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Lessons in subscription marketing from The Juggernaut: The Media Roundup

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How The Juggernaut built a media business targeting the South Asian diaspora

I love a case study, particularly when there are practical lessons for media businesses (including my own!). So this interview with The Juggernaut founder Snigdha Sur scratches that itch, particularly since it grapples with the biggest question facing media at the moment – how to get users to pay for content when the lion’s share is locked behind a paywall:

“We have a few ways to make our product porous. One is we have great social media on Instagram, so people can preview a lot of our content that way. Second is we have a free newsletter where people can read our analysis, our voice, our style, and hopefully see value in it. And the third thing we do is that we have a really cool feature that we stole from The Information where any person can gift an article to anybody else for free.”

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and there are worse publications to emulate than The Information. Most importantly, however, Sur seems to have hit upon a vast niche, one that serves an audience that comprises US$460 billion in disposable income. We should all be so lucky.

The top global media consumption trends of 2021

Very good holistic look at the global trends around media consumption from John McCarthy. Notably – while we haven’t spoken about it on the podcast for a while – ad fraud continues to be a huge issue, even with all the attention given to how the industry is trying to clean itself up.

Taming the tech giants is one thing. Giving free rein to censors quite another

Never one to let a good crisis go to waste, the UK Conservative government is pushing ahead with changes to how we communicate online (mostly so they can’t be criticised). Nick Cohen takes a look at why handing the reins to internet comments to Paul Dacre of all people is a huge error.

The Players’ Tribune Executive Editor Sean Conboy on tackling mental health in sports reporting

This week we hear from Sean Conboy, Executive Editor at The Players’ Tribune; a sports-focused site that publishes first-person stories from professional athletes. He talks about the process they use to get content from elite athletes, and why the site doesn’t shy away from difficult stories and human rights issues, like the ones around the Qatar World Cup.


This content originally appeared in The Media Roundup, a daily newsletter from Media Voices. Subscribe here: