tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95540912026-01-08T11:58:53.014-05:00A blog for those who toil in the most specialized, and perhaps the least glamorous, area in the press -- B2B journalism.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger607125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-82146425710968004012025-12-28T19:08:00.004-05:002026-01-01T17:32:20.969-05:00

Rex Hammock passed away earlier this year. If you were part of the media blogosphere back when that was a thing, you knew Rex. He was everywhere -- writing on his blog (Rexblog.com), speaking from the podium at every magazine conference, quoted in seemingly every issue of Folio magazine, Publishing Executive, and Magazine Industry News (min). Folio, PubExec and min have all shuttered.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-87078195790735437012023-07-23T15:03:00.002-04:002024-12-06T19:57:50.555-05:00

 I moved to a new apartment a few weeks ago. I traded my small place in Manhattan for a much larger place across the East River in the Long Island City section of Queens.I'm in a lovely, high-rise building with spectacular views. And I'm not alone. There are tens of thousands of people living along the waterfronts of Long Island City and the nearby Brooklyn neighborhoods of Greenpoint,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-73021124167445752282023-03-16T09:42:00.007-04:002023-03-16T09:57:54.944-04:00

I seem to find myself in a strange time loop. A few decades ago, as the Web altered the nature of communications, it was painful to watch how B2B journalism failed to adapt. A stubborn resistance to change among older journalists permeated the industry.  Now the world is changing once more, and B2B journalism is not adapting.This time the force driving change is the emergence of

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-76380407213403275802022-11-04T19:25:00.015-04:002023-02-04T15:47:22.727-05:00

There's a scandal this month in the content marketing world. That's an unusual occurrence.  In its most common forms, content marketing is a bit innocuous.  But sometimes content marketing goes wrong. Badly. And when content marketing does go wrong, it's almost always because a company has decided its content should be more like journalism, but not actually be journalism. The

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-88236714176706565172019-08-20T12:02:00.000-04:002019-11-01T09:37:32.420-04:00

LifeScore Labs is a new client of mine. They use artificial intelligence to improve insurance scoring. They've relaunched their website (LifeScoreLabs.com) with copy written by yours truly. So, as I tend to do whenever I get the chance to mention artificial intelligence, I want to point out that I won the world's first online beauty contest judged by artificial intelligence back in 2016.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-83203921980021013612018-10-29T12:40:00.001-04:002018-10-29T12:57:01.489-04:00

One of the great mysteries of my career has been that otherwise bright and talented folks in B2B publishing express an interest in working with me. Even more mysterious is that some people who know me well, and have known me for years, express that interest too. I chalk it up to combination of factors: a) good luck. I have an enormous amount of it. Always have. I hope I always will. b) dumb luck.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-78037410920866859552018-01-02T15:31:00.001-05:002020-01-04T18:05:52.150-05:00

I posted something on this blog a few days ago. That's become an exceedingly rare event. This blog has been largely dormant for a very long time. And with good reason. First and most importantly, the issues I used to write about here have become less important. I started this blog way back in 2004 as a way to share my thoughts on what seemed to be the start of a revolution in B2B media. But that

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-23707035938333630582017-12-22T11:41:00.001-05:002017-12-28T19:30:40.385-05:00

I woke this morning with a need to write. There's nothing unusual about that. I wake most mornings with a need to write. But what was unexpected today was that I had an urge to write here, in this particular blog. I have a dozen places where I can write -- some for money, some for fun, some for no good reason at all. But today I wanted only to write here. And that seemed strange to me, knowing

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-14690936117748859582014-12-22T14:10:00.000-05:002015-02-16T15:04:19.326-05:00

It's hard for me to remember what my career was like before I launched this blog on a whim 10 years ago this very night. Certainly the world of traditional B2B publishing was different back then. Lots of folks were making lots of money. And lots of folks thought the good times would last forever. I was different then too. I was younger ... and often willing to say things aloud for no reason other

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-9231579850514205902013-08-09T09:43:00.001-04:002013-08-09T09:43:39.662-04:00

Two weeks ago today at about this time I was some 90 minutes into giving a one-hour speech. I tend to run long. This, it should be noted, is not because I have a lot of terribly important things to say. Rather, I'm one of those annoying characters who really, really enjoys being on stage. The occasion was the national conference of ASBPE, the group formally known as the American Society of

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-72029752601598234632013-06-18T12:10:00.000-04:002013-06-18T12:11:27.775-04:00

So it turns out that there is a 60-second long video of a writer named Paul Conley staring into a camera. He doesn't speak. And the purpose of the video is unclear to me. I bring it up here for two reasons: First, someone who knows of me, but doesn't actually know me, sent the video in an email and asked if the man in the video was me. So I feel sort of obligated to let folks know that I'm not

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-1203930415674703342013-06-14T14:33:00.000-04:002013-06-14T14:33:15.360-04:00

If you're a member of the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE), it's time for you to resign in protest. For reasons that are unfathomable, that formerly reputable organization has asked me to be the keynote speaker at its annual national conference. I'm sure you are as baffled by that decision as I am. I, and perhaps you, might be willing to overlook such a ridiculous move

