Fast Company’s longest-running franchise, Most Innovative Companies (MIC), has made FC a lot of money since 2008. Candidates pay to apply, with no guarantee they will make the grade.
The New Stack (TNS) is accepting contributed posts again. During a months-long hiatus, editors rethought their priorities, and consulted Google Analytics to understand what had resonated.
The Associated Press began publishing computer-generated articles eight years ago. Yet it always seems a bit futuristic — perhaps even dystopian — when a publisher turns to an algorithm to write articles.
What publication, launched only 18 months ago, is already sponsored by Google, Amazon, Target and Walmart? The answer is Punchbowl News.
Brody Ford last month succeeded Joe Williams as the Bloomberg tech reporter most likely to write the story you’re pitching. Time to get him on the radar.
This month we studied guidelines from contributed content gatekeepers. Dozens and dozens of them.
This is a tale of two Fortunes — “new” Fortune and “classic” Fortune, each with their own needs and culture. You’ll want to approach accordingly.
Change is coming to 31-year-old ZDNet. According to EIC Jason Hiner, ZDNet is honing its focus on professionals of all sorts — not just IT pros. Its historic emphasis on B2B and IT will soon be over.
How do private companies get covered by reporters committed to cover public companies? Like anything else in PR, it’s difficult but not impossible. Here’s something of a toolkit we hope can help.
PR pros often wonder how to measure the influence of a particular publication. Similarweb measures audience size and that’s great. How do you measure a publication’s relationship with its readers?
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
This is majorly tl;dr, but recent research from FT Strategies and Reuters empirically uncovers every trend there is, when it comes to the health of the media business. In short, “the media” is barely breakeven, here and around the world. AI search may prove devastating.
The WSJ this week launched CEO Brief, a newsletter designed to inform readers, and to attract new members to the WSJ Leadership Institute. This organization is already a Dow Jones profit center, and a great example of how Tier 1 can lessen dependence on advertising. Former Fortune CEO Alan Murray runs the institute and is the nominal editor of CEO Brief — and promises to read every bit of reader mail — though he has delegated the writing of the newsletter to subordinates in the early going.
Fast Company’s Lydia Dishman has joined (SWMS subscriber) Method Communications as VP of content strategy. Lydia joins an already strong content team, which includes former NY Times reporter Tim Race and B2B tech edit vet John Foley.
“I’m leaving to build something new,” Alex posted on X today. He spent 12 years at Forbes as a reporter and a builder of databases and lists. It’s time he gets to keep the money.
Axios reported on Jan. 24 that private equity firm Blackstone will sell IDG/Foundry, publishers of InfoWorld, Computerworld and Network World (and owners of IDC) to another private equity firm called Regent, which bought streaming video channel Cheddar in 2023. Remains to be seen how the ownership change will affect IDG’s venerable IT titles, but it’s unlikely their budgets will go up.
Unionized writers have secured new protections governing the use of generative AI in member newsrooms, reports the Hollywood Reporter. The union — Writers Guild of America, East — represents Fast Company, Wired and many other prominent titles. The union won agreement that publications “will not lay off current staff employees due to the use of generative AI,” and also that “advance notice [must be given] if the company plans to make the use of generative AI systems a requirement of [editors’] jobs.”
