You may know John Kell as the author of Fortune’s weekly newsletter, CIO Intelligence. You’d be right, but John’s work also shows up in Fast Company and Business Insider. Few other freelancers have such impact.
Fast Company EIC Brendan Vaughan had a busy week this week, chairing the publication’s tenth annual Innovation Festival. On Sept. 11 Brendan made time for the following SWMS Q&A, in which he discussed the role of AI in innovation…
No one interviews more CEOs than Jon Fortt. Now in his 14th year at CNBC, the TV co-anchor and podcaster enjoys interviewing founders too. Jon likes to explore the minds of responsible people — fully responsible, for everything. That’s where the lessons are.
Think back to what you were doing in 1992. Jim Aley was writing features for Fortune. Eight years later he was editing them for Business 2.0. In 2024 he edits them still, serving as deputy editor for the recently relaunched Bloomberg Businessweek.
You may be familiar with Timothy B. Lee’s work from The Washington Post, Vox or Ars Technica — he worked at all three. Today Tim is a Substack author well into his second year of “Understanding AI,” a fast-rising analytical newsletter on the hottest topic around.
To know Eric Savitz is to like him. Friendly and smart. Versatile. The man spent 27 years in edit, the next six in PR and then returned to edit for another five. Who else has done that, or could?
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At 27, she is one of the important Tier 1 journalists in the business. Important certainly to SWMS readers, because no one writes more CEO profiles than Brooklyn resident Jane Thier.
Ken Yeung has returned to VentureBeat to cover AI as a contributing writer and editor. Tech PR veterans may remember Ken as a VB staff writer in 2015 and 2016. Now he is back. Knowing all about the fast-paced culture VB founder Matt Marshall has built.
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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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.”
