5 Actionable Steps to Build Your Media Career 5-Year Plan

John Lombard is a content strategist and writer with over a decade of experience creating interactive and video content for brands like Apple, IBM, and Samsung. He previously worked at Mediabistro and now serves as a Client Strategist at Ceros.

4 min read • Originally published January 4, 2015 / Updated April 5, 2026

Apply for the Senior Editor, Leadership role at Inc.

4 min read • Originally published January 4, 2015 / Updated April 5, 2026

Whether you’re just starting out in your career, deep in the freelancing trenches or already at your media dream job, developing a 5-year plan is a bold, take-charge move. With a long-term goal in sight, and with actionable steps leading to that goal, you’re no longer simply floating by, you’re taking the reins on your destiny. And that feels awesome.

Wondering where to start? Read on as we take a look at the 5-year plan and how to really get it going.

1. Determine Your Overall Goal

Think of your overall goal as a finish line, the desired outcome of your 5-year plan: Maybe you’re looking to transition into a new career, or maybe you want to turn your idea for a startup into a reality. Whatever the goal, be sure that it’s realistic and concrete, as more defined goals make it easier to develop actionable steps towards your desired outcome.

Let’s say your overall goal (what you plan to achieve with your 5-year plan) is:

To create a blog with a strong online following that generates enough steady income from ad revenue to support myself by first quarter 2021.

Wondering what you’ll need to do to hit that goal? See below for more on how to make the dream a reality.

2. Determine Your Actionable Steps

Now that you have your overall goal laid out, it’s time to figure out the actionable steps you’ll need to take in order to reach that goal. What are actionable steps? Put simply, they’re steps that require you to physically do something in order to get closer to your goal.

To just state your 5-year plan and attempt to achieve it would be incredibly overwhelming. Rather, set small attainable goals that lead to your ultimate goal. Using our blogging 5-year plan as an example, let’s take a look a couple of the actionable steps that get us closer to our end:

Build a following of readers.

For this step, you can break down all the smaller steps that lead to this being accomplished. You might list these steps as learn how to build a blog following via online classes, study other successful bloggers, write at least 10 new articles every month.

Use digital marketing techniques to raise my visibility online.

Here, you might list take a class in digital marketing .

3. Break Out the Calendar

Here’s where things get real: Take your actionable steps and substeps and give them real dates.

Determine which steps need to happen in which order, then begin filling out the calendar. Start with yearly goals, move on to monthly goals, then add your daily or weekly goals.

A good idea when filling out your calendar is to ask yourself with each entry, “Is this step directly contributing towards my 5-year goal?” Asking this will help weed out what are actually side-projects and what are essential steps needed in reaching your goal.

Here’s how this might look with our blogging example:

End of week 1
Set my 5-year plan in motion!
Began researching top bloggers in my field
Completed 3 of 10 blog posts to roll out next month

End of month 1
Finished researching online classes and signed up for at least one
Began following the top bloggers in my niche field
Created 10 quality pieces to roll out for the next month

End of year 1
Completed content and marketing classes
Reached out to popular bloggers for advice
Created quality content for my audience (at least 10 pieces a month)

To make your steps even more specific, and yourself more accountable, productivity strategist Mike Vardy suggests renaming “appointments” on a calendar with “agreements” helps make them more difficult to break. “Rescheduling an appointment is something that can be done,” Vardy says, “but rescheduling an agreement seems more daunting and less viable.”

4. Add and Adjust Steps as Needed

As you continue towards you goal, it is very important to revise steps along the way. Maybe you, our hypothetical blogger, thought a content marketing class would help, when you realized a creative writing class would also be beneficial. Or maybe you learned that you also need to add video and a podcast to your site in order to gain more followers.

The main lesson here: Don’t be afraid to make changes to your steps, as long as they are changes that will more effectively lead you to your 5-year goal.

5. Stick to Your List by Becoming Your Goal

It may sound weird, but this change of mindset can help you achieve your goals. Behavioral psychologist James Clear says that our current behaviors are a reflection of our identity. To change your behaviours and actions, Clear says, you must “start believing new things about yourself.”

How to do this? Clear recommends developing a new identity and backing it up with small wins (which in this case are your actionable steps). Let’s check out our blogger example one final time:

New Identity
A highly creative writer capable of pulling in large audiences from all walks of the internet.

Prove It through Small Wins/Actionable Steps
Each month, get over 100 shares on at least 3 articles.

“You have to become the type of person you want to be,” Clear says, “And that starts with proving your new identity to yourself.” The more actionable steps you take towards your goal, the more you become your new identity.

Need that extra boost to jump-start your 5-year plan? Sign up for one of Mediabistro’s online courses such as Project Management Methodologies or Fundamentals of Digital Marketing. Developed and led by industry experts, these courses are designed to enhance your skills and help you get closer to your goals.

Topics:

Be Inspired, Productivity

Hot Jobs

Editorial and Digital Marketing Leadership Roles Hiring Now

By Mediabistro Team

6 min read • Published April 5, 2026

By Mediabistro Team

6 min read • Published April 5, 2026

The Senior Talent Search Is On

Media companies are hunting for leaders who can do two things at once: produce excellent work and grow an audience. The pressure behind that demand has sharpened this year.

Wired just shuttered its UK print edition to redirect resources toward subscriber growth. The Washington Post is turning to creator-led video deals after a round of staff cuts. WSJ, one of the few legacy outlets posting strong digital subscriber numbers, credits editorial discipline as central to its recovery.

The companies still actively hiring for senior creative and editorial talent are the ones that have found a version of this that works for their particular business model.

Whether the title says “editor,” “art director,” or “associate director,” each role demands someone who understands metrics as deeply as they understand craft.

That convergence used to live mostly at digital-native outlets. Now it’s showing up at a legacy business magazine, a regional print publication, and a small independent book publisher. The signal is clear: audience development is no longer a separate department. It’s baked into every senior creative and editorial hire.

