A Master Class in Media Strategy
How The Dispatch Hopes to Improve the Product, Expand and Define its Brand
This missive, I delve into an interview with the relatively new business leader of The Dispatch, a growing center-Right media company with some political journalism stars at its helm. And, this time, I’m not doing the news bits. Not that there isn’t any, but this one is already pretty long and I want to get to it.
So, without further ado...
— Dorian Benkoil, Verts Media
A Master Class in Media Strategy
Michael Rothman, president of The Dispatch, gives a master class in how to craft a strategy to take a media company to the next level.
The Dispatch was founded in 2019 by well-known political journalists Stephen Hayes and Jonah Goldberg as a place for fact-based reporting, opinion, and analysis from a conservative (but not fringe, lunatic) perspective. With a staff of eight, they were the first media company on Substack, starting as a newsletter, then adding more products, such as podcasts.
Today, they’re off Substack (a platform they found restrictive) but are still primarily a suite of conservative-leaning newsletters, and have added tailored and premium more private offerings. They’ve grown to tens of thousands of paid subscribers, have millions in revenue, and are looking to expand into what Rothman calls a “T-shaped” strategy — wide and deep. Their most successful newsletter, The Morning Dispatch, has about 500,000 subscribers, with Goldberg’s G-File raking in many thousands more.
Rothman has been working for them since their inception and came on full-time in March of last year)
I spoke to Hayes a few years ago, and it was clear he was thinking about what steps to take, while being occupied primarily by editorial and product concerns. Rothman, an active Verts member since earlier days at parenting media company Fatherly, talked to me twice in the past couple of weeks, describing his and colleagues’ plans for The Dispatch.
Rather than just write up what Rothman gave me (which might actually be a disservice to you, or at least under-serve you) I’m going to give you the full shebang: a half-hour video, an edited transcript to follow along, and an organized outline of the things he said — audience numbers, revenues, plans for the future, talent hiring plans, charts, and more.
I will here mention some of what he provided:
Charts grounded in both numbers — total addressable market — and how they define it. Matrices of strategic and audience considerations.
Thoughts on how to pivot beyond current coverage areas, politics and policies.
Thoughts on monetizing a powerful niche podcast he says has five Supreme Court justices as listeners but isn’t well-monetized today.
Ways to attract and incentivize big(ger) name talent (and keep them on board even after they’ve been poached by The New York Times).
Ways of expanding reach to new, younger, demographic groups.
How to expand average revenue per customer — which relates to the above bullet in surprising ways.
Cutting the customer acquisition cycle by more than a third.
The technologies and vendors they’re using and considering, by name.
How to build The Dispatch out as a brand.
… and a lot more.
Below, as I said, you’ll get the video, a time-coded transcript with portions highlighted, and my bullets and narrative text, and a valuable chart. I want you to be able to take Mike’s master class, which is why I’m providing this all. And you can create extract (and reassemble) whatever you might want from that.
Mike, thank you.
