More with Less Media with Brian Morrissey - [Making Media, EP.36]

More with Less Media with Brian Morrissey - [Making Media, EP.36]

Author: Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts September 14, 2023 Duration: 1:01:50
Today we're sitting down with Brian Morrissey and getting back to the guts and glory days of the media industry. In 2021, Brian founded The Rebooting - a newsletter publication focused on the mechanics of building sustainable media businesses. Prior to The Rebooting, he spent a decade building Digiday and had a nice stint as editor at Adweek. We get into Brian's own experience launching his business and unpack his view that we're in a "more with less" era in media. Please enjoy this conversation with Brian Morrissey. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here. ----- Making Media is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Making Media, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @ReustleMatt | @domcooke | @MakingMediaPod | @JoinColossus  Show Notes (00:03:23) - (First question) - How media is adapting to the "more with less" era amidst challenges (00:06:08) - Efficiency's impact on media brand identity and content quality (00:08:21) - The benefits of niche focus in media for building sustainable brands (00:10:25) - Media companies' failure to adapt and the impact of misaligned incentives (00:13:30) - The power law effect on media business size and advocating for lean operations (00:16:22) - Starting narrowly versus broadly in the media business (00:18:57) - Leaving Digiday to build a personal, autonomous, trust-based media brand in The Rebooting (00:22:27) - Using his year away from work to strategize personal media product creation (00:23:52) - Leveraging connections to sell ads, avoiding paywall to grow faster (00:28:12) - Understanding the essence of sales and the role belief plays in it (00:30:41) - How niche markets and personal connections can serve as media business moats (00:33:43) - Valuing passion and expertise over market trends when starting a media business (00:36:53) - Why questioning industry norms can be beneficial (00:37:52) - Creators using autonomy and audiences for better deals (00:40:57) - Pat McAfee's leverage as an entity, not just talent (00:42:56) - Analyzing the Barstool-Penn breakup and its implications for the media business (00:46:27) - Why ad agencies continue to survive despite being dysfunctional (00:50:23) - Debrief (01:01:17) - Live Event

Matt Reustle and Dom Cooke have spent years analyzing companies as investors, but found themselves drawn into a new, messy, and fascinating world: building a media company from the ground up. Their Making Media podcast, from Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts, is the raw audio journal of that transition. Instead of theory, you get the real-time experiments, stumbles, and occasional breakthroughs of two practitioners who are actively trying to construct something lasting. Each conversation pulls back the curtain with seasoned media operators who have navigated these waters, offering hard-won tactical advice rarely shared publicly. Between these interviews, Matt and Dom hold themselves accountable, documenting the progress of their own ventures and breaking down the books, articles, and interviews that shape their thinking. The underlying mission gives this business and entrepreneurship podcast its pulse: a genuine fight to create substantive, long-form content in an economy increasingly optimized for fleeting clicks. For anyone curious about the operational realities of publishing, audience building, and sustainable creation, this series feels like getting a direct feed from the workshop floor, where ideas are forged into tangible assets.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 65

Making Media
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