3 min read • Originally published January 25, 2016 / Updated March 25, 2026
Editor’s note: This interview was originally published when Jeff Larson was data editor at ProPublica. Since then, he co-founded The Markup, a nonprofit publication investigating the societal harms of technology, and is now Director of Cyber Experience at Yahoo. His advice for breaking into data journalism holds up just as well today.
Data is all the rage now. Companies use it to create more nuanced marketing campaigns. Politicians use it to formulate legislation. And as analytics become more sophisticated and data becomes more available, media, too, has gotten in on the fun.
Some publications, like ProPublica and The New York Times, have whole departments devoted to data, while others, like FiveThirtyEight, focus exclusively on it. This translates into a lot of different jobs in the world of data reporting, but it can be a difficult career path to break into.
We spoke to Jeff Larson, then the data editor at ProPublica and now a veteran of some of the most consequential data journalism of the past decade, to learn what it takes to succeed in the field.
How did you get into data journalism?
In 2009, New York magazine ran an article about [Web] developers in The New York Times Magazine, and I thought, wow, that’s the job I want!
I was already aware of what people like Matt Waite, Adrian Holovaty [co-founders of the late, influential Google Maps mashup chicagocrime.org] and Derek Willis were doing in newsrooms around the country, and I thought it was something I could try my hand at. In fact, that year Matt Waite won a Pulitzer for PolitiFact, a website he developed himself.
I was at The Nation, and so I looked around for a project and created a very simple analysis of how much the CEOs of Fortune-500 companies spent on the 2008 election by party. My former boss Scott Klein invited me for an interview as a data journalist at ProPublica, and I’ve been doing this ever since.
What’s the draw to data journalism?
I firmly believe that data makes a story better and stronger in every case. It is one thing to collect a bunch of anecdotes about a trend you think is happening, but data is a gift to any contentious story. While a source may lie to you, or spin the facts, a careful look at the data will never lead you astray. There’s power in that.
I’m lucky to be in a newsroom that focuses on investigative journalism, so I’m able work on an analysis for a very long time to get it right, but I’ve seen people turn around outstanding day stories with a careful look at the data.
What kind of background do you need to get into the field?
That’s a hard question. In my department, we’re all over the map. I was a literature major in college.
At a baseline, you’d need some experience in news and editorial judgement, but also a provable interest in writing code and statistical techniques like linear regression. Learn a programming language, and start a project in your free time. Grab some dataset and learn to visualize it, analyze that dataset to uncover hidden stories and report those out.
Mostly, though, we’re looking for fast learners who can tackle problems creatively to explain complex subjects to folks. Just like the rest of journalism.
Looking to get your foot in the door and launch your data journalism career? Of course, a great place to find a journalism job is on the Mediabistro job board.
Miles Jennings is CEO of Mediabistro and its parent CognoGroup. He previously founded and led Recruiter.com through its NASDAQ listing, executing more than 10 acquisitions over nearly a decade as CEO and COO.
4 min read • Originally published January 22, 2026 / Updated March 25, 2026
Miles Jennings is CEO of Mediabistro and its parent CognoGroup. He previously founded and led Recruiter.com through its NASDAQ listing, executing more than 10 acquisitions over nearly a decade as CEO and COO.
4 min read • Originally published January 22, 2026 / Updated March 25, 2026
If you work in media, journalism, entertainment, publishing, or digital content and feel like the rules keep changing, you are not imagining it.
Attention is fragmented. Career paths are no longer linear. Job titles are blurring. Teams are shrinking. Platforms, not institutions, now dictate how work is created, distributed, and rewarded.
That is precisely why The Weekly Drop, the flagship industry newsletter from Mediabistro, has quickly become required reading for creators and media professionals who want to understand not just what is happening, but what it means for their careers.
Under the editorial leadership of Matt Charney, The Weekly Drop does something rare in industry coverage. It treats media as both culture and system, and it explains how that system now operates for the people doing the work.
A New Editorial Voice for a Changed Media Industry
Matt Charney’s writing stands out because it refuses nostalgia.
Rather than romanticizing legacy career paths or lamenting what media used to be, The Weekly Drop focuses squarely on the constraints shaping the industry now. Fragmented attention. Algorithmic distribution. Consolidation. Layoffs. Measurement. Monetization.
Across recent editions, Charney returns to a consistent set of truths:
Attention no longer sits still.
Audiences multitask by default.
Platforms reward resilience over purity.
Careers are built on adaptability, not pedigree.
These are not abstract arguments. They are observations grounded in hiring data, platform behavior, and the lived experience of media workers navigating a smaller, faster, more competitive market.
When The Weekly Drop dissects how Netflix designs stories for partial attention or how social producers operate like live control rooms, it is not critiquing creativity. It describes the environment professionals must design within if they want to stay employable.
That clarity is what makes the newsletter valuable.
From Storytelling to Systems Thinking
One of the defining insights of The Weekly Drop is that modern media and creative careers are no longer built around a single skill or channel.
Writers are expected to understand distribution.
Editors are expected to interpret analytics.
Producers are expected to think about revenue.
Audience development now sits between editorial, product, and growth.
Charney frames this shift clearly. The work is no longer just creative execution. It is orchestration.
That is why the newsletter spends as much time on layoffs, consolidation, platform economics, and advertising shifts as it does on awards season or breakout hits. Those forces determine which jobs exist, how long they last, and which skills carry leverage.
The Weekly Drop treats careers as systems, not fantasies.
Connecting Culture to Careers
What truly distinguishes The Weekly Drop is how it links cultural moments to workforce reality.
