CIO

A veteran of IDG and TechTarget and now on her own as consultant to CIOs, Maryfran Johnson discusses how best to pitch editors who serve C-title executives, in the first SWMS video teleconference of 2020. Visit MFJ Media to learn more about what Maryfran is up to these days.

In the SWMS piece to your right, we posited that case studies might not be worth the trouble of arranging — or writing — because few readers shared them on social. There’s more to it than that. Using the ShareableMetrics tool from ShareableMetrics the company, we’ve learned two additional things...

IDG Communications yesterday laid off 93 employees, mostly in US-based editorial. It was the largest layoff in IDG’s 53-year history. Says IDG CMO Josh London in an email: “This was a difficult decision for the company, but we are grateful to those colleagues whose roles have been affected for their many contributions to IDG.”

You may remember Ben Worthen from his six years at the Wall Street Journal or seven years at CIO Magazine. Today Ben is well into his second year as EIC of Ready State, a San Francisco-based marketing agency providing strategy, design and content. "Marketing is really good at what you want to say," Ben says. "Journalists are trained to say, 'Does anybody care?'"

Kim Nash this week joined the WSJ's CIO Journal as senior writer, after five years at Baseline and more than 20 at IDG's Computerworld and CIO. Taking the WSJ job was "not a difficult decision whatsoever... I'm excited and honored to be here," Kim tells us. "I have a lot of longtime friends at IDG. I know a lot about the company and feel emotionally attached to it... but I can tell you I am thrilled to be here."

Did I make you laugh? Good, because if you have an inner Tina Fey or Jimmy Fallon, and you bring that instinct to work, you can come sit by me. Snark and humor resonate with readers and fuel headlines that people love to share. Enterprise tech headline writing, which I have been practicing intensely since 2008, also involves science, art, and muscle memory. Great headline writers keep up to date on the science, appreciate the art, and relish the practice.