I popped onto the Scale podcast with Stewart Ritchie to talk about how WordPress is powering a lot of new publishers. The topic was the PublishPress plugins, and how running that business has helped us discover hundreds of publishing start-ups.
The interview is 35 minutes long. If you’re short of time, the meat of the conversation starts around the 8 minute mark:
We talk about 3 things the define these start-ups:
- Building community, not chasing clicks.
- Tightly focused coverage of one or two subjects.
- A range of revenue sources including subscriptions, ads, donations, events.
And we mentioned 3 organizations that are helping these publishers:
- Newspack: taking away the technical challenges of WordPress.
- INN: building a community of publishers.
- States Newsroom: putting journalists into local state houses around the US.
I also got to give special shout-outs to the TheNarwhal.ca, who we wrote about before, and also Mississippi Today / Verite.
