Mediabistro Says Media Companies’ Jobs Aren’t Attractive Enough

To: Bill Conneely Subject: Responding to your “smackdown.” So, first off Bill, let’s talk about customer relations. I argued on this media blog that the market for matching journalists with journalistic outfits (and PR people with PR outlets) is still somewhat inefficient — an observation that others in similar positions to me (aka: your customers) […]

Why Is The Market For Journalists and PR People So Inefficient?

Can anyone explain to me why the recruitment market for entry- and early-mid-level journalists, and public relations people is still so insanely inefficient? I used to think it was just me who had to dig for days to turn up a single good candidate. Maybe, I just didn’t know where to look. Maybe, as editor […]

The World Cup’s Marketing Winners and Losers, Part Two

Today, we finish out our rundown of the heroes and goats from the pitch and beyond. Budweiser 2, Other brewers 2. Budweiser will be happy to have moved on from Germany, where the official beer sponsor was soundly pounded as spulwasser (that’s dishwater to you) by a populace that takes its beer seriously and didn’t […]

The World Cup’s Marketing Winners and Losers

While we wait impatiently for Holland versus Brazil, let me bring you a few of the latest World Cup marketing scores. Castrol 0, Visa 1. If a sponsor’s checkbook opens on Sepp Blatter’s desk and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Castrol is not the only marketer to pony […]

The New York Times Should Look to Game Mechanics, Loyalty As It Ponders a Paywall

So the paywall debate is raging. Again. That media rascal Murdoch has erected barriers and toll booths around his London Times and Sunday Times, and the New York Times is going to follow suit with a metered system that will charge readers who try to access more than an as-yet-to-be-determined number of stories. Predictably in […]

Why the News Media Needs to Spend on Data Visualization

Data visualization gets its props on web and information design sites, such as Web Design Ledger, Web Designer Depot, and Information Is Beautiful, which feature some incredible examples of this science (or is it art). Yet its influence on the way the news media tells stories and configures its platforms is still sadly limited. That’s […]

Testing a Truncated RSS Feed on Above the Law: The Results Are In

It’s time to wrap up the month-long trial of truncated RSS feeds on Above the Law. I had somewhat put the conclusion cart before the research horse, in that I marked the last day of this experiment in my calendar with the phrase “eat humble pie re. RSS.” And if you wait just a minute […]

Nike Reminds Us that Brand Ads Can Be Worth the Investment

Nike’s “Write the Future” ad reminded me of something the vivacious magazine publisher Felix Dennis said in the mid-nineties about the then ad-bloated issues of the revenue-producing beast InStyle magazine. He called it the last roar of the T-Rex before the dinosaurs became extinct. I’m not saying that either magazines or video ads are going […]

What Yahoo’s Deal for Associated Content Means

Last week Yahoo agreed to spend $90 million on Associated Content. While we sniffed at the quality of Associated’s two million-plus consumer-written articles, the deal has serious implications for the media business. Here’s how it impacts four different constituents. For Yahoo I think we can safely say that it depends on post-deal execution, as it […]

Beyond the iPad: Get Ready for the Internet of Things

Earlier this year, at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, I was struck by a remark that I thought I heard from Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg. “By 2020,” he said, “50 billion devices will be wirelessly connected to the internet.” I was going to tweet his statement from @breakingmedia but hesitated because I thought I must […]