Tue, 2016-04-05 09:28
Sam
Profile: Phil Kenny, The Economist
Phil Kenny oversees data journalism at The Economist. Phil joined the newspaper 15 years ago. Since then, empirically speaking, he has seen it all -- but he hasn't published much of it. Accepting vendor data is "a trap we never fell into," Phil says.
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As promised last week, here is our conversation with freelance writer Stacey Higginbotham, now the author of a weekly e-newsletter on the Internet of Things. [Listen to our 20-minute audio conversation here.] The highlights: Stacey says she will continue to write for Fortune "once or twice a week... as long as they like my pitches."
If VentureBeat staff writer Jordan Novet says he'll get back to you, don't be surprised if on the odd chance he doesn't. Don't misunderstand: Jordan has integrity and means what he says. But look what happened in just two days this week: the IRS suffered computer failure; LinkedIn, Cisco and Microsoft acquired companies; and Box and Salesforce announced new products.
Mic now reaches 30 million readers each month. It just recruited Ruth Reader from VentureBeat to cover "innovative technology and the people behind it." That sounds promising. But Mic's relentless focus on big ideas -- sublime and ridiculous -- is likely to frustrate PR for a while yet.
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.
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.