A streaming hit becomes a lesson in second-screen design.
Awards season becomes a signal about résumé lift and marketability.
Audience data becomes a roadmap for which roles are growing and which are disappearing.
The newsletter does not separate media news from media jobs. It treats them as inseparable, because they are.
This approach aligns directly with Mediabistro’s broader strategy. Mediabistro is not simply listing open roles. It is helping creative professionals understand where opportunity is moving, not where it used to be.
Why Media Professionals Are Paying Attention
The Weekly Drop resonates because it does not pretend the industry will revert to a past golden age.
It assumes smaller teams, fewer full-time roles, more contract work, more competition, and more measurement.
And then it answers the only question that matters.
How do you build a career inside those constraints?
The answer is consistent. You adapt. You understand how attention works. You learn platforms. You stop waiting for permission. You build skills that survive distraction.
That message is unsentimental, direct, and useful.
Mediabistro’s Editorial Reset
The Weekly Drop represents more than a newsletter. It signals an editorial reset for Mediabistro.
By pairing industry analysis with real job listings, hiring trends, and career guidance, Mediabistro is positioning itself as a navigational tool for modern media professionals, not a nostalgia engine for vanished career paths.
In an industry where many workers feel disoriented, that positioning matters.
The Bottom Line
If you are serious about building a sustainable career in media, journalism, entertainment, or digital content, The Weekly Drop is no longer optional reading.
It does not offer comfort. It offers clarity.
And right now, clarity is the most valuable career asset there is.
You can subscribe to The Weekly Dropby Mediabistro to receive weekly insight on media careers, hiring trends, and how the industry is actually evolving, not how it wishes it still worked. And we highlight new projects and open jobs in every edition.
Attention is fragmented. Careers are adapting. And the job market has already moved on. Mediabistro is here to work for the people who tell the world’s stories.
Miles Jennings is CEO of Mediabistro and its parent CognoGroup. He previously founded and led Recruiter.com through its NASDAQ listing, executing more than 10 acquisitions over nearly a decade as CEO and COO.
3 min read • Originally published March 24, 2026 / Updated March 24, 2026
Miles Jennings is CEO of Mediabistro and its parent CognoGroup. He previously founded and led Recruiter.com through its NASDAQ listing, executing more than 10 acquisitions over nearly a decade as CEO and COO.
3 min read • Originally published March 24, 2026 / Updated March 24, 2026
There’s a founder, a freelancer, a designer somewhere right now who has spent more than 72 hours agonizing over their logo.
Stop it.
Your logo is fine.
Logos matter. Just not as much as you think they do at the stage you’re probably at when you’re reading this. And the proof is everywhere if you bother to look.
Twitter was almost called Friendstalker
In his 2013 book Hatching Twitter, journalist Nick Bilton reconstructed the platform’s chaotic early days in detail. The founders had kicked around names like Twitch, Smssy, and yes, Friendstalker. Most of the early logos were mocked up by co-founder Biz Stone, and they looked like what you’d expect from a startup figuring itself out in real time: different typefaces, different color schemes, nothing remotely close to the clean blue bird that became one of the most recognized marks in media history.
One of the early logos, designed by co-founder Noah Glass, was a gloopy green thing. It actually ran as the company’s branding for a while. Green. Gloopy. For the company that became a global communications platform worth billions.
The sky blue bird and bubbly lettering (and its subsequent X’ing out) came later. Much later. After the product found its audience, after people started using it, after the thing actually worked.
Your early logo is a placeholder until it isn’t
Here’s what happens with logos: you pick one, you use it, and over time it becomes “your logo” because people associate it with whatever you’ve built. The Nike swoosh wasn’t inherently meaningful. Carolyn Davidson designed it in 1971 for $35. It became iconic because Nike became iconic.
The brand gives meaning to the logo. The logo doesn’t give meaning to the brand.
If your product is good, if your service solves a real problem, if people like working with you, they will remember your logo fondly, no matter what it looks like. And if none of those things are true, the most beautiful logo in the world won’t save you.
A note for designers
If you design logos for clients, you already know this. But your clients probably don’t. And part of your job is giving them permission to stop overthinking it.
That doesn’t mean doing sloppy work. It means helping clients understand that a good logo is one that’s clean, legible, and doesn’t actively embarrass them. That’s the bar. Everything beyond that is a bonus, and it can evolve over time as the business grows and the brand sharpens.
The best thing you can tell a client who’s on revision 14 and still not happy: “This is good. Let’s ship it. You can always refine it later when you know more about who you are as a company.”
Maybe show them this article.
Knowing when to call something done is a professional skill. It’s also billable time you’re currently spending for free.
Ship the logo, build the thing
Every hour you spend tweaking kerning on your wordmark is an hour you’re not spending on the product, the clients, the content, the relationships that actually determine whether this works or not.
Twitter launched with a gloopy green logo and a name its founders weren’t even sure about. They figured it out as they went. You can too.
Pick something. Use it. Move on to the work that matters.
The Rise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): How AI Is Redefining Digital Authority
By
Media News
3 min read • Published March 24, 2026
By
Media News
3 min read • Published March 24, 2026
A new digital strategy is emerging as AI-powered search platforms prioritize credible sources, reshaping how organizations build visibility and authority online.
POST FALLS, ID / ACCESS Newswire / March 24, 2026 / The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in search is transforming how people discover information online. Instead of browsing multiple search results, users increasingly rely on AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity to deliver immediate, summarized answers.
This shift is driving the emergence of a new digital strategy known as Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), a methodology designed to help organizations become the trusted sources AI systems rely on when generating answers.
