the business of content

The needs of digital content businesses in late capitalism differ starkly from legacy publishing models. Explore how automation, ad-supported media, subscription culture and publishing culture are changing drastically in the 2020s.

106 posts from the business of content

Members July 16, 2020 by dc

Insights from writing a weekly newsletter for exactly 1 year

What did I learn after writing a newsletter every week for a year?

April 30, 2020 by dc in Production

Coronavirus-era clichés to use and avoid

As a close-reader-by-trade, I’ve found myself analyzing the phrases and clichés of the coronavirus crisis. Let's reflect on the early COVID-19 cliches.

April 16, 2020 by dc

Content laundry tasks for when you're not feeling up to much else

Clean pajamas are better than dirty pajamas. Try these content strategy, UX and SEO maintenance tasks to get you through hard times.

Members April 9, 2020 by dc

Changing news habits in April 2020: Succession, scale and measurement

“I’m giving the audience what they want,” says every media executive I’ve ever met or seen speak, in one way or another. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, our news habits shifted.

April 2, 2020 by dc

Web content performance at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

Shortly after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, web traffic plunged. This post summarizes traffic trends at the beginning of the first lockdown.

Members March 19, 2020 by dc

How did we optimize for the pandemic? [03/19/20]

In optimization school, we are explicitly told not to optimize toward Quality Score. We are told to optimize toward conversions, or conversion rate, taking into account cost-per-conversion. But really, we are optimizing toward profit.