Fri, 2016-01-29 05:23
Sam Whitmore
Profile Update: Fahmida Y. Rashid, InfoWorld
This time last year, InfoWorld senior writer Fahmida Y. Rashid managed the RSA Conference blog. "If journalism is a 10,000-foot view, [at RSAC] I was getting a 20,000-foot view," Fahmida says. And she learned a valuable lesson: security is only part of the picture.
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Healthcare-minded PR pros keep Christina Farr near the top of their pitch list, for good reason. Christina joined Fast Company last month as a senior writer covering "health and technology," one of the most fascinating beats you can have these days.
Officially speaking, Stephen J. Bronner is now a deputy editor at Entrepreneur, supervising seven staff writers. "It's always fantastic when you're able to do a new job with the same people you've become accustomed to over the years," he says. We say "officially" because Stephen isn't straying far from the contributed content gatekeeper role he filled for the past two years.
PureWow may not leap to mind among women's lifestyle publishers. It should. In 2015 its audience grew more than 300 percent. Its revenue more than doubled. "We completely blew past our numbers," says EIC Mary Kate McGrath. This is no mean feat considering fierce competition from Refinery29, Popsugar, HuffPo and countless others. 
Unlike most of the reporters you pitched this year, IDG News Service senior correspondent Katherine Noyes is a former senior copy editor and adjunct college instructor. That makes her a language expert. Her years of covering Linux and open source make her a tech expert, too.
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.
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:
