Fast Company technology editor Harry McCracken sheds light on newsgathering at physical and virtual events, and changes in FC edit coverage brought on by Covid and other factors. Interview was conducted July 2020.
If it wasn’t before, Fast Company’s Work Life section became perfectly positioned when legions of readers began working where they lived and living where they worked. “I will say what our editor-in-chief, Stephanie Mehta, has said about Work Life, which is, it’s table stakes for us,” says deputy editor Kathleen (Kate) Davis.
Fast Company last week unveiled The Queer 50, a first-ever list of LGBTQ women and nonbinary innovators in business and tech. The idea germinated in Fall 2019, when Fast Company editors and members of Lesbians Who Tech decided informally that “it was about time a list like this existed,” recalls FC editor Julia Herbst.
So the CMO believes in stretch goals and wants you to land a cover story. You know the odds and not the path. Thanks to Fast Company technology editor Harry McCracken, we at least can illuminate the path to this one, published in FC last fall. Read and learn.
The following is an excerpt from a Slack conversation held between Fast Company technology editor Harry McCracken and deputy editor David Lidsky in June 2018 as the pair were deciding whether to publish the Steph Curry/Palm cover story, and if so, how and when. Published with permission.
Fast Company editors voted to unionize last week. So did the New Yorker’s. Should PR care? Not directly. Unionization does affect the editorial environment in which you pitch. Over time, if the economics of publishing don’t improve, the best journalists may well seek to work where editors are “protected.”
Where are all the company profiles? They abounded when the IPO window was wide open. Not anymore. Back when he wrote for Forbes, Dan Lyons told us that PR people always wanted him to write “book reports” — here’s who we are, and we’ve done this and that. That sounds like a company profile, doesn’t it?
You send us lots of rejected contributed content, asking what went wrong. Sometimes we can spot a path forward, but it’s heartbreaking to hear that “the client wants it written this way” or “this has already been approved.” That’s why this week we studied nine sets of contributed content guidelines from top edit targets and packaged what we think is their most valuable advice.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
… and it has no problem disclosing how. Reporters still run the joint, but they are getting AI assistance.
The Atlantic’s Karen Hao, in conjunction with the Pulitzer Center, is designing a course in AI for journalists. Classes begin next month. Details here. Might be something to alert your friendlies about. Karen hopes to help train 1,000 journalists in AI over the next two years.
Joshua Topolsky‘s edit project for Robinhood is optimized for mobile but you can peruse it here. The design seems crazy. Context from Axios’s Sara Fischer here.
‘The Prompt” is not out yet, but you can sign up for it here.
That’s the strategy as expressed to NYT’s Katie Robertson by Axios CEO Jim VandeHei. First up: Eleanor Hawkins, Sara Fischer and Dan Primack.
Forbes’s reputation is taking a hit because of the ad scandal unearthed this month by the WSJ. Some advertisers have stopped spending with Forbes, at least temporarily. Here’s the latest from Digiday [subscription required].