As conversational AI becomes the primary gateway to information, companies are recognizing that digital authority is no longer defined only by search rankings but by whether AI systems cite them as expert sources.
What Is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the process of optimizing a brand’s digital presence so that AI-powered search and conversational systems recognize it as a credible authority when generating answers to user queries.
Unlike traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which focuses on ranking web pages in search results, AEO focuses on becoming a referenced authority within AI-generated responses.
AI platforms analyze vast datasets and evaluate signals such as:
Verified media coverage
Expert commentary in credible publications
Consistent digital reputation
Structured, machine-readable information
Trusted third-party citations
Organizations that strengthen these signals increase the probability that AI assistants reference them when answering questions.
Why AI Is Changing Digital Discovery
For more than two decades, SEO has defined online visibility. Businesses competed to rank on the first page of search engines by optimizing:
Keywords
Backlinks
Page speed
Website architecture
However, AI-driven search platforms operate differently.
Instead of presenting a list of ranked pages, AI systems synthesize information from multiple trusted sources and provide a single, summarized answer or recommendation.
This shift creates a new competitive landscape where authority, expertise, and credible citations matter more than traditional ranking signals.
The Signals AI Systems Use to Identify Trusted Sources
AI assistants evaluate a range of authority indicators when determining which sources to reference in answers.
Key signals often include:
1. Credible Media Mentions
Coverage in reputable publications strengthens a brand’s trust and verification signals.
2. Recognized Subject-Matter Expertise
Experts quoted or featured in trusted media are more likely to be referenced by AI systems.
3. Consistent Digital Reputation
AI systems analyze brand mentions across:
News sites
Professional profiles
Industry publications
Knowledge graphs
4. Structured Data and Clear Information
Content formatted in a way that AI systems can easily interpret increases the likelihood of citation in AI-generated responses.
How AEO Is Redefining Online Authority
Industry analysts say the rise of AI search is redefining what it means to be an authoritative brand online.
Instead of measuring success purely through traffic or rankings, companies increasingly evaluate:
Whether AI assistants reference their expertise
Whether their insights appear in AI-generated answers
Whether their brand is recognized as a trusted authority
Organizations that achieve this level of recognition can gain a significant competitive advantage, as AI systems often highlight only one or a few authoritative sources.
Preparing for an AI-First Internet
The influence of AI-powered discovery is expected to expand rapidly as conversational interfaces become embedded in:
Web browsers
Mobile devices
Enterprise software
Smart assistants
For businesses, adapting to this environment means building verifiable expertise and digital credibility that AI systems can confidently reference.
Strategies increasingly combine public relations, expert positioning, structured content, and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).
As AI continues to reshape the information ecosystem, AEO is emerging as the next evolution of digital visibility.
About Trustpoint Xposure
Trustpoint Xposure is an AI-driven PR and digital authority agency that helps organizations strengthen their visibility through:
The firm works with leaders across law, finance, technology, and emerging industries to build long-term credibility in an AI-driven information ecosystem.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
6 min read • Published March 24, 2026
FADE IN:
Every Thanksgiving, Hollywood pretends to slow down.
Executives “step away,” inboxes auto-reply, and everyone likes to believe they’re about to spend four uninterrupted days thinking very deeply about gratitude instead of the year’s remaining greenlights and headcount targets.
Then the trades drop a Friday afternoon bombshell, a streamer leaks a sizzle reel, or a studio quietly updates its FYC page, and suddenly the entire industry is doomscrolling from their grandmother’s couch.
If there’s a theme to this week, it’s that nothing in entertainment ever really pauses. Not the rights battles.
Not the tax incentives. Not the slow-burn anxiety that generative AI is about to rebuild the business at a structural level. Probably not even the box office for Wicked: For Good, despite tepid reviews and proof you can’t spell “junket” without junk.
You can put the turkey in the oven, but the future doesn’t take holidays.
So here’s what actually matters right now. Consider it your Thanksgiving briefing. No sentimentality. No corny metaphors about harvests or feasts.
Just the stories shaping the business while everyone else is pretending to be offline. If you can, enjoy that turkey and binge-watch the final season of Stranger Things – and if you’ve got a gig, be thankful. If you’re looking, well, we’ve got your back.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Matt Charney
Executive Editor, Mediabistro
LEAD STORY
Platform Wars Go Prime Time: Netflix and NBC Smash Baseball’s Old Guard
Yes, we know. Thanksgiving is all about football, but when it comes to media, America’s most popular sport might no longer be its most lucrative.
The streaming wars finally reached America’s pastime (Go Dodgers), and the fallout is bigger than a blown call in October or the Guardians’ betting scandal. If you thought Thursday Night Football was as big as the streamers would spend on broadcast rights, think again.
Major League Baseball has finalized explosive media deals through 2028 that redraw the entire map of live sports distribution. Yes, baseball.
Of course, with one of the best World Series ever watched by an estimated 51M viewers – the most since 1992, when the existential threat to the networks was basic cable and the launch of Fox – this seems like an obvious home run for the networks.
Netflix enters live sports with Opening Day exclusives and the Home Run Derby.
NBC rips Sunday Night Baseball from ESPN after 35 years.
ESPN, in a surprising twist, lands what may be the most valuable asset: exclusive rights to distribute MLB.TV, the out-of-market streaming service that clocked 19.4 billion minutes watched in 2025.
It’s the clearest signal yet that if entertainment wants reliable, global, live audiences, they’re going to have to buy them the old-fashioned way. With a fat check for the rights to event viewing.
