EDITOR'S NOTE: For 2019, we've expanded our annual publishing-industry honors program. It's now known as the Ad Age Publishers A-List and it includes the Magazine A-List, the Digital Publishers A-List, below, plus three shortlists of special citations focused on key growth areas (video, audio/podcasting and events) for publishers. Read the introduction and find links to the other portions of the package here.
Digital Publishers A-List: News & Politics
TheAtlantic.com
One of the essential sources of smart analysis about the news
cycle, and specifically the D.C. horror show, TheAtlantic.com grew
its unique visitors to 22.3 million in 2018 and is rapidly adding
staff—including a new global editor, tech editor, design team
and dozens more—under new majority owner Emerson Collective.
Key to the site's strategy: foregrounding its expert team of staff
writers—including Krishnadev Calamur on global news, Alia
Wong on education and Alexis C. Madrigal on technology—whose
photos all regularly appear on the homepage.
Axios.com
Launched in 2017 by a trio of Politico veterans (Jim VandeHei, Mike
Allen and Roy Schwartz), Axios spent much of 2018 cementing its
status as the new Beltway must-read—particularly the Axios AM
newsletter, with its brisk, big-picture take on politics, business
and tech. And Axios' four-part TV series, "Axios on HBO," gave it
buzz far beyond the D.C. chattering class.
Bloomberg.com
The Bloomberg.com business-journalism machine continued to be
unstoppable in 2018, and management is feeling confident enough in
its must-read status that it added a metered paywall (following the
example set by Bloomberg Businessweek, the content of which lives
in a section of Bloomberg.com).
BuzzFeedNews.com
Under Editor Ben Smith, BuzzFeed News was a 2018 Pulitzer Prize
finalist (in the international reporting category), and given how
some of its groundbreaking reporting presciently charted the course
of parts of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, we'd be
surprised if Smith's team doesn't get a 2019 Pulitzer nod (or even
a win) in investigative reporting.
NYMag.com
Like Bloomberg.com, NYMag.com added a metered paywall in 2018.
Given how essential the Intelligencer vertical has become to making
sense of the news (see especially Jonathan Chait and Olivia Nuzzi's
take on politics), it's a gamble worth taking. And given that the
site averages monthly uniques of 30-plus million, representing
year-over-year growth of nearly 50 percent, it's got plenty of
wiggle room to experiment with extracting reader revenue.
NewYorker.com
Condé Nast's NewYorker.com has had a metered paywall in
place since 2014, which is one reason why reader revenue for the
brand overall, including the glossy mothership, is so enviously
high (see our Magazine A-List). Still, monthly uniques increased to
19.5 million (up from 18.5 million in 2017) and the magazine used
its website to relentlessly break news and respond to
it—particularly in the News Desk and The Current ("New Yorker
writers respond to the news") sections, most notably surrounding
the midterm elections.
NYTimes.com
In February, The New York Times Co. announced that its subscription
revenue had surged past $1 billion for the first time—and
most of that growth came courtesy of NYTimes.com. Throughout the
year, particularly in regard to its White House
coverage—endlessly derided by President Trump as "fake news"
(and then often confirmed by White House staffers, hapless Trump
lawyer Rudy Giuliani or Trump himself)—the Times has proven
itself to be a truly digital-first newsroom (and in 2018, a
three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning one).
WashingtonPost.com
Given that The Washington Post has scant distribution outside the
Beltway, the strategy behind WashingtonPost.com has been essential
to elevating the paper's journalistic power and relevance to the
national discourse. The Post shared a Pulitzer in the national
reporting category with The New York Times for coverage of Russia's
interference in the 2016 election—journalism that, along with
the Post's investigative reporting win for its coverage of U.S.
Senate candidate Roy Moore, would have been inconceivable without
the metabolism and iterative publishing capabilities of
WashingtonPost.com.
Wired.com
In February, during Wired's 25th anniversary year, Wired.com added
a metered paywall. In doing so, it expanded its coverage with two
new online-only sections: Ideas, which features big-picture takes
on digital culture (e.g., "Why Japan Is a Rare Holdout in Asia's
Cash-Free Future") and Backchannel, a longform feature hub. (Of
course, longform features from the print mothership, including
Wired Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Thompson's viral February cover
story, "Inside Facebook's Two Years of Hell," also appear first on
the website.) In 2018, Wired.com kept investing in digital,
poaching a new site director, Scott Rosenfield, from Outside, and a
new social media director, Meghann Farnsworth, from Recode/Vox
Media.
