(A Short Visit to Toronto and Montréal) It’s been three years since Web Summit’s sister conference Collision was physically held at Toronto’s Enercare Centre. This year it returned big time, with a sold-out audience of 35,000+ and more than a fair share of founders, entrepreneurs, VC’s, and tech luminaries to…

Paywalls be damned! — If you’re an avid news consumer, like me, or your profession demands it, also like mine, you’re no doubt alarmed by the toll your daily habit is taking on your wallet. A quick tally of the digital news outlets to which I subscribe puts my annual outlay at around $1635…

How Nick Clegg & co. Game the Media Of all the media hats that Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway wear, it’s the Pivot podcast that brings out the best in both of them. Sure Kara’s “Sway” draws an eclectic mix of boldfaced names and “The ProfG Show” gets philosophical and…

In January 2020, two months before the words SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, and COVID-19 became frightening fixtures in our shared lexicon, my wife and I decided to take on a major real estate project: renovating a 2-BR wreck of an apartment in a pre-war Manhattan co-op building. It would involve the removal…

How the Explosion in News Creators Affect Comms Pros It was inevitable. The ability to profit from a personal news brand through the creation and distribution of original content has gotten even easier. “We the media” started 15+ years ago with CGM/blogging and, to a lesser degree, podcasting and has evolved to the point where established journalists (with decent…

Did @PressSec’s Staff Seek Journalists’ Questions in Advance? I suppose it’s all relative. Compared to the horrific daily White House press briefings of the last four years — when there were any — the transparent and truthful approach of President Biden’s new Press Secretary Jen Psaki and her team is a breath of fresh air. Didn’t I read…

Dogma Be Damned: Set Real Journalists Free For many, it would seem unusual, if not highly suspect, for a long-time public relations executive to opine on the state of journalism and to offer remedies for its preservation. After all, aren’t most PR pros charged with positioning their clients more favorably in news and feature stories? (There are…