Making Media · Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

A 30,000 Foot View of Niche Media Businesses with Jon Ostrower

·50 min·3 clips

The Air Current started with one person, then the pandemic forced a pivot into analysis and airline coverage.

1. Making Media talks with Jon Ostrower about building The Air Current around aviation and aerospace coverage. 2. Jon Ostrower is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Air Current, and Matt and the show introduce him as a preeminent aviation journalist. 3. The episode asks how a 22-year-old blogger turned an aviation obsession into a subscription media business that now serves business, government, and industry readers. 4. Ostrower says curiosity has been his barometer since age 22, because if he wants to know more, other people usually do too. 5. He says his interest in flying started at age three with a Fisher-Price airport playset, then deepened through one aviation business class and one journalism class at George Washington University. 6. He describes starting a blog while working in politics for the governor of Massachusetts and writing at night after a scheduling-office job. 7. He says blogging about Boeing during the 787 Dreamliner struggles brought him into a global industrial story involving South Carolina, Italy, Japan, Kansas, and Seattle. 8. He compares his early reporting style to political campaign coverage and says he tried to adapt that on-the-trail method to aviation. 9. He explains that the audience evolved from enthusiasts and fanboys to C-suite decision makers, regulators, labor leaders, suppliers, and investors. 10. He says The Air Current moved to a strict paywall because he no longer wanted to optimize for advertisers or traffic. 11. Ostrower argues that advertising can push a publication toward “eyeballs,” while subscriptions force the business to focus on content value. 12. He says a subscription model spreads risk because no single advertiser or organization can tank the business. 13. He says the outlet had to learn not to be “all things for all people,” and instead price for what its audience values. 14. He describes a pandemic-era inflection point, saying Courtney Miller joined on February 1, 2020 and the world changed three weeks later. 15. He says COVID made The Air Current focus heavily on airline collapse, with global traffic potentially down 95% to 97%. 16. He says the crisis showed that niche publications need good information in both good times and bad times. 17. He describes the current team as roughly four to five people, including Alon Head, Will Geisbord, Ned Russell, and Howard Slutskin. 18. He says the style is direct and operational, with the team constantly asking not just what happened, but why it happened. 19. People building niche subscription media businesses around specialized expertise would get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting celebrity interviews or broad pop-culture coverage will probably skip it.

As heard by us

A grounded look at how a focused aviation publisher turns specialization into a subscription business.

John Ostrower lays out a tight case for The Air Current: a subscription business built on narrow aviation coverage, with a reader-first model and a small team of four to five people.

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Why you'd press play

A close look at how The Air Current turns aviation expertise into a subscription business.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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