Fri, 2015-08-14 06:39
Sam Whitmore
Where Are All the Narratives?
Is the tech narrative endangered? Lately we've cased the web for the kinds of stories we used to see everywhere -- the 600-to-800 word news story about a tech company claiming to have built something better, cheaper or faster, or otherwise out to change the world. We found far fewer than we expected, even where they once were abundant.
Want to upgrade to a subscription that includes SWMS news, research and consulting? Send e-mail to Sam for details.
Nine years ago this month, WSJ personal technology columnist Joanna Stern was an account coordinator at Kaplow Communications in New York. Last week Joanna was in Hong Kong, working the crowd at Converge, a two-day Asian tech conference co-sponsored by WSJ and f.ounders. Not bad.
What is it like to be a reporter at Business Insider? "Everyone is kind of their own CEO," says west coast bureau chief Matt Rosoff. There's no daily copy quota, as there is at Pando Daily and was at Gigaom. Every reporter is free to chase a big story that takes weeks to report if the story is big enough. However, Matt adds, "there's an expectation that we're not going to be missing any news."
Not so long ago, if you wanted to place a client in a business video, you'd email a producer you happened to know. If you had a decent story to tell and your client was good on camera, odds are you'd get the hit. Somewhere along the line, "web video" became "web broadcasting" -- and everything changed. 
Clouds, smartphones and wearables have transformed the world of financial services. Banks and brokerages battle crowdfunded lenders and robo advisors, using M&A, partnerships, FUD and every other weapon available. “Financial services companies are at the center of the tension between productivity and innovation and security and compliance,” Box CEO Aaron Levie 
(Editor's note: Moments after we posted this profile, 
On Mar. 31 Wall Street Journal technology editor Jonathan Krim will interview two startup CEOs (from Kiip and Locket) on stage at Hotel Adagio in San Francisco. Topic: Lessons and Pitfalls from Young Founders. Could your clients have handled a broad topic like that? Couldn't it be them up there instead? Probably yes. Had you heard about this pitch opp? You might have. It's not secret, just in the shadows. Amid unprecedented pressure for agencies to deliver "business press," coverage backdoors in the big titles have become more important than ever.
Kim Nash this week joined the WSJ's CIO Journal as senior writer, after five years at Baseline and more than 20 at IDG's Computerworld and CIO. Taking the WSJ job was "not a difficult decision whatsoever... I'm excited and honored to be here," Kim tells us. "I have a lot of longtime friends at IDG. I know a lot about the company and feel emotionally attached to it... but I can tell you I am thrilled to be here."
Former TechCrunch co-editor Erick Schonfeld is the executive producer of IDG's DEMO conference, but he also happens to be the co-founder of TouchCast, a fast-rising interactive video platform company. TouchCast lets video producers embed clickable elements -- such as a photo, a web page or even another video -- within the video frame itself. Think of it as picture-within-picture web video.
