
Deep Dive: Fortune’s Edit Churn in 2024
Fortune sure does churn through the journalists. In the ten months since we last studied its masthead, 19 editors have departed, while 16 arrived. That’s roughly a 25 percent turnover rate.
Fortune sure does churn through the journalists. In the ten months since we last studied its masthead, 19 editors have departed, while 16 arrived. That’s roughly a 25 percent turnover rate.
Lots of people cover cloud these days but who’s at the core of it? This SWMS cheat sheet offers 17 targets across Tier 1, trades and verticals. The challenge was not to omit obvious go-to’s, but still come up with targets you may not have considered.
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.
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.
Until now at least, PR pros never had to pay much attention to tech analytics platforms such as CrunchBase, PitchBook and CB Insights. Sure, they might have had a blog. But PR was built to pitch publications. The worlds of tech data and tech edit really didn’t intersect.
This cheat sheet was born from a valet request for reporters who are covering corporate sponsorships of the Olympics — which will come and go. Fact is, most if not all of these 11 journalists stand to cover sponsorships in general — if the deal was interesting enough.
f you represent a tech product that fits in a “back to school” category, you had better get those pitches together — the coverage is already appearing. This cheat sheet contains 11 targets, many freelance and connected to a publication’s “list and best of” operations.
Two of the world’s most powerful business publishers are out to refine themselves as the impact of generative AI approaches.
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?
Here’s a cheat sheet with 13 reporters who cover how Washington tries to rein in the forces of technology. Keep an eye on this group… and expect it to grow in coming months.
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
Indy media business experts Brian Morrissey and Jacob Cohen Donnelly have built two very successful businesses with both newsletters and face-to-face events. Axios has noticed this and has decided to get into the event space focusing on the economics of publishing, which of course is a topic close to home. Announced this week: an Axios event coming up in September. Hosts: Sara Fischer and Kerry Flynn.
ServiceNow has launched a special report on Fortune to jumpstart strategic spending on AI, illustrating workarounds for implementation problems, and otherwise illuminating the path to integrating AI into software operations. This is a branding exercise, of course, and perhaps is a sign that earned media is just not going get a strategic job done.
AIQ shows a big idea and how to leverage the prestige of Fortune without having to pitch stories to accomplish that same objective: you can just buy shelf space. In the case of AIQ, Fortune hired freelancer Sage Lazzaro — who used to work on staff there to create high-level content. So let’s keep an eye on this project, monitoring how well-respected it is… and whether its content gets surfaced in search engines.
Here are the details — Choose from 5 categories and 30+ subcategories. The awards are being promoted by Bhava Communications, an SWMS subscriber.
The guy also is the full-time “chairman” of Bally and Sassoon. On top of that, he’s also chairman of Foundry and 13 other companies. Well, 14, if you count his own private equity firm. How much time will he put into TC, understanding the subtleties of tech edit?
Julie opens up to host Dave Reddy.. it’s a good listen. BVM is a SWMS subscriber.