Back To Cali: $750M in Tax Credits Fuels a Production Repatriation Wave
While everyone else is arguing about stuffing versus dressing, California is busy launching the most aggressive production incentive play in its history. Last week, we discussed the decline in production that has cost tens of thousands of jobs and one of its primary economic engines – consider that in 2024, Ukraine actually had more major productions filmed there than the Valley (speaking of war zones).
It’s still early, but it already looks like the kind of tentpole project that studios dream about. Since the incentive went into effect July 1, the numbers so far show that this is one development we’re happy to see stuck in turnaround (a little screenwriter humor).
Consider:
Fifty-two film projects were announced in October alone
More than $1.4 billion in economic activity has been generated.
133,000 entertainment industry jobs have been created or saved.
Most importantly, the Baywatch reboot announced it was moving from Maui back to Malibu. Nice.
It’s the most assertive statement Sacramento has made in a decade: the runaway production era is over, and the state wants its industry back. West Coast for life.
Fix It In Post: AI Moves from Hype to Infrastructure in VFX
A new McKinsey report quietly dropped a truth that’s been obvious to anyone walking through a studio lot recently. Generative AI isn’t something that’s “coming.” It’s something that’s already baked into the foundation of the business, and as ubiquitous in the entertainment industry today as craft services or call sheets.
The report, which is totally worth reading, projects 80 to 90 percent efficiency gains in VFX and 3D asset creation. That’s not incremental. That’s a collapse of production timelines. It’s directors A/B-testing shots before a single crew call. It’s indie producers hitting studio-level polish without studio-level budgets.
The question now isn’t whether AI transforms content creation. It’s whether the industry can absorb the shock without cracking. Guilds are drawing lines in the sand, and studios are staring down lawsuits over dataset origins.
Fresh opportunities across entertainment, media, and production. Even during a holiday week, hiring doesn’t hit pause. And neither do the job postings on Mediabistro. Here are some hot jobs worth checking out:
Tuesday 11/25: Netflix rumored to tease another live sports deal
Wednesday 11/26: Early box office enters tracking; Zootopia 2 expected to win long weekend
Thursday 11/27: Thanksgiving; Post Malone to play halftime show of Chiefs-Cowboys game
Friday 11/28: Back to Hawkins for the final season of Stranger Things as Black Friday streaming surge begins and awards contenders jockey for position; favorite Hamnet hits streamers
What gives me something like optimism, even in a business that treats optimism like a scheduling conflict, is that moments like this force the industry to stop coasting.
Hollywood has always done its best work when it’s slightly uncomfortable. Streaming didn’t happen because studios felt inspired. It happened because DVDs collapsed. Peak TV didn’t emerge from a vision deck. It came from networks realizing they were losing cultural relevance.
If you strip away the noise, what’s happening right now feels less like decline and more like recalibration. Production is coming back home because the state finally stopped pretending runaway shoots were temporary.
Streamers are rediscovering the value of broad audiences instead of chasing niche subscription spikes. And AI, for all its legal and ethical headaches, is putting craft back into the hands of people who’ve spent years racing impossible deadlines. It doesn’t replace creativity. It buys time for it.
That’s not naive optimism. It’s pattern recognition. Every time the industry resets, new voices get in. New formats break through. New careers start. Thanksgiving is supposed to be a moment to acknowledge what’s working, and for all the chaos, a surprising amount actually is.
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
4 min read • Originally published June 6, 2015 / Updated March 24, 2026
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
4 min read • Originally published June 6, 2015 / Updated March 24, 2026
Editor’s note: This article features advice from Anne Russell, who at the time of our original interview was editor-in-chief of Shape magazine. Russell has since added to an already impressive resume, including a stint as editor-in-chief of VIV magazine. She continues to work today as a writer, editor, and content creator in Los Angeles, where she has been president of Extra Special Media since 2013. Her advice holds up as well as ever.
Here’s one we hear all the time: “I want to pitch to magazines and newspapers, but I don’t have any clips. No one will give me an assignment without clips, but how will I get a clip until I have an assignment?”
That’s an excellent question — but, you’ll be surprised to hear, the dilemma isn’t as intractable as it seems. We checked in with Anne Russell, former editor-in-chief of Shape magazine and president of Extra Special Media, who gives these suggestions.
Start small
Start with something doable. Concentrate on pitching to publications that actually accept work from writers without clips — and they do exist. Small publications are often willing to take a chance on first-timers, so try newsletters and local newspapers and magazines.
Write for freebie newspapers and magazines, which have small budgets and are therefore always eager for unpaid contributors. Insist on choosing a topic yourself. This is your golden opportunity to generate a sample that demonstrates your ability to write about a certain subject. Editors will focus on the quality of your work rather than the publication it appeared in. Branded content outlets and content marketing publications are also worth considering — companies are always looking for contributors, and those clips are increasingly recognized by editors as legitimate samples of your work.
Deal with daily sites
You can often drum up quick clips writing for websites that have daily needs for fresh content. The caliber of the provider can matter, so shoot for reputable and recognizable sites that can give you a brand-name writing sample. But something’s better than nothing, so write for any pub that’ll have you.
The same logic applies to newsletters. Substack and similar platforms have become legitimate publishing venues, and a byline in a well-read newsletter can be just as useful as a traditional website clip. It also helps to build a writer’s website where you can house everything in one place.
Just make sure your final, edited article is free of typos and misspellings. A writing sample with mistakes will not work in your favor — even if you aren’t responsible for them.
Pitch with references
When you send a pitch without clips — or with only byline-less clips — consider attaching a list of references. Compile the names of editors or former colleagues who have supervised your work (even if it wasn’t writing work you did for them) and include their contact information.
