Our conversation is split roughly into two equal parts. In the first half, Pippa talks about her early career and how she went from a degree in Arts and Hip Hop at Sydney University to roles at studio magazine and MSN, and eventually joining News Corp. In the second half (28:31), we dug into the work she’s been doing in recent years building a finely-tuned first-party data-driven advertising machine, achieving huge growth in engaged reach. We talk about the shift from text to video, the importance of evergreen content and the challenges of monetising off-platform audiences.

There’s loads to get your teeth stuck into here so give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Jonny

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I really recommend listening to this one - there's so much in there around, not so much AI and how Gen AI is changing the way content is created (we wanted to veer away from that), but really more about how these different platforms are changing the way that people discover content, get access to content, the way that content owners are going to be able to licence their content to those platforms. Plus we speak a little about a really interesting project that David is working on at the moment that, who knows, could change some of the fundamentals around the relationship between content owners and the platforms.

There's lots to get your teeth stuck into - give it a listen and let me know what you think.

Jonny

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Chris and I met many years ago while both working at News UK, where he ultimately became MD at The Times. He then moved from news media to magazines as the CEO of Bauer Media, managing a portfolio of over 100 magazine titles. It was this work that we spend most of our time talking about in the episode, as we try and piece together what the future of magazines might look like... 

As always, give me a shout if you have any suggestions on who you’d like me to chat with or any feedback at all. It’d be great to hear from you.

Jonny

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Karl and I were colleagues many years ago at News UK before he headed over to New York to work at the Wall Street Journal. He spent a number of years there heading up subscriptions before joining The Information a couple of years ago. At the time of recording, he’s just a couple of weeks away from joining The Washington Post as Chief Growth Officer - he’s certainly doing something right!

We spoke about his time both at The Journal & The Information, subscription strategies in general, and what he thinks about 2024 and what it’s going to bring to news media. It’s definitely worth a listen if you’re focusing on reader revenue right now - Karl’s got a lot of information to share. I’d definitely recommend listening - I hope you enjoy it! 

As always, give me a shout if you have any suggestions on who you’d like me to chat with or any feedback at all. It’d be great to hear from you.

Jonny

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In this episode I take a stroll around Central Park with Ariscielle Novicio, a News Corp colleague of mine from many years ago and now CTO at New York Post. We reminisce about two sister projects we worked on back in 2010 that were both designed to change the face of news media. While mine didn't see the light of day, Ariscielle's, The Daily, did make it, and for some time as a very high production newspaper for the iPad.

We talk quite a lot about those projects, how they were pulled together, and what ultimately ended them. We also had a completely unplanned and highly coincidental bump in with Paul Mellor, who used to be CTO at the Wall Street Journal. So bizarrely, we had the New York Post, the Journal, and the Times of London together at the same time, in the same park. No idea how that happened, but that was quite fun!

It's a really interesting chat with Ariscielle and we covered all sorts of different topics, from her experience running technology at one of the biggest newspapers in the US to back in the times we were doing crazy stuff on the iPad, and a whole lot of other things. It's definitely worth a listen, so do give it a go.

I hope you enjoy it and as always, give me a shout if you have any suggestions on who you’d like me to chat with or any feedback at all. It’d be great to hear from you.

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In this episode I chat with Kerin O’Connor, publisher and subsequent CEO of The Week - an amazing business that’s very close to our hearts here at Pugpig as our first ever app we launched together with Kerin and his team back in 2011. We walked around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens and talked about Kerin’s time at Dennis Publishing, how they built an incredibly successful brand and subscription business at The Week, and more recently one of the fastest growing news brands ever with The Week Junior.

A little over a year ago, Kerin set up his own business called Atlas - a consultancy specialising in subscription businesses. So we spent a bit of time speaking about the sort of work Kerin’s doing right now and subscription businesses in general. Lots to get stuck into in this episode...

I hope you enjoy it and as always, give me a shout if you have any suggestions on who you’d like me to chat with or any feedback at all. It’d be great to hear from you.

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We also had a quick chat about something that comes up time and time again - which is the better model for digital news media, periodical editions or continuous feeds - or possibly even something in-between? Listen in and you’ll get Alan’s views and some insight into how they’ve approached this at the Times.

Thanks again to Alan for being so generous with his time, and as always, if you have any suggestions on who you’d like me to walk and talk with, or if you have any feedback at all - just give me a shout - I’d love to hear from you…

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In this first part (episode 9), we talked about Matt’s earlier days as a regional newspaper journalist, his views on the news media in general, his time at Archant, and the birth of The New European.

In this second part, he takes us through how he secured the investment to buy his creation, The New European from Archant and how he’s new building the business pretty much from scratch (also with a little help from Team Pugpig of course!)

It was a really interesting chat as we walked through Highbury Fields, on a typically British summer’s day, alternating from beautiful sunshine to torrential rainstorm from one minute to the next...

