Recode plans more conferences, podcasts

Laura Hazard Owen of The Nieman Lab looks at the changes coming at tech news site Recode, including the hiring of a new engagement editor.

Owen writes, “Frommer has hired Recode’s first-ever engagement editor, Meghann Farnsworth, who was the managing director of distribution, operations, and engagement at the Center for Investigative Reporting. Her first day at Recode is Monday. ‘We think of our engagement editor as a really interesting hybrid role,’ Frommer said. ‘It’s partially being the public brand voice, partially being our head of data and analytics, and partially working on publishing into other formats — starting with social media, but also, potentially, any platform, from messaging apps to Snapchat.’

“As for video, ‘we’ve been really behind, mostly because we didn’t know what we wanted to do,’ said Swisher. ‘We tried a few things last year and it didn’t work out because we were completely thoughtless about. We’re thinking hard about the attributes of Recode that would lend themselves to video. We do interviews very well, but watching a video of an interview is like watching paint dry.’

“So, she said, Recode needs to take the areas where it’s strong — analytical pieces, scoops, ‘access to a lot of high-level people’ — and figure out how those translate into engaging videos.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.