A Letter from Laurel

If I had to sum up this year in a word, I couldn't do any better than what Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupiter had to say in his blog about buying mediabistro.com: "It's the job board, stupid!"

But, more specifically, it's all about the talent. The mediabistro.com job board is a cornerstone of our passionate community of media professionals. In 2007, it continued to be a vibrant marketplace delivering the best jobs in media to top industry talent. Like all that we do, the job board captures the pulse of what is happening across media. Whether it's Rupert's latest maneuver or Rachael Ray dipping her toe into another brand extension, if organizations need media talent, they'll connect with it via the mediabistro.com job board.

In virtually every occupational category, 2007 saw strong demand for media talent and experience. That demand comes as traditional media companies expand online and from other players in the media space, including public relations firms, advertising agencies, and technology companies.

When people ask me about economy and jobs, I point out one simple figure: 2 percent. That's not the milk fat content of my latte, it's the unemployment rate for people with a college education. That's slim, and it means people want more ways to highlight themselves and their talent. Media professionals seek stronger digital profiles that highlight their accomplishments, abilities, and experience, and need ways to connect with past and future employers. Employers want more ways to cultivate their alumni, highlight their work places, unique office cultures, and career building opportunities. So expect more video, more profile tools, and more ways to connect and get introduced to your next employer or employee in 2008.

Articles, Blogs Arm Media Talents With Opportunities
Our editorial features and premium AG content had its strongest year to date. We discovered how media pros harness their talents in our new series, Hey, How'd You Do That? We kept bringing you the best of media-world notables in their own words with our So, What Do You Do? interview series, getting media-focused insights from talents ranging from Tina Brown to Brian Williams. Everyone's favorite, How to Pitch, got a snazzy update with new sections devoted to online outlets for your freelance articles, while we kept our archive of 230+ articles updated. Our Video Pitch Slam series, featuring freelancers' in-person pitches to top editors launched this year, only to get a phenomenal revamp in October. Plus, we launched features such as mbManage (focused on how media professionals bring talent into the workplace), J-School Confidential (schooling media folk on how the next generation of media talent is coming up) and What to Charge (illuminating the range of reasonable rates for different types of freelance work). We can't wait to bring you all this and more in 2008.

Our blog network continued its growth and expansion in 2007, remaining the go-to spot for media pros. We now have nine blogs covering the media universe. During the summer we launched AgencySpy, which has become the source for advertising agency pros. From planners to creatives, our SuperSpy keeps the ad world up to date with breaking news, account moves, and gossip from Madison Ave. In late summer we launched PRNewser, which has already generated great buzz in the PR world. From exclusive interviews to breaking news, PR pros-turned-bloggers Joe Ciarallo and Jason Chupick keep the PR industry in the know. There was a changing of the guard at TVNewser, as blog founder Brian Stelter moved to The New York Times, and we brought in TV news veteran Chris Ariens to helm the must-read site for TV news professionals. At the same time, the bloggers from our publishing site GalleyCat (Ron Hogan), our design blog Unbeige (Alissa Walker, Steve Delahoyde and Stephanie Murg), and MobileMediaNews (Jamie Lendino) were the talents who kept you up to speed on goings-on in their parts of our media world. Our Fishbowl blogs, FishbowlNY (Neal Ungerleider, Ron Mwangaguhunga), FishbowlDC (Patrick Gavin, "Inky") and FishbowlLA (Kate Coe, Mayrav Saar), continued to break news and cover their cities with the thoroughness and wealth of industry understanding you've come to expect.

Keeping Talent Connected
The mediabistro.com community continues to grow by leaps and bounds. We now have more than 730,000 registered users, 13,000 of whom have become AvantGuild members and 1,200 of whom have posted a Freelance Marketplace profile. I'm also extremely proud that we improved our health insurance options, which are now available to members nationwide. Other new benefits include a database of magazine mastheads, savings on Zipcar, and discounts on writers' rooms. We're constantly adding new features and benefits so that AvantGuild continues to shine as the best investment for media pros anywhere. Write to our membership team if you have suggestions for more community services we can offer.

As you may have heard, mediabistro.com has its origins in the cocktail parties I started organizing back in 1993. Ever since, the site has focused on fostering community and allowing media professionals to show and share their many talents. One of the goals in the coming year will be to start bringing our community closer than ever before with the help of social media. We've already begun extending our reach to existing social-networking outlets such as Facebook, and we're looking forward to providing our members with new tools that will further enhance their experience on mediabistro.com, as well as their professional (and technological) presence.

Courses Take Talent to the Next Level
2007 was another record year for developing talent in our courses: Our lively instructor pool of book agents, copy editors, PR mavens, designers, and multimedia journalists taught a record 1,200 courses, seminars, and panels for experienced and up-and-coming media professionals.

Students from Des Moines to Mumbai joined in our online classes, which grew by more than two-thirds. Students logged on to study personal essay writing with New Orleans-based author Ken Foster (Dogs I Have Met: And The People They Found) and writing and editing for the Web with New York-based editor Aileen Gallagher, of NYMag.com.

We launched Mediabistro On Demand, our series of video crash courses, panel discussions, and expert speakers on topics such as The Future of Photojournalism and Web 2.0 Terms Every Media Pro Should Know. You can watch, listen, and learn whenever you want.

We're gearing up for the spring launch of our first conference, The Mediabistro Circus: Three Rings of Digital Wonders -- Video, Mobile, and Social Media. Conferences aren't fun, that's why ours is a circus! Look for it in New York on May 20-21.

Our events team organized 160 cocktail parties in 10 cities, including our 10th anniversary party, where we honored the likes of Craig Newmark of craigslist.org for his achievements in interactive media and Adam Moss for his editorial direction at New York.