Tag Archives: journalism

Web traffic growth no longer matters

During a recent podcast interview, Business Insider’s Henry Blodget admitted something astonishing: Business Insider is no longer seeking audience growth. Instead it’s now focused on wringing more engagement and revenue out of its already-existing audience. This is part of a larger trend in media in which news orgs are no longer pursuing traffic growth for the sake of traffic growth. In this video I explore why scaling your traffic doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll also be able to scale you revenue.

I spent several weeks using chatbots for news and they suck

With the growth chat apps like Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and Snapchat, we started to hear a lot of buzz last year about the rise of chatbots, which are accounts you can subscribe to within Facebook Messenger and chat with an AI that’s geared toward a specific task. Several news organizations launched their own chatbots, so a few weeks ago I subscribed to bots from the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and Complex Magazine. They all sucked. I explain why in the video below.

 

Has Medium lost its way?

If you’re a longtime Medium user like I am, you’ve likely noticed a number of drastic changes to the platform in recent years. At first, the site put significant resources toward producing original journalism on the platform. Then it spun off its homegrown publications and started focusing on luring established media companies to adopt its CMS. It also launched a native advertising program, only to abruptly shutter it and lay off a third of the company’s workforce. Just recently it launched a paid subscription service and drastically revamped its homepage feed. So what is with all these changes? Has the company figured out where it fits in the marketplace, or is it flailing about, still looking for a sustainable business model? To answer this question, I interviewed Renan Borelli, director of audience development at MTV News. Enjoy.

How I leveraged my journalism skills for a career in content marketing

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From time to time I’ll be speaking to someone I’ve never met before, and the “What do you?” question comes up. I’ve always struggled to answer. If I tell the person I’m a journalist, then invariably the next question is, “What publication do you work for?” Simply telling people I work in marketing could mean a variety of things depending on how familiar the person is with that industry. Well, though I haven’t thought up a more concise way to sum up my career, I now at least have an article I can point them to that discusses it at length. MediaShift asked me to write a first-person essay on how I leveraged my journalism skills for a career in content marketing. Here is the end result:

Why Freelance Journalists are Shifting Their Careers to Content Marketing