Fri, 2016-06-17 04:44
Sam Whitmore
Why Mattermark Matters
Former TechCrunch reporter Alex Wilhelm loves the challenge of his new job as editor-in-chief of Mattermark. "It's a combo of my old job -- writing, reporting and publishing, plus a new layer of [managerial] skills I've had to learn." Alex is on the hunt for smart contributed content -- that isn't ghost-written.
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Darren Murph is back in the tech edit saddle, as global editor-in-chief of TechRadar, a UK-based site with a monthly audience of 44 million. If you already know Darren's name, it's probably through Engadget, where he spent almost eight years during that site's glory days.
Phil Kenny oversees data journalism at The Economist. Phil joined the newspaper 15 years ago. Since then, empirically speaking, he has seen it all -- but he hasn't published much of it. Accepting vendor data is "a trap we never fell into," Phil says.
As promised last week, here is our conversation with freelance writer Stacey Higginbotham, now the author of a weekly e-newsletter on the Internet of Things. [Listen to our 20-minute audio conversation here.] The highlights: Stacey says she will continue to write for Fortune "once or twice a week... as long as they like my pitches."
If VentureBeat staff writer Jordan Novet says he'll get back to you, don't be surprised if on the odd chance he doesn't. Don't misunderstand: Jordan has integrity and means what he says. But look what happened in just two days this week: the IRS suffered computer failure; LinkedIn, Cisco and Microsoft acquired companies; and Box and Salesforce announced new products.
Mic now reaches 30 million readers each month. It just recruited Ruth Reader from VentureBeat to cover "innovative technology and the people behind it." That sounds promising. But Mic's relentless focus on big ideas -- sublime and ridiculous -- is likely to frustrate PR for a while yet.
This time last year, InfoWorld senior writer Fahmida Y. Rashid managed the RSA Conference blog. "If journalism is a 10,000-foot view, [at RSAC] I was getting a 20,000-foot view," Fahmida says. And she learned a valuable lesson: security is only part of the picture.
Healthcare-minded PR pros keep Christina Farr near the top of their pitch list, for good reason. Christina joined Fast Company last month as a senior writer covering "health and technology," one of the most fascinating beats you can have these days.
Officially speaking, Stephen J. Bronner is now a deputy editor at Entrepreneur, supervising seven staff writers. "It's always fantastic when you're able to do a new job with the same people you've become accustomed to over the years," he says. We say "officially" because Stephen isn't straying far from the contributed content gatekeeper role he filled for the past two years.
PureWow may not leap to mind among women's lifestyle publishers. It should. In 2015 its audience grew more than 300 percent. Its revenue more than doubled. "We completely blew past our numbers," says EIC Mary Kate McGrath. This is no mean feat considering fierce competition from Refinery29, Popsugar, HuffPo and countless others. 
Unlike most of the reporters you pitched this year, IDG News Service senior correspondent Katherine Noyes is a former senior copy editor and adjunct college instructor. That makes her a language expert. Her years of covering Linux and open source make her a tech expert, too.
This time last year things looked awfully bleak at InformationWeek. Parent company UBM was slashing IWK's payroll and didn't appear to give a damn about its most respected editorial brand. Today, IWK is very much on the mend.