WSJ.com
If you've read this far, you likely realize that most of our
digital A-List honorees have paywalls and, as noted above, several
of them were added rather late in the game (i.e., 2018). The Wall
Street Journal's WSJ.com, of course, pioneered the successful
implementation of a highly profitable paywall starting in 1997, and
in the years since it's been perfecting its paywall tech, now
deploying dozens of personalized signals to determine how much
content to serve up to any given reader and how to convert the best
prospects into paying subscribers. At the same time, the paywall
has been porous enough to make sure the paper's most essential
journalism—particularly its blockbuster reporting regarding
Trump's hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels as well as
National Enquirer parent American Media Inc.'s entanglement in a
protection racket for Trump—has gotten the exposure it
deserves.
Digital Publishers A-List: Lifestyle, Culture & Special Interest
TheAtlantic.com
The Atlantic's website appears above in the News & Politics
category, but we're also honoring it here because of its
extraordinary culture coverage. See, for instance, Ibram X. Kendi's
"A House Still Divided," about the continuing "existential threat"
of racism in this country, or Hannah Giorgis' "Terry Crews and the
Discomfort of Masculine Anxiety"—pieces that dive deep into
our national psyche. It's worth noting that some of the site's most
viral posts (e.g., Judith Shulevitz's "Alexa, Should We Trust
You?") originate in the brand's print edition, which suggests that
The Atlantic's staff knows exactly how to connect with readers no
matter the platform.
BonAppetit.com and the Food Innovation Group
Complex.com
Under Complex Media CEO Rich Antoniello, Complex has morphed from a
glossy youth-culture magazine (co-founded by designer Marc Ecko in
2002) to a multimedia empire with pop-culture/street-culture site
Complex.com at its heart. Unique visitors are averaging 49 million
per month (up 10 percent YOY), giving new-ish owners Hearst and
Verizon (they teamed up to jointly acquire Complex in 2016) access
to elusive male millennials and post-millennials thanks to
laser-focused content (e.g., see the "Sneaker Shopping" video
series hosted by Joe La Puma). For its IRL brand expression,
ComplexCon, Complex also appears on our Event Publishers
A-List.
Delish.com
Hearst's Delish has been averaging 22 million unique visitors per
month (up 21% YOY) and has been reaching 6.2 million millennials
each month, thanks in large part to its strong social media game
(19 million Facebook followers, 1 million Instagram followers and a
new Snapchat show, "WTFood" that's racked up 16 million unique
views so far). Editorial Director Joanna Saltz has also been
focusing on the IRL expression of the brand, with the production of
100-page "bookazine" newsstand specials such as the Delish guides
to soup and cast-iron cooking, plus "Delish: Eat Like Every Day's
the Weekend," a 400-page hardcover cookbook published by Houghton
Mifflin in October. Meanwhile, Hearst's cross-brand digital sales
team has been convincing big marketers to come on board as
category-specific "Official Sponsors of Delish," including Unliver
(in the ice cream category) and Walmart Fresh (groceries).
NYMag.com including The Cut, Vulture, The Strategist, Grub Street and Intelligencer
NewYorker.com
NYTimes.com
People.com
Though its print mothership continues to do great business (with
top issues selling upward of half a million copies at the
newsstand), we're honoring People here because, under
Editor-in-Chief Jess Cagle and Publisher Cece Ryan, it increasingly
functions as a digital-first business. People.com unique visitors
are averaging 70 million per month (up nearly 40 percent YOY), and
over the Royal Wedding weekend (May 19-20), the site drew 22.5
million visitors thanks to wall-to-wall coverage (200-plus pieces
of content) of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's nuptials. Much of
People's digital growth can be attributed to its impressive
video-production capabilities and facilities, including a Hollywood
studio where content for its OTT channel, PeopleTV, is produced.
(See our Video Publishers A-List, where People is also
honored.)
Self.com
Condé Nast ended the print edition of Self magazine with its
February 2017 issue. In 2018, Self firmly established itself as a
digital brand that didn't need a glossy mothership to thrive in the
crowded health & fitness media marketplace. Self.com uniques
grew nearly 40 percent, and brand revenue rose 88%, driven in large
part by a booming video business that focuses on no-nonsense how-to
fare (e.g., "5-Move Core and Cardio Workout," "15-Minute Dumbbell
Workout for All Levels"). The brand has also proven itself with its
strong social presence (see, for instance, the Self channel on
Snapchat Discover, which averages 9 million monthly
uniques)—nicely validated by Self winning the first-ever
National Magazine Award for social media in 2018.
TimeOut.com/NewYork