Janice Min, a media executive in Los Angeles, is teaming up with Richard Rushfield, a show business columnist, to launch a new media venture that will be derived from her popular subscription newsletter, The Ankler.
Ms Min, who transformed The Hollywood Reporter from a struggling trade publication into a successful large-format glossy, will become co-owner, managing director and editor-in-chief of new company Ankler Media. Mr. Rushfield, the founder of The Ankler, which bills itself as “the newsletter Hollywood loves to hate and hates to love”, will be the company’s editorial director and chief columnist.
“One of the things that really convinced me to do this with Richard is that he gave me visibility on the subscriber list, and that’s insane,” Ms. Min said in a commentary. interview. “It’s a Who’s Who of power in the entertainment community, and from that base I feel like there is so much potential to exert that level of influence.”
Mr Rushfield wrote for BuzzFeed, The Los Angeles Times and Gawker before going solo with a newsletter in 2017, a decision he made because he felt there was room for a cover that was “more precise, more irreverent and more fun than what came out there,” he said.
The Cheviller started out as something he wrote to amuse his friends. Eventually, he moved it to the digital newsletter platform Substack, and he now charges $ 10 per month for a subscription. According to Substack’s public ranking, which ranks newsletters by revenue, it is among the platform’s top three trade publications.
“So have you met any Americans lately or the entertainment consumers of the world? »He wrote in Monday’s edition, on the disappointing box office results of Steven Spielberg’s big-budget adaptation of “West Side Story.”
“It may shock you to learn that they don’t know about the history of mid-century American musical theater,” he continued. “Mass culture as it stands can barely remember who Katy Perry was and will not kindly accept anyone pointing out to them that entertainment existed before that. “
Ms Min said she first saw The Ankler’s potential for expansion after reading a Publish by Mr Rushfield on the lack of diversity in the ranks of movie studio executives, which included screenshots of the ‘About Us’ pages which showed mostly white management teams.
Over the past 18 months, Ms Min and Mr Rushfield have discussed ways to expand the newsletter, including with other media companies, before deciding to stick with Substack. They said they plan to keep The Ankler as a flagship product and will introduce additional newsletters, as well as podcasts and events, starting in January.
They will also be hiring new hires, the first being Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter, who will join in January to cover the worlds of Hollywood and entertainment.
Ms Min and Mr Rushfield said the company will be part of a three-month program run by Y Combinator, a start-up incubator known for its early investments in Airbnb and Reddit. The program provides business founders with seed capital and business advice.
Ankler Media’s coverage will focus on the clashes between the tech leaders who now make big decisions in Hollywood and those who have been around since moviegoers lined up to buy tickets.
“This push-pull tension between the folks eating McCarthy salads at the Polo Lounge with the algorithm folks in Silicon Valley – it’s real tension that’s going to drive the next 10, 20, 30 years here,” he said. said Ms. Min.
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