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Cracking the media management puzzle through insights, solutions and data. ▪️Website — http://thefix.media ▪️Newsletter— http://bit.ly/2Tsr0M9 Reach out: @thefixmediabot
How are regional media houses in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland turning readers into loyal digital subscribers? dpa’s DRIVE initiative combines AI, data analytics, and tailored strategies to transform the industry.
Discover how these insights are reshaping the future of regional journalism from experienced strategist Meinolf Ellers.
Bluesky has seen a spectacular boom in the weeks after Donald Trump's victory, reaching over 20 million users as people flee X over Elon Musk's ties to the incoming administration. But can the rival platform sustain momentum long-term? Romain Chauvet explores.
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Emilio Doménech is a unique Spanish journalist who creates news content specifically for social media platforms. He works in a newsroom while maintaining a significant following as a streamer and influencer across six networks.
Doménech represents a new breed of journalist-influencers who can sustain themselves through engaged audiences and successful financial models. Last year, he shared with The Fix insights on his work, plans for growth, and views on AI's impact on social media.
When livestreaming on Twitch, Doménech mainly discusses US politics, technology, and culture. He has engaged with the George Floyd protests, the 2022 US presidential elections and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for Newtral, a Spanish news outlet that specialises in data journalism, fact-checking and technology.
Since he began streaming in 2020, Doménech’s work now involves a five-person operation. The flagship product remains his live sessions on Twitch and his newsletter La Wikly on Substack, although he consistently produces content in Spanish across six platforms. His newsletter currently has 12,000 subscribers, including 250 paying ones who have access to special features such as a Discord community.
Doménech’s days seem like they last 36 hours – two articles a week on politics and technology; two live streams on Twitch; personal streams; five editions of his newsletter; multiple videos with four colleagues; and a TV project is in the works.
The recording of a Twitch stream is passed on to an editor who cuts it down to a 10 to 15-minute video for YouTube and three short videos for TikTok.
Every morning, he finalises the day’s newsletter. He browses the news and picks one or two topics that he will use on his stream or for an article. At Newtral, Doménech reports to the managing editor and a producer, and he enjoys the collaborative environment.
Doménech has used Twitch to help make difficult topics engaging to younger audiences. But his unique selling point is his charisma and the way he interacts directly with his viewers via the live chat on Twitch.
Better known as Nanísimo, Doménech built a following on YouTube while living in New York and became popular for his videos about life in the US. During the pandemic, he started commenting about US politics on Twitch.
While a focus on a short-video format strategy is working well to reach younger audiences with low attention spans, Doménech sees a lot of potential in newsletters to reach wider audiences.
For journalists flirting with the idea of becoming independent content creators it is important to stand out with a unique voice. Doménech offers two words of advice: quality and consistency.
For now, Doménech will continue to blur the lines between “news” and “content” to inform and engage his audience in Spain, the US, and Latin America.
Find more insights into Doménech’s role in the full article.
News publishers might need a ChatGPT SEO strategy. In a new guest column for The Fix, Olga Odarchenko looks at SEO’s next frontier – optimising news to get visibility and traffic from AI services.
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Another weekend of extreme weather events in October spotlighted how Italian media fails climate coverage, Alessandra Vescio writes in a new article for The Fix. She looks into how the state of Italy’s media business explains the problem.
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An important decision looms for publishers - whether to block or allow AI crawlers access to their content. This seemingly technical choice carries significant legal, ethical, and strategic implications.
In this instalment of his AI email course, Alberto Puliafito considers the copyright concerns surrounding scraping practices and the fair use debate.
"Watching a podcast" is no longer a joke – it’s a reality that’s transforming media. Major names, from Joe Rogan in the US to Ukrainska Pravda in Ukraine, are bringing podcast conversations to YouTube, reaching massive audiences.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
🧠 AI for social media management;
✍️ Lessons from the Reinventing Media Business Conference;
🔤 How to use AI for fact-checking;
🗞 LinkedIn's news content strategy.
📍And, our AI course is underway. This week, Alberto Puliafito reviewed how AI can help with fact-checking in journalism. Sign up for free to receive eight weekly instalments.
❓ You can also help us become better by taking our editorial survey.
