This week, I sat down with Mark Stenberg, senior media reporter at Adweek.
Did you always want to be a journalist? If not, what was the turning point or experience that made you choose the path of journalism?
Being a journalist was the closest thing that I ever had to a definitive career that I wanted to do. I went into college studying journalism, and then I quickly dropped out of journalism school and switched majors. It was always the best career option I could think of, but I never was walking around being like, “I’m going to be a journalist. I want to be a journalist.”
What changed for me was that after undergrad, I got a job running a magazine that was specifically not journalism, but very much magazine writing, pop culture. This was the BuzzFeed days, and I was running that. In the process of running it, it began to really dawn on me that I love writing, and my primary career path was something that had to do with writing. While running the magazine, I was like, “OK, I think I need to try to do proper journalism wholeheartedly.” I went to grad school, and I ended up getting a really great job at Business Insider that put me on the track I’m on today.
In general, I’ve always had this insatiable love for learning, reading, consuming content, and being on the cusp of everything new. There are so many people who got into journalism because they love writing.
The written word is becoming less and less central to journalism. I’ve talked about this with other people. What kind of person wants to become a journalist now? A lot of people got into it because this is how they could write for a living, and now that’s being challenged a bit. It’ll be really interesting to see how that affects the candidate pipeline of who ends up getting into the industry.
If a college student wanted to do journalism, what would you say to them?
I would say absolutely. There are a lot of caveats, but I think journalism is one of those jobs that is never going to go away. It’s going to change, and we will probably need fewer people to do it. Whenever I get very concerned about job security, I say to myself, “There is no world in which technology eliminates the need for going out into the world and speaking with people or collecting information.” The internet and technology make it easier to do a lot of that gathering and compiling, but there is no substitute for calling someone on the phone and getting a piece of information that does not exist yet out in the world.
I had to really grapple with this last year. I have to think of myself as a reporter first and a writer second, whereas I’d thought of myself maybe more as a writer who’s a good reporter. The things that are going to keep me in this industry are information gathering, analysis, and my source network. The writing is a nice to have. But I would say to any prospective journalist, “Do not limit yourself to a channel or a medium. Remember that the service you provide is the information gathering, and however that gets packaged and distributed, that will always change. But as long as you have that affinity for talking to people and gathering information, and that kind of instinct, then you’ll be fine.”
As a senior media reporter, you cover the business of digital and print media and publishers, including their advertising, marketing, and editorial strategies. What’s driving your coverage?
There are three or four archetypes of stories that I write. One is scoops and investigative work, in which brands typically do not play a role. That’s me going and getting my own information. The second, that’s typically a surefire story, is: This company is doing something that no company has ever done before, just pure novelty. That will always pique my interest. A third is a key milestone: You’re one year in, or you’re at 500 million subscribers, or you’re at $10 million in EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, debt, and amortization). That’s a news peg to tell a larger story, and I think it’s credible because you need excuses to return to things, even if you know the sky isn’t falling. It’s also a helpful way to check in. If it’s relevant, novel, or a particular milestone, that’s always a way in. Fourth is trends and analysis, and those are more up to me to determine.
I have people say, “Hey, have you seen that this thing is starting to happen a lot more? Have you noticed this?” People can pitch me on a trend analysis story, but that’s more observational, based on conversations I’m having and just following the industry.
In terms of macro forces driving my coverage, it’s no secret to say that the print-to-digital transition and how challenging that has been for the media industry is probably the primary animating force behind my coverage, and that subdivides into a lot of different subject matter. The interesting flavor of that, which I’m writing about more and more now, is creators and the transition from news as a protected commodity to just one of a number of different sources of attention and entertainment that exist for people. That’s the transition that’s happened. How does news and entertainment media fare in the attention economy when it has to compete with not just other news sources, but TikTok and YouTube, as well? That’s the primary storyline, but I cover it more from an economic and commercial perspective.
There are a lot of different flavors of media coverage. If you’re running a media company, I’m particularly interested in: How are you making money? How are you balancing your books? How are you finding people? Because I feel like every other conversation is downstream of that. I’ve been fortunate that this is the kind of media coverage they want me to do at Adweek.
With the ever-changing media landscape, how are you adapting your work at Adweek to meet the trends and demands?
Everything we talked about above, but I would add: events and the reporter’s role in events or live journalism. But that one is probably the smallest of the bunch. The primary challenge I set for myself this year was to do way more video. That’s something I inched into last year. So many journalists internally—and it’s not even necessarily a generational thing, it’s a person-by-person thing—we’re all being coached and coaxed into, “You’ve got to make video. You’ve got to be in front of the camera. You’ve got to do that more.” I’m pretty into it. I enjoy it, and I see the distribution being 10 times what it is.
It was a bit of a hard pill for me to swallow, but the anecdotal and objective data is so unarguable. I do a video, and everyone in my network texts me about the video. I write a story, and the same 10 people who read my stuff text. It reaches so many more people. Of course, we have paywalls and all these things, but the amount of people who respond to video content is just so much greater.
