Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter

For the first time, social media overtakes TV as Americans’ top news source

There’s always been a lot of hand wringing over how the “mainstream media” covers particular issues, especially political ones, but we’re at a point where the term “mainstream media” is pretty much an anachronism. Independent media wields significant influence now, and we have the collective ability to drive attention and interest toward issues regardless of how they’re covered by the legacy media. That’s not to say that traditional media doesn’t continue to play an important role in our information ecosystem, but it’s no longer the gatekeeper it once was. [Nieman Lab]

$250K from LinkedIn in one year

Platforms like Threads and Bluesky are often cited as the main Twitter competitors, but LinkedIn was probably the greatest beneficiary of the post-Elon Twitter exodus, especially since it absorbed a lot of the business influencers who used to publish long viral tweet threads. I think one of LinkedIn’s biggest assets is that it doesn’t have restrictive character limits, and instead simply hides longer posts behind a “read more” button. This allowed people to start using it as something closer to a real blogging platform — a more scalable Medium, at least when it comes to business content. [Creator Spotlight]