Two to three people will suffice; more than four is overkill. Just make sure that these references are actually prepared to vouch for you — a bunch of names might seem impressive, but the editor will call and a fake reference will be found out.
Play up your focus fields
Forget that you don’t have much journalism experience; you probably have stellar credentials in other fields. Don’t underestimate the value of your own expertise. Are you a dentist? A history buff? Do you have a hobby you’ve perfected? Focus your efforts on publications that cover your area of expertise. Here’s how to position yourself as a subject-matter expert that editors actually want to hear from.
In your letter, play up your specialized knowledge, not your writing skills. Take full advantage of anything and everything you have going for you.
Pitch the unique, interview the evasive
Pitch story ideas that only you can do. Spend some time hunting down an unusual idea that you are uniquely qualified to cover. Or, better still, nail an interview with someone who is known for being elusive.
The goal is to present an opportunity to an editor that she cannot refuse, and this is what will give you the edge against all those other people who have clips. Remember that more than anything else, editors are hungry for new and different stories.
Sell with your pitch letter
Demonstrate quality writing in your pitch letter — it’s a written document, after all, and it should prove your ability to communicate ideas and concepts. Without clips, the prose in your pitch letter assumes greater significance. Here’s a breakdown of the elements that make a pitch letter work.
Opt for op-eds
Write a personal essay or an opinion piece. Of course, an editor won’t assign a first-person piece like this based on a query letter, so you have to do the work first before you can shop it around. Your advantage here is that the writing speaks for itself. Before you submit, make sure you’re not making one of these common personal essay mistakes.
Resist the urge
And, finally, remember: When you don’t have samples of non-fiction writing, it’s tempting to send an editor samples of other types of writing you have done, such as poetry, a song or a screenplay. Resist this temptation. These things don’t show you have a command of journalism — and they just might freak out the editor.
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
6 min read • Originally published February 8, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Celeste Mitchell is an editorial writer and editor with nearly 30 years of experience creating consumer lifestyle content for publications including Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and SELF. She previously served as Deputy Editor at Cosmopolitan and taught journalism courses through Mediabistro.
6 min read • Originally published February 8, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Updated March 24, 2026
We’re always getting questions about what certain obscure (or sometimes not-so-obscure) publishing terms mean. To help, we’re rolling out Mediabistro’s media glossary.
So, freelancers and media-job-seekers: Bookmark this bad boy and hit it up whenever you’re asking yourself, “What the heck is a nut graf?!”
All-rights contract: A legal contract between a publisher and a freelance writer which grants all rights to the completed work to the publisher. This is not so good for the writer. Before signing anything, it’s worth knowing the key terms in any freelance contract.
Beat: A subject or industry that a reporter (or editor) is responsible for covering. Also how you’ll generally feel after a long close night.
Book: Industry slang for a magazine. As in, “I’ve got a piece in the book this month.” Using it correctly is a reliable way to signal you know what you’re doing.
Clips: Your published writing samples, the currency of the freelance world. No clips, no assignments; good clips, better assignments. Simple math. If you’re just starting out, here’s how to build your portfolio from scratch.
Close: The night (or nights, at a monthly, bimonthly or quarterly) when pages are finally being finished off and sent to the printing plant. During a close, mag-world people have no life.
Credit line: A list of photographers, illustrators or stylists appearing in small type on the page. It’s like a byline, but for art people, and for no good reason, much smaller.
Deadline: When your assignment is due. Ignore them and they’ll stop being a problem, because you won’t get any more work.
Dek: A sentence or few sentences below a headline, a dek summarizes the article. Like many magazine-production terms, it’s intentionally misspelled (instead of “deck”) so that others involved in the process won’t accidentally think it’s real copy.
Display type: Heds, deks, pull quotes and other written material that’s printed in a larger font or different color from the main body copy, to help draw a reader’s attention.
Embargo: An agreement that information provided early (by a PR firm, company, or government agency) won’t be published until a specified date and time. Breaking an embargo is how you stop getting early information.
Evergreen: An article that has no news peg and thus can be published at any time of the year or repeatedly, year after year. A “glossary” column, for example, is an evergreen.
File: As a verb, when a writer submits a completed assignment to an editor. As a noun, the material submitted.
First North American Serial Rights (FNASR): The standard rights most magazines want to purchase: the right to publish your piece first, in North America, in print or digital. After that, the rights revert to you. Much better than an all-rights contract.
Galley (or galley proof): An early typeset version of a story sent for proofreading before it goes to print. If you’ve ever caught a typo in a final magazine, someone wasn’t reading their galleys.
Graf: A paragraph, once again intentionally misspelled.
Hed: An article’s headline, sometimes intentionally misspelled. Writing a great one is harder than it looks. These headline tips can help.
Independent contractor: Most freelancers are considered independent contractors, which means the publication doesn’t take legal responsibility for the employee, deducting taxes and so forth. Generally, but not always, an independent contractor doesn’t receive benefits. If you’re navigating the freelance life, here are 7 ways to be a more productive freelance writer.
Kicker: The final paragraph or sentence of a story, usually designed to be funny or wry or somehow end things with a bang.
Kill fee: Payment to a writer whose piece won’t be published. It’s usually a percentage of the agreed-upon piece fee, but sometimes it’s a flat rate.
Lede: The intentional misspelling of “lead,” it’s the opening to an article.
Masthead: The official list of names and job titles of those responsible for producing a publication: editors, writers, designers, art directors, sales representatives, publishers, lawyers and support staff. It usually runs someplace in the first few pages of a magazine, but it’s not always there, which is frustrating.
