Bookazines, pop-up newsletters and video podcasts: podcast highlights

For 2026’s second season of MediaVoices’ The Publisher Podcast, we spoke to more than a dozen leading media practitioners about their work: where they’ve found success, what they’ve found hard and which challenges they are looking forward to tackling next.

From transformation to talent, post-traffic publishing to print, creators to community, here is a roundup of the insights we’ve taken away from the first six of this season’s guests. Thoughts from the first six episodes of the season are here.

Bauer on the business of bookazines

Bauer Media UK, part of the family-owned Bauer Media Group, is the country’s biggest selling magazine publisher. Its portfolio includes TV Choice, Take A Break and Heat in the weekly market, the biweekly women’s glossy Grazia and iconic entertainment monthlies Empire and Mojo.

Publisher Lauren Holleyoake leads the company’s growing bookazine business and told us the publishing brands she looks after operate ‘way beyond their print heritage’ but that print is still a big revenue driver. She described Bauer’s collectible-print offerings as ‘beautiful, big, premium’ products.

Part of making the numbers work on bookazines is being bold on pricing. Holleyoake told us lower-priced weeklies like TV Choice are big earners for Bauer in the UK, however the bookazine market can support premium price points: “We’re being much, much more bullish with price than perhaps we were in the past.”

The bookazine market can support premium prices
Superserve fandoms with beautifully produced deepdives
Centralised processes improve P&L

“It’s about superserving a segment of your audience with something really deep, done really beautifully with premium production values.”

Three key themes driving B2B

Monetising B2B Information and Events – June 2, 2026

Flashes & Flames’ Monetising B2B Information and Events conference took place in London on the 25th of May, 2026. At the event, more than 30 industry-leading speakers highlighted the transformation going on in the B2B sector as publishers and event organisers move away from passive information delivery to become an integral part of their customers’ workflows.

Julie Harris, CEO at commodity intelligence provider Expana, argued that AI will amplify businesses with strong, defensible ‘moats’, highlighting proprietary data, transparent and trusted methodologies, and strong customer relationships. Questex CEO, Paul Miller, said his staff no longer work for an events company or a media company, they work for a ‘connecting’ company.

A third theme which emerged across a number of panels and interviews was that the most valuable B2B businesses are those that can become indispensable infrastructure for the professional communities they serve. Amin Mrini, Chief Digital Officer at Informa Festivals, said being inside workflows where the work is taking place is critical.

Build ‘moats’ to protect against AI disruption
Create intelligence ecosystems
Become indispensable infrastructure to customers

“The value of human intelligence has gone up rather than down as a result of some of the things that we’ve seen in the market.”
Julie Harris, CEO, Expana

What The Conversation UK has learned from podcast decade

The Conversation is a charitable organisation funded by universities, foundations and research bodies. It has 10 editions, operates in14 countries, and publishes content under a Creative Commons license. The mission is to be a bridge between academics and the general public, with journalists helping communicate complex ideas to non-specialists.

Gemma Ware, Head of Audio at The Conversation told us it is important for its podcast topics to have a long shelf life. She explained how the Expert guide to conspiracy theories series, made just before 2020’s COVID lockdowns, still stands up today. Other series, like Jane Austen’s Paper Trail, released to mark 250 years since her birth, are built around key events or anniversaries.

Ware also told us how The Conversation UK had experimented with video podcasting, launching Strange Health early in 2026. Her team saw this as an opportunity to meet younger audiences where they are seeking health content – YouTube – but acknowledged that resource constraints have limited video output.

Podcasts can have an extended shelf life
Series support deep dives and attract more funding
Audio is a great way to highlight community voices

“You can get a lot more traction for series. You can do more in-depth work leading up to it, and build a series of content in the written form around them.”

The Guardian shifted its newsletter strategy away from organic, ad-hoc launches seen by desk editors as a way to drive referral traffic a few years ago. Its current approach sees the newsletter format as uniquely authored products, designed to connect with specific reader groups rather than simply replicate existing web content.

Toby Moses, the Guardian’s first Head of Newsletters, told us about the thinking behind launching a pop-up World Cup newsletter targeted at US ‘soccer’ fans. He explained that pop-up newsletters centered on real-world events have a track record of incredibly high-engagement, but that the long-term goal is to transition short-run readers to a more permanent newsletter property.

Moses said data helps inform newsletter strategy, but that editorial instincts and audience feedback are equally important. He highlighted The Guardian’s gaming newsletter, Pushing Buttons, which has a relatively small audience but delivers huge engagement from an audience that skews more female and younger than other Guardian newsletters.

Pop-up newsletters deliver high-engagement
Publishers need to transition short-run readers to permanent newsletters
Editorial instincts and audience feedback play an important part in newsletter strategy

“In an ideal world, when you start a pop-up newsletter, you have already worked out where you’re taking those readers.”

From magazine to outdoor: the evolution of Outside Inc

Outside Media Inc. brings together 15 media brands in the outdoor world – from backcountry travel to mountain biking – plus a host of tracking, fitness and mapping apps, real-world events, travel services and a film and TV channel. In total, the business runs 25 brands across outdoor sports and healthy living.

Outside magazine once set the gold-standard for long-form journalism about life outdoors. Chief Media Officer, Heather Dietrick told us that, these days, it sits at the centre of a media ecosystem designed to inspire and guide people through their journey outdoors.

She explained that beginners can subscribe to content-only bundles, while those that are more advanced can upgrade to mapping and tracking apps. Dietrick told us Outside Inc. provides its users with content designed to spark ideas and support training, while utility apps help users achieve their goals, and associated communities provide a place to celebrate their achievements.

Provide a choice of routes to subscription
Outside’s content and utility offerings are closely related
Consumer revenue provides more control than advertising

“It’s no longer just a magazine… we have to meet the audience where they are, when they are, which means all sorts of other form factors in the mix.”

Multi-platform success at Immediate food brands

Immediate Media has three brands in its Food Group: the 30-year old Good Food magazine; olive magazine, launched in 2003; and Good Health by Good Food, a new social-first sub-brand built specifically to counter the growing volume of health and nutrition disinformation online. The company also owns the Nutracheck dieting app and website.

Lily Barclay is the first Content Director appointed to oversee Immediate’s Food Group, with her role covering the full portfolio in print, digital, video and social media. She told us that the group’s content planning sits on an audience-first strategy that is intimately tied to multi-platform distribution.

Barclay’s team concentrates on content that will add value to the group’s specific audiences – utility for Good Food, inspiration for olive and education for Good Health. However, although there is one point of conception, she noted that quality content can be edited and repurposed to make it relevant across a variety of platforms.