TechCrunch Redesigns
October 2, 2024
1:42 pm
TechCrunch redesigned this week. Still green, less clutter. Built for the phone. Events and newsletters rank higher in the home page scroll than startups, venture
>> Notes
Wired To Launch Awards Program
September 29, 2024
8:28 am
Adweek’s Mark Stenberg reports that Wired is getting into the awards business. The Wired 101 Awards will debut in October. Be on the lookout for
BI’s AI-based Paywall Increased Conversions by 75 Percent
September 25, 2024
6:29 am
BI’s publishing software knows what you’ve clicked on before and where you came from. Through Google Analytics, BI also knows how all readers react to
Prepare for Axel Springer to Acquire Publications
September 22, 2024
5:20 am
Now that it has sold off its classifieds business, the owner of Politico and Business Insider will go shopping for more titles. Don’t be surprised
Follow Anthropic’s Steve Mnich For Guidance on Claude
September 9, 2024
10:01 am
Steve is a longtime friend of SWMS and worked at subscriber LaunchSquad before moving on to IBM, Salesforce and now Anthropic. Steve knows exactly how
27 B2B Newsletters, All In One Place
July 23, 2024
6:04 am
The UK-based newsletter company called Trending Now uses AI to scrape what’s trending across 27 areas of B2B. Press Gazette has additional detail. The company
Semafor Goes AI Crazy
May 23, 2024
3:33 pm
Fourteen of 19 tech stories in the Semafor technology section are about AI. Two of the five outliers were about TikTok’s potential sale. Semafor sells
Refinery29 Buys An Event Company
May 8, 2024
8:41 am
Another scoop from Sara Fischer at Axios: Refinery29 is “taking over” B2C event brand Beautycon, among the most successful F2F events in the beauty space.
Microsoft Now Powering Semafor With AI
March 5, 2024
9:36 am
Visit Semafor and you’ll see lots of headlines with blue stars next to them. Semafor reporters write these articles, which then are extended by ChatGPT
The Economist, On Its Own Writing Style
October 6, 2023
9:11 am
The Economist this week held a 60-minute webinar on the topic of its own writing style. Three editors emphasized the power of simplicity: “old, short
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
The Media Business Underperforms Other Industries, Badly
February 6, 2025
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.
WSJ Launches CEO Brief Newsletter
February 6, 2025
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.
Lydia Dishman Joins Method Communications
February 6, 2025
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.
Next Out the Door: Forbes’s Alex Konrad
January 31, 2025
“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.
IDG/Foundry: From One Private Equity Owner to Another
January 31, 2025
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.
Key Editorial Union Stands Up To AI
January 31, 2025
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.”