What makes today’s batch especially worth watching is the range of formats these companies publish across. Print magazines, contributor networks, TikTok, Amazon advertising, branded content. If you’ve been building skills across multiple channels, these roles were designed for someone like you.

Today’s Hot Jobs

Senior Editor, Leadership at Inc. (Mansueto Ventures)

Why this one matters: Inc.’s Leadership section is a contributor-driven franchise, which means the Senior Editor won’t just be editing stories. They’ll be managing a large roster of columnists and freelancers, coaching writers on performance, and recruiting new voices. This is an editorial role where your success is measured by traffic growth and contributor output, a combination that reflects where digital publishing leadership is heading. The contributor-driven model also gives a section like this more resilience than a staff-heavy operation — a well-run freelance network keeps content flowing without the fixed overhead that has made many editorial teams vulnerable to cuts in recent years.

The salary range of $88,500 to $106,000 plus bonus eligibility puts this solidly above market for similar section-editor roles. The position is covered under the Writers Guild of America East collective bargaining agreement, which means union protections around salary floors, scheduling, and working conditions. That coverage means more now than it might have five years ago.

What they need from you:

Strong editorial judgment paired with deep understanding of audience behavior and digital publishing best practices
Experience managing and coaching a large roster of contributors and freelancers
A track record of scaling editorial content that performs, with a metrics-driven approach
Willingness to work a hybrid schedule (Tuesday through Thursday) at 7 World Trade Center in New York

Art Director at Virginia Living

The creative opportunity here: Virginia Living is an award-winning regional lifestyle magazine covering food, culture, destinations, homes, and gardens. The Art Director role offers genuine creative ownership over both the print publication and digital platforms. You’ll be directing photography shoots, commissioning illustrators, and setting the visual direction for every issue. Regional lifestyle print is actually in a steadier position than many national titles right now. Local advertising relationships, loyal community readership, and lower distribution costs give publications like Virginia Living a model that works without scale. Hiring for creative leadership at this level signals real investment in where the publication is going.

Regional magazines like this one rarely advertise nationally for creative leadership, which makes this opening unusual. Richmond’s cost of living also means your salary stretches further than comparable roles in New York or LA.

The ideal candidate brings:

Seasoned experience in magazine art direction across print and digital
Ability to concept, direct, and execute photography and illustration assignments from scouting through final delivery
Strong typography, layout, and brand storytelling skills
Comfort working hands-on in a small, close-knit editorial team based in Richmond, VA

Apply for the Art Director position at Virginia Living

Associate Director, Digital Marketing at Topix Media Lab

What caught our eye: Topix Media Lab is a small, independent publishing house with a catalog spanning gaming, graphic novels, food and drink, home decor, card decks, and children’s titles. The Associate Director will lead full-funnel digital campaigns across Amazon, TikTok, Instagram, and influencer channels. The Amazon and TikTok focus here is worth paying attention to. BookTok has moved serious sales volume for independent and backlist titles, and Amazon’s advertising tools have matured into a genuine acquisition channel for niche genres. Topix’s catalog breadth is actually an advantage in that environment: each genre connects to its own creator ecosystem and its own buying behavior, which means no two campaigns look alike.

This is a remote role. If you’ve been working in-house at a larger publisher and craving more ownership, this is the kind of seat where you can shape strategy from scratch.

Core qualifications:

Proven record developing and executing direct-to-consumer marketing programs, including digital advertising and influencer outreach
Experience building relationships with authors, agents, and influencers in book publishing
Ability to strategize, budget, and run digital advertising and social media efforts across a diverse catalog
Leadership experience, including mentoring junior team members

Apply for the Associate Director, Digital Marketing role at Topix Media Lab

Editorial Intern at Kirkus Reviews

For those just starting out: Kirkus has been one of the most trusted names in book criticism since 1933. This paid, remote internship (15 to 25 hours per week) puts you inside a working editorial operation where you’ll fact-check, maintain editorial calendars, catalog review submissions, and contribute to social media.

The real draw is the opportunity to write for the publication. Kirkus reviews go out to librarians, independent booksellers, and publishing trade professionals who use them for acquisition and stocking decisions. A byline there means your criticism is being read by people with real purchasing power across the industry, which is a disproportionately valuable starting point.

If you’re interested in breaking into editorial at the entry level, getting clips from a publication that functions as the industry’s reading list is a better foundation than most.

What they’re looking for:

Interest in the publishing industry, cultural journalism, and criticism
Strong writing samples and a cover letter
Ability to work remotely 15 to 25 hours per week
Attention to detail for fact-checking and editorial calendar management

Apply for the Editorial Intern position at Kirkus Reviews

Professional Takeaways

Today’s openings reward people who have refused to stay in one lane. The editor who understands analytics. The art director who thinks about digital as naturally as print. The marketer who can pivot from Amazon ads to TikTok influencer campaigns in the same afternoon.

It’s also worth noting what these four companies share beyond the job listings: each operates from a defensible revenue base. Inc. on subscriptions and a contributor network. Virginia Living on local advertising and community readership. Topix on genre-specific catalog depth. Kirkus on its long-standing authority with librarians and the book trade.

These companies are filling seats because they have stable ground to stand on, and in the current media environment, that’s worth paying attention to when you’re evaluating where to take your career next.

If your resume still reads like a single-discipline specialist, consider reframing it around the cross-channel results you’ve delivered. Hiring managers at companies like these aren’t sorting applicants into neat skill categories anymore. They’re looking for people whose experience already mirrors the way modern media actually works.

For more on building a well-rounded social and digital skill set, Mediabistro’s career resources are a good place to start sharpening your positioning.

Topics:

Hot Jobs

New to The Street Announces Episode 741 Airing Tonight on Bloomberg Television at 6:30 PM EST Featuring Canton Networks, Acme Markets, Virtuix Holdings (VTIX), HPB, Jonas & Redman, Acurx Pharmaceuticals (ACXP), and FreeCast (CAST)

By Media News

2 min read • Published April 4, 2026

By Media News

2 min read • Published April 4, 2026

NEW YORK CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / April 4, 2026 / New to The Street, one of the longest-running U.S. and international business television brands, today announced the broadcast of Episode 741, airing tonight as sponsored programming on Bloomberg Television at 6:30 PM EST across the United States, with additional distribution across international markets.

