No One's Reading This

How PodMe Is Winning Over Young Audiences With Paid Audio

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:15:00 +0200

Publishers have been saying it for years: young audiences don't pay. PodMe has 200,000 subscribers, and more than half of them are under 35.

In this episode, Kerstin Hasse talks to Kristin Ward Heimdal, who leads PodMe, Schibsted's paid podcast platform. They discuss why Schibsted started investing in the start-up, what happened when they first tried a hard paywall, and why the true crime genre is now being developed closer to the newsroom rather than acquired from independent creators.

Kristin also explains what actually drives young people's willingness to pay — and why the answer has less to do with format and more to do with what publishers are trying to sell them.

If your organization is still treating paid audio as a side experiment, this conversation is worth your time.

Guest: Kristin Ward Heimdahl, Head of Podme

Host: Kerstin Hasse, Young Audiences Initiative Lead, INMA

Der Spiegel's Crossmedia Bet: What Happens When Digital Finally Sits at the Table

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:50:00 +0200

One year ago, Der Spiegel merged three digital teams into one. In a newsroom where text still carries most of the editorial weight, what happens when video, audio, and social suddenly sit at the same table?

Kerstin Hasse is talking to Aleksandra Janevska, Deputy Head of Crossmedia at Der Spiegel, about what it takes to restructure a newsroom from the inside and what happens when you stop organizing by medium and start organizing by format instead.

They discuss what's working, what Der Spiegel decided to stop, including a podcast ending after two years and what that process revealed about making editorial decisions with clarity. They also dig into fact-checking as a format and why "Sagen, was ist" – say what is – turns out to be not just a founding editorial principle, but a natural fit for the platforms where young audiences are. Plus: the growing role of on-camera personalities, and what it looks like when a major investigative story goes viral across every platform at once.

This conversation was originally recorded as a live INMA Young Audiences Initiative webinar. Listen, share, subscribe! More infos about the International Media Association and the Young Audiences Initiative supported by Knight Foundation at inma.org

Guest: Aleksandra Janevska, Deputy Head of Crossmedia, Der Spiegel

Host: Kerstin Hasse, Young Audiences Initiative Lead, INMA

How The Economist Cracked Vertical Video — From TikTok Launch to Subscriber Strategy

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:45:00 +0200

A 180-year-old magazine is thriving with vertical video. And the way they did it is not what you'd expect.

In this episode, I'm talking to Liv Moloney, Head of Video at The Economist, about the full journey — from launching on TikTok in 2022 with a single video editor to 360 million video views across platforms in 2025, and then bringing it all back into their own app.

We talk about why The Economist took TikTok seriously when many legacy newsrooms still dismissed it, how they navigate putting individual faces on camera in a publication famous for having no bylines, who's actually watching (younger and more female than you'd think), and whether vertical video is really a "young audience play" — or something much bigger.

Guest: Liv Moloney, Head of Video, The Economist

Host: Kerstin Hasse, Young Audiences Initiative Lead, INMA