The Rebooting is holding our first New York CIty Media Mixer on March 19, which should leave enough time for NYC to shovel out from the blizzard. This will be an invite-only event for media professionals. You can submit your information here for invitations to the various events we hold throughout the year. We will give priority to TRB Pro members.
We are holding a pair of Breakfast Salons in NYC in the spring. One is focused on audience-first strategies and the other on what’s working in AI. We will have the dates on those nailed down soon. Get in touch to learn more: [email protected].
Finally, send me in your submissions for what’s working in the media business. I’ve gotten several very good ones that confirm a few things:
Smaller is far better than bigger in this moment
Community models are strongest
Relentless audience focus
Send me a note with your submission (tactical is welcome, too) and include what’s working in the subject line.
Newsweek is making the move to beehiiv
Why is an industry leader like Newsweek migrating their newsletter program to beehiiv? Let’s get it straight from the source: "We needed to be able to run newsletters as its own business within Newsweek, and a platform like beehiiv gives us more capabilities and opportunities to monetize those newsletters," said Bharat Krish, Chief Product Officer at Newsweek.
beehiiv’s ecosystem of tools is core to their ambitious growth plans, as they look to scale their flagship Bulletin newsletter while launching new subscriptions. Krish added, "I'm excited about partnering with a team that's tech-first and has an entrepreneurial mindset." Keep an eye out for Newsweek’s partnership with beehiiv launching in mid-December, and learn more about working with beehiiv here.
Food Fix founder Helena Bottemiller Evich on optionality
Yesterday, I did a talk for a group of Australian publishing executives. One question came up that I often get: Where are the bright spots in the media industry?
I always land back on those building lean, focused brands that are geared to high-value audience segments. In particular, those who execute these strategies with true expertise.
Helena Bottemiller Evich fits that bill. She spent over a decade at Politico as a reporter covering food policy. In 2022, Helena struck out on her own with a newsletter, Food Fix, which goes deep on food policy issues with a subscription model. Helena has rolled out a podcast, but I admire how focused she’s been on not trying to do too many things, like building an ad business, events and the rest.
"I'm building this very sustainable platform upon which I can stay the course and build a really strong, loyal Food Fix audience and keep building it brick by brick,” she told me on The Rebooting Show. “Or there's definitely space for Food Fix to be broader. I see other niche lanes that are adjacent that would work. And that's just a different path. And I can do either. I have optionality."
That optionality is earned through a strong subscription base. Thanks to the massive role the government plays in agriculture and food – the Department of Agriculture has a $200 billion budget – and the MAHA movement, Food Fix can command $500 a year for a subscription. She has a 10% conversion rate from free to paid.
"I knew my price point was going to be lower [than Politico Pro]. But I also wanted to hit that sweet spot where it's premium,” she said. “$500 a year for most people, you don't necessarily have to have a meeting about that. Someone can just sign up, get their business to expense it for them."
It’s enough that Helena has both autonomy and more income than as a W2 employee. Subscriptions as a base allow her optionality. She doesn’t feel pressure to expand too fast or even to take advertising from lobbyists or others trying to influence policy.
"I'm not anti-ads. I'm anti-ads that present a conflict or that appear to present a conflict,” she said. “There's just not a lot of distance and it's still my name that goes in your inbox."
This is an underrated aspect of whatever we’re going to call the creator economy. Subscriptions as a base involve tradeoffs. The ceiling for a subs-only business is lower in most areas than one that makes money in several ways. But as The Information showed, focusing squarely on subscriptions, particularly early on, forces a product focus that is inevitably difficult in a multiple revenue stream model. I often feel this. Operating the business takes more time and energy than making the product.
Other topics we discuss:
Being an accidental entrepreneur. Like many independent journalists, Helena never considered herself an entrepreneur. Instead, she applied her journalistic instincts to figuring out the business.
The job security paradox. The tradeoff of going independent was always the loss of security in exchange for autonomy. That isn’t necessarily the case, as waves of layoffs continue to downsize institutional media.
Shifting ambition. Helena no longer writes 5,000 word magazine-style feature stories with fancy graphics packages and expert editors. But she hears more from her readers now than she ever did at Politico.
The advantage of launching when X was Twitter. Helena launched with 1,700 newsletter subscribers.
Straddling consumer and professional. Food Fix’s new video podcast, American Dish, is geared to those outside the food and ag industry who are into food policy discussions around wellness, biohacking and MAHA issues.
Best/worst of times
In the latest episode of People vs Algorithms, we unpack the "orality thesis" and what the shift from written to spoken culture means for how we think, communicate, and vote. On the media side, they map out what's actually working right now: audience-first elite brands, B2B trojan horses like Hearst, expert creator newsletters, and the relentless pull of performance marketing, and AI-generated monkey content on YouTube. Plus: a report from the Swiss Alps.
Send me a note with your feedback by hitting reply or emailing me at [email protected].