SWMS Trends: Three New Opps in 2012

New year, new opportunity. But where exactly?

POV

Concerned that HuffPo and the blogs have kicked their ass, Bloomberg and the New York Times have re-committed to op-ed – and they seek your help.

Bloomberg View wants your contributed column at 800-1,000 words. Editor in charge: David Shipley. The New York Times’s re-tooled Sunday Review section is led by Trish Hall. Submit your piece at 750 words. 

“People are competing with us all over the place,” NYT op-ed chief Andrew Rosenthal told Crain’s New York Business. “We felt it was time to do our thing bigger and better.”

Can you capitalize?

“Our clients don’t have a message that appeals to top-tier titles like those,” an SWMS subscriber told us last month. 

They don’t if they think they don’t. Study the friction where business, technology and society meet. That’s what the NYT does, says tech editor Damon Darlin. So does Bloomberg op-ed chief Shipley, who spent five years at the NYT before moving to Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, InformationWeek and eWeek now reject vendor-contributed content. Why? Because vendors overdid the sales-y stuff, editors in both shops told us.

Don’t give up. Spend time on BigThink – it’ll give you and the clients a great overview on effective big thinking across business, technology and society. 

Data Journalism

Tech vendors are awash in newsworthy data. Knowledge bases. Customer support records. Footprints from social media fans and followers. Whose job is it to package this data for publication? Risk-averse vendors don’t dare. Even when they do, which departments have the best stuff? How fresh must it be? Should the data be redacted? Should legal be involved? PR agencies often lack the remit to tackle these issues. 

In 2012 that will begin to change. This year’s election coverage will bring new imagination to data display. Tablets will put data viz – literally -- in our hands. 

Rendering tools such as Tableau Software make it easy to blend data sets and spot patterns that trend-hungry journos can run with. Vendors can publish their own data, of course. Keep an eye on Dell’s soon-to-be-revamped IdeaStorm and the new kinds of coverage it makes possible. 

Journalists from the New York Times, the Guardian and other titles recently collaborated on the first Data Journalism Handbook. Bookmark this. It stands to become what the Cluetrain Manifesto was to social media and marketing.

IP TV

Some technologies seem to arrive twice. For example, Internet TV programmer Revision3 turns seven years old in April. IP TV infrastructure startup Ooyala is already four. Yet in 2012 IP TV still seems fresh and new. Why?

• smartphones and tablets have proliferated – with HD screens on the way
• 4G networks untether viewers from their desks on-camera talent has grown skilled and plentiful
• Skype interviews look and sound better every day
• Netflix/Amazon on Roku/Xbox have made IP TV part of everyday life

PR pros: grasp this opportunity. Study IP TV media talent. Befriend the producers. Add Skype interviews to your media training.

And happy new year!