Mark Coatney
As seen in:
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Medium,
The New York Times,
TIME,
CNBC,
Inc.,
The Daily Dot,
beehiiv,
Forbes India
I am part of the problem. Working on a solution with RoverAI Founder, CounterMeasure. Ex Tumblr, Forbes, Al Jazeera, Time, Nwk, etc. mcoatney.bsky.social
Articles by Mark Coatney
What Does It Mean When Most of the Web's Content Is Mass Produced?
The other day I was listening to my friend Jed’s excellent “Techs on Texts” podcast (subscribe!) and Jed’s guest Alex Merose got into a nice discussion about how Duchamp’s art was a reaction to the rise of industrial mass production in the early 20th Century. What does any tangible hand-made good mean when it can be cheaply replicated by machines? Duchamp’s response was in part to say that an object’s value comes from the human connection between giver and receiver.
Let's Start Solving Society's Trust Problem By Solving Substack's Trust Problem
The latest “On Substack” from Hamish McKenzie, Chris Best, and Jairaj has a lot of things in it that are hard to disagree with. Trust is an issue. And there are many good reasons why trust is at a low point in most areas of our society, mainly because so many of our people and institutions have shown themselves to be completely untrustworthy. But if you’re going to claim that you want to be part of the solution, it’s good to walk the walk.
Will the Metaverse Save Journalism?
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Opinion: Ask Not What Your Senator Can Do for You. Ask Why He Isn't Doing It
Forget the actual people of Texas; Ted Cruz certainly did. His trip to Cancun after a record snowfall overwhelmed the local energy grid last week, illustrated in stark detail how the state's junior Senator really feels about his constituents: He simply doesn't care. Aside from the fact that abandoning his constituents to literally freeze to death is morally wrong, it's also just a bad behavior for someone who someday will want those people to vote for him. Texas area businesses should demand more.
Presidential Debate: A Mute Button is Great. But it Doesn't Solve the Problem
It's certainly welcome news that the Commission on Presidential Debates is trying to avoid a repeat of the noisy chaos that was the first Trump-Biden debate by muting a candidate's microphone when his opposite is speaking. Go ahead, call it the Donald Rule. It will apply only at certain designated times, not during the entire debate.
Pence v. Harris: A Rare Vice-Presidential Debate That Matters
Like the office itself, vice-presidential debates are often not worth a warm bucket of spit; they tend to be lightly-viewed and quickly-forgotten moments in a presidential campaign (If you can remember the immortal Biden-Ryan tilt of 2012, well, your name is probably Jana Ryan). Mainly, if you're paying attention, you're interested in how well the two candidates support the top of the ticket, and contemplate whether, in some unlikely alternate universe, that person would be a good president.
Businesses Shouldn't Have to Be the Mask Police
If there is any consensus around how to limit the spread of Covid-19, it is that everyone should be wearing a facemask in public. It's a simple thing, and yet it's an issue many state governments don't want to touch. In the absence of any sort of a national plan, companies have tried to step into the void. As my colleague Bill Saporito so eloquently noted recently, Walmart is currently providing greater leadership on Covid-19 than the CDC.
How Much YouTube Paid Me for a Video with Over One Million Views
Before I begin to break this case study down, here are a few quick disclaimers: 1. As click-baity as this title is...this is NOT a clickbait article. My plan is to be as transparent as possible to show you how much (or little) creating content on Youtube is worth if you put in the effort and how to optimize a potential revenue opportunity. 2. There's nothing to buy here. No punch line or call to action at the end. I'm not selling a product.
Opinion | We Need a PBS for Social Media (Published 2019)
Social media is an opportunity wrapped in a problem. YouTube spreads propaganda and is toxic to children. Twitter spreads propaganda and is toxic to racial relations. Facebook spreads propaganda and is toxic to democracy itself. Such problems aren’t surprising when you consider that all these companies operate on the same basic model: Create a product that maximizes the attention you can command from a person, collect as much data as you can about that person, and sell it.
Dear Marc Benioff: To Make Time Soar, Make a Salesforce for Magazine Editors
Publishers traditionally use CRM software to connect on the sales side. But what if they used those same tools to build a closer connection to readers? My alma mater, Time magazine, is having a moment. The sale to Marc Benioff has clearly invigorated the place. Ed Felsenthal has smartly returned the Time cover to its former glory as one of the best marketing vehicles in publishing. The magazine is going on hiring binge, with openings for two-dozen new journalists.
