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.
Axios and Fortune continue to be star performers in the world of Tier 1 edit, according to the latest data from Similarweb.
From June 2023 through June 2024, Axios increased its readership by 47.5 percent, from 22.5M monthly visitors to 31.1M on a trailing 12-month basis. How does Axios do it? Smart management, smart verticals, smart brevity.
It’s been true for years: Tier 1 loves to craft “can they do it?” stories. Some PR pros avoid pitching “can they do it” stories because “what if they can’t?” Why encourage a reporter to think that the company might come up short?
Why would tech PR pros care which tier 1 titles have the most loyal readers? Why does loyalty — or the lack thereof — matter? Pitching requires deep knowledge of targets and beats, and that’s about it, right? Here’s why you might care.
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.
OK, so maybe the guest speaker would be of interest to our subscribers…. in any case, host Peter Jacobs took us to a lot of
Publications do have positions in the marketplace, but they often stray from them, pleasing readers in the process.
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This is the third installment of the SWMS-Semrush Top 15 Index. This month we list and analyze the top 15 most popular articles in Axios, TechCrunch, The Verge, VentureBeat and Wired during January 2023.
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FRIDGE NOTES
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.
Adweek subscription required.
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!
