Pondering Past and Future for Women In Media

Entrepreneurs from all over the tri-state area gathered in droves at the NY Xpo For Business 2008 last week, held at the cavernous Jacob Javitz Convention Center. WCBS sponsored the Working Women's Business luncheon at midday and had media mogul Cathie Black as a keynote speaker (I snagged a picture with her at the end, see below...apologies for my cellphone camera's fuzzy resolution). Ms Black, who is busy doing the speaker circuit promoting her now book, Basic Black, gave us some interesting anecdotes on Helen Gurly Brown, who paved the way for women in media by becoming editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and staying on the job for an impressive 32 years. Ms. Black, who oversees Cosmo as president of Hearst Magazines, told us how HGB, who is now in her late 80s, still goes into the office and writes letters to the editors around the world.

While we munched on roasted chicken and vegetables, she recounted the story of how back when HGB started out, corporate America was like an episode of Mad Men. There were absolutely no opportunities for women to advance their careers. As a secretary at an advertising agency, part of her job was to deliver her boss's itinerary every day to his home, and she would fill it with personal notes and light-hearted comments. As luck would have it, her boss's wife noticed her clever scribblings and asked him to give her a chance. That's how she got a job writing copy, and rose through the ranks to become one of the highest paid copywriters in the 60's. This original "sex in the city" girl also wrote various books - her first was Sex and the Single Girl - and was a big champion of women's sexual liberation.

As a blogger, I see myself as a pioneer of sorts as well, as social media is rapidly transforming the webosphere and we're still in the early stages of change. So during the Q&A I asked Ms. Black how her magazines, which include O, Harper's Bazaar and Esquire, were embracing user-generated content. Unfortunately she really didn't answer my question, but she did say that she spends 80% of her day on the digital side, and every one of their titles has their own site with blogs, video and games. Although not all of their digital properties are yet profitable, she sees profitability by the second half of 2009. The future, she says, is about "engaging the reader when they want it and where they want it".
What I was curious about was, when it comes to magazines, what is the future for bloggers? Forbes has created a Blog Network where they feature hundreds of blogs on their site and shares advertising revenue with the bloggers. MTV is doing the same thing except theirs is much smaller and more exclusive. Will Hearst follow suit?

Finally, a plug for fellow blogger Nichelle Stephens, whom I met at the table. She pens the Keeping Nickels blog and who also wrote a post about the luncheon. That's her on the left, with the glasses.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

EconWomen Conference - Part 2

So I'm groovin' to the funky latin beat of Los Hombres Calientes, Vol. 2 in the background (music to blog by) and ready to keep yaking about yesterday's EconWomen Conference. Where did I leave off? Oh right. Wenda Harris Millard. Co-CEO of Martha Stewart. She had a lot to say about ad networks (similar to Adsense, ad networks allow publishers to make money by placing ads on their sites). The internet, she explained, is a brand medium, and there is concern on the part of brands with being associated with lower quality sites, or ones that don't fit well with their image, so they will have a preference over branded sites. Because the environment in which the ads appear is very important to advertisers, sites that are able to brand themselves will do well. But she warns you can't rest on your laurels - execution is everyting and publishers have to continue to deliver quality content. She told us about how big-name brand marketers like Dove (Unilever) are embracing the internet while others (Proctor & Gamble) are still sitting on the sidelines, experimenting. "You can't experiment anymore, especially since the forecast is for advertising online to match that of consumer magazines by 2010, and quickly surpass it from there," adds Wenda.

We heard more on the subject at the next panel, "Advertising, Ad Networks and Other Revenue Opportunties". Lisa Stone, CEO of BlogHer (that's her next to yours truly), shared how her company started out as a conference and has now become a full fledged organization that offers an ad network to its members but maintain high standards. "We have advertising guidelines that forbid pay-per-post and we request that bloggers bring in the best content for women", she says. As Lisa puts it, their members didn't want to write for magazines or newspapers, they wanted to write for themselves (here's to blogger's independence!), and BlogHer is providing a way for them to monetize their work. She sees a very positive future for ad networks.

Up next it was two media powerhouses: Cathie Black, Pres., Hearst Magazines, being interviewed by Tina Brown, back at work with the launch of her new Daily Beast. Tina Brown made a catty remark about being in magazine publishing in this environment (meow...I guess she learned her lesson...), which was blogged about in this piece on PaidContent.com.

The highlight of the panel that followed, which was on M&A and venture capital activity, was seeing Andrew Shue in the flesh, cute as ever. Yeah, that Andrew Shue. From Melrose Place. Elizabeth's brother. He is co-founder of CafeMom, an online community for mommies, although apparently he hasn't left Hollywood altogether. When he introduced himself he said he was formerly with D&D Advertising, and the whole room chuckled. I had to ask one of my table mates what he meant, and she quickly clarified that was the fictional company he worked for in the series (ok, he's cute and has a sense of humor).

The other big thrill was listening to blogger extraordinaire Heather Armstrong tell her story. She started her blog Dooce when she was single, thinking that only a handful of friends (and, as she puts it, a few guys she slept with) would read it. She would complain about her job and call her boss names, for which she subsequently got fired. Heather later got married and had a baby, so her posts became about the isolation that new moms go through and her own struggles with post partum depression. The beauty of it was that new mommies all over the country were sharing her same angst and, through her, found a voice for what they were feeling. Page views went through the roof, to the point where Dooce now supports her whole family. Her experience really inspired me to keep writing, and more often. Hope it does for you too. Blog on!

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