By gutting local advertising overnight, COVID-19 has accelerated strategies — like cutting print days, corporate consolidation, or even closing down offices — that publishers had hoped could wait a while longer.
O’Reilly Media, long known for its successful conferences, has decided that it’s getting out of the business — no matter how quickly civilization gets past COVID-19. Will events revenue bounce back quickly in a few months or be lost under a mountain of Zoom calls?
“One of the things that we try to do, and I think it has worked well for us, is to surprise and delight. Surprise and delight is a marketing tactic. In our case, it’s essentially constantly launching new things so that the industry is constantly surprised.”
Newspapers were, for decades, a prime example of a community institution, meant to last through the centuries. A new generation of owners is thinking of them more as something to milk for profit on their way down.
“We no longer look at National Journal simply as a news source, but as a collection of resources, as well as a collection of experts we can turn to on occasion.”
Ali hopes to make Skift “the most pervasive travel information brand” through providing a unique blend of news subscription-based data products. Justin Ellis
