Daily Briefing for Tuesday, April 11th
Good morning! And welcome to Business Side.
In today’s briefing we cover:
Recurrent selling Saveur
College students filling reporting gaps
The Wall Street Journal’s new EIC
Plus other developments across the industry
Let’s get to it.
Recurrent sells food site Saveur. The buyer is Saveur’s editorial director, Kat Craddock, who described the sale as “an opportunity to bring our legacy brand back into the hands of editors who love it.” Craddock will serve as editor-in-chief and CEO, and a “majority” of Saveur’s full-time employees will continue with the brand.
It’s been an eventful past year for Recurrent, which runs a slew of brands in categories spanning automotive, military, home, and science. Last May the company raised $300 million with ambitious plans to grow its portfolio of brands. But with worsening economic conditions, Recurrent’s pace of acquisitions slowed. In July the company shut down lifestyle site MEL, and in September it went through a round of layoffs. Although the company has still been looking for acquisition opportunities, the strategy will be “more focused” going forward.
Recurrent’s brands are most concentrated in the home & military spaces, so a “more focused” strategy might entail doubling down in those areas. This tracks with two companies Recurrent acquired in the past year – home design site Dwell, and veteran-led publisher We Are The Mighty.
College students filling reporting gaps. There are more than 120 programs where university students are doing local reporting, and at least 20 programs where they are covering statehouses, according to research by the Center for Community News. In the statehouse programs, experienced journalists supervise the work, which is then shared with news organizations around the state. In a new program at the University of Vermont, students earn credits and a stipend to produce the reporting. You can check out programs in each state here.
WSJ’s new editor-in-chief. The Intelligencer ran a profile of Emma Tucker, as she does the important work of maintaining public attention on detained journalist Evan Gershkovich. The profile gave a peak into how Tucker plans to differentiate WSJ’s content: “Tucker wants to deprioritize the dry, short, incremental news reports that make up much of the Journal’s daily output in favor of lengthy investigations, and she wants to cook up creative, conceptual stories that rely on the kind of expert business analysis that only a Journal reporter can provide.”
Ad revenue trends. Madison and Wall’s Brian Wieser published data detailing how ad revenue has become more concentrated among top players in recent years. In his analysis, Wieser argues that digital ad growth will be more challenging going forward now that there is less print advertising to disrupt.
Plus:
Twitter tags the BBC as “government funded media” after doing the same to NPR.
YouTube Premium adds new features, including higher-quality video.
President Biden’s re-election campaign will leverage social influencers heavily.
Kahn Academy pilots an AI tutor.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s box office results sets a record for animated films.
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