Multiple submission: Pitching the same story idea to several publications simultaneously.
Nut graf: Also sometimes known as trumpet or billboard graf, it comes right after the catchy lede and clearly lays out the thrust of the article. It’s like the thesis statement in a term paper. Here’s what else makes a good magazine story.
Off the record: Information provided by a source that cannot be used in print. It can, however, be used (without revealing the source) to coax information from another source, and sometimes people can be persuaded to put previously off-the-record information on the record. Not-for-attribution information, by contrast, may be used in print but without the source’s name attached. In general practice, information cannot be placed off the record retroactively.
On background: A step above off the record. Information provided on background can be published, but the source can’t be named or identified in any traceable way. Distinct from not for attribution, which is essentially the same thing with slightly looser conventions depending on who you ask.
Pay on acceptance: A policy under which the publisher pays the writer when the assigned article is completed and accepted by the editor. We like to be paid on acceptance.
Pay on publication: A policy under which the publisher pays the writer when (or soon after) the article appears in print. We like this less.
Pull quote: A compelling and provocative quote from a source that is “pulled” from the running text of an article and featured as display type.
Query, also called a pitch letter: A letter from a freelance writer to an assigning editor that describes a story idea. A query is also the term for a request from an article’s editor for more information to flesh out the piece. It can also be used as a verb. Inexplicably, some pronounce the word qwee-ree while others pronounce it qweh-ree. Not sure how to reach editors in the first place? Here’s advice on how freelancers can connect with editors.
Roundup: A story format that collects multiple examples, sources, or products on a single topic. Easy to pitch, easy to sell, and often evergreen.
Running text: The main text of an article or in a package, as distinct from sidebars, charts and so forth. Also sometimes called the main bar.
Service: A type of writing that offers advice and useful information. Also called a how-to.
Sidebar: Text or a chart that is separated from the main bar and highlights additional information about a story.
Slug: The short internal identifier given to a story during production. Has nothing to do with the slimy garden variety.
Spike: When an editor kills a story before assigning it a kill fee, meaning you did the work and got nothing. Not to be confused with a kill fee, which at least acknowledges your pain.
Stet: An editor’s indication on a manuscript that previously crossed-out text should be reinstated.
TK: A place marker used in drafts of an article to indicate missing information. It’s an intentional misspelling of “TC,” for “to come,” as in “more info to come.”
Work for hire: Like an all-rights contract, but baked into the job itself rather than negotiated per piece. If you’re a staffer, everything you write is probably work for hire whether you know it or not.
Jenell Talley is a journalist and program analyst with a background spanning media, government, and editorial work. She holds a journalism degree from Howard University and a master's in human resources management from the University of Maryland.
3 min read • Originally published May 3, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Jenell Talley is a journalist and program analyst with a background spanning media, government, and editorial work. She holds a journalism degree from Howard University and a master's in human resources management from the University of Maryland.
3 min read • Originally published May 3, 2016 / Updated March 24, 2026
Lots of companies have a business development director, including yours. And there are business development director openings on the job board. Yet you’re not sure what the position entails or if it’s the right job or ambition for you. Well, wonder no more.
We asked a couple of business development directors to tell you all about the job. Check out what they had to say, and consider taking a chance on a profession that’s all about creating opportunity.
What exactly does a business development director do?
Whether the job is in television, tech, or digital media, a business development director is responsible for driving a company’s growth and increasing its revenue, identifying and developing new business opportunities, and building and expanding the presence of the company and its brands.
The role also involves leading sales and client-relationship management, tracking new markets and emerging trends, recommending new products and services, proposing and developing new strategic partnerships, writing proposals and plans, and guiding long-term objectives to meet business needs and requirements.
“It’s an all-encompassing role,” says Sajeel Qureshi, VP of business development at Computan, a marketing support organization with offices in Canada and the United States. Qureshi manages a sales team, oversees marketing campaigns to generate leads, earns media placement to position the company as an expert in its discipline, and allocates and manages the sponsorship and pro-bono budgets.
What skills do you need?
Persistence, knowledge of the product or service you’re selling, and communication skills are essential — and all equally important, says Tim Drudge, brand and business development manager at St. Vincent Sports Performance in Indiana. “Without one of those skills, the others fail.”
Qureshi emphasizes the importance of communication skills in particular. A business development director is one of the first points of contact someone has with the company, so it’s vitally important to be able to explain what the company does and how it can help in simple, digestible terms — whether in person or via email.
You should also understand how to use technology to stay ahead of competitors. Knowing what software and automation platforms are available in your industry — and picking the ones that best fit your organization — is a must.
Who is a business development director’s boss?
This depends on the size of a company and its setup, though most business development directors report to a vice president or to the owners.
What do you need to get ahead in this position?
People skills. That means effectively communicating with customers and building real relationships. Verbal communication is a lost art, says Drudge. “Not only does it lead to clear expectations, but it builds a longstanding relationship — and revenue — that can be counted upon year after year.”
Strong networking skills matter just as much. The ability to connect with new contacts, stay top of mind with clients, and open doors through relationships is what separates good business development professionals from great ones.
How can you break into this field?
The career ladder to this position usually starts with an entry-level job in sales or marketing. You don’t need a degree in a specific area before starting your climb, says Drudge, so long as you have top-notch people skills and a genuine passion for the products and services you’ll be selling.
