It always seems to be two steps forward and one step back for publishers as they try to find a future with the big technology platforms. In the latest progress-with-caveats, Apple is allowing publishers to sell digital subscriptions from inside the Apple News app, giving them access to a much larger potential subscriber base. But that's hedged around, as always, by constraints intended to maintain consumer privacy — and Apple’s control over access to them. According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, a number of big publishers are already signed on to sell subs from …

Business-to-business media is still big, well, business, judging by the price tags attached to some of the big B2B publishers and events companies over the last year. In the most recent blockbuster offer, British business publisher Informa is offering GBP1.18 billion, or around $1.56 billion, for U.S. trade publisher, business information provider and conference organizer Penton Information Services.

On Tuesday, Deadspin, Gawker Media's online sports news and gossip site, reposted two items that had been deleted by Univision's management because they were the subject of a defamation lawsuit.

The rise of technology platforms with massive followings has offered publishers the tantalizing possibility of reaching millions of readers. But as more publishers are discovering, these partnerships with Facebook, Google and Apple may turn out to be devil's bargains.

Gawker Media's new owners are not quite as willing to court controversy as its founder, former CEO Nick Denton. That's judging by Univision's decision last week to delete six posts that are involved in ongoing legal action.

Once the most powerful figures in the magazine industry, publishers may soon find themselves an endangered species, as big magazine brands move to eliminate the role in favor of new, more forward-looking titles and executive org charts.

According to the Census figures, total newspaper publishing revenues fell 2.5% from $6.72 billion in the second quarter of 2015 to $6.56 billion in the second quarter of 2016. U.S. magazine publishers saw total revenues slip 4.3% to $7.05 billion.

The Newspaper Association of America is bowing to reality with a new name that drops a longstanding part of its heritage - specifically, the name of the medium it was printed on.

2016 is proving to be another bruiser for print magazine newsstand sales, with both dollar figures and unit sales continuing to decline. In dollar terms, total magazine newsstand sales for the thousand biggest titles in the U.S. and Canada fell 6.1% to $536.3 million in the second quarter of this year.

The state is in the act of repealing a sales tax that was first foisted on newspaper publishers back in the fat days of the 1990s, providing a much-needed financial fillip as the industry continues its rocky transition to the digital age.