VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is building what you might call its own Wired — a pro-tech media brand appealing both to consumers and business. It’s unnamed as yet, but A16Z is hiring fast. So far, at least, parts of it appear to be pitchable.
Andreessen Horowitz is looking to hire an editor to manage guest posts. The VC firm’s 936-word want ad reveals much about good contributed content. PR pros can go to school on this one, using these universal insights when pitching any outlet.
DEI awareness is one thing, applying its principles through official corporate language quite another. We had the opportunity to examine a style guide produced by a tech company steeped in content publishing. There’s a lot to learn from it.
Three years ago we studied dozens of profiles carrying the headline, ‘Meet the Woman Who…” and “Meet the Man Who…” With gender now so fluid, we wondered whether that’s now an insensitive construct, to be avoided. We asked Tier 1 editors what they thought.
If you’re thinking about pitching a story to Ars Technica, you’d better hurry, because its editors are preparing to go out on strike.
Here is a pun-free list of journalists who cover cannabis usage and the industry that has grown around it. OK, maybe not pun-free.
It’s tough to recover when a key employee jumps ship, but that’s exactly what Decipher EIC Dennis Fisher managed to do, last month hiring Lindsey O’Donnell-Welch from rival Threatpost. Just like that, Decipher again is well-positioned to provide its context and analysis on cyberthreats and the efforts to thwart them.
SWMS contributor Leah McLean writes: Just as reporters need a reason why they should write the story being pitched, buyers of security solutions want useful detail on why they should buy. Being in close contact with these buyers as I am, let me share a real-world scenario.
Here’s a highly scrollable way to see what we produced in the first quarter of 2021. SWMS in Review is well-suited to explain to someone else what SWMS is all about. Statistically speaking, we averaged one cheat sheet and one new pitch opp per week.
Perhaps you saw the headline in HBR: “Women-Led Startups Received Just 2.3% of VC Funding in 2020.” Google — the company — is out to fix that with a recently launched podcast called Founded… and its co-founder welcomes your pitch.
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Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
At this time last year, Eric Newcomer and his two podcast co-hosts — Max Child and James Wilsterman — each formed an “AI startup fantasy team” and picked five AI startups to seed their rosters. We’re now in year 2 and it’s time to draft again. The podcasters wonder… which startups do they dump? Which do they add? The player whose startups accumulate the most total value by Nov. 1, 2028 is the winner, so there’s plenty of time to make adjustments. Here’s a link to the AI fantasy team podcast — you may need a password. Not sure.
