Will there ever be another Walt Mossberg? The now retired consumer tech product reviewer was one of a kind. But someone, someday, is bound to emerge as the voice above all others. Don’t be surprised if it’s Bloomberg technology reporter Mark Gurman.
-- Updated Aug. 2, 2017 -- Contributed content is becoming harder than ever to place. Our one-of-a-kind list of gatekeepers is freshly scrubbed and augmented. It's the most popular page on our web site. Enjoy and good luck.
Are tech events on the wane? Quartz last month pulled the plug on The Next Billion, its three-year-old conference series with $1,500 ticket prices. The Bloomberg Technology Conference, historically held each June in San Francisco, is as yet unscheduled for 2017.
Axios soft-launched yesterday. It's the publication Dan Primack left Fortune to join. You can sign up for its newsletters here. The web site debuts late next month. Pitching Axios will be difficult but not impossible. Think Quartz, Bloomberg Gadfly, The Atlantic, The New Yorker.
Seeing as Bloomberg Businessweek has published its "The Year Ahead" issue, it's probably OK to begin assessing 2017 and what it will bring tech PR pros and the editors they pitch. Today let's keep it simple and consider just one issue -- stunning job losses where print advertising and unions still reign.
Bloomberg made news of its own last week. It launched its newest vertical, Bloomberg Technology. It launched Decrypted, a tech podcast, and Fully Charged, a daily e-mail newsletter. It announced two new live-video shows: "Apple This Week" with Mark Gurman and Alex Webb, and "Digital Defense" with Jordan Robertson.
We learned much in our 15 meetings last week in Chicago and Washington, DC. For example, we learned that some clients live in a time warp. No, Tier 1 reporters don't want to travel to Timbuktu for your press conference or product demo. And only a reporter new to a beat has time for coffee. Also, what's with the quotas and ultimatums?
What do you do if you're an editor-in-chief and have reportorial superstars everywhere you look? That's the landscape for Connie Guglielmo, now halfway through her third year as EIC of CNet News. Ultimately, she told us in a recent SWMS interview, her job is to "look at opportunities and add value."
Which Tier 1 titles are podcasting? In June 2016 we explored the podcast efforts of 11 top titles, listing the shows and their missions, and where there is opportunity, whom to pitch. Here's our spot check, in alphabetical order.
Doug MacMillan will leave the WSJ this summer to become a Knight-Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University in New York. "There's no plan to announce yet about who will be taking over my beat, but I know that I am leaving the bureau in very capable hands," Doug says.