This week’s episode delivers a strong lineup of innovative companies and sector leaders across financial infrastructure, healthcare, advanced technology, and digital media-continuing New to The Street’s role as a platform for emerging growth companies to reach a global investor audience.

Featured Companies in Episode 741

Canton Networks
A next-generation financial infrastructure platform focused on enabling secure, interoperable blockchain networks for institutional markets, advancing real-world asset tokenization.

Acme Markets
A well-established retail grocery operator serving key U.S. markets, with a focus on operational scale, customer engagement, and evolving consumer demand.

Virtuix Holdings
A leader in immersive virtual reality solutions, redefining entertainment and fitness through its Omni platform and expanding commercial adoption globally.

HPB (High Performance Battery)
A German-based advanced battery technology company developing next-generation solid-state battery systems to support global electrification and energy storage demand.

Jonas & Redman
A strategic investment and advisory group focused on identifying and scaling high-growth opportunities across emerging industries.

Acurx Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ACXP)
A late-stage biopharmaceutical company developing a new class of antibiotics targeting Gram-positive bacterial infections, including drug-resistant pathogens.

FreeCast Inc.
A digital streaming platform offering aggregated content solutions designed to provide cost-effective alternatives to traditional cable and subscription services.

National Broadcast and Global Distribution

Episode 741 will air nationwide on Bloomberg Television in the U.S. at 6:30 PM EST, reaching millions of households, with additional distribution across MENA and Latin America as sponsored programming.

All featured interviews will also be distributed across New to The Street’s powerful digital ecosystem, including:

New to The Street TV YouTube Channel (4.5M+ subscribers):
https://youtube.com/@newtothestreettv?si=o6sE-t6X9Eu1NHEo
NewsOut Channel (combined reach exceeding 5.2M subscribers):
https://youtube.com/@newsoutchannel?si=BKhh8Aeei7_vknLR

This combined distribution delivers immediate scale across television, digital, and social platforms-driving visibility, engagement, and investor awareness for featured companies.

About New to The Street

New to The Street is a premier business television platform broadcasting sponsored programming on Bloomberg and Fox Business, featuring innovative public and private companies. With over 17 years of production and more than 700 episodes filmed, the platform combines long-form television interviews, earned media, digital distribution, and iconic outdoor advertising.

Filming regularly from the NYSE and Nasdaq MarketSite, New to The Street delivers unmatched exposure through its "Predictable Media™" model-aligning media reach with measurable outcomes for its clients.

Media Contact:
Monica Brennan
Communications Lead
New to The Street
Monica@NewtoTheStreet.com

SOURCE: New to The Street

View the original press release on ACCESS Newswire

Topics:

Productivity

How to Crush Your First Two Months at a New Job

Make a solid first impression and situate yourself for success

3 min read • Originally published July 28, 2016 / Updated April 4, 2026

3 min read • Originally published July 28, 2016 / Updated April 4, 2026

So you landed a new job. Congrats! The first two months can be an exciting—and stressful—time as you’re meeting your team, learning the ropes, and working to make your mark.

How can you be sure you’re doing all you can to set yourself up for long-term success at this new company or role? Read on as we break it down.

1. Be Prepared for Introductions

One of the first things you’ll be doing at your new job—assuming your company has a decent onboarding process—is meeting your team and any other staff you may work with.

Because you’ll be around these people every day, and in sometimes stressful situations, it’s important to start out positive, letting your coworkers know you’re excited to jump in and support the team.

Another thing to keep in mind—people will be asking you a lot of questions. Because you don’t want to nervously blurt out you left your last job because you hated your boss, a brief, prepared elevator pitch might be helpful.

2. Do Something Really Nice

Small things, like offering to grab coffee for a coworker or bringing in donuts for your team the first week, go a long way when you’re new to the team. It shows you’re excited to be there and that you’re the type of person who goes out of his way to help others.

And when you do finally make your first big mistake at work, how could anybody be mad at the person who brought donuts?

3. Ask Questions—a Lot of Questions

Your first few months are considered your onboarding time, when you’re getting the lay of the land. And while your manager or higher-up will try hard to get you up to speed, they are certain to skip crucial pieces of information.

So ask questions. Get everything figured out now, so when your workload does ramp up, you’ll be ready to tackle it all.

If you feel like you’re constantly pestering your manager with questions, put together a list of questions that don’t impede your current work and schedule a meeting with your manager to go over all of them at once. This not only helps you iron out the missing pieces, it shows your manager you’re committed to doing your job well.

4. Make Your Mark

Once you start feeling more comfortable in your role, it’s a great idea to start mapping out an easy—and highly visible—win.

Now this doesn’t mean developing a plan to restructure the company. Stick to something simple and attainable, since you want to make sure you’ll actually be able to accomplish it.

One way to go about this is to discuss your goals for the week with your manager. Then, at the end of that week, recap what your goals were and show how you hit your mark. Or, if your manager is looking to assign a task and you’re confident you could knock it out of the park, grab it before anyone else does and, well, knock it out of the park.

Topics:

Be Inspired, Productivity

Advice From the Pros

Hey, How’d You Become a Published Author and TV Writer at 23, Kara Taylor?

One determined young novelist's foray into TV writing

@AndreaWillWrite

Andrea Williams is an author, journalist, and columnist for The Tennessean with over 16 years of experience in journalism and 20 years in copywriting and communications strategy. Her work spans national outlets and high-traffic digital brands.

7 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026

@AndreaWillWrite

7 min read • Originally published October 21, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026

According to a slew of media reports detailing how the economic crisis has disproportionately affected millennials, most 20-somethings are unemployed or underemployed, bunking on their parents’ sofas, eating Frosted Flakes for dinner, and trying to figure out what to do with their lives. Except for Kara Taylor, that is.

