So you want to be a content leader
Let's go over your options
Good morning.
I hope everyone is doing alright.
I’m heading out on vacation for two weeks and I’m looking forward to it. There are a few things scheduled out in advance for you. Hopefully you enjoy them.
Let’s get to today’s topic.
A couple of weeks ago a LinkedIn post outlining all of the brands that have hired former journalists or media leaders to run their content arms caught my eye. I filed it away for later.
But then a former colleague and friend of mine dropped me a note saying she’d like to see me cover it here. So here I am, covering it here.
In case you don’t want to click into the link above. Here’s a visual of all the places that have hired former journalists to drive their content/content marketing.
None of this really surprises me. At Artsy, we didn’t know it, but we were kind of ahead of things. (We were ahead in a lot of ways, but that’s a separate story and you can DM me if you want me to toot my own horn and the horns of everyone that worked on our editorial team there.)
But, at Artsy, we worked for a company that was ostensibly for helping businesses in the art world sell more art. To gain trust and stand out in the industry, Artsy needed content. It needed good content.
And, it took some time, but after several years and lots of help from talented people from lots of different backgrounds (some in media and some not) and lots of experimentation, we did some good work and got attention for the brand.
Probably the most famous example of this was Harry’s Razor’s supporting MEL magazine for many years.
Now, as you can see, this is common practice. Any brand needs good content across platforms to stand out. My fiancee shows me wild TikToks of all these brands now that are making little animated characters and jingles to try and stand out on that platform. It’s bizarre, surreal, and funny stuff. It’s not for me—but I don’t really buy stuff. It’s for a new generation of potential customers.
Why are these places hiring these journalists? Well, because, in case you haven’t noticed in all of my previous newsletters, it’s kind of hard out there.
If you have years of experience in media as an actual writer or editor or leader, there aren’t a lot of great options out there.
You can try to find a senior job at an established media company. But those are tough and increasingly rare jobs.
You can take a step back from leadership and be a pure editor. But that comes with its own challenges.
You can move to Substack and create your own small business. But that’s going to require a lot of work and you probably need to be very into being everywhere, as Kyle Chayka outlined.
You can set up your own consulting or strategy business, but that takes hustle and a lot of posting on LinkedIn. You got the stomach for that?
You can try to find jobs running content at an institution focused on learning or education (e.g. a museum, think tank, nonprofit, etc.)
Or, you can try to find a job running content at a consumer or B2B brand of some kind.
Maybe there are other options, but I can’t think of them right now.
This is good for brands because they are getting talented people to help drive awareness for their core business. And it is good for the talented people because these places have actual products they are selling or businesses with (varying) levels of proven success.
However, there’s always a catch. Content, at these places, is marketing and when times get tough, marketing is the first thing to go. And very often, there are people making big decisions that don’t understand how content pays off in the long run.
It’s a gamble. But what career isn’t at this point?
One media is sports quote
“Media is turning into sports, an entertaining industry that revolves around exciting, controversial characters and their teams. We’re all walking around with an inbox full of our favorite players. If you're a media operator, you should not be taking a summer Friday today. You should be having an emergency meeting about talent retention, when signing with Substack is always an option. One retention strategy is obviously having insurance and benefits, which still beats Substack in some ways. Another is to let writers play in new formats like newsletters and video.”
This one is from Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me newsletter last Friday. This quote both shows the opportunity and the challenge right now: there’s lots of individual people and experts out there now competing with you for subscription dollars—but it charts a path forward for how to better empower your teams and rethink how they do their jobs. The internet doesn’t necessarily need lots of new articles: it needs new good articles and other ways to market those and draw attention to them.
I expect all these links to be read or listened to by the time I’m back
Lots of good podcasts recently that I recommend listening to
Brian Morrissey talked to the CRO of the Wall Street Journal about their business strategies.
Morrissey also spoke to Jessica Sibley, the CEO of Time, about how their business has evolved.
On the Grill Room Podcast, Dylan Byers and Julia Alexander had a good conversation about YouTube and Alexander’s theory that we actually need less content. This is something I agree with.
On People vs. Algorithms, Brian Morrissey talked with Sara Fischer and Neil Vogel live from Cannes about the current media landscape with Google Zero approaching. Lots of good stuff in here.
And Morrissey also spoke to the EIC of Cosmo, Willa Bennett, and Hearst CRO Lisa Howard about how the Cosmo brand has evolved. I really enjoyed this one.
Substack is raising more money. Dylan Byers has some good thoughts on this over at Puck.
Derek Thompson is leaving The Atlantic to set up shop on Substack. His podcast will continue on at The Ringer. Great, more competition here. Now no one will be reading my 40 for 40 movie series!
Speaking of The Atlantic, apparently they’re paying people a lot of money.
Digiday has a report on how Reddit is becoming a bigger source of traffic for publishers. And apparently the Daily Beast is seeing a lot of those referrals. Great! Good for them.
The New York Times reports that, in May of this year, people watched more hours of streaming entertainment than cable and network television combined. Kind of surprised that hadn’t already happened.
Perhaps related, Deadline reports that Amazon and Roku are partnering to give brands access to advertise on 80% of connected-TV households. If you’re a website, you better have very good audience targeting to compete with something like that.
The Atlantic also launched their games hub. Guess, they’re a gaming company now too.
And according to Bustle’s editor in chief, BDG’s brands and business are doing just great.