his own membership program, which offers two tiers: $20 monthly / $200 yearly for access to member-only coverage and $200 monthly / $1000 for access to exclusive in-person events.

A big part of building a media organisation is building a loyal community. Morrissey says he has sold more of higher-tier subscriptions than he had expected thanks to his community of media operators and С-level executives. “A lot of the conversions are almost like supporting the existence of a publication or saying, ‘I retroactively got a lot of value out of this, and I want to continue to get value out of it’”.

Source of the cover photo: generated by ChatGPT, DALL·E

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Brian Morrissey on challenges for general news publications and doing more with less