QM Events

March 25, 2009     ARCHIVES

Media Guru Breakfast: Jonah Bloom

Jonah Bloom, as the editor of Advertising Age, oversees editorial operations for the property across all its platforms and channels – online with blogs, sites, video and enewsletters, at events, as well as through its venerable print product. The publication and web site is one of the most intelligent and comprehensive voices that cover the confusing array of ground-breaking stories for all things marketing and media. Find out from Bloom, how a dominant, but small player in a niche media area is surviving and thriving in the digital age. He will let us in on his secrets of managing an infinitely expanding set of stories as more and more media platforms channels that sell advertising and care about media come on line. Although Bloom spends his many talents primarily on the wrangling of ornery columnists, reducing bombastic ad guys’ pronouncements into something close to truth, and of course the editing and presentation of marketing and advertising information, he does a little writing too. To get a flavor of Bloom the commentator, here are a couple of tidbits from recent columns: · “As someone whose main function in life is editing, I wonder, in the dark moments, whether I will soon be redundant. Perhaps I’ll be outsourced….More likely I’ll find myself in a losing battle with the machines.” (October 2008) · “ Not once have I picked up a newspaper or turned on a broadcast to find a lengthy discussion of how America is going to educate and retrain its citizens to make them competitive in a digitized, globalized economy. Not once have I seen a thorough analysis of what exactly is going to replace the country’s rapidly disappearing manufacturing sector…The media will continue to chase ratings, and I’m not saying there isn’t a place and time to analyze unaccomplished celebrities who forgot to don panties. But now would be a really good time for the deeply discredited media to start asking important questions about this country’s future.” (September 2008) Before Bloom joined Ad Age in 2002, he was at PRWeek magazine, a national weekly based in New York reporting on corporate communication, branding and public affairs. He helped to launch PRWeek in 1998 as news editor and went on to become editor-in-chief. He also has considerable experience reporting on the media industry in Europe, having founded and served as editor of Campaign Media Business, a national weekly covering planning, buying and selling of media in the U.K. Previously, Bloom worked at weekly Press Gazette, VNU’s Accountancy Age and PrintWeek. He is the editor of the HarperCollins book “Top Companies in Marketing & Media.” His work has appeared in The Financial Times and The Guardian.

About Media Guru

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