At just 25, Taylor is riding high on the success of her young-adult thriller series: Prep School Confidential. Oh, and she recently snagged writer and co-executive producer credits on The Revengers, a new TV pilot created by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack and ordered by the CW network.

The temptation to call Taylor an overnight success or credit her good fortune to a well-connected relative in the industry is understandable. But make no mistake, haters: Taylor’s been hustling hard for years.

**With Prep School Confidential, your first novel, tell me about the process from completed manuscript to published book. How did you find your agent? How long did it take to sell the book?**

So I’ve obviously been writing most of my life, but I finished my first book my freshman year of college.

And I started to read up on the publishing industry [and] how to find an agent. And that book, it was just the cliché, terrible first book. So I eventually set that one aside, and my sophomore year of college I wrote another book. It was a young adult, contemporary novel, and it took me about six months to find an agent.

I did a major revision for the agent I signed with, who’s my agent now, and that book actually spent over a year on submission and it never sold. And during that time I wrote Prep School Confidential, which is the book that eventually sold.

So it was about two years, three completed manuscripts, and it was one book that eventually sold.

Did you always plan to pursue a traditional publishing deal, or did you ever consider self-publishing?

My goal was always just to find an agent and sign with a big publisher because back when I started writing, self-publishing wasn’t this phenomenon that it is now.

It still had the connotation that it was this vanity thing, where you pay somebody to publish your book. So I’d always had it in my mind that I was going to find an agent and find a publisher.

Around the time that I found my agent, self-publishing really had this upswing, and it was like this eBook revolution. [But] I never really considered it because, at that point, I’d worked so hard to find my agent and she’d worked so hard shaping the manuscript with me that we both just wanted to see it land with a traditional publisher.

Speaking of eBooks, you came into the publishing industry fairly recently, in the midst of all of the changes on the digital landscape. How has that affected your approach to your career?

I know with a lot of the [YA] authors, the pressure to churn out a book every year is enormous, and that’s why a lot of authors have turned to releasing short, eBook novellas in between their books.

My publisher is a little different. [At] St. Martin’s Griffin, their trade paperbacks, which Prep School Confidential is, come out every six to eight months, so the second book in the series is actually going to be out in March [2014].

So they stick with that model, and they really haven’t experimented a lot with the short eBooks. It’s not something that I’ve considered for this series, but I do know that to have longevity as a writer, if you’re not doing a book a year, it’s hard to stay in the game.

I know a lot of people are doing these serialized novels in eBook form, so that’s something that I’d definitely like to dabble in, especially since I write for TV, too. Episodic writing comes naturally to me.

**OK, let’s talk about the TV writing. How did you land the writing position with the CW’s The Revengers?**

My publisher [has] a new division called Macmillan films, [and] my editor, Brendan Deneen, has worked with the Weinstein Company in the past, so he has a lot of experience being a film rights agent. So the projects that he takes on at Macmillan are really focused on things that would translate well to film.

Prep School Confidential, once it was a finished manuscript, before it was even published, was making its way around the Hollywood circuit to producers and talent agents.

And it actually fell in the hands of Dan Dubiecki, who produced Juno and Up in the Air, and he just loved it so much that he called my editor and asked if I would be open to talking to him about other projects because he thought that my voice is really suited for television.

So I had a conversation with Dan, and I went out to California to meet him. I met some film agents; I wound up signing with United Talent Agency, and I had a general meeting with Warner Bros. Television.

They offered me a blind deal, which is basically a script commitment. So I had to write a script for them for this TV development season. I talked to a bunch of producers for a bunch of ideas that Warner Bros. had in house, and one day I got a call, “Hey, would you like to talk to Rashida Jones and Will McCormack? They have a new production deal at Warner Bros. Television. They wrote [the film] Celeste and Jesse Forever together, and now they’re trying to branch out to TV.”

I was like, ‘Of course I want to talk to Rashida Jones!’ So over about three or four months, I worked with Rashida and Will and a bunch of producers, and we came up with a pitch for [the show] and it wound up at the CW. And now I’m writing the pilot for this development season, and we’ll see if it gets picked up in January.

What tips do you have for other writers who want to break into TV?

I think the most important thing, and this is hard advice because it’s not something that you can really learn, [is to] just have a voice and a point of view and focus on branding yourself, whether it’s [with] humor or whatever.

Just be unique and be yourself, and write as much as you can.

I obviously broke into it in a strange way because it was actually the novel writing that helped me break into TV. So I think it’s good to keep in mind that there’s not one clear path or way to break into the industry. You have to put yourself out there in all mediums and all aspects and not write anything off, and [don’t] get discouraged, obviously.

I was writing books for two years before I found an agent, and I heard a lot of nos. I must have been rejected by over a hundred literary agents with my first book. So if you’re expecting instant results, it’s not going to be the career for you.

You just have to be patient and be in it for the long run.

So what is a typical writing day like for you? How do you balance TV and your books?

Well, I wake up around 8, and the first thing I have to do is answer all of my emails. I make sure to set aside a certain amount of time for the things like answering emails from readers, but I try not to get too bogged down by that.

And I’ll spend the first half of my morning working on book stuff because it’s early and the California people haven’t woken up yet. So I’ll work on the books until lunchtime, and I take a break.

And that’s normally when the TV people start their day, and if I’m waiting on notes from them, they’ll probably contact me in the afternoon. Sometimes I actually have to work until 10 [p.m.] my time because in the TV industry, they work till 7:30, 8 at night sometimes, just to churn out things, especially during development season.

So I have to be careful how I split up my day because it’s obviously hard to work on two things at once, a book or a TV show. I usually reserve the morning for books and night for TV.

Where do you see your career in the next five or ten years?

I would love to be writing for TV full-time. I mean, as much as I love writing the novels, right now, the book series is a full-time job in itself.

