Axios ruffled feathers within publishers’ walls last week with a post titled “The great subscription news reversal.” Headlines like those tend to bounce around publishers’ Slack channels fairly quickly, and execs at various publishers said they typically face a barrage of questions internally when they do. Last week was no different.
“It’s best to address that stuff directly and quickly,” a consumer revenue executive at one major U.S. publisher told me over breakfast last week. (Editorial staffers tend to ask the most fervently, they noted.)
Although most said they welcome discussion about their business models, publishing executives I asked about the prospect of a widespread shift away from subscriptions all held similar views: It's highly unlikely at this point.