Simon Owens
substack.com
Washington, DC, United States
Contact Simon
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
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Past articles by Simon:
The 4 hurdles micropayment platforms can’t overcome
Most publishers remain wedded to their subscription models and show no appetite for offering a micropayments alternative. → Read More
Can Quartz become a scrappy media startup?
The business news site went independent in 2020 and is betting much of its future on paid memberships. → Read More
How a midwestern newspaper chain pivoted to digital subscriptions
Forum Communications launched a metered paywall across all of its newspapers in 2019. → Read More
How Law Insider monetized a massive database of legal documents
Image via Pxhere There’s a common misperception that many non-lawyers have about how legal contracts are written. Most people probably assume that a lawyer writes each contract from scratch, but in reality the lawyer is most likely copy and pasting clauses and sections from already-existing contracts and modifying them for their particular client. → Read More
How Ben Cohen built The Banter, his politics newsletter
Welcome to the latest edition of Creator Collab House. I’m your host, Simon Owens. For those who don’t know me, I write a media industry newsletter you should definitely check out. Today’s featured creator is Ben Cohen, who runs the left-of-center newsletter → Read More
It’s not all doom and gloom. These 9 local news orgs are thriving
Image via Pixabay Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button: The journalism industry is in freefall. Advertising revenue has cratered. Private equity gutted once-profitable newsrooms. The American landscape is blighted by news deserts. Facebook deprived publishers of vital traffic. Craigslist decimated newspaper… → Read More
How I ran an NPR-style pledge drive to grow my newsletter
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button: Over the past few years I’ve encountered various cases in which publishers attempted to drive subscriptions/memberships by running what could be described as NPR-style pledge drives. → Read More
Can publishers stop their journalists from launching Substack newsletters?
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my tech and media newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button: Can publishers stop their journalists from launching Substack newsletters? Back in 2006, when I was working my first job as a reporter at a Virginia weekly newspaper, I received an ominous request from my bosses: they wanted me to drive the half hour to headquarters for a… → Read More
Are publishers making any real money on virtual events?
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my tech and media newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button: So much attention has been given to the implosion of publisher advertising revenue in recent months that it’s easy to overlook the media business model that’s experienced even more devastation: live events. → Read More
Is Patch actually producing quality local journalism?
With the journalism industry in a freefall and hundreds of local newspapers facing possible extinction, it’s uplifting to occasionally read about the success stories in local news, the startups and legacy publishers that have bucked the trend and managed to find sustainable business models. While the vast majority of news outlets have struggled amidst falling … → Read More
Why The Information’s paywall strategy is so successful
If you survey the field of publisher subscription models, you’ll basically find that the vast majority of media outlets utilize one of two kinds of paywalls. The first is the metered paywall, the kind that was pioneered by The New York Times and later adopted by hundreds of other companies. Publishers love this model because … → Read More
What The Athletic’s success teaches us about monetizing local news
A little over a year ago, I wrote about the popping of what I called the “VC-fueled media bubble.” For a period spanning from about 2012 to 2018, Millennial-focused publishers raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in easy venture capital investment, but this cash waterfall dried up soon after Facebook announced in 2017 that … → Read More
Why laid off journalists should launch their own media companies
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my tech and media newsletter. You can subscribe over here or just click on this handy little button: One of the unfortunate realities of living in our current time period is that we get to witness media layoffs in real time. First come the initial reports announcing the layoff. Then journalists start posting tweets identifying themselves as its victims, often… → Read More
Business Insider’s fascinating approach to paywalls and free content
As we embark on a new decade, I think it’s safe to say that the metered paywall’s best days are firmly behind it. This method of charging readers for news is so commonplace now that it’s almost hard to contemplate how revolutionary — and even radical — it seemed when The New York Times adopted … → Read More
How Complex Media became one of the most innovative digital publishers
Back in September, I logged onto Twitter one day and saw that the actor Shia LaBeouf was trending. At the time I had only a passing familiarity with the actor; I’d seen him in a few movies, but none of his performances had stood out to me. LaBeouf was trending because of his appearance on … → Read More
Why it’s so hard to scale paid podcast subscriptions
The last decade hasn’t been kind to digital publishing, but if I had to name one bright spot within the industry, I’d point to the rise of paid subscriptions. When The New York Times launched its metered paywall in 2011, many questioned whether consumers would ever pay for online news. Skip forward eight years, and … → Read More
The media industry might be healthier than you realize
It’s rare that a private media company opens up about its financials, so I was surprised that Nick Quah, in an interview on the Longform podcast, did just that. Quah launched Hot Pod, a newsletter that covers the podcast industry, back in 2014, and he ran it as a side hustle while working at media … → Read More
How BuzzFeed is solving native advertising's scale problem
There was a time, earlier this decade, when it seemed that native advertising — the kind embraced by web native publishers like Buzzfeed and Vice — would serve as the magic bullet to ward off the encroaching devaluation of web content. Because each native ad was custom built, the model couldn’t be commoditized with the … → Read More
Why bundled subscriptions won’t save the news industry
Earlier this month, a company called Mogul News launched a news app that curates article content from three media outlets: Bloomberg, The Financial Times, and The Economist. If you were to subscribe to each of these publications separately, it would add up to at least $944 a year, but the Mogul News app costs just … → Read More
How newsletter innovations are driving publisher revenue
If you were to travel back in time about a half decade and inform news publishers that, within a few short years, they’d be pouring significant resources into growing their email newsletters, many wouldn’t believe you. Back then, the media industry was still benefiting from Facebook’s generous distribution of news content, and the running assumption … → Read More