Why I've Left the Media Business | Hacker News Reader

Why I've Left the Media Business

blog.hubspot.com

22 pointsscholia12 comments

I was working as a copy editor at Forbes.com while Dan Lyons was still working for the magazine, and he's a very talented guy. When I found out he was taking the head job at ReadWrite, I thought it would really help ReadWrite become a major media presence. Not sure what went wrong there.

I left the journalism world a year and a half ago for many of the same reasons Dan cites. It's possible to LOVE writing and editing for a magazine or newspaper but to recognize that the people who are in charge of operating the publication _as a business_ don't seem to have any idea how to turn things around.

I'm now doing full-time software development -- something that had increasingly become a part of my duties when I was an editor -- and it was totally the right move for my family. I went from being employed by a newspaper that had layoffs and furloughs almost every quarter for several years straight to being employed by a web startup with a significantly higher salary and much more job security.

One small aspect of Dan's piece I want to take issue with, though: Yes, tech companies are hiring former journalists, and yes, they get to do reporting and writing, in a sense. But let's be clear: These are P.R. jobs. Your job, ultimately, is to make your employer look good, not to be objective.

I agree that Dan is very talented, though I think the Fake Steve blog was the best thing he's done, and it's creative writing rather than reporting.

I don't know what happened at RedWrite but I do know it can be hard to step down the ladder, in terms of support. I spent most of my career on a national newspaper. Having left, I miss the phalanx of subeditors, graphic designers, picture researchers, lawyers, programmers and other staff who did so much to turn stories into impressive packages.

I imagine there's gulf between Forbes, Newsweek etc and ReadWrite, though I have no personal experience of either.

Journalism is just like any other desirable creative field with no shortage of talent willing to work for free -- allowing the owners of outlets to take value from both their customers (in the form of ads) and their workers (in the form of underpayment). Once the romance fades away for most who don't make it big, they all come to Dan's conclusion and a new young person takes their place.

The thing is though -- media hasn't died yet, nor advertising. In fact the market has only gotten bigger. The significant change is that Google and other aggregators are able to steal the most valuable part of text content (headline and nutgraf) and place their ads in front of it w/o investing in production.

Advertisement isn't dying -- its been abstracted away from media production.

Advertising is running around in panic, throwing money at Google et all. The impact of that form of advertisement may be more measurable, but those same measurements suggest it's not worth the money.

Also, following your "steal the most valuable part" logic, aggregation is not a sustainable business model, because it kills its primary resource.

In the meantime, adblockers just keep getting downloaded...

And even if it wasn't for all of the above, the internet has destroyed part of the value of advertising as the first to source of information about products, and with that the ability to control the message from the start. Even if it isn't dead, its value has significantly diminished.

"How I went from content to PR-Marketing and spun it"

>Media companies need a new way to make money -- one that doesn’t depend on advertising.

There aren't that many business models. You charge for a subscription, you charge per use (e.g. view), you sell your credibility by writing PR pieces, or you put ads. The first two are hard to do because you're competing with free, and the last two is how everyone makes money. There's no magic formula here.

He says advertising is dying, but Google makes most of its money from advertising and they're doing well.

> Why HubSpot? It’s mostly because I’m a content guy, and HubSpot is all about content. These days other companies are figuring out the value of being publishers, but HubSpot was a pioneer in this space. There’s a lot to learn here, and I’ll do two things I love best: write and speak. In my mind I’m still working as a journalist. I’m just not working for a traditional newspaper or magazine.

I'm still unclear about why he's working at HubSpot, other than he needs a job. HubSpot's tagline is: "All the software you need to do inbound marketing."

In terms of content creation, Hubspot's main offering seems to be to let clients hire writers to ghostwrite their blog: http://www.hubspot.com/products/business-blog/

> Concerned that blogging will suck up your time? No experience publishing a blog? No worries. HubSpot makes it easy to hire experienced, professional writers for one blog post or 100.

I have no problems with the OP leaving the media business for something more lucrative. But it sounds like he's trying to claim that he's having his cake and eating it too...that through HubSpot he's doing valuable journalism and getting paid well...when it seems that his role at HubSpot is to create marketing copy for clients. That's not a bad job, but it's not what's typically considered journalism.

I was unaware that the distinction between marketing copy and journalism was still made.

"advertising is dying, and therefore any business that depends on advertising to pay the bills is a dead end"

Well that's interesting.

"advertising as you know is dying. "

Fake Steve Jobs?

Edit: Ah Fake Steve Jobs = Dan Lyons.

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