No one interviews more CEOs than Jon Fortt. Now in his 14th year at CNBC, the TV co-anchor and podcaster enjoys interviewing founders too. Jon likes to explore the minds of responsible people — fully responsible, for everything. That’s where the lessons are.
Think back to what you were doing in 1992. Jim Aley was writing features for Fortune. Eight years later he was editing them for Business 2.0. In 2024 he edits them still, serving as deputy editor for the recently relaunched Bloomberg Businessweek.
You may be familiar with Timothy B. Lee’s work from The Washington Post, Vox or Ars Technica — he worked at all three. Today Tim is a Substack author well into his second year of “Understanding AI,” a fast-rising analytical newsletter on the hottest topic around.
To know Eric Savitz is to like him. Friendly and smart. Versatile. The man spent 27 years in edit, the next six in PR and then returned to edit for another five. Who else has done that, or could?
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At 27, she is one of the important Tier 1 journalists in the business. Important certainly to SWMS readers, because no one writes more CEO profiles than Brooklyn resident Jane Thier.
Ken Yeung has returned to VentureBeat to cover AI as a contributing writer and editor. Tech PR veterans may remember Ken as a VB staff writer in 2015 and 2016. Now he is back. Knowing all about the fast-paced culture VB founder Matt Marshall has built.
Jared Council is one of a kind. Yes, he covered AI for the WSJ, which is sort of a conventional thing for a good reporter to do. Then things changed. Jared blended what he did with who he was deep inside.
Fortune editorial fellow Dylan Sloan will turn 24 in May. If you happened to visit Freeport a year or two back, you might have run into a wavy-haired bouncer at Gritty McDuff’s Brew Pub.
If tech journalism had its own 30 Under 30 list, Belle Keni Lin certainly would be on it. The 28-year-old WSJ reporter started her career as a marcom intern, first at Dropbox and later at Fleetsmith, an IT software company later acquired by Apple.
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Steve is a longtime friend of SWMS and worked at subscriber LaunchSquad before moving on to IBM, Salesforce and now Anthropic. Steve knows exactly how to harness Claude’s power for comms purposes. Follow him and learn.
Press Gazette has a great story about Google reintroducing AI summaries into search results — less so in queries about breaking news, but definitely when someone searches for trend or how-to info. Convenient for users, maybe… but publishers stand to lose a ton of long-tail traffic because of this. No wonder the vast majority of publisher “innovation” is about commerce or consulting and no longer builds upon journalism.
CNBC Make It had a popular video franchise called My Biggest Lessons, in which CEOs shared something valuable that they learned along the way. No new segments have appeared since May 31. We’ll monitor this for you.
Great reporting from Mark Stenberg at Adweek. Two departures on the sales side seem to have hurt. The story also suggests that former Fortune CEO Alan Murray — who said he was retiring — may turn up at WSJ. Fortune is said to have released Murray from his noncompete, taking his word that he was ending his career.
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Ten months ago SWMS spotlighted five up-and-coming Fortune reporters, suggesting that PR get to know these rookies. Where are they now? Jane Thier continues to excel in the Success section. Ruth Umoh now edits Next To Lead. Kylie Robison split for The Verge. Rachyl Jones is a fellow at Semafor. Alexandra Sternlicht this summer won a Knight-Bagehot fellowship at Columbia. Competition for this is brutal — congrats Alexandra!