A Data Journalist is a person who uses data and statistics to investigate an important topic and to write a story and/or illustrate it with a data graphic. This is both a journalistic and technical position, as it asks for skills in collecting data, cleaning and analysing it, and familiarity with programming and design software.
We described the position based on our 2023 interview with Sondre Ulvund Solstad from The Economist, a British weekly newspaper and an online outlet famous for its data journalism.
◼ Sondre Solstad is a Senior Data Journalist at The Economist, where he has worked since February 2020. He is part of the data team led by the Data Editor. Solstad explains the essence of his role in one phrase: “To produce journalism that helps our readers make better decisions.”
◼ The Economist is a huge outlet, and the data team itself has 9 data journalists. As Solstad explains, they work mostly independently on their projects. The cooperation starts later when there is enough processed data to write a story or prepare a visual.
◼ To prepare the story for publishing, data journalists cooperate with designers to make a final product like an interactive map. Then it goes up the chain — to the data team editor, then to the editor of a section, like the Britain or China editor, and to the editor-in-chief or other senior editors looking at the story before it goes public.
◼ Sondre Solstad says that he doesn’t have metrics as his KPI. Instead, to understand how well he works, Solstad looks into the audience that read his articles and the policy impact — for instance, if people refer to his works or quote them.
◼ Asked about verifying data, Sondre Solstad replies that he starts with a basic premise that any data isn’t trustworthy. Then he looks into reasons to trust it. One source of trustworthy data is those obtained in automated ways, for instance from satellites. Next goes the data on apolitical topics.
◼ However, everything gets tricky with politics and economics. The journalist looks for incentives one may have to misrepresent the data, but uses logic as well. For example, businesses may be incentivised to publish incorrect data to hype up their product, but then they can get sued if caught, thus making a case for the data being more trustworthy. Anyway, every case is different.
◼ Solstad says that the job’s most exciting part is the ability to help people make better decisions: “To be able to write about important topics and to inform people about how they should see and react to them.”
◼ Solstad’s advice? Generally, when trying to break into the field, it’s useful to rely on personal preferences. For example, if a person loves pieces that rely on satellite imaging, then it is a good idea to dig into this field, to look for resources to understand how it works and what tools journalists have.
◼ Solstad also thinks that the importance of creativity is often overlooked in data journalism, and it will be priced more with time. The number of data journalists is growing, and they use relatively similar sources of data, but Solstad believes there is a push to be more creative.
📍 Find more insights into this profession in the full article.
What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: The peril and promise of reader revenue
▪️The articles featured pertain to Euractiv's new subscription strategy, and TikTok's power in news;
▪️Interesting insights on how Reach leverages the Google Discover service, and Meta AI's first news deal from our colleagues at Digiday and Axios;
▪️Great opportunities from the European Press Prize, Bloomberg, and the European Commission.
▪️Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
📍You can also help make The Fix better by taking our editorial survey to offer your feedback. All respondents will be entered to win one free professional consultation and two €50 Amazon vouchers.
Social media isn't just for content sharing – it's a hub for audience engagement, trend monitoring, and even breaking news. In this article that is part of his AI email course, Alberto Puliafito explores how artificial intelligence tools can streamline social media management, enhance interactions, and analyse trends.
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An Events Manager is a person who plans, produces, and manages events held by the organisation. Last year, we spoke with Tamara Novel from EURACTIV to learn more about this position.
◼ The Events Manager checks the status of all the events daily. Novel assigns tasks between the assistants and looks into issues that need more focus at the moment, such as speaker acquisitions.
◼ On the day of an event, she focuses solely on its implementation: welcoming the speakers, checking if everything works, briefing the participants, and communicating with other teams, such as the multimedia one, which livestreams the discussion, or the communication or editorial ones, which live-tweet the event and publish an article afterwards.
◼ As of last year, EURACTIV’s events team produced around 100 events in a year, most of them online or hybrid, when both the speakers and the audience can come in person or connect online.
◼ Events are sponsor-driven, it’s the key business model for EURACTIV’s events. The sponsor, which can be an industry stakeholder, civil society organisation, or an institution, can propose the topic, and the team checks if it falls into one of these hubs.
◼ Preparation involves drafting a concept note, checking it with the sponsors, selecting speakers, and communicating with them, which is quite a challenge, according to Novel.