I’d like to gradually transition to TV and then five, 10 years from now, go back and write the book I’ve always wanted to write—at my own pace, not under contract, not with any deadlines—and maybe see that go out into the world at the same time as I’m working on my TV show. In five years, I’d obviously love to be working on The Revengers still, if everything works out and it gets picked up.

But if not, I have a lot of other ideas for TV.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Topics:

Advice From the Pros, Be Inspired, Hey, How'd You Do That?

Advice From the Pros

Interview with Brendan Deneen, Executive Editor of Macmillan Entertainment

'The primary role is that I create ideas for books'

@AndreaWillWrite

8 min read • Originally published October 15, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026

@AndreaWillWrite

8 min read • Originally published October 15, 2015 / Updated April 4, 2026

For many writers, getting a book published with a major publishing house is the ultimate mark of success, a validation of talent and proof that years of toiling in anonymity were worth it. But for a select few — authors like John Grisham, J.K. Rowling, Nicholas Sparks, and others — there’s an even greater pinnacle: when their books are optioned for movies.

It’s a sweet gig for Deneen, a lifelong storyteller. His own novel, The Ninth Circle, was released in January, and he has written several graphic novels in the Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost series. He even recruits writers to pen books based on ideas that he’s developed in house (and that will hopefully soon be playing at a cinema near you).

Here, Deneen discusses Hollywood’s love affair with the literary world and how new writers can get in on the book-to-film fun. At Macmillan Publishers, authors who hope to see their stories on the silver screen must undoubtedly go through Brendan Deneen.

As the executive editor of the brand-new Macmillan Entertainment Group, he shops TV and film rights for all of the company’s signees. For example, Deneen successfully sold the crime novel American Blood by young New Zealand author Ben Sanders to Warner Bros. — and Bradley Cooper has signed on to star in the film.

Name: Brendan Deneen
Position: Executive editor, Macmillan Entertainment Group
Resume: Moved to New York to write and act; landed a job at William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor) at 28. After a year, left to become a junior associate at Scott Rudin Productions, facilitating the book-to-film process for two years. Became an executive in the same book-to-film capacity for Bob and Harvey Weinstein, which provided the opportunity to dabble in production and development work. Four years later became a literary agent before landing a job as editor at Thomas Dunne Books (a division of Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press). After closing a deal with a film company, was ultimately called on to represent all titles for Macmillan.
Birthday: “Only my hairdresser knows for sure.”
Hometown: Windsor, Conn.
Education: University of Scranton, with a pit stop at the University of Glasgow in Scotland
Marital status: Married
Media mentor(s): Mark Roybal (currently at 20th Century Fox), Andrew Rona (most recently at Joel Silver Pictures), Thomas Dunne
Best career advice received: Shut up and listen.
Guilty pleasure: Entertainment Weekly
Last book read: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
X handle: @BrendanDeneen

What are the primary functions of your new role as executive editor of Macmillan Entertainment?

The primary role is that I create ideas for books. I create the ideas by myself or with other editors, write the outlines, and then hire authors to write the books. We control the rights, so I then turn around and, using my experience in Hollywood, hopefully sell those rights to film or television companies.

And do you still work in the traditional sense, acquiring books from authors?

Yes. Traditionally, agents and authors don’t give publishing companies movie and TV rights; that’s just not the way it’s done.

So I am still getting submissions the old-fashioned way, and I welcome and love those because you never know what’s going to come your way. But because of this new division, I am looking for an opportunity to at least shop them on behalf of the agents.

A lot of agencies will hire or work with other film agencies to sell the rights, so I’m just replacing that for some of the literary agencies out there, taking the same commission that a film agent would take. So it’s a win-win because they would be doing this anyway.

Instead of using another agent to do this, they can use me — somebody who’s working for the publishing company, who’s invested in the book already, who wants the book to succeed.

With Macmillan retaining the rights to works developed in house, how do you ensure the authors are not taken advantage of?

I really believe in honoring authors. [They] get an advance, just like they always would in a book deal. They get their name on the cover. They get a piece of all profits — royalties, movie money, foreign sales, merchandising, everything. It’s very author friendly.

As a former agent and an author myself, I’m not in this to take advantage of people. I happen to have a ton of ideas that I’ve created and I continue to create, and I can’t write them all myself. Not a single one of my authors has written one of these and not put their own information or ideas into the book, and I love that.

When we work together it’s very collaborative. And it’s a great opportunity, especially for up-and-coming authors who haven’t been able to sell their books and are looking for their big break, or someone who’s looking for a commercial idea to break them through. And also, I’m not so cynical as to want to churn out bad books just to hopefully make a movie.

How can authors position themselves to have an opportunity to write for you?

I go to agents when I have an idea and I’m looking for authors who are a good match. So the key is for an author to get an agent. I know it’s easier said than done, but that’s the most important thing.

And then, for me specifically, because I’m doing Macmillan Entertainment, I need to have some kind of hand in the film rights, even if it’s just six months to shop the material on behalf of the literary agent. But the good news is that I have a pretty decent success rate, so it’s not something that’s like a shot in the dark.

So if the agent has unsuccessfully pitched you on an original idea, you would still keep the author in mind for one of your ideas developed in house?

Absolutely. Or an agent calls me and says, I have this great author, really hungry, is totally open to collaborating, what do you have? And I’m like, ‘Oh, I have this one thing,’ and then I’ll pitch it, and they may say it’s perfect for them, or, no, it’s probably not, what else do you have? So we go out fairly wide, and we have people write sample chapters.

It’s almost like a reality show. We pick a winner; they write the book; they win the book contract. But we take it very seriously, and we want the perfect match for each book. And like I said, it’s a circumstance in which everybody wins.

Why does Hollywood turn to published books so often for content? And what does that mean for writers?

As a writer, I think you gotta write what’s in your heart. I think that trying to adjust your story or style for any other reason than just the book is a mistake, honestly.

