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Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor

Scott Monty - Strategic Communications & Leadership Advisor
 


The unending Sony saga, Time goes all-in with digital, Spanish publishers get exactly what they bargained for, marketing skills, companies and trends to watch in 2015, Instagram makes some changes, the future of Secret and Medium, Serial is over, how to get data to make your PR program better, a growing and pervasive lack of trust in the media and more, it's This Week in Digital.

A roundup of relevant links affecting our industry.

Each week, I compose a newsletter that includes a series of links about current events and trends in the worlds of technology, business, digital communications and marketing in order to keep leaders up to date on changes, newsworthy items and content that might be useful in your job. And now you have the option of subscribing just to this newsletter if you wish.

If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links by subscribing to the This Week in Digital Magazine.

[Note: this is the last issue for 2014; while you wait for the return in 2015, we'll still be bookmarking in Flipboard.]


Industry

  • As you've undoubtedly seen, the Sony Entertainment soap opera rolls on. From damaging emails to financial data and even personal information that was part of the data breach, the film giant's secrets and intellectual property has been laid bare. It hired a high-priced lawyer to order a cease and desist, and then the final nail in the coffin came when the hackers made a reference to September 11, causing Sony to cancel the film's release entirely.
  • Time Inc.'s chief content officer is meeting the challenges of the digital age with an ultimatum to reporters; Norm Pearlstine says that he has "the right to choose to keep the reporter that is generating a lot of traffic," and presumably to fire those who don't. (Washington Post)
  • Let's hope Time doesn't pursue Google the way European publishers did. After objecting to Google News providing headlines and snippets of content, a Spanish court ruled that Google could no longer do so; as of Monday, the search giant removed all Spanish publishers from its Google News index. The result: traffic to Spanish news sites plummeted. You can't say they didn't see this coming. (GigaOm)
  • Here are 15 social media companies to watch in 2015. (Forbes)
  • Five global PR trends to watch in 2015 include focusing on micro-networks and seeing more east-meets-west scenarios. (The Holmes Report)
  • And as we round out the year, Google sums up what we searched for in 2014



Platforms



Collaborative Economy


Audio






Metrics / Measurement / Big Data




Legal / HR




Content






When You Have Time: Essential Reading / Listening / Watching

There seems to be some trust issues in the media of late. Issues that cause us to question the integrity of some journalists and publications. It seems to be some combination of laziness (perhaps beholden to tight timing?) and lack of ethics. Here are some of the more recent cases:
  • Rolling Stone published the earth-shattering "A Rape on Campus," detailing the sexual assault of a female student at the hands of some fraternity brothers. The magazine published "A Note to our Readers" (never a good sign) in which the editors admitted that they couldn't verify the sources. (Rolling Stone) 
  • Actress/activist (actrivist?) Lena Dunham wrote a book that described a forced sexual situation with a college associate named "Barry," who turned out to be unidentifiable. Other details of her story didn't line up either, making some question her tale overall. (Washington Post) 
  • The publishers at Penguin claimed that a new book by vlogging star Zoella was debuting with better results than JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book. After extensive publicity about Zoella's first book, the publisher was forced to admit that the singer "did not write the book on her own." (Daily Mail) 
  • Earlier this week, a high school student said that he earned over $72 million by making investments through his investment club. He later came clean, admitting that he made it all up. (New York Observer) 
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