ServiceNow: Tech's ultimate second act
Vegas being Vegas, fans have crammed the Venetian Hotel for selfies with a greying celebrity working his way through the scrum: Fred Luddy, the 63-year-old founder of ServiceNow, America’s hottest IT-services company.
Tooths and Tails – Mark Coatney – Medium
I was re-reading this piece the other day, and it reminded me of one of the big ongoing problems with reporting on media companies as the seek out sustainable business models. One of the things that sometimes gets lost when journalists talk about media companies is how much they’re spending on content creation vs. all the other things a company needs to spend money on. The military calls this the “tooth to tail” ratio?—?the number of people on the front lines vs.
About Commenting on Forbes
Forbes has long been a platform that contains multitudes. Our staff writers, our network of more than 2,000 contributors and the larger number of people who comment on Forbes.com or social media channels all help make Forbes what it is today. Right now, we are doing a full evaluation and rethinking around how to best facilitate a conversation between our writers, contributors and readers.
News is an Argument
One prevailing view of the news biz is that it's the content, and not just the business model, that is completely going to Hell. This argument sees the future as a bunch of uninformed millennials texting listicles to other members of their own filter bubble. Real newspapers that publish serious news don't have a chance.
Gmail is the next big user interface
One of the things that’s fascinating to me right now is how Google has finally figured out how to pivot from the less than optimal performance of G+ by making Search and Gmail more actionable directly from the interface, rather than making you go to another app, or down at least one level, to get what you want.
Dear NYT: Let John Herrman Speak!
Here are two ledes: Both stories are about the panic online publishers are feeling as their traffic declines. One of these I want to keep reading, and it sure as hell ain’t the first one. Both are written by the same person, John Herrman, who was the author of some really nice and thoughtful pieces on the topic at The Awl, and is now writing the same stories for the New York Times, which are presumably pushed through a Boringmatic 3000 editor-bot before publication.
radiatingseconds: 2046 {2004} dir. Wong Kar-wai
© SNGTDTED 2008–2016
How Tumblr Can Save Yahoo
The short answer is, no, of course, nothing can save Yahoo. A year from now things will certainly look very different in Sunnyvale. The longer answer is, there’s a good media company here, with a lot of great assets and a real audience. That audience is both blessing and curse, since, while all those eyeballs bring in a lot of money, the fact that they’re there hasn’t forced Yahoo to adapt to the new digital media environment.
The Publisher and the Pipeline
One of the interesting things about reading John Herman’s latest piece, about the changing nature of access in journalism, is that one gets the strong feeling that pretty much everyone in the world already knew this except for the people running large media companies.
Tweet, O Muse - Medium
With that in mind, here’s the Moments page right as I write this, Oct. 21, around 1PM ET: In online storytelling, there are only two options: You can be First, or you can be Unique. Moments needs to own one of these two points, or it will fail. Moments needs a voice. Remember that the best Twitter accounts aren’t feeds. The best Twitter accounts don’t ignore users. The best Twitter accounts give you a view into a personality and a mind you could never see in any other way.
Unfrozen. - Medium
So a lot has been said about that Amazon article, and while in general I’m in the “eh, I don’t think that workplace sounds as bad as the Times says it is” (in general, I’m far more sympathetic to the warehouse workers that get a glancing mention in the NYT story than I am highly-compensated white-collar workers (though even that story is four years old — the NYT piece really could have used some more current reporting)), there is one thing that I found really jarring about the whole piece:...
I Mean Honestly, New York Times, It’s Like You’ve Never Even Heard of the Term “Forced Dogfooding”
So next week is going to be just one big pain in the ass for folks at NYT HQ — if you want to read your story you’re going to have to step away from your desktop machine (though Andrew McLaughlin helpfully shows you how you can VPN past the corporate block here) and view it on your mobile device. As annoying corporate directives go, this is pretty minor (especially in a world where this happens), but it’s kind of missing the point. Sure, it’s good if you’re a Times employee to use the product.
Person of the Week: Abu Zubaydah
It was a good week to be a bad guy. The U.S. went into high alert mode, at least briefly, after warnings from the FBI that attacks from al-Qaeda or some other malevolent group could hit banks and apartment buildings . The New York City Police Department stepped up security around bridges, tunnels and city landmarks Monday after receiving vague threats.
Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com
MARK STEHLE/AP Erica Pratt smiles while being held by her uncle during a news conference In this unsettled summer, with its bear market in stocks and bull market in terror warnings, every bit of bad news resonates tenfold.
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