I’m in Rome on my way to Perugia, where I’ll be speaking at the International Journalism Festival later this week. I am on track to consume each of the Big Four of Roman pastas, although I argue that zozzona should make it a Big Five.
This is a busy stretch. I’ll be at the DCN Next Summit next week in Miami, interviewing People Inc chief innovation officer Jon Roberts about future proofing publishing businesses in an AI era and another with Dow Jones chief growth officer Scott Havens about how it’s building new products by stitching together parts of its portfolio of assets.
To round out the month, we will be at Possible in Miami Beach for a sushi-and-conversations collaboration with EX.CO, and a private dinner on Monday, April 27.
Today:
The Center Square is a nonprofit newsroom publishing original reporting across state and national markets. Before beehiiv, newsletters were managed externally, meaning slower turnaround, no direct access to subscriber data, and limited visibility into performance.
After migrating in-house on beehiiv, average open rates climbed from 52% to 72%, click-through rates increased 42.4%, and RSS automation saved more than 15 hours a week. A small internal team now manages 12 state and national newsletters without outside help, and the beehiiv Ad Network added a revenue stream that previously didn't exist.
Morning Brew’s direct thesis
The last generation of digital publishing produced some unlikely winners in the long run. Morning Brew is one. Even as it grew, Morning Brew was often seen as “just email.” It turned out that being “just email” was a far better foundation than site models that allowed fast growth – remember Little Things – that turned out mostly ephemeral. When Axel Springer bought a majority stake in Morning Brew in October 2020, it placed the property as part of Business Insider. Now, Morning Brew is building its own portfolio assets with Morning Brew Group while BI is retooling its business for a post-traffic era.
That comes back to email. It’s now received wisdom in publishing that direct audience connections are critical, not just as a distribution channel but as infrastructure. Morning Brew’s massive email list allowed it to segment its audience to create a suite of B2B newsletters. It is adding to that playbook with YouTube shows and the addition of Bisnow.
"The real thing that matters is passive versus an actual relationship,” Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell told me on The Rebooting Show. “There are two different types of media operators. There's ones that have passive relationships and ones that have direct. And the ones with direct are the ones that are building and doing deals and the ones that are historically passive are the ones that are scrambling to figure out how to continue."
Other topics we discussed:
Embracing creators. Morning Brew does talent-friendly deals, with upside, not over-restricting outside work, and treating their arrangement as more than a W2.
The M&A criteria for Brew Media Group. Dippell's non-negotiables for acquisitions: direct audience relationship, diversified revenue, diversified content channels, a brand people actually care about.
AI is for efficiency. Morning Brew's created a proprietary sales tool that blends audience data with CRM and research, and it relies on a culture of curiosity rather than an AI mandate. The company has a firm line against using AI to create content passed off as human-written.
The pillars of old media – cable distribution, scale web models, magazine pecking order, late-night TV – are collapsing. That’s led to a Great Reorientation that is defined by durable ties to smaller but more valuable audiences. We discuss why Acquired, which produces just six episodes a year, is sold out through 2027 and can charge up to $3 million for a mid-roll podcast ad; the lessons of OpenAI’s deal for TBPN; why Meidas Touch is quietly a great business; and the case for publishers to create a “bad bank” model for their legacy pageview assets as they shift to engagement models.
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