Matthew Belloni. Puck & Influencer Journalists.

A lot has been written about how the business model for news and information is broken. The world went digital and print media followed suit, but their business models didn’t translate quite so well. The...

The post Matthew Belloni. Puck & Influencer Journalists. appeared first on Up Next.

A lot has been written about how the business model for news and information is broken. The world went digital and print media followed suit, but their business models didn’t translate quite so well. The rise of social platforms has further stressed digital publishers’ revenue models and the space between influencers, journalists and content creators has started to shrink. Are digital media brands chasing views and clicks going to be able to reinvent themselves? Is a subscription model the way to go?

Today we’re speaking with Matthew Belloni, a founding partner at Puck News, about the information that consumers are willing to pay for and why the time is ripe for a media platform owned and operated by journalists themselves.

Topics discussed include:

The difference between subscriptions and memberships.
Why Matt and his fellow founding journalists opted to start a new media venture instead of going it alone via Substack.
How a newsletter format and conversational tone can facilitate reader engagement.
What success looks like when building a niche membership content offering.
How traditional print media should be thinking about their business models and what it means for people starting a career in journalism today.

Interested in joining Puck? click here

Matthew Belloni is an experienced journalist and content executive who has successfully managed large teams of creators, serving as the top editor of a leading entertainment publication and appearing frequently as an analyst on television, as well as practicing law as an attorney in the entertainment industry.

As Founding Partner of Puck, Belloni covers the inside conversation in Hollywood, with a popular newsletter called What I’m Hearing…. As editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter from 2016 to 2020, Belloni was responsible for editorial content and initiatives at the iconic entertainment media outlet. Belloni oversaw all of THR’s editorial properties, including its weekly print magazine; http://THR.com and its digital verticals; on- and off-platform video content, podcasts and live events.

Over the course of 14 years with THR, Belloni served in a number of senior editorial positions, managing a staff of 100 journalists and playing a significant role in the outlet’s heralded transformation from a trade newspaper into the entertainment industry’s flagship media brand with a global reach and a major digital presence. Together, THR and its sister publication, Billboard, now draw more than 50 million monthly unique visitors and boast a combined social media footprint of 20 million followers. During this time, THR took home many of publishing’s most prestigious honors, including a National Magazine Award for General Excellence by the American Society of Magazine Editors and more than 100 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism awards.

Belloni was at the forefront of THR’s move into audio and video, spearheading initiatives like its roundtable series, Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter, which airs on SundanceTV and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award, and Angelyne, a scripted adaptation of a THR article, which is set to air as a limited series on NBC’s Peacock in 2021. Belloni also appears regularly as an entertainment industry analyst on NBC Nightly News, CBS This Morning, CNN, CNBC, NPR and The Bill Simmons Podcast.

Before joining THR, Belloni was an attorney at an entertainment law firm in Los Angeles, representing actors, filmmakers and media companies in disputes and litigation. He also has served as a contributor to magazines including Esquire, Details and Town & Country.

Belloni graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in political science and obtained a law degree from the University of Southern California School of Law, where he was a member of the USC Law Review.

Puck is a news brand dedicated to the inside story, hyper focused on the four power corners of American culture: Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Washington, and Hollywood. We are focused on the “last mile” of news. While other outlets are covering the waterfront and educating their scale audiences, we are distinctly focused on what they’ve left out – what the insiders are really saying. Puck is creating a media platform owned and operated by the journalists themselves.

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The post Matthew Belloni. Puck & Influencer Journalists. appeared first on Up Next.