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Weekly strategic communications advice to help you drive relevance and impact

April 18, 2024

Have you read a Substack recently? 

The world of traditional media is changing. We know that, and have known that. It seems like everyone has a newsletter these days (hello! 👋), but not many cut through the noise with substance.

We’ve been in the PR and comms world since 2007 and have great relationships with top journalists. It’s been tough to see the media landscape undergo mass layoffs and closures, but opportunity looms as journalists innovate and capture eyes and ears nonetheless. 

We’re watching the future of journalism and outside of the behemoths like The New York Times, which have found a way to capture broad audiences with vertical offerings like Cooking and Wirecutter, etc., right now there's a heavy dose of entrepreneurialism.

One of the smartest, and potentially lucrative platforms, is Substack (no offense, Medium! We love you too!). From Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer who started Newcomer to TechCrunch’s Ron Miller who writes Head in the Cloud, we’re seeing a lot of great journalism on Substack. 

We advise clients to keep an open mind about Substack. Influence tends to travel with journalists, which is why we’re following all of the moves closely. Check out some of the tech newsletters we subscribe to and follow.

Introducing Inksights | Media Intelligence Report

We’re always telling clients to root their points of view in data. And we’re doing it too. Introducing Inksights | Media Intelligence Report, a quarterly look at the media trends driving how we approach communications.

This first edition explores IPO media coverage. While AI is currently all anyone can talk about in B2B technology, it isn’t playing a leading role when it comes to IPO stories (yet). In our first report, we explore three specific IPO media trends:

1. IPO optimism is back! Woo!
2. IPO media coverage mentioning AI increased 120% in 2023, but still only accounts for just 18% of the overall IPO conversation.
3. Big IPO coverage doesn’t mean that media interest will continue afterward. How does an IPO impact a company’s media coverage?

You can read our first media Inksight report here. And check out our client CAVA's IPO case study here.

• Will TikTok launch a photo-sharing app? Seems bold before potentially being banned from the US 
• Meta is labeling a wider range of AI-produced content to address a flood of "fake" images
• Elon Musk admitted that he has “burner” X accounts, and it’s looking like the platform will be ripe with misinformation leading up to the election. Literally shaking all of our heads.

Client Quote

Deep Instinct in Why fear of AI making a job obsolete is the wrong way to think about a career future

Feature Piece

Airtable in Airtable debuts new AI tools to make your office workflows even easier

Feature Piece

 Abstract in  Abstract Security Brings AI to Next-Gen SIEM

"… We need a lot more small teams with independent owners producing news that matters if we are to save journalism from the billionaires and the hedge fund managers. There's been a lot of bad news lately in this profession, but let's look to a future where the writers control the media instead of the large corporations because that clearly hasn't worked."

— Ron Miller, Enterprise Reporter, TechCrunch