If you happen to have a commercial instinct, then that’s great. But there’s no guarantee that your book will ever, first off, get published — let alone get optioned. So I think you have to be true to what you believe as an artist.

As to why [Hollywood likes published books], I think the idea of a book means that it’s been vetted. It’s been looked at by an agent already, by an editor. It’s a source material that’s got fans, marketing, publicity and sales that are already in place. Hollywood likes that; that’s why they’re always looking for franchises.

That’s why you hear about exciting stuff like Hunger Games and Harry Potter. They’ll go for anything these days. Ouija board is being made into a movie; Battleship was made into a movie. They want stuff that has pre-existing fans, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

So what is the best way for an established author to break into TV and film, aside from being lucky enough to work with you?

It’s really up to your agent. If you have an agent at CAA, ICM, William Morris or one of the big agencies, they have TV and film divisions, so hopefully your agent will pass your stuff on. One of the things I’ve said in other interviews is that patience is key. I’m 41 and I wrote my first book when I was 18, and I sold my novel this year. It took me forever.

And that doesn’t mean you have to not be putting yourself out there and working your ass off; it just means you may get rejected over and over again like I did when I was 18 and I wallpapered my bathroom in college with rejection letters. It should be a badge of honor. It means you’re getting stuff out there.

And you just have to keep trying. Finish one book, but don’t just spend your life sending out query letters. Send out the query letters to agents, but be writing book two. And finish book two, send out query letters for that and then write book three.

You need to be constantly writing. If you’re a screenwriter, you should be writing a new screenplay every three or four months. If you’re an author, honestly, you should have a new book every year if you’re serious about it — two years at the most.

If your legacy is based solely on your work with Macmillan, and no one ever reads your books, will you be OK with that?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I wrote Flash Gordon for a while; I worked on Casper the Friendly Ghost. I actually sold two of my novels this year, and I’m writing a very high-profile graphic novel for next Christmas.

I’m not saying I’m a well-known author by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve gotten fan mail from random people, and if that’s all I get for the rest of my life, I can live with it. It’s nice that I’ve made any impact.

Would I like more? Yeah, who wouldn’t? But if I just get this little piece of the pie as an author then that’s great. And then, for my day job, if I can break out new authors or find someone who goes on like Kara [Taylor] to do bigger and better things, or if I create a franchise that becomes a huge hit, it’ll be a cool legacy.

I’m having fun and that’s really, honestly, the most important thing for me. I love creating stories. So if I can make a living creating stories for myself and for other people, then I’m living the life I want.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Mediabistro regularly interviews media personalities to hear their stories and for their career advice.

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Advice From the Pros, Be Inspired

Careers & Education

A guide to creating your first lead scoring model

By Xier Dang for Apollo

9 min read • Published April 3, 2026

By Xier Dang for Apollo

9 min read • Published April 3, 2026

Dave Hoeek // Shutterstock

A guide to creating your first lead scoring model

If you’re drowning in leads but your close rate isn’t improving, you’re not alone. Most B2B sales teams waste hours chasing dead-end prospects while hot leads go cold in their CRM. The fix? A lead scoring model that automatically tells you which prospects deserve your time right now.

Every sales rep knows the frustration — you’ve got a list of 500 leads, but no clue who to call first. You could go alphabetically (spoiler: That doesn’t work), or you could build a system that ranks leads based on how likely they are to buy. That’s where lead scoring comes in.

In this guide, Apollo walks you through creating your first scoring model. You’ll learn exactly which criteria matter, how to weight them, and how to implement a system that separates tire-kickers from serious buyers — so your team can focus on conversations that actually close.

What is lead scoring?

At its core, lead scoring is a methodology that helps businesses evaluate the quality and potential of leads based on predefined criteria.

By assigning scores to different attributes, businesses can focus their efforts on leads that are more likely to convert into customers. Typical lead scoring models assign “points” to individual leads based on factors like company size, revenue, industry, if they’ve shown intent to buy, etc. The higher the points, the more likely they are to convert into customers.

With lead scoring, you remove the manual vetting of which high-potential leads to tackle next (which is prone to human error), and instead, you use a data-driven methodology that can be easily optimized to drive better results.

The value of lead scoring

Improve lead prioritization and prospecting efficiency

By assigning scores to leads based on predefined criteria, you can focus your time, resources, and efforts on the most promising leads. This leads to better allocation of resources and increased efficiency in your sales and marketing activities.

Make marketing and sales an allied revenue duo

With a clear understanding of lead quality, both sales and marketing teams can work together to target high-scoring leads more effectively. Marketing can tailor campaigns and content to match the needs and interests of specific lead segments, while sales can focus their efforts on leads with the highest scores, resulting in improved conversion rates and higher revenue generation.

Increase conversion rates and revenue

Lead scoring helps you identify leads that exhibit characteristics or behaviors indicative of strong buying intent. This enables you to personalize your outreach and engage with leads in a more targeted and meaningful way. As a result, your conversion rates improve, leading to a higher return on investment (ROI) for your sales and marketing efforts.

Types of lead scoring models

Not all lead scoring models are built the same. The best ones usually blend a few different types to get a complete picture of a lead’s potential. Think of it as looking at a lead from multiple angles to decide if they’re the right fit and if they’re interested right now.

Here are the core types you’ll work with:

Demographic and Firmographic Scoring: This is all about fit. It answers the question, “Is this the right type of person at the right type of company?” It uses explicit data points like job title, industry, company size, and revenue. If a lead matches your ideal customer profile (ICP), they get a high score here.
Behavioral Scoring: This is all about interest and intent. It answers, “How engaged is this lead with us?” This model tracks actions like visiting your pricing page, downloading a whitepaper, opening your emails, or attending a webinar. The more they engage, the higher their score.
Negative Scoring: Just as important as adding points is knowing when to subtract them. This model deducts points for actions that signal a poor fit. For example, you might subtract points if a lead is a student, comes from a non-target country, or only visits your careers page. This helps weed out unqualified leads automatically.