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-4260307777964358782012-12-06T11:50:00.002-05:002012-12-06T12:00:01.154-05:00

I have a thing about calendars. I tend to think in terms of anniversaries and cycles, and I'm often conscious of completely inane and useless pieces of time-based trivia about my past. It's not unusual for me to remark over dinner, for example, that "it was exactly two months ago today that we last ate this!" Or to comment while getting dressed in the morning "the last time I wore this jacket was

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-84728373291007619482012-11-13T12:43:00.000-05:002012-11-13T12:43:12.064-05:00

You know those Google vanity alerts that incredibly arrogant, egotistical and self-centered people use to alert them whenever someone mentions them anywhere on the Web? I have one of those. It's a good thing too. Because otherwise amid the hurricanes, nor'easters, power outages and business travel that have marked my life in recent weeks, I would have had no idea that the good people at the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-37619979768963942962012-09-18T07:41:00.000-04:002015-12-09T15:27:54.860-05:00

A few years  ago I received a LinkedIn connection request from an old college friend. It had been nearly 20 years since I'd seen him, and I'd missed him. So I was pleased to accept the request to connect virtually. A few hours later, in one of those wonderfully serendipitous moments that make living in a major city so perfect, I turned the corner of a crowded street and there he was --

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A year ago this month I made a decision to cut back on this blog. I promised that I'd publish things here from time to time, but I was not going to post with anything like the frequency of earlier years. That was, apparently, a very bad decision.  Allow me to explain. Late in May of this year I found myself engaged in a frustrating conversation with my preschool-aged daughter. One of her

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-1795634491991602952011-12-22T19:26:00.003-05:002011-12-22T20:58:05.823-05:00

What were you doing seven years ago tonight? Odds are it was more fun than what I was doing -- which was sitting at my desk and launching this blog. I don't have a very clear memory of  that night -- and that seems strange to me now, given how important this blog became to my career. Rather, I have a hazy recollection of coming home and feeling sort of fed up. It seemed clear to me that the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-7342631208983339932011-12-06T15:05:00.000-05:002011-12-06T15:05:46.524-05:00

As I said in a post a few weeks ago, I don't intend to blog here at the rate I once did. But as I promised in that not-quite-a-farewell post, "I won't abandon this site, nor will I stop writing entirely about the news and business of business news." Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that I won't stop talking entirely about the news and business of business news. Because I still do

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-22138499131610230552011-09-08T06:21:00.000-04:002011-09-08T06:21:47.007-04:00

I don't want to be a blogger anymore. And that works out just fine, since I'm clearly not a blogger anymore. Or at least not in the way I was back in the early days of social media. I launched this blog late in 2004. But things took off the following year. It seems remarkable to me now, but I published 272 blog posts in 2005. But that volume dropped steadily as more and more people entered

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I've spent a considerable amount of time in the past decade or so trying to convince journalists (and their employers) of the value of the agnostic link. -- a link that points to a competitor or rival. My argument is that journalists have an obligation as journalists to point to information of value no matter where they find it. Thus if a competing brand publishes something that your readers

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-31392985359657595432011-03-03T09:19:00.001-05:002011-03-03T09:20:20.801-05:00

My career tends to be riddled with serendipity. I seem to find what I need through good fortune, rather than through any organized effort. Whenever I ask “how did I get here,” the answer is usually “because I got lucky.” Let me tell you a story about what I mean: I’m a consultant. That means I run a small business. But it’s about as small as a business can be. It’s a one-person operation with

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I spend a lot of time thinking about content quality and how to measure it. This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's worked with me in the past. Much of my consulting business involves quantifying-- how many pieces of content created, of what types, with which characteristics, over what time frame, collecting how many pageviews, generating how many leads, etc. But those are simple metrics

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-48035908038100978432010-12-22T13:31:00.002-05:002010-12-22T13:36:10.868-05:00

Six years ago today I launched this blog. My initial reaction to reaching this milestone is that I should say something about how quickly the time has slipped away. I feel I should say something like "it doesn't seem possible that six years have passed." But that feels like a lie. The truth is that when I look back over the past six years, it seems the time has dragged on forever. I want to

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-43635865276666133772010-11-16T12:57:00.002-05:002010-11-18T13:58:03.625-05:00

(Editor's Note: A custom publisher interviewed me last week for its company blog. As it turns out, at least one executive at the company wasn't crazy about my thoughts on the state of publishing. So the company opted not to publish the interview. I, on the other hand, am crazy about my thoughts on the state of publishing. So I'm posting the interview here.) Question: Content marketing:

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9554091.post-35308487443372421682010-09-27T21:30:00.000-04:002010-09-27T21:30:01.004-04:00

(Editor's note: As the world of B2B content marketing grows, ever-increasing numbers of journalists are moving into the field. In addition, a large crop of new grads are coming into the business ... often with little to no understanding of how content marketing works or what role journalism plays in it. This is the first of a four-part series on some of the cultural barriers that workers face in

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1