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In this first part, we talk about Matt’s earlier days as a regional newspaper journalist, his views on the news media in general, his time at Archant, and the birth of The New European.

In the second part (episode 10), he takes us through how he secured the investment to buy his creation, The New European from Archant and how he’s new building the business pretty much from scratch (also with a little help from Team Pugpig of course!)

It was a really interesting chat as we walked through Highbury Fields, on a typically British summer’s day, alternating from beautiful sunshine to torrential rainstorm from one minute to the next...

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Justin Pearse is first and foremost a writer, and currently the editor of new digital age (after having spent a number of years also editor of new media age, and soon to be launching e-commerce age). In between all that Justin was heading up branded content at The Drum and Digiday - so he’s been writing about media and marketing pretty much his whole career.

We took a covid compliant walk around Kelsey Park in Beckenham and talked about trade publishing, about launching new media brands, about the continuing growth and importance of ecommerce to publishers and about how events are continuing to evolve now that we’re getting to grips with what works best in a world where we continue to be doing everything remotely.

Just a little warning in advance that you’ll hear a mix of ducks, cars, children and maybe a certain amount of sniffing in the background on what was a chilly, damp January day in London, but hopefully they will just add a touch of texture to what was an extremely interesting conversation with Justin. Here we go…

I suspect we’ll have a short hiatus now that at least in the UK we’re pretty much housebound, and I think this podcast works so much better when we’re talking face to face, but I hope to be back soonish with more walks and chats for you. If in the meantime there’s someone you’d like me to walk and talk with, or if you have any feedback at all - just give me a shout - I’d love to hear from you…

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At the time of recording, Esther had recently left her role at Dennis publishing so that she could commit herself fully to her own consulting business and also to the ever growing media voices empire which now includes a daily media roundup newsletter, an annual podcast awards event and of course their own media voices podcast - all of which we cover in our conversation and all of which I would recommend you check out and sign up to if you haven’t already!

I hope you enjoy it - as always, if you have any feedback do let me know...

Jonny

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We chatted about the future of consumer magazine businesses and how the need to diversify is becoming ever more important. We also touched on live events and how they can survive in a world where large gatherings can’t come together - well timed given he’s just managed one of the biggest online events that the publishing industry has seen to date.

In fact I’d recommend you heading to FIPP.com to have a look - there’s loads of great content on there, including a sneak preview of our very own 2020 state of the digital publishing market report in which we got to interview 40 execs from across the industry about what’s keeping them up at night and where they are focusing their effort in the coming year.

I hope you enjoy it!

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Katie and I took a long walk in the fields of the South Downs near her home in Slindon, where, after chatting about her career at News Corp (see part 1), we covered the inception of Tortoise Media and how she and co-founder James Harding have built a completely different newsroom, in the form of a membership business built around slow news, open journalism and live events.

Please do give it a listen and as always, please feedback, like, subscribe and tell your friends!

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Katie and I took a walk in the fields of the South Downs near her home in Slindon, where we started by talking about her career at News Corp from her early days at The Times to her move to New York where she became president of The Wall Street Journal. We talked about how she fell in love with journalism, how, in 2010 we built one of the world's first paid news websites for The Times and how she helped grow The Wall Street Journal subscriber base to 3 million readers by April 2019.

In the next episode we'll cover the creation of Tortoise Media and how she and co-founder James Harding have built a completely different newsroom, in the form of a membership business built around slow news, open journalism and live events.

Please do give it a listen and as always, please feedback, like, subscribe and tell your friends!

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Syd and I took a lovely sunny walk along the Grand Union Canal from his office in Kings Langley towards London, while chatting about his career, his early start growing up in a religious cult and how that has given him a very particular outlook on life. We also talked about remote working and managing teams, along with some of the initiatives he has been spearheading over the last few year in order to help give disadvantaged kids a better start in life.

Please do give it a listen and as always, please feedback, like, subscribe and tell your friends!

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Alison and I had planned to walk through Richmond Park, a stone's throw from her West London home, but global lockdown got in the way and so instead we spoke from our respective living rooms, a glass of wine in hand.

In this episode, you'll hear how Alison arrived at News UK from Sky, whether she thinks the big tech platforms are playing fair with news media companies and how the growth of audio is changing the way that News thinks about its future...

We're just learning the ropes here so please feedback, like, subscribe, tell your friends etc.

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Welcome to Episode 1 of the Out of Office podcast, with a perfect first guest - Barry McIlheney, CEO of the PPA, ex-editor of Smash Hits and Empire Magazine and all round good egg.

Barry and I go for a walk in Clissold Park where he dazzles me with stories of how he went from his first job as a librarian to editing some of the biggest and most influential magazines titles of the last few decades.

You'll also hear why Barry is optimistic about the future of magazine publishing.

We're just learning the ropes here so please feedback, like, subscribe, tell your friends etc. Back in a week...

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