The Business of Content Simon Owens, tech and media journalist

Historically, foreign correspondents haven’t been the type of journalists who break major news stories in the countries they cover. That’s because they’re typically not as well sourced as the local reporters who grew up in a particular region and have an intimate knowledge of its issues.
 
But what would happen if you could take the work of local reporters and translate it for English-speaking readers? That’s the idea behind Worldcrunch, a media outlet that was founded in 2011. Rather than creating all of its own content, it syndicates articles from publications all around the world and then pays translators to adapt those articles for a Western audience.
 
In a recent interview, founder Jeff Israely talked about his years of work as a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine and how that fueled the idea for Worldcrunch. He also discussed the publication’s evolving business model as it moved from syndication to advertising and subscriptions.
 

Before the major social platforms launch a new product, they’ll often run small experiments within a subset of their users to test it out. More often than not, the first person to spot these new products is a guy named Matt Navarra, and his mini scoops have been cited in thousands of news articles over the years.
 
Matt got his career start running the digital communications for the UK government and then later became the director of social media for The Next Web. In 2018, he struck off his own and launched his own marketing consultancy.
 
It was that same year that he began writing Geekout, a weekly newsletter that curates emerging news and information around the marketing industry. Within a few months it amassed thousands of subscribers, and today it drives six figures in revenue, mostly through sponsorships.
 
In my interview with Matt, we talked about where he gets his product scoops, his audience growth strategies, and how he built a six figure newsletter business as basically a side hustle.
 

We live in an era where every company is expected to operate as a media company and every business executive is expected to produce thought leadership content. Newsletters and blogs have become crucial mediums for establishing longterm relationships with customers, and you’ve probably noticed that your LinkedIn feed has been flooded with posts from CEOs and startup founders who want to share their expertise.
 
But what happens when those CEOs don’t have the time or the writing expertise needed to produce compelling content? They often turn to ghostwriters: trained journalists who are able to quickly distill executives’ thoughts into shareable copy. These ghostwriters often work behind the scenes – in fact most people barely know they exist – and they can often make much more money than your average journalist.
 
But how do you break into ghostwriting when they’re effectively invisible, and what’s the best way to work with clients? To answer this question, I assembled a panel of ghostwriting experts to share their experience from building their businesses.
 

When it comes to disruption, few industries have experienced as much upheaval over the past 20 years as the music industry. The lucrative CD era ended with the rise of Napster piracy, and the introduction of Apple’s iTunes did little to stem the losses, It’s only within the last decade, with the rise of streaming services like Spotify, that music revenue has begun to recover.
 
Jay Gilbert had a frontrow seat to all of this turmoil. Working for companies like Warner Music and Universal Music Group, he got to know just about every facet of the music-making process. Then in 2015, he struck off on his own and launched a consulting business. To help raise awareness of his services, he began writing a weekly newsletter called Your Morning Coffee. What started out as an email sent out to a few hundred friends eventually grew to 15,000 readers, and it’s now one of the most influential newsletters in the industry.
 
In my interview with Jay, we talked about how the newsletter found an audience, its contribution to his consulting business, and why he doesn’t want to scale it into a traditional media company.
 

By the time Emanuel Cinca launched his Stacked Marketer newsletter around five years ago, he already had a successful affiliate marketing business, but that business was largely dependent on the whims of other platforms like Facebook and Google. He wanted to build a product that he could monetize directly, and by that point he had grown to admire daily digest newsletters like Morning Brew and The Hustle.
 
So Emanuel decided to niche down and launch a newsletter geared toward the marketing industry. To grow the newsletter, he leveraged his skills in paid media and marketing, and today it has over 30,000 subscribers. In 2022, it generated over half a million dollars through a mixture of paid subscriptions and sponsorships.
 
In my interview with Emanuel, we went deep on how he designed the newsletter, his growth strategy, and how he approached monetization.

When it comes to distinctive newspaper designs, the print edition of The Financial Times stands out. The 135-year-old publication is instantly recognizable for its salmon pink paper, and it’s become a status symbol for London’s monied elite.
 
The newspaper’s web presence is extremely successful as well. In early 2022, it announced it surpassed 1 million digital subscribers, an especially impressive feat given its hefty price tag of over $400 a year.
 
So given this success, why did the FT launch a mobile app last year that only costs around  £5 a month?
 
To answer this question, I turned to Malcolm Moore, a longtime Financial Times editor who was put in charge of FT Edit, which is the name for the new mobile app. We discussed why he was chosen to lead the initiative, what the app has to offer that differs from the main newspaper, and who the audience is for the product.