◼ Every event takes about two months of preparation, resulting in a 75-to-90-minute discussion. After securing the speakers, the team focuses on promotion: another strong side of EURACTIV is an extensive contacts database, which helps the events team send invitations to many stakeholders. It takes a few weeks and goes parallel to social media promotion.
◼ In the last weeks before an event, the team focuses on briefing a moderator, who is usually a journalist of the outlet and then briefs the speakers.
◼ Maintaining a balance is one of the main challenges for the Events Manager. Tamara Novel explains that it means keeping the discussion balanced between different sides, and it is also about editorial independence.
◼ Novel advises being mentally flexible and ready to perform a series of very different tasks — from writing a concept note to moving chairs in the room.
📍 Learn more about this role in the full article.
Specialised in EU affairs, Euractiv, has announced a new strategy model based on several subscription options to expand its audience. This move, coupled with the recent launch of a revamped website and appointment of a new editor-in-chief prompted us to discuss the changes with René Moerland, Euractiv’s publisher.
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A few months ago, we spoke with Brad Wolverton, Editorial Director of HubSpot Media Network, about his approach to steering this network, his transition from reporter to team leader, and the trends he believes will shape the future of digital content.
◼ In his current role, he leads a team of 40 people that publishes a collection of blogs, newsletters, podcasts and YouTube channels reaching over 75 million people each month.
◼ An American tech company that sells marketing and sales products, HubSpot has a market cap of $30 billion. Its media empire serves as a vehicle for attracting new customers, while producing free content that offers value to its audiences.
◼ The blog network includes five properties covering topics like AI, marketing and sales. Together they attract 10-15 million unique views per month. On the newsletter side, the flagship product is The Hustle, a business and tech dispatch with about 3 million subscribers.
◼ Rather than chasing traditional revenue streams like advertising or subscriptions, HubSpot Media’s primary goal is to support the company’s core software products by securing new clients.
◼ Key metrics for success include leads, free signups, and the reach of the network. The team also closely tracks the company’s revenue that can be attributed to individual pieces of content.
◼ Wolverton’s path from journalist to media executive has given him a perspective on what it takes to successfully navigate the transition from individual contributor to team leader. The key to being a successful media manager is having an innate desire to help others succeed, he argues.
◼ For those eyeing a similar path, he suggests taking on small-scale management opportunities before making a wholesale leap. The idea is to get a taste of what it’s like to be responsible for the success of others, not just your own work. “I think it’s rewarding when you get to work with talented people and bring out the best in them,” he says.
📍 For more insights into Wolverton’s position and experience, read the full article.
The integration of artificial intelligence into journalism has been a topic of significant discussion and debate. Recent research presented at the 10th European Communication Conference offers valuable insights into the impact of AI and automation on the news industry. We compiled its three key findings, along with practical ways news outlets are putting these strategies into action.
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What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: SEO’s next frontier; Italian media’s flop
▪️The articles featured pertain to how Italian media fails climate coverage, optimising news content for AI search, and how European public broadcasters combat Russian disinformation;
▪️Interesting insights on DMG Media's acquisition of a stake in a generative AI company, and redundancies at AP from our colleagues at Financial Times, and The New York Times;
▪️Great opportunities from Sphera Network, and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
🇮🇹 How Italian media fails climate coverage;
🧠 Optimising news content for AI search;
🇪🇺 How European public broadcasters combat Russian disinformation.
EU countries have been combating Russian disinformation by different means. One of the least-known approaches is conducted in Russian – by several of its public broadcasters. The Fix spoke with representatives from Latvian, Lithuanian, and Finnish public broadcasters – LSM, LRT, and Yle.
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What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: From audience to community
▪️The articles featured pertain to the growth of video podcasts, and why serving specific communities is important for media;
▪️Interesting insights on Spotify doubling down on video podcasts, and Daily Mail's milestone of 100,000 paying subscribers from the company's LA campus, and our colleagues at Press Gazette;
▪️Great opportunities from the Kim Wall Memorial Fund, Reporters Without Borders, and the BBC.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
Media must evolve from audience-hunting to community-building, Mark Lee Hunter argues in a column for The Fix. Read his take on why traditional watchdog journalism needs reinvention.
