Thu, 2019-01-24 07:49
Sam
Behind BuzzFeed's 200+ Layoffs: The Big Roll-Up
More than 1,000 media people lost their jobs yesterday. At BuzzFeed the toll will range between 225 and 250. At Verizon Media Group — home to Yahoo, AOL and TechCrunch — it was more like 850. What’s happening and what does it mean for PR?
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Does Business Insider hurt itself reserving select articles only for BI Prime subscribers? Probably not. Of all the types of articles BI publishes, only three tend to be gated, SWMS research shows. Unfortunately, those types include most stories PR folks would pitch.
Dow Jones this week introduced WSJ Pro Artificial Intelligence (WSJ Pro AI), the sixth in a series of WSJ Professional Editions designed for business executives and technologists immersed in a particular field. Unlike the other WSJ Pro verticals -- focused on cybersecurity, central banking, venture capital, private equity, and bankruptcy -- the AI vertical is free.
Add Substack to the list of platforms frustrating to PR -- Product Hunt, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Quora -- that command attention but aren't pitchable like publications. Founded in 2017, Substack is a publishing platform for indie newsletter authors. It's cool and we'll get into why, but Substack's web site is more or less a metaphorical black box.
Here's a selection of 2019-related links and notions you may find predictive of things to come. Explored are three cool tools that automate the creation of rough drafts, the rise of graphics at the WSJ, and the specter of global financial chaos that could transform the world of business and tech media.
A fixture in our Q4 subscriber meetings was the discussion of SEO and evergreen content. Here's how the set-up went. "Think about how much has been written about digital transformation... the many thousands of articles. Now let's go to Google, type in 'digital transformation' and let's see what ranks highest."
Before 2018 concludes, we wanted to share concepts we presented during our recent subscriber visits. We typically arrived in the conference room with 10-15 web pages tabbed up on the laptop — and we varied them from day to day. Rarely omitted: the one on "business, society and technology."
A sharp-eyed subscriber alerted us this week to a cool, little-known Business Insider feature called “My First Day as CEO.” After a bit of sleuthing we identified the editor who oversees the franchise, and she offered us good background and pitching advice.
If you like the Forbes Technology Council, you'll like the newly announced Ad Age Collective. It's based on the same idea: paying an affordable annual fee for the right to publish content to a prestigious site and to enjoy additional benefits -- such as professional introductions and early-bird pricing to live events.
There aren't too many like Kathryn Bonesteel. She has worked in PR at agencies and in-house. At other times she worked as a legislative aide in the Texas House of Representatives, and in marketing for the Dallas Cowboys. And she's one of the sharpest pros we know when it comes to SEO and social analytics.
If you're looking for quick-and-dirty lists of top tech edit targets across 28 tech categories, you might be interested in Techmeme's new Topic Leaderboards. Created by Gabe Rivera in 2005, the original Techmeme Leaderboards tracked the clout of individual reporters and publications, and still do.
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