Peter Houston

Listen to this article now00:0007:43 We just published the second issue of The Grub Street Journal, a magazine for people who make magazines. The path that led us to make a print magazine is fairly long and winding and we won’t bore you with it here.…

AI could be the most ruthless disruptor the news business has ever faced, and it could also be the industry’s best hope to save and sustain itself. Tech entrepreneur Ricky Sutton believes that explosive public adoption and the industrialisation of…

Listen to this article now00:0007:14 “If you can have that culture of openness, my God it’s a game changer!” Amy Kean is a self-confessed weirdo. The former Head of Innovation for Publicis and now CEO and Creative Director of Good Shout, a company…

Media Voices co-host Peter Houston has been in Portugal again. He headed back to the beautiful coastal town of Cascais for the 2023 FIPP World Media Congress. He caught up with speakers and attendees at the event to find out how they are facing up to…

With 40 years’ experience managing a wide range of publishing businesses, Neil Thackray has earned the right to his views on modern media. The Media Voices team worked for Neil back in the day and one of our favourite things were the regular rants…

Listen to this article now00:0003:58 Jim VandeHei, CEO of leading digital news publisher Axios, has shared his thoughts on the impact of AI The co-founder and CEO of leading digital news publisher Axios, Jim VandeHei, has written a column outlining…

Listen to this article now00:0003:45 AI search could bring the most radical change the internet has seen since Google became the world’s dominant search engine Google announced a raft of releases at its I/O 23 developer conference. From changes to…

Five major advertising trends that need to be addressed if publishers are to succeed in digital ad sales Writing on the International News Media Association’s Advertising Initiative Blog, Mark Challinor says the way advertisers buy media has changed.…

Finding the right balance between audience and community is a key strategic consideration Writing recently on her blog, former LA Times audience engagement editor Adrianna Lacy highlights two of the central concepts in effective digital publishing…

Annual update highlights the best posting times for key social media channels The annual analysis of the best times to post to the major social platforms has been released by social media management firm Sprout Social. The report is based on a year’s…

Analytics data shows how Facebook referral traffic to publisher sites has fallen Press Gazette is reporting that Facebook referral traffic has ‘plummeted’ on the back of Meta’s continued turn away from the news industry. The scale of the fall is…

Listen to this article now00:0009:14 Deciding where to start, both with identifying use cases for AI in publishing and actual implementation, can feel overwhelming. From securing data sources to getting colleagues on board, here is some advice from…

Reddit represents a significant audience development opportunity for publishers Clocking up more than 1.6 billion monthly visits from 430 million monthly active users across more than 100,000 communities, Reddit offers a significant audience…

There are a wide variety of different ways AI can be implemented in a newsroom to help reporting, audience growth, engagement and more. Here we explore just some of the benefits local media organisations have seen from their AI projects in this…

5 focuses for publishers who want to know how to future-proof their editorial operations At the 2023 International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, thousands of journalists discussed everything from democracy to audience engagement. They also…

Some local media organisations have been benefiting from AI for years. Peter Houston explores what it looks like in practice in this extract from our new report, Practical AI for Local Media. Structured In starting to write this report, I wondered…

Generative AI could ‘radically disrupt’ the way publishers create and distribute content The rising hype around generative AI technologies since the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT has been staggering. The publicity surrounding a range of AI…

Listen to this article now00:0003:40 Two recent reports have shown that gloomy economic conditions have not significantly hurt subscription revenues Peak subscriptions will only be a problem for publishers if the industry fails to change its approach…

Listen to this article now00:0006:05 Is AI a magic technology that will make all our jobs obsolete? Or will it be the silver bullet that ‘saves’ publishing? There are plenty of myths, misconceptions and exaggerations around the use of AI technology…

Marketers report significant sales increases from personalized advertising placement The dominance of mass-market advertising may be coming to an end as one-size-fits-all advertising isn’t as effective as it used to be. The fragmentation of digital…