Saturday 22nd August: My Media Roundup by Laura Jenner, Product Director, New Statesman Media Group

Every Saturday morning, we invite a publishing pro to put together their top media links. This week’s guest editor is Laura Jenner.

Laura is Product Director at New Statesman Media Group. You can find her on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Laura says:

"I’ve worked in digital publishing for over 20 years, starting out as a sub-editor and moving into product in 2009. I joined New Statesman Media Group during lockdown in April, having spent the previous 6.5 years at Immediate Media, working across a range of titles including RadioTimes.com. I remain fascinated by the business of digital media and the complexity within it - both in terms of meeting the needs of an increasingly sophisticated and time-poor audience, and how on earth to make enough money while doing it.

"Given the amount of news and information out there, it’s been a great challenge to try and narrow down to a few links. I absolutely love email newsletters; they are a brilliant way to keep in touch with the industry, and indeed the wider news, at a time that works (often very early or very late). Without publications like Quartz, Media Voices and Digiday, I’d feel very lost indeed."

This is from 2011, but it’s still super-useful. Having recently started in an organisation that hadn’t previously had a product function, I’ve re-learnt how important it is to communicate the key aspects of the role and the value it will bring to the organisation. If you’ve ever wondered what on earth those product managers are doing (or if you’re a PM who gets asked, “So, er, what is it that PMs do?”) this is an article worth bookmarking.

When I first heard (from my 11 year olds…) that Fortnite had been banned by Apple, I was intrigued (and, no-parenting-awards-here, relieved that we have an Xbox so I didn’t have to deal with the trauma). Epic are a massive company; is this finally the one that can make a dent on the stranglehold Apple/Google hold over app revenue? I don’t know if it is, but there are a multitude of reasons why publishers might want to cheer them on.

I’ve worked remotely for at least a day a week for a decade, but never would have predicted that all of a sudden I, along with all of my colleagues, would be full-time at home. Starting a new job during lockdown, with others also starting the same way, has been a fascinating experience. For the lucky ones, there are a lot of perks about working from home, but that has to come with an awareness that it is a significantly less than ideal situation for many, if not most remote workers. This Quarz article pre-dates lockdown, but still is a great resource for helping you take care of yourself while working remotely.

On a similar theme, this article looks at how work, and management, are changing in the lockdown era. It looks at the changes to management and leadership that are needed, especially in an era when career development may be stalling for those who would normally be learning by observing the people around them. Anyone working with remote teams should take a look.

If you’re in digital media, you’ve probably been part of a conversation about how we design user experiences to encourage a certain behaviour - from making positive options bright and ‘negative’ ones grey, to where links are place. As ever, the big networks take this to a whole new level, but we should all be taking responsibility for our UX, in particular when it has any impact on our audience’s data and privacy.

If you would like to guest edit a future edition of My Media Roundup, simply reply to this email.