A truly powerful lead scoring system doesn’t just pick one; it combines all three. This way, you’re prioritizing leads that are both a great fit for your product and are actively showing interest in buying.

Step-by-step guide to creating your first scoring model

Step 1: Define your criteria

To start, identify the criteria that matter most to your business. Consider factors such as demographics, firmographics, and behavior-based indicators. What characteristics align with your ideal customer profile? Defining these criteria will form the foundation of your scoring model.

Here are a few commonly used demographic and firmographic attributes on contacts or companies:

Job titles or departments
Location
Industries
Number of employees
Revenue
Technologies used

And here are a few commonly used behavioral attributes that are relatively easy to collect (depending on the tools you use):

Opened or clicked an email
Expressed buying intent by researching online for your service
Filled out a form on your website
Registered or attended your webinar

Start by simply selecting a few of the criteria above and add more as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t. Your first scoring model can be very simple and still make a huge impact on how you prioritize your leads.

Step 2: Weight your attributes

Not all criteria carry the same weight in determining lead quality. Assign appropriate weightings to each criterion based on their relative importance to your business.

There are two ways you can think about assigning weightings:

Scale (e.g. not important, somewhat important, neutral, important, or very important)
Numerical (e.g. 0-20 where 20 is the max)

If this is your first time setting up a scoring model, the scale might be the easier approach. However, either way will still tally up scoring points between 0-100 where the higher number indicates better customer fit than a lower number.

For example:

Each attribute can be weighted differently — a lead’s level of engagement like attending a webinar might be more significant than their job title.
The options within an attribute can be weighted differently — a VP or director might be more significant than a manager job title.

Step 3: Gather and integrate data

To effectively score leads, you need reliable data. Collect and integrate data from various sources, such as your CRM, website analytics, marketing automation systems, and sales intelligence platforms.

Whatever data sources you’ll use for scoring, make sure it’s accurate, up-to-date, and clean to avoid any misleading scores.

Step 4: Build your scoring model

Now it’s time to build your scoring model.

Select your target type: For example, people or companies

Add the criteria and weightings:

Persona (e.g., sales leadership)
Location (e.g., US)
Number of employees by department (e.g., at least 5)
Contact engagement – # of times opened (e.g., at least 10)

Render distribution and see how many of your saved contacts match the criteria as excellent, good, fair, or not a fit.

Step 5: Test and refine

Once your scoring model is set up, it’s time to put it to the test. Start by applying the model to a sample set of leads and analyze the results.

The next step is to personalize your outreach based on the data insights provided.

For example, you could try sending a personalized email that says “Hey, we’ve seen that you’ve been opening our emails a few times, and would love to chat about what caught your eye!”

Continuously refine and optimize your model based on real-world feedback and outcomes. Remember, lead scoring is an iterative process, and it will evolve as you gain more insights.

Lead scoring best practices

Building your model is the first step. Keeping it effective is an ongoing process. A great lead scoring model isn’t static; it’s a living system that you refine over time. Here are a few best practices to make sure your model keeps delivering high-quality leads to your sales team.

Get sales and marketing in the same room: Your lead scoring model will fail if your sales team doesn’t trust it. Sit down with them from day one. What signals do they see in their best deals? What makes a lead “sales-ready” in their eyes? Build the criteria together to ensure everyone is aligned on what a good lead looks like.
Start simple, then expand: You don’t need 50 different criteria on day one. You’ll get lost in the complexity. Start with the 5-10 most impactful attributes you identified with your sales team. You can always add more nuance later as you gather more data.
Work with clean data: A scoring model is only as reliable as the data that fuels it. If your contact data is outdated or incomplete, your scores will be meaningless.
Review and iterate regularly: Don’t just set it and forget it. Schedule a quarterly review of your model. Look at your closed-won deals. Did they have high scores? If not, it’s time to adjust your weights and criteria. The market changes, and your model should, too.

Unlock new opportunities with lead scores

The scores generated by your model provide valuable insights into lead quality. Leverage this information to tailor your outreach and engagement strategies. High-scoring leads deserve more attention, personalized messaging, and targeted offers.

By aligning your efforts with lead scores, you can enhance efficiency, improve conversion rates, and drive revenue growth.

Lead scoring isn’t just another sales tool — it’s your competitive edge in a world where speed wins deals. You’re now equipped with everything you need to build a model that transforms how your team prioritizes prospects. Start simple, test often, and watch as your close rates climb.

Frequently asked questions about lead scoring models

What is the formula for lead scoring?

There isn’t one universal formula because it should be customized to your business. However, a simple and effective structure is: Lead Score = (Demographic Fit Score) + (Behavioral Interest Score) – (Negative Score). You decide the points for each attribute based on what matters most for converting a lead into a customer.

What’s a good lead score range to use?

Most businesses use a 0-100 scale. The key isn’t the range itself, but the thresholds you define within it. For example, you might decide that leads scoring 80+ are “sales-ready” and get routed to an AE immediately, while leads scoring 50-79 enter a nurture sequence to build more interest.

How often should I update my lead scoring model?

You should plan to review your model at least quarterly. The market changes, and so do your buyers. Look at your recent closed-won deals. Did they have high scores? If not, your model needs tweaking. Treat it as an iterative process, not a one-time setup.

What’s the difference between behavioral and demographic scoring?

It’s the difference between “fit” and “interest.” Demographic scoring measures fit—does this lead match your ideal customer profile based on things like job title, industry, or company size? Behavioral scoring measures interest—what actions has this lead taken, like visiting your pricing page or downloading a guide? You need both for a complete picture.

How do I know if my lead scoring model is working?

The ultimate test is your conversion rate. Are leads with higher scores converting into customers at a significantly higher rate than leads with lower scores? If the answer is yes, it’s working. Also, get qualitative feedback from your sales team. Do they agree that the high-scoring leads are better opportunities? Their buy-in is crucial.

This story was produced by Apollo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

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Careers & Education

The News Business Split in Two. Hollywood Did Not.

