Launched on November 11th 2021, just three months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kyiv Independent (KI) is four years old tomorrow. The award-winning English-language media outlet covers Ukraine and Eastern Europe for the rest of the world, and is celebrating its birthday with a campaign designed to boost its membership from 22,000 to 25,000 by the end of the year.

This week's guest is the Kyiv Independent's Chief Operations Officer Zakhar Protsiuk. KI has reporters on the frontline of the war and an investigations unit covering Russian war crimes, but also covers Ukrainian business, culture and even travel.

What struck Peter this week in speaking with Zakhar, is how focused he was on what we might consider the normal elements of building a media business. Of course we spoke about the war, but we spoke just as much about audience acquisition and retention, trust and churn.

Listen now to hear Kyiv Independent's origin story, whether it's possible to separate everyday media operations from the impacts of Russia's invasion, revenue diversification, and the brand's shift from donations to a membership model.

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In this week's episode of The Publisher Podcast, we're joined by David Adeleke, founder and CEO of Communiqué, a media business that analyses African media and its creative economy.

Communiqué started out as a newsletter, but now runs live events and publishes research about the scope of the creator economy across the continent.

We last spoke with David four years ago on the podcast, and a lot has changed since he set up his newsletter as a side project. He talks to Peter about how he always wanted Communiqué to be more than a newsletter, his vision for a 'proper' media business, and how he is hiring to build a culture that can be replicated elsewhere. He also talks about community and the importance of bringing what he does online into physical spaces.

Get the write-up of the key points of this interview in your inbox by subscribing to The Publisher Newsletter, over on voices.media

Over 500 media and publishing professionals gathered in the beautiful Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid to hear leading speakers discuss their strategies for thriving in today’s landscape.

ChatGPT, AI overviews and traffic challenges are certainly top of mind for many delegates, but the on-stage conversations haven’t been quite as dominated by AI as we’d expected. Rather, there seems to be a doubling down on good, ‘old fashioned’ publishing principles like investing in high-quality content and products in order to secure growth.

There were some really strong themes that came out across the two days - too many to include them all here - so we've focused on the top four. Hear speakers from TIME, The Economist, Hearst, Semafor, The Atlantic and more discussing transformation, new opportunities, brands vs personalities, and how they're using AI.

Get a write-up of the key learnings from this episode online at voices.media or straight to your inbox by signing up to The Publisher Newsletter.