Think about it as your readership—using that word intentionally—is going to be the bullseye at the center of a larger target. I think they’re very engaged and they’re very valuable audience members. But if you’re just writing, you are leaving behind the rest of the bullseye, which is eight, nine, 10 times larger. So you’ve got to do video. Second, newsletters: it’s a way of engaging that core audience. If people like you, they can get your stuff on demand, and you can also include video. I link out to podcasts all the time. It’s really just a way of saying, “If you like following my work, you don’t have to hope the algorithm places it in front of you. You can sign up for this, and you’re going to get it on a consistent basis.” That’s huge.
With my newsletter, they really encourage me to be a bit more personal about it. So it’s sort of “Substacky” in that regard, and I think that is a response to broader creator economy trends. Third would be participating in live events in some capacity, and I do think it is an increasingly integral part of being a reporter, because events are becoming an increasingly integral part of the media landscape.
Being able to be on stage, or to be good in front of a camera, or to be somewhat telegenic, or at least be a competent public speaker—these things you didn’t need to be a journalist 20 years ago. You just got behind your keyboard or your typewriter, and you pounded away. Now you have to be kind of a people person. I always talk about how you have to really be more honey over vinegar. You hear these stories about reporters who would just pester sources and badger them and berate them, and nowadays, sources have a million other options for where to share their information. You have to coax and cajole and butter them up, and I think that applies to your work, too. You can’t just file a story and live in a cave. You have to be out in public. You have to be on stages. You have to be doing podcasts. You have to be public. It’s the attention ecosystem.
How do you decide if something goes on Adweek.com versus in the On Background newsletter?
Nowadays, everything that’s in the newsletter goes into an article. The order gets changed up a little bit. That was an evolution, and we pulled it from one of my favorite newsletters, Lucas Shaw’s Screentime for Bloomberg. We felt like it was not an efficient use of time to interview somebody and then only have it live in the newsletter. Why not also have that online? So we just take everything from the newsletter and put it in an article, and that’s every week. I do try to have it be a story that I’m really excited about. Timing-wise, sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t work.
Do you want PR people to be like, “Hey, Mark, this could be good for the newsletter because XYZ?” Or are you like, “No, I decide where what goes?”Is it helpful if they are specific?
I welcome the pitches, specifically if that means somebody has thought about it on some higher level, especially if they have the sort of self-awareness to say, “This might not be a feature, but maybe you could mention in the Talking Heads section,” which are these little news briefs I do. One of the reasons I didn’t ever want to think of myself as a journalist is that there are a lot of behaviors of journalists that I find to be very annoying, and one is this disrespect for PR people and lack of appreciation. I get it: You’re signaling that you’re tough and you get all your own stories, but it’s a ridiculous posture to me. I appreciate PR people. I appreciate pitches. I use my discernment to make heads or tails of them, but to turn them away at the door, I don’t see the advantage of that. So yeah, I absolutely welcome them, especially if they’re well-informed.
Any new news (e.g. features, columns, podcasts, tools) at Adweek you’d like to highlight for Meredith & The Media readers?
We are considering taking On Background to twice weekly. That’s going to be a conversation we’re having in the next few weeks. I am certain that it will happen in the future—it’s just a matter of when.
Also, a plug for our biggest event of the year, Brandweek. It’s in September, and it’s in Atlanta this year. I’ll be there talking about live journalism and business-to-business creators. That is a big focal point for us, and that’s the next big thing that everyone at the company is focused on.
What is the best way to pitch you and get on your radar as a source? Do you accept coffees and on-background meetings?
Email. It’s typically about the quality of the contents of the pitch. It should fit those buckets I laid out earlier: novelty, milestones, trends, analysis. If you want to bring a scoop to my desk, I’d love that, but if it fits into one of those buckets, that’s really helpful.
If I meet someone at an event and they talk to me, and then they follow up, that is an effective way to get my attention, because I feel like it’s harder to say no.
We’re humans at the end of the day. I’ll still say no if I think it’s completely untenable. But if you see me and you pitch me in person, I’m definitely going to remember that more.
No LinkedIn, no phone calls or texts—not initially at least. I’m very happy texting after I have a relationship.
Coffee can be nice, but not right out of the gate. I’m not going to get a coffee with somebody if I haven’t worked with them. If we don’t know each other, email is your best bet, unless you run into me at an event or on the street or something.
I saw two different LinkedIn posts from reporters complaining about PR people trying to meet up live at conferences. What’s your POV on doing that?
It’s event-specific. If I go to Cannes, it is probably not the best use of my time to be meeting with a comms or PR person. It took a lot of money to get me there, so I’ve really got to be meeting with sources.
There are a lot of events where my schedule’s not bolted down every 15 minutes. If you’re at an event that’s theoretically a target-rich environment, I am more inclined to want to be talking to execs, talking to sources, or looking for execs and sources, rather than getting caught in a conversation with the comms person who’s pitching me. I understand that could be a bit frustrating, but I’m not going to hold it against a comms person who sees me alone at an event and pitches me. That’s fine, but I would prefer my interactions with comms people to be structured and planned. Maybe that’s me being a Virgo, because there’s value in not knowing anyone in the room, running into somebody, and having that be a serendipity.
It’s all part of the game. If someone comes up to me and pitches me, I’m not unhappy or offended by that. If you see me, you pitch me. That’s fair play. I’m not going to be upset about that. But if you’re asking my preferences, I’m scanning for execs, so there’s a priority to that.