AAN News » Media Roundup
   

The Media Oxpecker: The Ever-Expanding Job Description of the Modern Editor

By Jason Zaragoza
april 6, 2012  11:00 am
The Media Oxpecker: The Ever-Expanding Job Description of the Modern Editor
Alexander Smulskiy/Shutterstock
Every week we round up media & tech industry news you may have missed while you were busy promoting your cookware line.
Just one link this week. In John Koblin's final act as media reporter for Condé Nast's Women's Wear Daily (he's leaving for Gawker's sports site brand, Deadspin), he writes about the redefined role of editor-in-chief, a position he says "could easily be referred to as content brand officer."

"When Jim Nelson took over at GQ when I was there back in 2003, he had a magazine to edit, and that was pretty much it and he did so remarkably well," said [Adam] Rapoport in an interview with WWD. "Now it's a magazine and a full-fledged Web site and an app. And we have an HSN cookware line, and we have a 600-page grilling book coming out next year and we’re working on TV shows to get developed, you know, which is in some ways exciting and in some ways totally daunting as well. I think the key, to kind of borrow a business term, is to stay on brand."

If you read nothing else this week, read Koblin's piece. The future is here, and it is relentlessly on-message.

Bonus link: Fine, two links this week. Once you've recovered from the previous article, read Paul Smalera's "The recession killed journalism – and saved it."

Happy weekend. XOXO.
Tags: , ,