Subaru, Red Bull and Rabbit Holes—How I Got Sucked into Rally
There’s nothing like the buzz of delving into a new passion and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my serendipitous and circuitous journey into the world of rally. I’ve also realized my interest in rally had always been hiding just under the surface, an influence on almost everything I’ve ever found interesting about cars—it just took an unpredictable confluence of events to suck me in.
My Favorite Movies of 2018
2018 was a pretty terrible year by many measures, but it was a damn good year for movies. While big budget sequels of varying quality continued to dominate the box office, there was still room in theaters for new and original stories to stand out while streaming options give them a shot at reaching the wider audiences they deserve—including me, in a couple of cases. My top 10 favorites (plus 4 honorable mentions) were unexpectedly tough to sort out, but they represent a more varied list than I would have initially guessed at the beginning of the year.
Five Trustworthy Sources for Media Business News & Insights
Since Google Reader shut down back in 2013, there’s arguably been no worthy replacement, partly because it helped accelerate the death of the individual blog and relegated RSS feeds to a tertiary distribution channel that most sites barely pay attention to these days. Over the years, I’ve used an unwieldy combination of Instapaper, Feedly, Twitter lists and Gmail filters (for the most useful email newsletters I subscribe to) to stay connected to my primary sources, and only a handful make the cut heading into 2019—including one social network that became unexpectedly useful in 2018.
Get A Clue(train) — Sustainable Digital Strategy for Author Platforms
In reality, markets consist of human beings and the conversations they have with each other, and those conversations can be messy and involve multiple points of influence. For authors trying to develop an effective and sustainable digital strategy, that means you’re not just competing with similar authors and books for readers’ attention—hello, myopic comp titles!—you’re competing with readers themselves and the various channels they use to connect with each other. With the right strategy, though, you’re not competing with anyone—you’re authentically engaging with and contributing to a dynamic community.
Leadership in Crisis | What I Learned From My FBF
While there are different ways to lead and different styles of leadership, without the ability to develop realistic budgets, communicate consistently and transparently with staff, and define a compelling mission and vision for all to rally around, they’re just meaningless personality traits. If it’s raining outside, don’t sing me “the sun’ll come out tomorrow,” give me a damn umbrella.
Data-Informed Content Strategy for Enthusiast Media
Enthusiast media, aka niche consumer, is my favorite sector because it prioritizes depth over scale, and its KPIs are different from general consumer media’s chasing eyeballs for advertisers. Instead of being dumb pipes driven by vanity metrics and anecdata, they can build self-sustaining communities with deep engagement that offers diversified revenue streams, including valuable intersections for marketing partners seeking strategic, long-term relationships. In its ideal form, enthusiast media (and some B2B verticals) combines community engagement, editorial integrity, and paid content into a diversified suite of relevant products and services which simultaneously minimizes its reliance on advertising while optimizing its effectiveness for savvier marketing partners.
Sustaining Literary Publishing | Reflections on #AWP18
One could reasonably argue there were TOO MANY publishers at the Bookfair when you think about the relatively small markets they cater to for literary fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, as well as the often myopic focus on a single magazine, ignoring or discounting other ways they could serve their community while ensuring a sustainable future. The relatively low barrier for entry into (and expectations of) literary publishing “let’s people wade in a little over their heads,” as Creative Nonfiction‘s Hattie Fletcher noted during the Literary Innovation session, and many publishers often find themselves living on the brink of insolvency, one time-consuming fundraising pitch away from failure.
Facebook Isn’t The Problem, YOU Are
Facebook doesn’t view publishers as valued partners and never has, despite so many helping it grow and engage a worldwide audience, handing over tons of invaluable data along the way, not just from engagement on Facebook itself, but from their own websites too. All for free! Facebook has transformed that invaluable data into billions of dollars of advertising revenue every year while steadily throttling publishers’ ability to reach their own audiences without becoming paid advertisers themselves. It’s an objectively and diabolically brilliant model that I simultaneously admire and despise.
YouTube, Algorithms, and Sponsored Content
As broadcast and cable TV fragmented into hundreds of channels serving various overlapping demographics in search of the occasional mainstream hit, and streaming competitors leveraged nostalgia and cheap licenses to fund their own original mix of niche and mainstream content, YouTube was quietly “democratizing” video content the same way Blogger and WordPress did years ago, to similar effect.
INTERVIEW: Charlie Huston & Moon Knight | PCS Flashback
Back in 2005, I spent two hours over cold beers talking with Charlie Huston about Moon Knight and the pressure of living up to the hype surrounding his relaunch; what “decompression” and “9-out-of-10 of those single issues sucked!” have in common; and what Doug Moench and Steve Gerber don’t have in common. The resulting interview, originally published at Buzzscope, is my favorite ever.