Jessy Wu’s Post

Vincent Heeringa has penned a thoughtful post on the destruction of an industry of intelligent, hardworking and principled individuals who are not driven by money, but by truth, vs the addictive so-called “social” media and now AI in the mix (text predictive algorithms that plagiarize creative and media content). War photographers risk their lives to document reality and AI generated photos use these images unpaid, then sell them at a higher price by making them appear more dramatic. This is happening now. So often, ignorance is directed at journalists, by people who claim the media is paid to write what the government wants them to. Well if this were true, journalists would be on incomes higher than consultants’ fees and there would be no crisis with journalism disappearing! There’s so much opportunity for AI in your industry too. Are you in HR? AI can summarize candidates and hire. Real estate? Who really needs a human? What about politicians…are they necessary to make decisions for their constituents? We are living in very interesting times indeed.

Love and tautoko this comment, wisdom and challenge by Dean Williamson in the comments section of Vincent’s excellent article: ‘it’s time to develop new and better frameworks for good communication.’ Quote; “With so much content trying to win our attention, powered by technology and tactics that have developed much faster than our ability to filter through them, it has become overwhelming. Good communication is at the heart of good society. Unfortunately the current technology and algorithm driven framework we’ve been relying on to connect us and inform us has instead exposed the worst in us. Now that we see what bad looks like, it’s time to develop new and better frameworks for good communication.”

More terrible news for the #media industry, this time impacting TechCrunch. It has been long considered the "newspaper of record" for Silicon Valley. It helped elevate breakthrough startups, shared the achievements and less successful endeavors of tech firms, and brought to our attention innovations that might have otherwise been invisible in areas we don't typically care about. Even with all its success, the publication isn't immune to the changing business climate. This week, it parted ways with some amazing journalists, including Darrell Etherington, Matt Burns, Harri Elizabeth Weber, Catherine Shu, and Morgan Sung. If you're looking for outstanding media professionals, please start here 👆 Also, TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos said in an internal memo the company's subscription program, TC+, will be shutting down. Originally called ExtraCrunch, it launched in 2019 as a way to diversify revenue back when TechCrunch was owned by Verizon — it's now owned by Yahoo. Additionally — and perhaps relevant to those in #marketing and #PR — TechCrunch will no longer accept guest contributions. With the restructuring, the publication plans to focus on original reporting and content, along with sponsored posts. Read more about the memo in Mark Stenberg's report for ADWEEK 👇 https://lnkd.in/e5u2cqGd #journalism #technology #business #siliconvalley

It's disheartening to learn about Vice Media's challenges, highlighting the harsh reality many media companies face today. The news serves as a wake-up call for new media startups to rethink revenue strategies and innovate for long-term sustainability. #ViceMedia #MediaIndustry #Innovation #RevenueStrategies https://lnkd.in/dVgZDdBN

I don't know much about the new owner of the Onion, but I do suspect that whatever happens next is likely to be better than it has been under the previous owners. Five years ago G/O Media (which was basically a vehicle for a handful of old Gawker sites) bought the Onion... and it looks like it's languished ever since. Here's the thing: I don't really understand G/O. It is, from what I can see, a private equity company focused on ailing new media assets. And the private equity model is like houseflipping for businesses: 1) buy something kinda broken 2) either fix it up into something nicer or strip it for parts 3) then resell the entity or the pieces for a profit. But while G/O has bought up a significant number of sites and publishers over the years, it feels like every publisher or service it buys gets demonstrably worse. And maybe I'm wrong on this, but it's hard to see that selling publications to Cards Aginst Humanity (which bought Clickhole from G/O) or Paste Magazine (which bought Jezebel, Splinter and the AV Club) or Static Media (which bought Deadspin and immediately laid everybody off) are big money spinners. Perhaps G/O is turning profit off these deals? Is it making money somewhere else? Hive mind -- what do you know???

The challenge is though that marketing spend often sits outside of comms and PR teams in many organisations. It has fast become the case that there are too many advertorial puff pieces that get written by marketing teams that don’t understand the true value of a strong, engaging narrative or good story telling. Added to this, a lot of PR agencies continue to also pitch bland homogenised and ‘brand -focused’ pieces and too many publications continue to publish them. This devalues the editorial integrity of the publications, which lessons the value of appearing in the publications and also decreases interest for readers as well as decreasing the value of placing more and/ better creative campaigns by good marketing teams in those publications. I always advocate for the support of our media industry through creative campaigns and engagement. But there has to remain value in creative campaigns and good quality story telling in both earned editorial pieces for a PR perspective, and in creative campaigns from a marketing POV. I feel particularly sorry for Alt-fi as I believe they did their best to innovate in these areas but ultimately was just too much. But until we start to value good content more, and comms and marketing teams work more closely together to support the industry with better quality content,  I fear the decline will continue.

You open up your New York Times app and there is a big feature story about a peer/competitor organization. Why did they get the coverage over you? Sometimes the reason is clear - they’re announcing a major innovation, service to a new community, or they’ve hit a significant milestone. Perhaps they offered a more relevant source for the story. However, the reason they are getting the coverage may be less obvious. Here are five reasons why a peer organization might be getting the spotlight and what you can do about it. #purposedrivenPR

BuzzFeed Provides An Update - https://lnkd.in/gRZic94k Follow #citybiz on LinkedIn - https://lnkd.in/eBgXKiz8 BuzzFeed, Jonah Peretti #internet #informatointechnology #update

Utilizing the Influence of Instagram Annotations: A Revolutionary Tool for Your Company'

It's not the role of the media to act as cheerleaders. That's the role of us in public relations (the clue is in the job description). Theranos is just the most-obvious example of the value in the media calling it out when the emporer had no clothes on. And PR is not easy. That's its role: to explain to audiences, sceptical journalists and their editors in particular, the merits of an argument or a position or a product sufficiently well to convince journalists to write objectively and independently. Anyone can book an ad or own a web page. Editors make us work for a living. For startups, financial success ultimately remains the best measurement. Everything that comes before is a good idea wrapped in hope. Neither is a sure-fire strategy for sustained and meaningful success. #startups #VC #publicrelations #PR