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Launching a digital subscription service can be both exciting and challenging for any media organisation. Amid the dire financial situation of media, especially small ones, digital subscription is often seen as a way to forge a more direct and financially independent relationship with the audience.
This summer, Gentiana Pacarizi talked to Paweł Nowacki, a digital subscription expert who has been mentoring many Polish media outlets. He argues that before launching any subscription model, newsrooms should understand how close their audience is to their product.
We identified four key points to keep in mind when launching a digital subscription mode.
1️⃣ Digital subscription is not a sprint, but a marathon
To navigate the complexities of digital subscriptions successfully, adopt a strategic and patient approach. Nowacki advises focusing on small, specific goals rather than attempting to tackle everything at once.
2️⃣ Package journalism as a service
News organisations often fail to understand audience needs and preferences. A study shows untapped audiences are often willing to pay for niche content like health, technology, and science. Key to subscriptions is tailoring content to specific user needs, not just providing general content.
3️⃣ Make your subscribed users feel exclusive
Nowacki argues that once you have users onboard, you have to make them feel exclusive, not just approach your content as exclusive. Treat them as premium clients with tailored offerings – early access to articles, niche newsletters, special cards/offers. Build loyal audiences by catering to their specific interests and making it easy for them to access.
4️⃣ Simplify the process
Sometimes, the registration or subscription process takes too long, and users might stop midway. Nowacki suggests ensuring an easy registration and payment process gives a better chance of success.
📍 Find more tips in the full article!
What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: US elections; video podcasting boom
▪️The articles featured pertain to lessons from the Reinventing Media Business Conference, and LinkedIn's news content strategy;
▪️Interesting insights on how media made no difference during the US election, and strategic autonomy in the information ecosystem from Thomas Baekdal and our colleagues at Media Finance Monitor;
▪️Great opportunities from the European AI & Society Fund, Goethe-Institut, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
LinkedIn is making a play to become a major platform for news and journalism. The professional networking site is now highlighting more news stories in user feeds and working with over 400 publishers globally. But challenges remain, including fair compensation for publishers and compliance with EU rules around licensing news content, Romain Chauvet writes in his latest article.
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As misinformation and disinformation continue to proliferate, the role of fact-checking has never been more vital, Alberto Puliafito writes in one of the instalments of his AI email course.
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The "Reinventing Media Business" conference, hosted by the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, offered valuable insights on new strategies for media sustainability, digital innovation, and audience retention. Here’s a round-up of three critical insights shared by media leaders.
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✌️ Good evening! Here is the recap of the stories we published this week:
✍️ Euractiv's new subscription strategy;
🎶 TikTok's power in news.
📍And, our AI course is underway. This week, Alberto Puliafito reviewed AI for social media management in journalism. Sign up for free to receive eight weekly instalments.
❓ You can also help us become better by taking a survey.
TikTok is redefining news for Gen Z, blending short-form video, relatable personalities, and authenticity—ingredients that traditional formats struggle to replicate.
In her latest column, Erika Marzano explores how Gen Z's demand for ‘real’ is changing journalism. She argues that newsrooms need to let journalists step into the spotlight, put authenticity first, and experiment with new formats if they want to engage young audiences effectively.
What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: AI in podcasting; micropayments
▪️The articles featured pertain to the latest insights from research, and using AI for news gathering;
▪️Interesting insights on Morning Brew's slight rebranding, Toronto Star's use of micropayments for subscriber acquisition from our colleagues at Axios and Media Voices;
▪️Great opportunities from Tarbell Grants, and Financial Times.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!
AI can assist journalists in uncovering stories, analysing large datasets, and improving the accuracy and speed of our research processes. In this instalment of our AI course, Alberto Puliafito looks at specific ways to achieve it – and considers the ethical implications of using these powerful tools.
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What's Inside The Fix Weekly Newsletter: Rebuilding Ukraine’s media business; decline of Europe’s free newspapers
▪️The articles featured pertain to the use of AI in podcasting, and the fall of free newspapers in Europe;
▪️Interesting insights on BBC's newsroom cuts, The Economist's paywalled podcast strategy, and Semafor’s successful events business from our colleagues at Financial Times, Press Gazette, and Digiday;
▪️Great opportunities from Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, IJ4EU, and CORRECTIV.
📍 Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more news on the European media space!