Every media business becomes an events business

The feed is overfed. People want to gather.

Everyone (journalists, creators, brands) is getting better at creating content (articles, videos, posts) of all kinds (news, entertainment, advertisements). All this before you consider generative slop filling the cracks.

Attention is not enough. Media companies of all sizes need to build worlds.

This means an increased appetite for events, people coming together in person, or even in chatrooms for live broadcasts. If I have the option of subscribing to ten newsletters that aggregate similar news, I’m going to pick the creator who throws a party every month; I want to be part of her world.

We can measure the success of a media product — the health of an audience — by its ability to get people to a given location at a given time. Listening to a podcast is one thing. Buying a subscription is another. Leaving your apartment and showing up stands beyond.

“Events” is not a new idea. But the type of events I’m talking about are newly relevant in our attention-economy moment. The death of SEO, competition between creators and newsrooms; nothing keeps a media business top-of-mind like the memory of a good party and text messages with people you met there.

There are plenty of these events in New York and fewer in other places; it’s a great tactic in less-saturated markets, especially for local media products. And even in New York, any given event is somebody’s pick of the day. It’s just about understanding your audience.

Events are conferences.

My previous employer, the software company Air, held its first (one-day) conference this year. This is a business built on the notion that “every business is a media business,” with an ambitious, creative content arm. When I still worked there, we started with small events, like an invitational dinner series (which they still do). Early this year, they hired somebody specifically to run that series and produce more ambitious events like this one, titled On Air.

At the conference, there were at least four different content series in production. Sales reps gave live demos (captive audience! events require audience trust to run and, done right, deepen trust). Two of my former colleagues told me that the amount of content they’d be able to produce and how long they’d be able to fill their calendar with it were the key to securing budget for the event; events are content.

Colin and Samir, leading creator economy commentators, threw their first conference this September; over a decade as creators, they’d thrown small “Coffee with Creators” get-togethers, but this was their first Event. And the day I filed this prediction piece, they released a new episode of their podcast: “Why the Future of Creator Businesses is Offline.”

Events are canvases.

A campaign is a pop-up media business. Look at the success of Zohran Mamdani. A million thinkpieces here, you don’t need another one from me; affordability is an attractive cause, and he beat the drum beautifully — a win of message discipline, great short-form video, the charisma and energy of a 34-year-old man.

And! 95,000 volunteers, motivated by the cause. An event spread out through the city every weekend for months. The success of a media product can be gauged by its ability to bring strangers together in person. Do you think he would’ve won without a ground game, on short-form video, get-out-the-vote content alone?

Events are parties and are particularly well-suited to the creator model; people show up for figures who can build strong parasocial connections. But none of that matters if the other people who show up can’t hang.

Emily Sundberg of Feed Me has thrown parties all over New York City. Sometimes they’re sponsored. From a LinkedIn post this spring: “Throwing parties with my readers is one of the most rewarding parts of building Feed Me. It’s always such a cool group of investors, chefs, students, moms, lawyers, and marketers. Sometimes people get jobs or hook up.”

When I interviewed Michael Kauffman of the Catskill Crew newsletter this time last year, he was just over a year into building his business. The core product, a weekly newsletter, had 12,000 subscribers. The list is now over 40,000.

An audience is not a community, nor is a group of people who showed up to one event. Community is when people keep showing up to a series of events, when they meet eyes and shake hands and exchange numbers.

Michael says his business now brings in multiple hundred thousand dollars in revenue. He sells ads, sells Catskill Crew-branded board games. And he has been hosting various events for a while; this December, he is launching a dinner club series. “Take the quiz and book your seat to get matched with 5 strangers for dinner.”

From Michael’s LinkedIn in November: “My local newsletter is throwing more events than ever. Community is and forever will be everything.”

Events are not some new technology, despite what Partiful and Luma would have you believe. But for media businesses, they are re-emerging as both a revenue stream and a powerful audience development tool. Well-attended events are the sign of a healthy audience and, barring the organizer’s failure to produce a good time, reinforce audience health.

Events are celebrations where patrons of cooperative media startups commemorate milestones; 404 Media threw a bash for their second anniversary this summer.

Events drive revenue; Adweek reported this fall that events bring in more than half of Semafor’s revenue. In A Media Operator’s fifth anniversary post in 2024, Jacob Donnelly shared that 23.9% of the company’s 2023 revenue came from event sponsorships, with a further 34.17% from event tickets. The New York Times’ DealBook Summit charges thousands of dollars for tickets.

Great media businesses — be they upstart creators or gray ladies — build worlds. And the bonds that build these worlds are stronger in person than in Slack channels and comment sections, though it’s all of a piece.

Throw a party, produce a conference, whatever. Send an invite to your most-engaged subscribers. If they bite, you’re doing something right.