Reactions to story from BuzzMachine

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  The quiet boom of paidContent, and its new chief executive

  http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/digitalcontent/2008/03/the_quiet...
  48 days ago in PDA: The Digital Content Blog | Guardian Unlimited · Authority: 594

  The quiet boom of paidContent, and its new chief executive Jemima Kiss / Blogging / Deals / Start-ups 12:51pm Rafat Ali's digital media empire has grown, again. I'll disclaim right away - I used to work for him and am in awe of what he has created since
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  paidContent adds CEO, Chief Sales Officer and a Director

  http://blog.blogcosm.com/2008/03/27/paidcontent-adds-ceo-chi...
  48 days ago in Recent Posts - Blogcosm · Authority: 40

  Earlier today, Rafat Ali announced some changes at ContentNext Media: I am stepping out of my position as CEO (something I was never comfortable with, as people who know me can attest...I always liked the Editor and Publisher title better); but will
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  News of the Week 4/6/08

  http://danblank.com/blog/2008/04/06/news-of-the-week-4608/
  38 days ago in Dan Blank: Publishing, Innovation & the Web · Authority: 73

  News of the Week 4/6/08 Apr 6th, 2008 by Dan Blank Traditional media team with niche sites to nab ad dollars "Looking to snare a larger share of Internet ad dollars, traditional media companies are launching "vertical ad networks" in which they sell ad bundles of space on their sites and on independent sites with complementary content." Passion fuels entrepreneurial journalism "The biggest challenge facing the journalism industry today is not declining readership, the economy or even the Internet – it is the increased competition that the Internet has made possible." The New Rules of Media "The Audience Knows More Than the Journalist; People Are in Cotnrol of Their Media Experience; Anyone Can Be a Media Creator or Remixer; Traditional Media Must Evolve or Die; Amateur and Professional Journalists Should Work Together; Journalists Need to Be Multi-Platform." Chasing rainclouds away with some positive attitude "Journalism is not newspapers. It’s bigger than that old tree-killing tradition, and sooner or later, someone’s going to figure out how to get it paid for." Citizen Huff: The Evolution of the Huffington Post "…this summer the site will take an ambitious step by introducing its version of a metropolitan section: local versions for major cities… The plan will put The Huffington Post into competition with existing newspapers and, arguably, ith companies like Yahoo, AOL and CNN.com." How to be an Authority Maven: 21 Tips for Keeping Up to Date in Your Niche "Here are 21 tips for a more productive approach to keeping up with all the crucial developments in your niche. They will work for feeds or Twitter in most cases but I have aimed mainly at RSS." Glam Makes Big Cuts In Publisher Payments - “Up To 80% Drop In Revenue” Advertising network Glam seems to be experiencing some growing pains. This blog entry and the ensuing comments offers an interesting look at how it affects publishers who use Glam. Social gaming picks up momentum "The combination of social networking and games, known as social gaming, is presenting online games to users who have never bothered to play or were turned off from their earlier experiences. It is also opening doors to new kinds of games, building on the Why Original Blog Thought is So Difficult "The question that begs to be asked is why does there seem to be so much me-too blogging as opposed to people contributing different perspectives?" Six Months In, And 600 Posts Later . . . The Worlds Of Blogging and Journalism Collide (In My Brain) "…what is a blog? It is a conversation with readers. And you don’t have to start a conversation knowing all the facts." Why Blog? Reason No. 92: Book Deal - New York Times "There was an innocent time, oh, about four years ago, when the idea of turning a blog into a book seemed novel, a fresh path for unknown writers to break into the big time." My social map is totally decentralized but I want it back on my blog "We used to have our social online presence very centralized, for me it was my blog. The current trend is very interesting, everything is decentralized and we only use the best services by type of media (text, photos, video, music, events etc)." If the news is important it will find me "We always talk about entertainment on the net and on tv as being different because TV is lean back, and internet is lean forward. It looks like information distribution has become delineated in the same way." A VC: Where My Traffic Comes From "This post should be called "the rise of the smart aggregators" because the new big sources of traffic to this blog are techmeme, reddit, twitter, and delicious." 20 Types of Pages that Every Blogger Should Consider "…today I thought I’d highlight a few ‘pages’ that I have here on ProBlogger as examples of pages that bloggers might want to develop to promote their blog to different groups of people." NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years "According to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America, total print advertising revenue in 2007 plunged 9.4% to $42 billion compared to 2006 — the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising expenditures in 1950." PaidContent vs. TechCrunch: Two Visions of Blogging’s Future “Our focus has been laserlike on the C-level executives in the industry. That’s why we get triple-digit CPMs. That’s nearly unheard of in the industry.” PaidContent Nabs Former Dow Jones Senior Exec as CEO, Expands Staff and Opens New York Office "Rafat [Ali] speaks about the growth of his company and the economic realities of the current digital media frenzy." Hothouse blogs "The other great example of the web as journalistic hothouse that I always point to is Brian Stelter, boy-blogger at CableNewser and now New York Times scribe… This from a young man who wouldn’t have stood a chance getting hired by The Times before the blog era." Are You Taking Advantage of Web 2.0? "A couple of years ago, The Times opened up my blog to comments, and the results have been spectacular. The quality of discussion on Pogue’s Posts is just astonishing." Posted in News of the Week
• 

  paidContent adds CEO, Chief Sales Officer and a Director

  http://blog.blogcosm.com/2008/03/27/paidcontent-adds-ceo-chi...
  48 days ago in Welcome to Blogcosm · Authority: 28

  Earlier today, Rafat Ali announced some changes at ContentNext Media: I am stepping out of my position as CEO (something I was never comfortable with, as people who know me can attest...I always liked the Editor and Publisher title better); but will keep the role of Chairman. Additions & changes: Nathan Richardson, Chief Executive Officer 2007: Country Director of the International Rescue Committee’s operations in Liberia 2005-2006: Sr. VP & GM of Dow Jones Online "which includes The Wall Street Journal Online, MarketWatch, Barron’s Online" (source) 2002-2005: general manager of Yahoo! Finance Patrick Dignan, Chief Sales Officer most recently with Forbes.com [as] director of East Coast sales for the business website previously publisher of Family PC and Saveur magazines previously advertising director for Philly.com Charlie Koones, new board member previously president and publisher of Variety Staci D. Kramer, promoted to Co-Editor and EVP The board of directors addition is worth a direct quote: "we are expanding our already-strong board to bring on key expertise in the entertainment media sector". (emphasis added) Looks to me like a clue... Here are some numbers for their Web sites: #BlogT RankAlexaPrimary Category 1paidContent.org43723,529Media News 2paidContent:UK15,796292,892Media News 3mocoNews.net3,701106,006Mobile 4contentSutra.com28,25354,074Media News Legend Blogcosm profile of this blogLink directly to the blog Technorati Rank as of March 1, 2008 Alexa three-month data as of March 23, 2008 ContextNext Media also hosts conferences and mixers. Quick update: Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine weighs in. Whenever anyone doubts the potential of the web to grow new journalistic enterprises, I point to PaidContent.org. Rafat Ali and his colleagues have built an incredible venture that hosts more tenacious reporting than most any news organization I know. I check it more than any other news source I depend upon. Now they announce a bunch of big appointments with big talent. It’s an impressive path of growth managed with cagey strategic care by Rafat.

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