Last week, 450 people packed into the London venue of The Publisher Summits and Awards, produced by MediaVoices. Here are some of the key themes and lessons of the four distinct summits and two awards ceremonies shared by the audience, including across LinkedIn posts and newsletters.
Author and journalist Nika Talbot wrote about her top lessons from spending a day at the Publisher Newsletter Summit in her own newsletter The Shift (“A conversation for writers, creators, and media makers. Building work and life on your own terms”). She said that many of the sessions touched on how putting a name on a newsletter could accelerate growth and loyalty – there was even a whole panel dedicated to the power of personalities.
Sarah Ebner, executive editor and director of editorial growth and engagement at the Financial Times, emphasised how staff-led newsletters were more successful when it came to retention. She highlighted Chris Giles on Central Banks – which later went on to win Best B2B Newsletter at the Publisher Newsletter Awards – where readers love the expert voice.
“Don’t worry about big personalities leaving,” she told the audience. “Build them up, they’ll probably stay. Or you’ll find new folks.”
Henry Seltzer, at Bloomberg – in a session on converting newsletter readers to subscribers – said that they’re also seeing success with personality-driven newsletters. He pointed out that it’s not about getting massive numbers and they actually see more value in smaller, more engaged newsletter audiences.
Reach plc’s Rob Parsons, whose Northern Agenda newsletter and podcast has won multiple times across the Podcast and Newsletter Awards, said he had actively tried to make himself more of a feature in the newsletter. “Increasingly, audiences want to know who is behind the news, and this builds trust – especially if you’re a part of their inbox,” said Ed Walker (ex Reach), summarising key learnings from the day in his What I’ve Been Reading newsletter.
The importance of the human connection came through at the Publisher Podcast Summit. Kicking off the day with his keynote speech, New Statesman’s Chris Stone emphasised that “podcasts can make people feel loved. They’re great at welcoming audiences into our world, then creating a sense of human connection, then fostering a sense of belonging.”
We’d like to theorise that all this emphasis on the human connection is the reason why newsletters and podcasts are booming in a world where everything else is awash with AI slop. But that’s a topic for another time…
Audiences are growing increasingly careful of where they spend their time. From time limits on social media apps to a brewing backlash against algorithmically-curated feeds, publishers have opportunities to re-take that time and attention with well-designed products. This was a key reason we put on the Publisher Print and App Summits alongside the Newsletter and Podcast Summits: it’s not just about going where the audiences are, it’s about creating products to deepen those relationships.
The power of apps to build relationships came up repeatedly at the App Summit. In his opening keynote, Jonny Kaldor, co-founder and CEO of the Pugpig platform, presented a wealth of data to show that – far from being in decline – news and magazine app downloads were actually continuing to grow. They’re forecast to hit 1.81bn downloads this year. This didn’t just present an opportunity for content-heavy news publications. Almost a third of time spent in apps is on edition content, according to Kaldor, with audiences going deeper for longer in weekly or monthly editions.
The FT’s Muj Ali reiterated the value of its own app in creating experiences for readers and subscribers, helping them feel they have spent their time well:“Subscribers visit the app home page more frequently than our web page, and are four times more engaged.” They saw the website as a vehicle for getting users subscribed, as well as building awareness and consideration. The app was the next stage of the funnel, to build engagement and habit.
The concept of value also came up time and again across the Summits. One panel, on fixing the magazine retail experience at the Publisher Print Summit, featured MagCulture’s Jeremy Leslie, Ra&Olly’s James Laffar, APL Media’s Maria Pieri and Warners Group Publication’s Natalie Smith and highlighted that customers are still willing to pay for print.“Stop the race to the bottom on price – put your price up!” Smith summarised. “Readers will pay more for content they value.”
In his keynote, our Peter Houston hammered home the point that print is nowhere near dead and isn’t likely to be as long as there was still money in it. Asked if there was anything he was surprised by in his research for his report Inside the Print Revival, he said that, while he knew print was not dead, it was a pleasant surprise to see that PwC projects 75% of 2026 revenues at global consumer magazine publishers will come from print.
Thinking about how long there will be a market for print, Prospect magazine CEO Mark Beard said: “As long as readers want it.” Echoing the sentiment, Alex White, managing director of Immediate Media’s knowledge portfolio, highlighted the newsstand success of the BBC Gardeners’ World 2-for-1 Gardens issue: “It gives readers real value and has enormous appeal on the newsstand.” She also saw huge utility in print publishers developing complementary digital offerings. The introduction of a 2-for-1 Gardens app had been driven by the desire to add digital convenience to the 30-year old print proposition.
Evolution was the central theme throughout the day on the print stage. Eyecatching innovation included Immediate’s digital value-add to the new business models outlined by Black Business founder Justice Williams, strategies for engaging the younges readers off-screen from Louise Ioannou, Publisher of National Geographic kids, and the pop-up publications described by Grazia editor-in-chief Hattie Brett.
The emphasis on team efforts seemingly contrasts with highlighted individuals and their newsletters and podcasts. but, in her opening keynote at the Newsletter Summit, Georgia Chambers (newsletter editor at The i Paper, published by the Daily Mail Group) said investing in a team had made all the difference. “I’ll be frank: for the first four years I was at The i Paper, it was me versus probably almost 18 newsletters,” she explained, as reported by Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt . “I managed it the best I could, burnout definitely became a familiar friend of mine, but it became difficult to think about the bigger picture and to be constantly evolving the strategy that I’d created. So now I’m pleased to say that The i Paper has invested a lot more in newsletters and it’s really great to see the energy behind newsletters in the newsroom from every department as well because it really does need to be a collaborative project.”
Ed Walker pulled this out as a key learning for publishers looking to implement successful limited series, from talks given by The Times of London and National World: “High quality, a huge collaborative team approach and picking topics which aligned with the strength of the brands and readerships with a propensity to subscribe and support.”
The Economist’s Head of Newsletters, Aaron Coultate, said on LinkedIn: “A successful newsletter depends on a great deal of work involving colleagues outside editorial: in product, design, marketing etc…it really is a team effort.”
Reproduced from MediaVoices.
