Into the indieverse
The winners of mass media's decline
In today's newsletter:
- Rethinking industry events
- News publishers are more confident than you might expect
- The strategic and tactical decisions of building independent media businesses
- For TRB members: Mass media is losing ground to what I’m calling the indieverse, a decentralized ecosystem of small-scale entities and individuals that is drawing attention and impact from packaged media.
Reminder: Last chance this week to upgrade to a TRB Pro membership for a 20% discount. With a membership, you get full access to all content, invites to member events like our upcoming live podcast at Gannett and soon a texting community.
Rethinking industry events
Interestingly, I got several notes about my small point about Advertising Week. My theory on events is that while the desire for in-person connectivity has never been higher, the existing B2B events formats leave a lot to be desired.
For one, they are too long. There is no industry event that should last a week, other than Cannes, and that’s only because it’s in the South of France – and the sensible only stay three days anyway. Another issue is how atomized these big events are. There are too many side events. And finally, the events themselves are front for sales meetings, so they deliver thin value in terms of actual insights.
As we head into 2025, I’m thinking more about where The Rebooting goes with in-person gatherings. My inclination is to stick with smaller, more focused events that deliver more value and are centered on real conversation rather than panels. Our plans for 2025 are to continue our dinner series, while adding breakfast salons, and topic forums along the lines of the Media Product Forum.
As part of The Rebooting’s State of Sustainable News Businesses report, we asked news publishers to rate their confidence in the sustainability of their models. Get the full report.
Building an independent media business
On The Rebooting Show, I was joined by Reid DeRamus to discuss the strategic and tactical decisions that go into building an independent media business. We discuss everything from choosing a business model, using the leverage of individual reputation, the value of consistency and authenticity, the mistake of over-reliance on optimization techniques, and the challenge of growth as tried-and-true methods wane in efficacy.
Listen on Apple | Spotify | other podcast platforms
Into the indieverse
An oddity of the media apocalypse is that pain is unevenly distributed. While legacy publishers deal with declining traffic, the specter of AI search and ad dollars flooding to performance marketing, it’s a boom time for the indieverse, the emerging class of independent, small scale and often personal publishers that stretches from OnlyFans to YouTube to TikTok to Substack.