It also helps to keep your LinkedIn profile sharp and stay visible in your industry. Business development is a relationship-driven field, and the connections you build early in your career are often the ones that open the biggest doors later on.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
4 min read • Published March 24, 2026
Welcome to the first edition of Mediabistro Weekly Drop. I’m Matt Charney, and I’m thrilled to introduce myself as the new Executive Editor of Mediabistro. If you work in media, publishing, production, journalism, design, content, or any other corner of the creative class, we’ve got you covered.
Each week, we’ll cut through the career chaos to bring you real news that actually matters in media – new jobs, industry shifts, emerging trends, and honest commentary you won’t find in a press release.
Our goal is simple: to help you survive, thrive, and stay inspired as a creative professional in an industry that’s changing faster than your inbox can keep up.
The Future Is (Un)scripted: Hollywood Quietly Fires 41,000 While Cloning the Stars Who Remain
AI isn’t coming for Hollywood. It already moved in, took the best parking spot, and edited itself into the credits. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Los Angeles County has lost over 41,000 film and television jobs since 2020. That’s one in four entertainment workers gone. At Creative Artists Agency’s Vault program, A-list actors are paying six figures to 4D scan themselves and preserve their vocal patterns for future licensing. Meanwhile, Amazon’s internal roadmap outlines plans to automate 75 percent of its operations workforce, already cutting thousands from Prime Video and MGM (full story: The Ankler) Google’s Veo 3 can generate 8-second, VFX-quality clips instantly. Netflix is using AI pipelines for projects like El Eternauta. Apple’s partnership with the South Park creators produced a demo of real-time de-aging – no makeup chair needed (full story: LA Times)
A FilmLA executive recently told me that 2025 is tracking worse than 2024, which was already the worst non-COVID year on record – and he expects 2026 to be even worse. Studios aren’t making content anymore; they’re making code. The message is simple: if you can’t outshoot the algorithm, you’d better learn to feed it (full story: Variety)
California Bets $750 Million on a Hollywood That’s Already Gone
California lawmakers have passed a $750 million annual production tax credit package—more than double the prior cap.
The problem? The math doesn’t work. Soundstage occupancy in the Los Angeles area is down to 63 percent. More than 70 percent of productions rejected from the program end up filming elsewhere, often in Georgia, New York, or Canada.
Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra summed it up well: “Even with subsidies, California just doesn’t make sense.”
That’s always been part of its charm, but apparently, not everyone feels that way. FilmLA reports the city lost 1,500 shoot days in the last quarter. That’s not a slowdown. That’s an evacuation (or another WGA strike). Full Breakdown
Silver Linings Playbook: How A UK Production House Is Using AI For Scaling Its Business
“AI didn’t replace our team. It saved it.”
That’s the takeaway from Black Spot Media Group, a London-based production house that turned to the AI-driven content-discovery platform CaraOne to get unstuck from the scramble of legacy workflows.
By adopting CaraOne, which uses natural-language search, emotion/context detection, and asset indexing across deep archive libraries, Black Spot didn’t just speed up its work. They avoided laying off freelancers and instead doubled down on creative expansion.
Founder John Laskas puts it simply: “We haven’t pitched a single job since March that didn’t involve CaraOne … it multiplies the creative power of our team and gives us a real competitive advantage by letting us do things we simply couldn’t do before.”
They were freed from endless footage triage, redundant searches and manual metadata tagging; the AI did the heavy lifting so their team could focus on storytelling, client engagements and new revenue streams.
Takeaway: If your job’s worth doing, it’s worth augmenting. The goal isn’t to compete with the algorithm; it’s to make it handle the tedious so you can work on the meaningful.
Want to be featured in the next Creator Spotlight? Share your story with us -especially if you’re experimenting with AI, building niche audiences, or rewriting what it means to have a career in media. editor@mediabistro.com
And Now: Your Moment of Zen
If you think your week was bad, or you didn’t make nearly enough money to justify all that hard work, try being Sydney Sweeney RN.
Every time the industry automates another function, it promises new efficiencies and new opportunities. But if history is any guide, efficiency in Hollywood rarely benefits the people doing the work. This week’s headlines prove it: jobs are vanishing, incentives are inflating, and AI is producing faster than most writers can edit.
The future isn’t coming; it’s been greenlit. The question is whether there will be anyone left to roll the credits.
See you next week, unless the algorithm decides to co-host, in which case we’ll both be here.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
Matt Charney is a talent acquisition analyst, journalist, and marketing leader with nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of recruiting, HR technology, and media. He has held editorial and content leadership roles at ERE Media, Recruiting Daily, and Recruiter.com, and served as Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions. As Principal Analyst at Kyle & Co, he covers HR tech funding, M&A, and market strategy. Matt currently serves as Executive Editor at Mediabistro, where he leads editorial, partnerships, and multimedia content for the creative professionals who power the media industry. He holds a degree in Writing for Screen and Television from the University of Southern California.
6 min read • Published March 24, 2026
Design is one of those jobs that everyone claims to need – at least, until budgets tighten or hiring freezes. Then, suddenly, the professionals responsible for making products more usable, brands more recognizable, and interfaces more intuitive – well, suddenly, design goes from mission-critical to commoditized and disposable.
The past few months, judging by the numbers, have been a perfect reminder of this job market dynamic. While designers were largely decimated in the wake of recent tech layoffs, hiring for these roles seems to be slowly creeping back.
This is undoubtedly good news, but tempering this uptick is the fact that designers today face a very different job market than the one most experienced during the post-pandemic boom years.
Aesthetics and Adobe acumen are no longer enough to land a gig; portfolios instead need to demonstrate real business impact and bottom-line results. AI literacy is increasingly creeping into job descriptions, and despite the overall uptick in openings, junior-level roles are disappearing faster than Flash developers.
