A look at the publisher vs. platform debate.

Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media newsletter. If you've received it then you either subscribed or someone forwarded it to you. If you fit into the latter camp and want to subscribe, then you can click on this handy little button: Hey everyone, I have a short newsletter for you today, but before we jump into it I wanted to start with a quick editor’s note.

Audacity is the most downloaded free software on FossHub since 2015.

This week is all about spelling. Some attempts to reform it have succeeded. (You've probably noticed that words are spelled differently in the US than in British English.) Others have failed hilariously. (You'll see.) But we're burying the lede; our first topic is that word itself: 'lede.' How did it find its current form? Then, we'll discuss the godfather of American English himself, Noah Webster. (Yes, that's where we got half our name.)

Ahead of the election, we have stories about people trying to live in the unreality that defines this moment.

The comedian delighted millions with her Trump lip-syncs. After the election, she may be on to her next act.

A weekly public radio program and podcast. Each week we choose a theme and put together different kinds of stories on that theme.

Latif Nasser co-hosts Radiolab. He also hosted The Other Latif and the Netflix documentary series Connected. “It’s so easy to hate everything and be cynical. There’s a kind of ease to that. It takes a lot more courage to go up in front of everybody and be

“The A-word is like the only thing that Google respects,” said Luther Lowe, senior vice president for public policy at Yelp.

Dec 9, 2019 - Conde Nast CEO Roger Lynch used to run digital music and video companies. Now he’s in charge of the world’s most iconic magazine publisher; he talks about his plans with Peter Kafka at the Code Media conference.Featuring: Roger Lynch (@RogerLynch), CEO of Condé NastHost: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at RecodeMore to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps ...

Who's better at predicting your behavior? Your computer or your spouse? | Illustration by Kevin Craft

People with perfect or "absolute" pitch hear every single sound as precise musical notes. Is this extraordinary talent a blessing or a curse? In this episode, we dive into the neuroscience, pluses and pitfalls of absolute pitch. Featuring neuroscientist Daniel Levitin and Grammy-winning

The Verge’s editors discuss this week’s iPhone event.

Jeff D'Onofrio joins us on the Source Code podcast.

Kayla Cinnamon, Program Manager at Microsoft for Windows Terminal, Console, Command Line, and Cascadia Code joined us to talk about the release of Windows Terminal 1.0 and the new Windows command-line experience. We talk about everything that went into rethinking the command line experience on Windows, the UX and UI de...

A look at what happens when the police don’t do the one thing you expect them to.

You've probably, at some point, been taught that there are certain words that should never, ever start a sentence. Today you will learn that this rule is a bunch of hooey. If anything, you should never, ever trust an 18th-century grammarian. After that, we'll look into what exactly is going on, language-wise, when a Top Chef judge says a dish "eats salty." Hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript available here.

We're excited to announce that Emmanuel Dzotsi is taking on a new role on the show ... as host! And this week, he brings us a story about a mysterious recording that has been popping up on government hotlines for years. Emmanuel tries to figure out where this recording is coming from and who's putting it there.

Stories of people who are tied together, but imagine radically different futures.

Hear our in-depth analysis of Amazon’s fall hardware event

'Like' is a wildly versatile, fascinating word and we're here with guest editor Serenity Carr to give it its due. Seriously. Like, there's nothing wrong with it. Later we'll tackle the story of 'mean', which was a perfectly nice word for centuries before it developed a bit of an attitude.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript available here.

How the pro-Trump conspiracy grew and its effect on the current political climate.

Listen to this episode from Cloud Giants on Spotify. Today we’re here with Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom. Especially in the age of COVID-19 and remote work, hundreds of millions of people have used Zoom, the company delivering frictionless video communication. In many ways, he’s built a platform that shapes a generation. I’m thrilled to have Eric here today to share the story of this epic journey and how he’s built the company that so many people depend on to stay connected at work and in our personal lives. Key takeaways from this episode include:  How focusing on customers’ perspective helped drive Zoom’s pricing strategy: “In the early days of Zoom, quite often our sales team told me, ‘Eric, we’ve got to increase the price. We added more features,’” Eric said. “But I always told them no. Our philosophy is always to make sure you add more value, and at the same time keep the same price. Because down the road, the customer will realize, ‘Wow, I paid $14.99, and you keep adding more and more features, gaining more and more value, but you still keep the same price.’ With that, you can establish trust. That’s one. The second, the reason why I’m personally involved is because I wanted to build a culture. Everyone’s got to look at everything from a customer perspective. Always care about the customers. You’ve got to lead by example. When it comes to price, provide a greater product and more value, but don’t increase the price. At the same time, build the culture, be customer-focused.” The importance of making business principles and values tangible: “When I started the company, over the past several years, if you asked me what’s the most important thing, I’d always say the company culture and the company value. We do all we can to think about the greater culture, to make sure we have a greater value and hire those people who can fit well into your company culture and value. That’s our focus,” Eric said. “But this pandemic crisis truly taught me one more thing: That’s not good enough. I still remember the Bridgewater Associates founder and CEO Ray Dalio. He taught me, ‘Eric, there’s one thing missing for you. You’ve got to write down your company’s business principles.’ I know that’s very important, but I didn’t quite really get what he said. Until recently, I realized that’s a big mistake, that’s a huge mistake I made. We should have written down all those business principles. The reason why is when suddenly you have a crisis like this, a pandemic crisis, suddenly your metrics grow 30 times. There are a lot of areas that might’ve been broken. You have to delegate it to your team to fix all those issues, to embrace the growth. If you do not write down your business principle, guess what? Quite often, you are going to make a lot of mistakes here and there. But how can you make sure you follow your business principles? That’s the key. Now, actually, we are doubling up on that. We are going to have a full-time position to focus on writing our business principles on many fronts.” The key to Zoom’s success in a competitive product space: “If you look at any competitive landscape, there are three things: Your company, your competitors, and customers,” Eric said. “If you laser-focus on just your customers, your users, don’t look at what your competitors do. Then you can sleep well. Then you can make the right decisions. Then you can deliver better service, more innovations to serve your end users. Otherwise, you look at all those competitors’ names, you will think, ‘Oh wow, they might catch up tomorrow.’ The more you are thinking, the more you are going to look at what they are doing. Then you spend less time on serving your customers. Don’t look at any of your competitors. Double down, triple down, on your customers. That’s our secret sauce.”

The next gadget rumors are surfacing.

YouTube is now serious about music streaming