Media

Media braces for consolidation in 2025

It’s open season for media companies big and small next year. Media insiders expect investment and dealmaking to whir back to life amid a friendlier regulatory environment for consolidation, continued upheaval in cable, and a reengaged audience that tuned out the news during much of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Big media: The simultaneous erosion of the entertainment industry and cable business and the return of a potentially more merger-friendly administration led by Donald Trump appear likely to spur several hot years of corporate dealmaking that will reshape the entertainment and cable news industry. And at the content level, the continued growth of YouTube as the default viewership platform of choice is reshaping the news, cooking, and talk-show content that a generation ago would’ve grown through cable television.

News: Some of the independent news media success stories of the past several years are seeing renewed interest from potential investors, buyers, and business partners.

Since the election, the Free Press’ founder, Bari Weiss, has been inundated with offers and interest in investment in her independent digital publication. As rumors circulated about the publication’s future, Weiss told Semafor that while the FP didn’t have any immediate plans for acquisition or investment, she felt that the increased interest in the Free Press was a vindication of the outlet’s worldview — contrarian, skeptical of progressivism — and demonstrated some of the tectonic shifts occurring in the US media business.

“The vibe shift is real. It’s been a big few weeks for those of us in the reality-based community,” she told Semafor. “I’ll let you know when we have news!”

Audio: The increased attention in recent months on podcasting and the “manosphere” has already prompted public relations leaders to examine their best practices, and that trend looks poised to shake up media dealmaking as well.

As goes San Francisco...

The San Francisco Standard, an unusual and ambitious local news startup backed by journalist-turned-investor Mike Moritz, will introduce a two-tiered metered paywall on Thursday, its CEO told Semafor.

The program will offer news but also lifestyle benefits: access to food events and gym membership for regular subscribers, who pay $90 a year, and sweeter perks for members of a $900 invitation-only “Gold Standard” elite tier that CEO Griffin Gaffney described as looking more like a social club, beginning with a private Rufus Wainwright concert in February.

The Standard blends local news and politics with culture coverage, and styles itself more New York Magazine than the metro section. Its focus, and the new program, matches the mood of a city that’s swinging hard back to the (relative) center and just tossed out its mayor over concerns about public disorder.

An app and a paywall

Vox Media, parent company of New York Magazine, is preparing to announce several changes aimed at boosting revenue and rewarding its most faithful subscribers. On Monday, the magazine will launch a new flagship mobile app that will offer readers comprehensive access to the magazine across its separately-branded verticals, like The Cut and Vulture, a spokesperson for Vox Media confirmed to Semafor.

The move is intended to bolster subscriber engagement and help continue to foster audience loyalty away from the mediation of tech platforms. It will be the magazine’s second crack at a mobile app; New York first launched an iPhone app in 2016. This time, the magazine is focusing less on replicating the experience of reading the print magazine on mobile, and more on servicing subscribers whose No. 1 concern is the ease of accessing NY Mag content on mobile.

On Tuesday, the company will also be launching a sitewide subscription to its technology vertical, The Verge. (Status reported earlier this year that Vox was weighing paywalling it.) Beginning this week, the Verge will charge $7/month or $50/year for comprehensive access to the site as well as the already-paywalled newsletters Command Line and Notepad.

Some content and the publication’s homepage, which was redesigned in 2022 to resemble a social feed, will remain free. The Verge is Vox Media’s third major subscription push behind New York and Vox, which launched a membership program earlier this year.

Carlyle Co-Chairman David Rubenstein, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and KKR Co-Chairman Henry Kravis will serve as co-chairs of Semafor’s World Economy Summit on April 23-25, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

This third-annual event will bring together US cabinet officials, global finance ministers, central bankers, and Fortune 500 CEOs for conversations that cut through the political noise to dive into the most pressing issues facing the world economy.

Join the waitlist for more information and access to priority registration.

Alex Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios.

⁛ News

Noonan meets Trump: The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan told Weiss that she’d avoided Trump for years because she “had a feeling that up close he would be charming and funny and that would mess with my swing as an observer.” They finally met at an editorial board meeting recently, and her fears were borne out.

Trouble in Pittsburgh: The president of the union at the Post-Gazette was arrested after throwing a chair at a wall during negotiations. The paper’s union, long a troubled one, has been on strike for two years, even as many of its journalists are back at work across the picket line. Asked for comment on the incident, NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss responded by criticizing the paper’s management, but didn’t address the arrest.

No error: If you want to start a small, ambitious newsroom, listen to Jason Koebler describe to Peter Kafka how he and three partners built 404 Media to revenues in the ballpark of a million a year, mostly with splashy scoops. Their biggest cost after payroll? Insurance.

⁋ Publishing

The Guardian’s owner — struggling to sell off its Sunday paper, the Observer, to Tortoise Media over the objections of a restive staff — says it’ll take a stake in the podcast-centric startup as part of the deal. Meanwhile, another bidder has emerged for the publication, a green energy investor named Dale Vince.

☊ Audio

A Trump official told Politico this week that they “could very well see a press briefing room where Maggie Haberman sits next to Joe Rogan.” That seems unlikely on a lot of fronts: While the “manosphere” podcast stars and YouTubers have backed Trump and benefited from his appearances on their shows, few have expressed any enthusiastic desire to take part in the drudgery of daily White House press corps duty.

But Politico’s piece buried a more interesting detail: The Nelk Boys, the YouTube pranksters-turned-Trump supporters, dipped their toes into political organizing this election cycle, spending $20 million through their voting registration initiative Send the Vote to target 18-to-34-year-old men in swing states who were registered to vote but hadn’t previously turned out.

Politico reported that the group organized a tailgate at the Penn State-Wisconsin football game in October, ran a voter registration concert with rapper Waka Flocka Flame in Atlanta, and got over 100,000 people to look up voting sites through the Send the Vote website.

✰ Hollywood

In another sign of the celebrity media production bubble bursting, LeBron James’ media venture, SpringHill, reportedly lost $30 million last year. James’ company recently merged with British media company Fulwell 73 in order to achieve greater scale to navigate challenging media headwinds.

✦ Marketing

It was a big Black Friday for Amazon’s advertising business. Media buyers and advertisers told Digiday they were experimenting with Amazon Prime’s new shoppable advertising feature — while also jockeying for space on Amazon’s Black Friday broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders game. Amazon used the game to woo football fans to sign up for Prime.

French telecoms company Orange plans to partner with Meta and OpenAI to develop new artificial intelligence models trained on African languages, Semafor’s Alexander Onukwue reported. Orange’s project comes amid rising interest in making AI tools available to African audiences, but it may not be an easy undertaking for a diverse continent in which more than 3,000 languages are spoken, Onukwue wrote.