I am excited to make the third pivot of my career (more on this in an upcoming blog post). After leading The New York Times’ entrance into the mobile subscription business (in addition to beta product marketing), I’m going to be heading up our off-platform (Apple News, Facebook Instant, Flipboard, Google AMP, etc.) efforts. This is a major area of focus at The Times, where I’ll be leading our content, monetization and product strategy across all off-NYTimes platform partners. Off-platform is a huge black box for the publishing industry. I look forward to the challenge of finding value in these partners to contribute to our overall business.
I also had the pleasure to give the keynote speech at the Wine Marketing & Tourism Conference in Texas two weeks ago. It was an absolute honor to try to inspire a large group of wineries and others across the wine industry to embrace mobile. I put a ton of work into the speech and, based on their feedback, feel like it was well received. I also got to eat some tremendous BBQ.
Reading
My wife often compares this newsletter to The Skimm. While there are a ton of differences, I’ll take the praise, even if it is coming from family. Here’s how The Skimm became a must-read for many.
YouTube Red has about 1.5 million subscribers. Now they’re having trouble growing that number.
Speaking of growing: The Washington Post does a great job increasing their audience. INMA has details on how they’re doing it better than most.
The start is often more important than the actual plan.
Building a brand isn’t the easiest job on the planet. Julie Supan has done it for DropBox, Airbnb and others. Learn from her.
NFL TV ratings are down. But are they done?
Speaking of pivots, Barnes & Noble has missed several in their history. They still believe in brick-and-mortar and are looking to that as their future.
Buyer beware. Apparently people are downloading fake shopping apps that steal your credit card info.
Google should buy the search technology the FBI used to scan the latest batch of Clinton emails.
Donald Trump won the presidency and then went on the offensive against The New York Times.
The end of free beer for retirees of one Canadian brewery. To fill the void, they could get a daily cute animal pic email.
Rock and Roll.
My last newsletter had an open rate of 39.8% (+2.2%).
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