It’s 2026. You’ve got a new job, earning $250K a year as “VP, Pitch Analytics.” You’ve got a modest budget to retain freelance tech reporters. You manage an intern.
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Who does John Kell write for again? Fortune? Fast Company? Business Insider? Well, all of them. John might have to rein things in starting this week, however, once he starts producing Fortune’s new CIO Intelligence newsletter.
Is TikTok worth the attention of tech PR pros? Based on fresh SWMS research, the answer is no, not really.
What exactly is Tier 1 publishing on TikTok, and is it pitchable? So few PR pros know because when they do find themselves on TikTok, they are probably not visiting, say, The Economist.
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Bloomberg last fall launched a 60-day marketing campaign with the message, “context changes everything.” In 2024 the “context’ messaging has continued, in the form of promoting Bloomberg’s opinion content.
What can tech PR expect in terms of AI coverage in February, March and April? As part of a valet consulting request, a subscriber asked us to do some thinking on that. Below is what we came up with.
TechCrunch suffered layoffs yesterday. At least five editors were affected
Perhaps you saw our Nov. 30 analysis of narrative story formulas that continually appear in Tier 1. The idea would be for PR pros to contour their story pitches to fit one of these formulas, since publications are writing these kinds of stories anyway.
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FRIDGE NOTES
I am currently informing all subscribers personally that SWMS is back. Informing people through an email blast is of course bad form. So I’m going to defer the reintroduction of the SWMS emailers until next week… thank you for your patience.
Axios is hiring a senior tech reporter to cover AI. How long will it take for the “laid-off” to land on their feet? It is already happening.
From Crunchbase News:
Neuralink’s recent $650 million raise is by far the largest for a neural interface startup on record, but comes as funding to neuroscience startups overall is set to rise sharply this year. All told, funding to the broader category of neuroscience startups totaled $896 million last year and is on track to reach $1.4 billion in 2025.
From the excellent The Rundown AI newsletter: The future of video content creation is increasingly looking camera-less — with this latest round of upgrades taking avatars from more robotic talking heads to full-fledged actors with more granular control over motion and expressiveness.
Time to get a grip on Veo.
The BI culture over the years has been aloof to vendors and definitely PR. Now that many of those affected could use a friend or two, here’s hoping they get the lift they need. Here is the message from BI CEO Barbara Peng.
