The Rebooting Show

Journalism's product problem

Dmitry Shishkin, a veteran of the BBC and former CEO of Ringier International, has a back-to-basics suggestion: Journalism needs to adapt more of a product mindset. Too much of what newsrooms produce is basic news updates rather than acting as a utility for the audience. His User Needs framework seeks to shift journalism to be more useful to the audience. We talk about why newsrooms overproduce content nobody values, how the BBC tripled its audience by doing less, why Dmitry thinks the next editor-in-chief should come from audience development, what happens when AI can handle all the commodity news, and whether your publication would even be missed if it disappeared tomorrow.

Google wants search to die

Taboola CEO Adam Singolda has built his company on open web publishing. He sees the dynamics of the open web changing, as the battle for AI surpremacy acclerates the shift from traditional web search, putting in motion a cascading series of second-order effects that will remake the publishing landscape. We discuss why GEO is the new SEO, the need for publishers to match changed consumer expectations, the collapsed marketing funnel and why creators are the new long-tail publishers.

The platform logic of entertainment

The industrial logic of media, premised on scarcity, has been replaced by a platform logic that is no less centralizing. Meet the new boss. Entertainment industry veteran Darren Cross breaks down what platform logic is, and how it dictates what's made, who has power and where our attention goes.

Food Fix's Helena Bottemiller Evich on optionality

Food Fix's Helena Bottemiller Evich has achieved sustainability. She has a recurring revenue business that exceeds her salary at Politico, with a 10% free-to-paid conversion rate. This gives her the option to continue as is as a solo operation or expand into adjacent verticals. Our conversation ranges across the choices that independent media operators need to make around complicating a simple business model, the guesswork that goes into subscriptions pricing, and how to maintain enthusiasm while on a content treadmill.

Yahoo's Kat Downs Mulder on the portal's comeback

Everything comes back in fashion. Why not the portal? Yahoo is a true legacy brand of the internet. An OG portal that failed to stem the rise of Google, missed on buying Facebook and for the last four-plus years has been a ward of private equity under the ownership of Apollo. It’s also found the market turning in its favor in many ways.Kat Downs Mulder, svp and general manager of Yahoo News and home, joined me on The Rebooting Show to discuss the portal’s comeback.