Media - Sean Blanda

Media

A collection of 15 posts

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.

The Dark Matter Influencer

Careers Featured

The Dark Matter Influencer

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

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/realDonaldTrump/status/911789314169823232?

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 their

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 “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

Pretty Much Everything I Know About the News Business

Pretty Much Everything I Know About the News Business

Last month, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen posted what, in his view, was the future of the news business [http://a16z.com/2014/02/25/future-of-news-business/]. Reactions were varied, but everyone had one. I joked that my entire Twitter stream was people replying to Andreessen [https://twitter.com/SeanBlanda/status/432640779115573248]

AxisPhilly, The William Penn Foundation, and “Old Philadelphia”

AxisPhilly, The William Penn Foundation, and “Old Philadelphia”

On July 11, Philadelphia’sAxisPhilly, a public affairs news site bankrolled by the William Penn Foundationparted ways with its CEO Neil Budde [http://axisphilly.org/article/axisphilly-ceo-neil-budde-steps-down/], a move which will likely lead to the site being shuttered or significantly downsized. I no longer live in Philadelphia and am no

On Impact, Startups, and Journalism

On Impact, Startups, and Journalism

Last year I sat in the audience at Behance’s 99U Conference (then called the “99% conference”) and listened to Alexis Madrigal’s lecture on what he saw as an unsettling trend in the startup world [http://99u.com/videos/7249/alexis-madrigal-why-startups-need-to-solve-real-problems-again] . Mainly: startups don’t work on real problems

The Universe

In case you missed it,we recently redesigned 99U [http://99u.com/articles/11159/introducing-workbook-and-the-new-mobile-friendly-99u] . And by “we” I really meanJocelyn Glei [https://twitter.com/jkglei],Jackie Balzer [https://twitter.com/jackiebackwards],Eric Snowden [https://twitter.com/ericsnowden], andJohn Refeno [https://twitter.com/threehz]. Besides abeautifulaesthetic upgrade, the redesign added

The inevitable collision of journalism and everything else

The inevitable collision of journalism and everything else

Most of the changes in online media and journalism have a common theme: Journalistic entities are becoming product companies, offering products that turn content into marketing. As a side effect, this creates businesses that follow Jack White’s theory of control: vertically integrated, creating content that markets a product that