By Mediabistro Team

5 min read • Published April 3, 2026

By Mediabistro Team

5 min read • Published April 3, 2026

An entire television newsroom in Indianapolis disappeared between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. No transition period. No gradual consolidation.

Staff at WRTV learned about layoffs through social media before management made official contact. The station changed hands and the new owner decided local news wasn’t part of the plan.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal announced it had grown its digital subscriber base to 4.3 million, a 33% increase under editor Emma Tucker’s leadership since 2023. Tucker told Press Gazette the growth wasn’t an accident. Deliberate digital infrastructure investment. Editorial repositioning. Organizational discipline about who the publication serves.

Key Takeaway: These aren’t contradictory signals about whether the news business is healthy or dying. The industry has split into two tracks, and the gap between them is accelerating.

Your organization’s business model, ownership structure, and digital investment determine which side you’re on. For individual journalists, the stability of your role increasingly depends on factors far upstream from how good your work is.

Two Hollywood stories illustrated a different kind of durability. Hannah Einbinder used a press tour for the final season of Hacks to call AI creators “losers.” Lili Reinhart described a male director telling her to “suck in your stomach” on set. Different issues, same throughline: talent using public platforms to name problems that institutions won’t address on their own.

Two Business Models, Two Outcomes

The WRTV situation is the blunt-force version of local news consolidation. The station’s parent company sold to an owner who saw more value in stripping out the newsroom than maintaining it. No pretense of efficiency. Just elimination.

Poynter’s coverage noted the speed and totality of the change, which distinguishes this from the slow-bleed layoffs that have defined local news contraction for a decade.

The Journal’s trajectory runs opposite. Tucker’s 33% subscriber growth came from strategic choices about product, pricing, and content focus. Reorganized sections to match how readers actually consume news. Editorial decisions that prioritized subscriber value over traffic volume.

Tucker emphasized organizational discipline, not luck or algorithmic magic.

The professional implication is plain. The question for anyone in journalism is whether your specific organization can command subscriber revenue, premium ad rates, or strategic value from an owner who sees content as an asset rather than a cost center.

Local broadcast news supported by declining linear ad revenue carries a fundamentally different risk profile than subscription-driven publications with audience demographics that advertisers want.

For hiring managers and recruiters, evaluating candidates now means assessing their adaptability to revenue-focused newsrooms where editorial decisions and business model sustainability are inseparable.

The AI Line Gets Drawn in Public

Hannah Einbinder didn’t hedge. She called people using generative AI to create content “losers” and said they’re “not artists,” adding that they’re “trying to rob real creatives.”

A four-time Golden Globe nominee used mainstream entertainment press to publicly reject the legitimacy of AI-generated creative work.

What matters here is less whether Einbinder is right and more what it signals when A-list talent makes anti-AI positions part of their public identity. During negotiations over streaming residuals and AI protections, union leadership carried the public arguments. Now individual performers are taking that stance into press tours and social media, where they have direct audience relationships that don’t require union mediation.

For studios and content platforms, this creates a practical problem. If enough talent at Einbinder’s level makes AI rejection a brand position, deploying these tools openly gets harder, even for applications that seem technically innocuous. The PR risk compounds when audiences side with talent over platforms, which has been the pattern throughout the streaming era’s labor conflicts.

Pressure to adopt AI tools for efficiency increases as they get more capable. Simultaneously, the reputational cost of being seen as replacing human creativity with algorithmic output grows. Different organizations will make different calculations about which risk they’d rather absorb.

The Problems That Outlast the Technology

Meryl Streep recalled that The Devil Wears Prada faced budget struggles because studio executives labeled it a “chick flick.” The film eventually grossed $326 million worldwide, but getting to production required “scrabbling” for resources that comparable male-targeted projects secured automatically.

Lili Reinhart described a different but related pattern. During a video promoting her film Forbidden Fruits, she recalled a male director telling her to “suck in your stomach” during filming. She contrasted it with working on female-helmed projects where that kind of body policing didn’t occur.

Two stories spanning nearly two decades and different tiers of Hollywood power. What connects them is structural. Studios systematically undervalue projects associated with female audiences. On-set culture frequently subjects women’s bodies to scrutiny that male actors don’t experience.

Key Takeaway: When a $326 million hit has to fight for its budget because of a genre label, that affects what gets greenlit the following year. When directors feel comfortable making body-focused comments to actors, that affects who stays in the industry and who leaves.

The pattern extends beyond Hollywood. Any organization making content investment decisions carries versions of these biases. What types of stories get labeled “niche” versus “universal”? Which creators have to prove their audience before getting resources, and which get benefit-of-the-doubt funding?

You can now measure exactly how audiences respond to different content, which makes the gap between performance data and investment patterns more obvious than ever.

What This Means

The news business bifurcation forces difficult decisions for anyone in journalism. If your organization doesn’t have a clear path to subscription scale, premium positioning, or strategic value beyond commodity content, the timeline for disruption may be shorter than institutional inertia suggests. WRTV shows that consolidation doesn’t always come with transition periods.

For creative professionals, the AI conflict and workplace culture patterns both point toward talent using public platforms to set boundaries that organizations have been slow to establish. Align with where cultural momentum is moving, and you position yourself well. Wait for organizational policy to settle everything, and you may find yourself explaining past associations that audiences have already rejected.

If you’re navigating this as a jobseeker, focus on organizations with demonstrable business model success and clear creative values. Browse open roles on Mediabistro to find positions at companies building sustainable media businesses.

For employers trying to attract talent, clarity about business model, technology strategy, and workplace culture isn’t optional. Candidates with options are making decisions based on those factors. Post a job on Mediabistro to reach professionals evaluating their next move with these considerations in mind.

This media news roundup is automatically curated to keep our community up to date on interesting happenings in the creative, media, and publishing professions. It may contain factual errors and should be read for general and informational purposes only. Please refer to the original source of each news item for specific inquiries.

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