1440 Flourishes: The general interest publisher 1440, which began as a daily newsletter, continues its expansion into adjacent products, implementing the same playbook that others, like Morning Brew, Front Office Sports, and Axios, have followed to parlay a dedicated email readership into a broader media empire. As part of this expansion, the publisher announced Wednesday that it has named Julie Shain its new editor in chief, overseeing the flagship Daily Digest newsletter, while former Daily Digest head Sony Kassam has moved into the newly created role of Executive Editor. Such an expansion can come with its own headaches, but 1440 has staked out a clear brand identity, serving as “the knowledge platform for the insatiably curious,” making growth into new channels less troublesome.
Paradium Pairing: The saga of the publisher formerly known as The Arena Group took another unexpected turn last week. On Friday, the company, which implausibly rebranded to Paradium AI in August, sold a 49% equity stake to Roundtable, a company led by former Arena Group cofounder James Heckman. In tandem with the $89 million equity purchase, Roundtable, which operates as a content platform, also struck a 10-year, $1 billion partnership with Paradium. There are two substantial asterisks to the news, however. First, Roundtable still has to raise the $89 million before it can make the purchase, which is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter. And second, the “$1 billion” figure is future-facing, a claim predicated on generating annual revenues of $100 million over the next 10 years. Critically, per Heckman, this deal does not give Roundtable control of Paradium, although Heckman will serve as the chairman of its board. Expect more developments on this front soon.
Quote/Unquote
Jordan Fox is the CEO of Ad Results Media, an audio-first media agency that helps advertisers buy and measure campaigns across podcasts, streaming music, and radio. He joined the agency in 2024 from the agency Laundry Service, a social media and influencer marketing firm, which gave him a fresh lens on the industry, as well as the idea that a podcast has to live on an RSS feed.
Now ARM and its peers are working in a market where top podcasters are multiformat creators with several revenue streams, and where the rights to a single show can be divided among a network, a talent agency, and the host.
This interview has been edited.
Mark Stenberg: The entire podcast industry was in New York last week for the IAB podcast upfronts and Podcast Movement’s fall event. What was everyone talking about?
Jordan Fox: For the past couple of years, the conversation has centered on the realization that podcasts were being consumed in ways beyond audio. When YouTube started growing quickly as a place people watched podcasts, the industry freaked out. What followed was a gradual calming-down as people got used to the medium becoming multiformat. That was always an industry concern, though—consumers do not think about any of this.
Mark: You sound fairly unbothered by that anxiety.
Jordan: I came from social, where the base assumption is that users decide how things go and you follow them. Podcasting is now a mix of walled gardens and open distribution, and social deliverables and live events are becoming important parts of partnerships. People have accepted that. I found a lot of the handwringing about formats to be unproductive anyway, although it did help us in that we got to position ourselves as the agency that was excited about the changes.
