If you’ve ever listened to a podcast, you’ll want to spend six minutes listening to this. It’s an experimental audio file produced by a new Google tool called NotebookLM. It turns a text file or PDF into a podcast…
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.
Until now at least, PR pros never had to pay much attention to tech analytics platforms such as CrunchBase, PitchBook and CB Insights. Sure, they might have had a blog. But PR was built to pitch publications. The worlds of tech data and tech edit really didn’t intersect.
The UK-based newsletter company called Trending Now uses AI to scrape what’s trending across 27 areas of B2B. Press Gazette has additional detail. The company
Two of the world’s most powerful business publishers are out to refine themselves as the impact of generative AI approaches.
Ever use AI to test pitches before sending them to reporters? Try it sometime. It’s a fun way to improve them. For the proper horsepower, you’ll need a paid subscription to a Gen AI service such as GPT-4 or Claude 3.
Strangely enough, there’s not a whole lot of coverage on how banks are using AI. Where are all the curious journalists?
Just for fun, try creating the story pitch after the story is written. We did that this week, using generative AI. We pasted an already-published story into each of three GenAI tools and asked it to write a compelling PR pitch based on that article.
It’s 2026. You’ve got a new job, earning $250K a year as “VP, Pitch Analytics.” You’ve got a modest budget to retain freelance tech reporters. You manage an intern.
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FRIDGE NOTES
“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.”
TC’s Rebecca Bellan finds fault with Quartz for how poorly its AI rewrote a recent story of hers. Quartz doesn’t attempt to hide its use of AI. This will be the year everyone assumes that all publications use AI one way or another, and few if any people will come to care.
Dr. Diane Hamilton has posted 37 articles on Forbes’s CHRO Network page since Dec. 1. She has an active LinkedIn profile, which advertises a book she wrote. But her X feed and her personal web page both seem to be down. The Dr. happens to be founder and CEO of Tonerra, a company that specializes in content creation, among other things. Strange, then, that Tonerra has no web site of its own. If you happen to see Dr. Hamilton, ask her to call her service.
Today’s Press-Gazette has a fascinating interview with Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, who left the FT to launch The CEO Signal, a weekly newsletter built for CEOs of companies with annual revenues of at least $500M. You can apply to receive it here.