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And yet, strangely, design has proven to remain one of the most resilient roles in entertainment and media. UI and UX roles remain among the most in-demand (and fastest-growing) digital professions through the end of the decade, according to BLS data.
In other words, design, as a profession, isn’t dying – it’s evolving. This means a ton of designers who felt that their Figma designs would change the world feel like they’re being personally attacked.
That’s why, this week, we’re taking a look at design career data to see the state of the design job market today, where it’s headed, and what it means for your job if your job involves pixels, prototypes, or trying to get PMMs to sign off on iconography.
Lead Story: Careers by Design
For most of the last decade or so, UX/UI design had, by all appearances, a pretty sweet deal going. When tech companies were essentially printing money, product teams were expanding exponentially, executives were all too happy to hire designers in what became a veritable arms race for “intuitive” interfaces and best-in-class user experiences (both high on the SaaS priority list).
The bad news: that design honeymoon phase is over.
After several years of hiring freezes, layoffs, and the existential threat posed by the rise of AI, design seems to be stabilizing – with slight increases in job openings and hiring events YoY, according to BLS data.
With the function back in growth mode, the most significant change for designers is a shift in employer expectations and role-related responsibilities. The shift is fairly straightforward: designers are no longer judged by how “good” their products or portfolios look. They’re judged by how their work aligns with bigger business and bottom-line results.
That might seem pretty obvious to anyone who’s tried justifying design expenses to finance, but in practice, this represents a seismic shift in focus, from making designs “pretty” to making them profitable.
What it means for your career:
With design tools becoming standardized, and AI increasingly capable of generating decent interface patterns, visual polish is no longer a differentiator; now, designers are expected to contribute to strategy, product direction, and measurable outcomes.
That means fewer conversations about typography and more about conversion rates. Designers have finally found a seat at the grown-up table – for better or for worse.
The Design Job Market Is Back (Sort Of)
Data from talent analytics platform Revilio Labs shows design hiring steadily rebounding in the wake of last year’s widespread tech layoffs. Design openings rose modestly from last year’s lows, although they remain far off their post-pandemic peak.
Design Jobs Rising Moderately
At the same time, the number of designers seeking work has skyrocketed, so every job posting attracts a small army of active applicants. The result is a labor market that economists generally refer to as “competitive,” and the rest of us refer to as “good luck.”
Remote work is also becoming much more prevalent for designers; remote-only or hybrid design roles, increasingly rare in the past, have settled well below their pandemic-era highs, but remain a much more prevalent – and presumptively permanent – part of the job market.
What It Means for Your Career
For all the AI tools and technologies that have emerged within the design space, there’s still a fairly robust market for design jobs; the only issue is that they’re much more competitive than ever before, due to candidate supply far outpacing employer demand.
Real talk: if you’re a designer who’s on the market, your portfolio is competing with hundreds of others, which means that talent and experience are no longer enough. Neither are generic case studies nor purpose-built portfolio samples.
AI Is Not Replacing Designers. It Is Rewriting the Job Description.
A few times a day, some self-proclaimed “thought leader” on LinkedIn announces the work apocalypse. Designers, marketers, analysts, you name the job, there’s some pundit out there positing that AI has already replaced them.
Research from the UX Design Institute, however, takes a different tack: it examines real labor market data rather than sweeping generalizations and clickbait hot-take headlines that dominate online discourse.
Their findings are pretty simple: the narrative about AI killing jobs is great for PR (and VC-backed AI vendors), but the actual empirical evidence remains conspicuously absent from the conversation.
In reality, research suggests that only 7-10% of all employers have deployed enterprise-wide AI initiatives at scale; with limited early adoption, employment in many of the professions most “exposed” to AI has not experienced any meaningful cutbacks or collapse.
This includes design: as the article notes, less than 10% of all US companies use any form of AI in UI/UX workflows, and those that do tend to augment existing design headcount rather than replace it entirely. For companies questioning whether to continue investing in design, however, the economics remain compelling.
What this means for your career:
Research into digital product design shows that UX/UI improvements can deliver consistent, significant financial returns, with studies estimating that every dollar invested in design yields between $2 and $100 in value, depending on the use case and context.
That sort of ROI tends to get executives’ attention – especially when sales slow, and companies move from looking for growth to looking for efficiency gains. The real career challenge facing designers? Proving that impact in a way that executives actually appreciate.
The Bottom Line: Design Is Still One of the Fastest-Growing Creative Careers
As we’ve already covered, the design profession isn’t dying – it’s evolving. In the new normal, the most successful designers will understand more than interaction patterns or layout grids – they’ll be equally adept at interpreting user behavior, product metrics, and business strategy.
Despite the turbulence, the long-term outlook for designers remains surprisingly strong. Workforce analyses and labor market data continue to rank design among the fastest-growing creative professions through 2030, with an estimated 7-10% annual growth.
That means, in the US alone, over 100,000 new design jobs should be created by 2030, with 20-25,000 net new design jobs opening every year, numbers that are something of an anomaly within the creative and media industries.
The reason behind this growth is simple: software keeps eating the world – and someone has to make that software something that normal humans can actually use. The tools may be changing, AI may be evolving, but the job remains more or less the same.
That means the future of design is less about making things beautiful and more about making them work. The good news is that there’s plenty of work – and even more opportunities – to be done.
One of the early logos, designed by co-founder Noah Glass, was a gloopy green thing. It actually ran as the company’s branding for a while. Green. Gloopy. For the company that became a global communications platform worth billions.
