Fri, 2015-12-04 12:38
Sam Whitmore
Tech Edit Spotlight: InformationWeek
This time last year things looked awfully bleak at InformationWeek. Parent company UBM was slashing IWK's payroll and didn't appear to give a damn about its most respected editorial brand. Today, IWK is very much on the mend.
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Pitching Gadfly, Bloomberg's newly announced business analysis site, is well worth the try -- especially if you shape and pitch contributed content. Nearly all Gadfly essays run between 500 and 700 words, contain at least one chart, offer plenty of outbound links, and make a smart point that thoughtful readers -- even experts in a given field -- might not have considered.
If there's one publication out there that never made a bad move, it's Quartz. According to Digiday, the three-year-old title now attracts 15 million uniques per month, about half from outside the US. More than 60 reporters and producers now publish between 50 and 60 pieces per day, Digiday says. That said, Quartz is at heart a software company.
Eighteen months out of Syracuse, Business Insider's Maya Kosoff is a modern tech reporter. She covers startups and venture capital on her own terms; there's nothing she is obliged to write, no story that will land her in trouble if she fails to post it. Like her BI colleagues, Maya produces lists, exposés and scoops -- none of which are fertile vehicles for PR.
Pando, again, is in trouble. In June we published "Pando's Last Stand," covering the publication's quest to persuade 5,000 readers to subscribe at $100 a year -- by year end. With eight weeks to go, reported EIC Sarah Lacy and editorial director Paul Carr this week, subscriptions have plateaued at "a fraction above 3,100." In response, Pando has announced 
Pam Baker is a busy woman. Currently editor of FierceBigData, she also freelances for, among others, 
After profiling his work last week, we circled back with Forbes chief insight officer Bruce Rogers to get his own take on how best to approach him. "The first thing for any PR person to know is that 1) I get scores of pitches daily 2) I am not necessarily looking to be pitched. That leaves the rare pitch to which I pay attention that have the following in common:
So you want to get into TechCrunch. You can pitch beleaguered reporters -- or write the piece yourself. It's easier than you think. Just make senior editor Jon Shieber happy. "The whole thrust of what we want to do is to have people who are very experienced in the industry be able to explain different aspects of the industry, or speak to the community on things that are going on," explains Jon.
"I'm not really a grumpy journalist," says Forbes contributor Adrian Bridgwater. "I just play one on Twitter." The ambiguity suits Adrian well. Though he's most associated with Forbes, where he writes ten to 12 posts a month on enterprise appdev and data management, Adrian writes almost as often (about open source) for Computer Weekly, a TechTarget site.
Getting to know Fusion senior editor Kashmir Hill is easy -- at least a younger version of her. Spend some time on her now-defunct personal blog. You'll learn that her goal as a journalist is to give people information they can rely on. She dislikes April Fool's Day and feels like it's smart to spend at least one week a year completely off the Internet.
Taylor Hatmaker isn't just The Daily Dot's tech editor, or just another ReadWrite alumnus that landed somewhere else. She's emblematic of so many post-PR player-coaches we see today in the "millennial" publications (and before we know it, everywhere else). She can report, write and edit, with a refined sense of audience and keen differentiation from competitors.
