Sean Blanda

Sean Blanda

What's About to Happen (to Content, Journalism, and Comms)

What's About to Happen (to Content, Journalism, and Comms)

7 predictions for the new era of audience building.

6 Mindset Shifts For Scaling a Content Team

6 Mindset Shifts For Scaling a Content Team

The messy transition from scrappy startup to grownup(ish) company.

Washington Ave and the decay of American cities

Washington Ave and the decay of American cities

The struggle to repave a single 2-mile stretch of road — and what it means to live in an American city in the 21st century.

7 Lessons learned from scaling a content machine at Crossbeam in 18 months

7 Lessons learned from scaling a content machine at Crossbeam in 18 months

How we built an email list of 22,000 and a steady 14% month-over-month traffic increase.

A half-baked idea: NFT for writers

A half-baked idea: NFT for writers

NFTs are for artists. They should be for writers, too. Here's what needs to happen first:

It’s time for localism in America.

Politics Featured

It’s time for localism in America.

We are divided. The way out requires us to shrink our field of vision.

The Dark Matter Influencer

Careers Featured

The Dark Matter Influencer

There is a deceptively large (and growing) quiet class of king maker.

Our remote work future is going to suck

Careers Featured

Our remote work future is going to suck

Why are we always assuming a distributed workforce is a good thing for the worker?

Your 30s are a time to go for it (or not)

Your 30s are a time to go for it (or not)

When I talk to friends and acquaintances about work, we dance around similar question. What is enough? Should I get off the career train and focus elsewhere?

The haunting music of Sierra Ferrell and Casper Allen

The haunting music of Sierra Ferrell and Casper Allen

In honor of Bandcamp waiving their feeds for indie artists and motivated by my friend Tom Critchlow [https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/03/20/bandcamp-blogging-bandwagon/], I’d like to recommend two artists that stopped me in my tracks the moment I heard them: Sierra Ferrell [https://sierraferrell.bandcamp.com/] and Casper

It's about the people, stupid: Lessons from 1 year of Pilcrow House

Personal Update

It's about the people, stupid: Lessons from 1 year of Pilcrow House

Pilcrow House [https://pilcrow.house/] is an event series that aims to foster candid conversation over some delicious food. At least, that’s what it is today. A year in, Allison [https://twitter.com/allisonblanda] and I are still figuring it out. Since the first Pilcrow House event with Adobe

What I wish I knew five years ago about building a career in "content"

Careers Featured

What I wish I knew five years ago about building a career in "content"

As of this writing, there are more than 1,000 content marketing positions on AngelList. It’s not only startups. A recent Axios story [https://www.axios.com/job-of-the-future-editor-in-chief-1dde0e58-4dc3-4dfc-8a07-41494f5c635f.html] highlights how Netflix, Airbnb, Blackrock, Robinhood, Stripe and other large orgs are launching new content ventures. In 2019, it’s

How to take a sabbatical

Careers Featured

How to take a sabbatical

(Since writing this, I've expanded this exploration into a newsletter profiling those who take Sabbaticals and what we can learn from them. Subscribe here.) This won’t be like every other blog post about travel. Your narrator won’t be casually doing something awesome when suddenly there is

My dead dad’s journal: How I finally met a man I knew for my entire life

Personal Update Featured

My dead dad’s journal: How I finally met a man I knew for my entire life

For some reason, when my brother told me our dad was dead, I immediately went and listened to my voicemails. He left me silly voicemails often and I wanted to hear his voice. I came across the last voicemail he ever left me, a month before. This one wasn’t

I work for the site with the funny name (A year in review)

Personal Update

I work for the site with the funny name (A year in review)

A year ago I flew to Austin, Texas and started my tenure as the Editor in Chief of the personal finance website I Will Teach You To Be Rich [http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com/] and the entrepreneur community GrowthLab [https://growthlab.com/]. It’s a fully remote company, one of the properties

Why We Should Fight to Keep Our President Tweeting

Why We Should Fight to Keep Our President Tweeting

On Sept. 23rd, the President of the United States tweeted the following: > Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017 [https://twitter.com/

Traveling Under Trump

Personal Update

Traveling Under Trump

On November 8th, 2016 many Americans wished they were a world away. I actually was. And it sucked. As the east coast of the U.S. settled down for a long night of listening to Wolf Blitzer painstakingly cite voting totals, I was driving a “Deucey” camper van with my

Medium, and The Reason You Can’t Stand the News Anymore.

Medium, and The Reason You Can’t Stand the News Anymore.

In January, Medium founder Ev Williams [https://medium.com/u/268314bb7e7e?source=post_page-----c98068fec3f8----------------------] announced [https://blog.medium.com/renewing-mediums-focus-98f374a960be#.jug64hi59] that despite his company’s efforts to better the news industry, it would refocus. The reason? > We believe there are millions of thinking people who want to deepen

The Tyranny of Facts: Being “Right” is Not Enough

The Tyranny of Facts: Being “Right” is Not Enough

Most philosophical and political disagreements don’t take place in courtrooms, they take place using a series of text boxes levied against an often-anonymous opponent. Or, if in person, in a setting where you don’t exactly have a notebook full of facts you’ve vetted and researched for your

The Creative World’s Bullshit Industrial Complex

The Creative World’s Bullshit Industrial Complex

As editor of 99U, my inbox is (thankfully) filled with pitches of all kinds. Mainly, writers who’d like to contribute to this site and speakers who’d like to throw their hat in the ring for our yearly 99U Conference. And most times, when we dig deeper into a

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the 99U Refresh

Entrepreneurship

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the 99U Refresh

2016 marked the seventh anniversary of 99U: a website, magazine, conference and book series dedicated to helping people make their ideas happen—and the publication I’ve worked on in various roles since September 2012. In that time, the website has amounted an impressive resume: About 650k uniques a month,

The Most Defensible Thing You Can Do for Your Career: Build an Audience

The Most Defensible Thing You Can Do for Your Career: Build an Audience

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: A well-known person in your field loses their job with impressive company X. Deep, deep inside you feel a vague sense of guilty satisfaction. They weren’t that talented anyway, you tell yourself. This will clear room for more up-and-coming talent,

The Greatest Millennial Actor in the Universe is Justin Long

The Greatest Millennial Actor in the Universe is Justin Long

One of the great parts about being a millennial is that everyone else likes to tell you what you are and aren’t like and what does and doesn’t represent you. It’s the best. It’s American tradition to anoint pop culture figures as being totally representative of

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb.

The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb.

[Note: this post was originally published on Medium [https://humanparts.medium.com/the-other-side-is-not-dumb-2670c1294063], where it received more than 3.5 million reads and selected as one of the best Medium posts of the decade [https://humanparts.medium.com/internet-time-machine/home].] There’s a fun game I like to play in

The Era of The RFE Publication

The Era of The RFE Publication

Last year, Tyler the Creator changes the way I looked at my job.It was then, by all accounts, his group Odd Future spent the day running around the Buzzfeed offices “terrorizing” the group of writers and editors plugging away on everyone’s favorite content machine. He ran around in