The Publisher Podcast by Media Voices
Media Voices is a weekly look at all the news and views from across the media world, featuring leading figures from media and publishing businesses
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2025 highlights from media leaders, and our outlook for 2026
<p>In our end-of-year episode, we talk through a busy year at MediaVoices, and outline what our favourite interviews from the year have been and why.</p> <p>Peter highlights chats with DC Thomson's Rebecca Miskin and Immediate Media's Sean Cornwell, who shared their strategies for managing disruption and transformation. "You control what you can control. You experiment as much as you can," said Miskin. "You learn from the experiments, and then you place bold bets."</p> <p>Esther chose a recent interview with Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis. Nizet is focused on finding the answers...
Media Briefs: WoodWing’s Jeroen Goemans on using AI for measurable workflow upgrade
<p>Most publishers know they should be doing more with AI, but the gap between strategy decks and the reality of nightly, weekly or even monthly publishing deadlines is huge.</p> <p>This is the latest in our Media Briefs series of short, sharp sponsored episodes with a senior executive from a vendor working with publishers to make their businesses better.</p> <p>In this episode, we hear from Jeroen Goemans, MD for EMEA at content management solutions provider WoodWing. After 25 years working with content-heavy brands, Woodwing’s publishing clients have already automated huge chunks of their production process, but th...
DC Thomson's Rebecca Miskin on the secrets of successful business transformation
<p>This week's guest is Rebecca Miskin, CEO of family-owned Scottish publisher DC Thomson. Peter caught up with Rebecca at FIPP Congress in October ahead of her presentation, titled The Gnarly Reality of Transformation.</p> <p>One of DC Thomson's iconic brands is The Beano, a children's comic-magazine that's been published since the 1930's. Gnarly is very much a Beano word, so Peter asked Rebecca why she describes transformation the way Dennis the Menace might, and maybe more ominously as a cross between chess and Russian Roulette.</p> <p>We spoke about the pressure and the privilege of working to...
Mediahuis' Liesbeth Nizet on engaging and monetising younger audiences
<p>Our guest on The Publisher Podcast this week is Liesbeth Nizet, Head of Future Audiences Monetization at Mediahuis, a media group with a presence in Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Luxembourg. </p> <p>In her role, Liesbeth is focused on next-generation audiences, and helping build future-proof business models that bridge editorial purpose and commercial potential.</p> <p>We talked at FIPP Congress about stereotypes around young people paying for news, to what extent demographics are helpful when understanding behaviours, and what she’s doing at Mediahuis to encourage younger audiences to engage with news content.</p> <p>Get th...
The Atlantic's Megha Garibaldi on growing subscribers in a challenging landscape
<p>In this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by Megha Garibaldi, Chief Growth Officer at The Atlantic. Megha leads the consumer revenue vertical, including consumer marketing, and she helped lead The Atlantic to its milestone of 1 million paid subscribers and reaching profitability in 2024.</p> <p>She spoke to Esther at FIPP Congress about the changes she’s seen in audiences’ willingness to pay over the years, the differences and similarities of working on membership and subscriber-driven publications, and where she’s looking for audience growth in the current challenging landscape.</p> <p>Megha also discussed the differences and si...
Kyiv Independent’s Zakhar Protsiuk on its campaign-led approach to audience growth
<p>Launched on November 11th 2021, just three months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kyiv Independent (KI) is four years old. The award-winning English-language media outlet covers Ukraine and Eastern Europe for the rest of the world, and is celebrating its birthday with a campaign designed to boost its membership from 22,000 to 25,000 by the end of the year.</p> <p>This week's guest is the Kyiv Independent's Chief Operations Officer Zakhar Protsiuk. KI has reporters on the frontline of the war and an investigations unit covering Russian war crimes, but also covers Ukrainian business, culture and even travel.</p> <p>...
Communiqué's David Adeleke on turning a newsletter into a sustainable media business
<p>In this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by David Adeleke, founder and CEO of Communiqué, a media business that analyses African media and its creative economy.</p> <p>Communiqué started out as a newsletter, but now runs live events and publishes research about the scope of the creator economy across the continent.</p> <p>We last spoke with David four years ago on the podcast, and a lot has changed since he set up his newsletter as a side project. He talks to Peter about how he always wanted Communiqué to be more than a newsletter, his...
Highlights from FIPP Congress 2025: "An existential moment"
<p>Over 500 media and publishing professionals gathered in the beautiful Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid to hear leading speakers discuss their strategies for thriving in today’s landscape.</p> <p>ChatGPT, AI overviews and traffic challenges are certainly top of mind for many delegates, but the on-stage conversations haven’t been quite as dominated by AI as we’d expected. Rather, there seems to be a doubling down on good, ‘old fashioned’ publishing principles like investing in high-quality content and products in order to secure growth.</p> <p>There were some really strong themes that came out across the two day...
Financial Times' Juliet Riddell on finding new ways to tell stories using video
<p>This week's guest on The Publisher Podcast is Juliet Riddell, Head of New Formats at the Financial Times. Her focus is on telling stories using video, and she spoke to Peter following the September release of the 13-minute film, Recall Me, Maybe, written by comedian David Baddiel and starring Stephen Fry and Gemma Whelan.</p> <p>Juliet talks about why a news organisation like the FT is making this type of drama, the other films in the FT's Standpoint series, and the power of external collaborations in bringing new perspectives to big issues.</p> <p>Get a write-up of...
Like the Wind magazine's Simon Freeman on 'niche-ification' and sustainable indie magazine publishing
<p>This week's guest on The Publisher Podcast is Simon Freeman, Publisher at Like the Wind, a quarterly print magazine dedicated to exploring the culture, history and social issues in the world of running. They are also a blueprint for sustainable indie magazine publishing.</p> <p>Simon spoke to Peter as part of the research and writing for Inside the Print Revival, our report on why print magazines are making headlines again.</p> <p>In this episode, Simon talks about 'niche-ification'; how it's okay that not every runner is a potential Like the Wind reader, how social media helps sell...
