How The Independent Built a Subscriber Acquisition Model and What It Told Them PLUS Dotdash Built Its Tech Infrastructure to Accommodate Remote Working

What’s New in Publishing has a great Q&A with Jo Holdaway from the Indy about how they built a subscriber propensity model. The piece is rich with data and discusses how to use the Indy’s registration scheme supports their first-party data play and how audience segmentation based on loyalty has been key in supporting their digital subscriber growth.

We also have a piece from Nieman Lab on the growth of single-topic niche news sites and also how Dotdash built out their infrastructure to protect their business and their employees from hackers.

We also have some of the post-mortems about Ozy. In retrospect, it really does seem like this was a house of cards in which founder Carlos Watson was using his personal charm and network to fund a media traffic buying network. Some are already trying to use this episode to tar digital media writ large, but that is not fair on so many levels. Watson launched Ozy when VCs and funders were throwing money at digital media outlets. The money spigot from VCs to digital media startups was shut off several years ago, and many founders have had to bootstrap their ventures in the last few years. Also Watson’s strategy was his own. The responsibility lies with him and his co-founder - YouTube exec impersonator Samir Rao.