The Colab Brief - 140: Is It Time To Say RIP To Legacy Media?

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Winter Changes in the media are coming. 

Read Time: 3 minutes

When, exactly, did the media start changing? Was it COVID? Was it when the internet became mainstream in the workplace? Was it the invention of The Gutenberg Press? 

I think it’s safe to say that the one thing that has always stayed the same is that the media is always evolving. 

We started to see it several years ago. Ads were something we have always been accustomed to, but somehow, peripherally, publications started sprinkling in different areas of monetization - paywalls, affiliates, article limits, memberships. When was the last time you visited a publication that was simply, entirely free?

When COVID hit we were faced with headlines that now seem second nature - X publication lays off Y% of staff, or X outlet is getting rid of this or that section. 

And one that maybe most of us didn’t anticipate - X veteran journalist is leaving Y legacy publication to….start a substack?

What seemed chaotic years ago now seems prophetic for those who made the jump. And there’s certainly no shortage of case studies to prove that point.

“Matthew Yglesias, who decamped to Substack from Vox (a site he co-founded) in 2020, says he has accrued roughly eight-thousand paid subscribers, and, according to Business Insider, he is “likely grossing at least $1.4 million a year.”

“Johnny Harris, formerly a video producer at Vox, developed his own documentary YouTube channel that now has nearly six million subscribers and covers subjects ranging from the criminal investigations of Donald Trump to the threat of China invading Taiwan.”

“The Free Press, started, in 2021, by the former Times columnist and anti-woke culture warrior Bari Weiss, recently raised about fifteen million dollars at a hundred-million-dollar valuation.”

There are a number of reasons why journalists are leaving legacy media to start their own ventures. According to the same article in The New Yorker, “While traditional journalistic media has faltered, prompting waves of layoffs at newspapers and digital-media companies alike, the creator economy writ large has boomed; Goldman Sachs recently found that the sector, encompassing both entertainment and journalism, is worth a quarter billion dollars and has the potential to “roughly double” by 2027.”

All of this is well and good. But what does this have to do with you? What does this have to do with your media strategy, and how can you tackle it head-on? 

Well, in short, it has everything to do with your media strategy. 

Every time we get on a new business call with a potential client, they all - every single one of them - ask the same thing. How can you get me into The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, or TechCrunch?

We’ve talked about this at length before. And today’s newsletter isn’t about telling you how hard it is, how long it takes, or how unique your angle needs to be (despite all of those things being true). 

Today’s newsletter is all about helping you deal with the ever-changing media landscape. 

There are a lot of misconceptions about legacy media. Is it a dying art? Is TechCrunch going away? Will print newspapers cease to exist as we know it?

It’s impossible to know. But just because we don’t have a crystal ball into the future world of journalism doesn’t mean we don’t know how to handle the changes. 

Regardless of what happens, it’s up to you (or your PR team) to navigate whatever the changing journalism landscape throws your way. 

Earlier this year it was reported that Substack has more than 35 million active subscriptions. 

And we’re not talking about some rinky-dink blogs, either. 

We’re talking about former journalists from the walks of The New York Times, Washington Post, and TechCrunch, all of which have started their own substacks, some of which have upwards of 1M subscribers.

The interesting thing about Substacks (or any new media, really) is that the subscriber and, thus, open and read-rate are so much higher than legacy publications. It’s not like a newspaper that gets tossed on your door every morning. It’s a piece of content that you actively requested, meeting you where you are  already (on your phone).

To be clear, we’re not saying to stop pitching to traditional media. But the ultimate lesson here is that new media - like Substacks, Newsletters, and Podcasts aren’t going anywhere, and you’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you weren’t pitching them. 

Now, some of these contacts and blogs can be a bit harder to track down. Lucky for you, we asked our wonderful network for their favorites, and have gathered a handful of them below. 

Substacks and Newsletters: 

The Pragmatic Engineer is the Number 1 Tech Newsletter on Substack 

Cautious Optimism was started by former TechCrunch journalist Alex Wilhelm

Runtime was founded by former Protocol reporter Tom Krazit  

User Mag is run by former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz, the ultimate inspo for this week’s newsletter 

Platformer provides the perfect intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy 

Podcasts: 

Dwarkesh Podcast is your go-to for deeply researched interviews. 

Moonshots by Peter Diamandis is here to solve all of your big challenges

First Principles from Christian Keil makes deep tech approachable 

S3 is your go to for people that want to change the world

BG2 podcast recently interviewed Jensen Huang, so that’s likely on the up and up 

Power User is also by Taylor Lorenz, who is a multimedia master 

Search Engine was named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by Vulture, Time, The Economist, and Vogue.

Vergecast talks about small gadgets, big tech, and everything in between

The evolution of media can definitely cause some stress. But, in short, this is totally navigable. And, if all else fails, we’re here for you.

Until next time -

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