Holtz Communications + Technology

As organizational communicators are occupied increasingly with helping their organizations become media companies—producing streams of different types of content that satisfy audience interests, support business and brand goals, and encourage sharing and conversation—it can be instructive to look at what actual media companies are doing to engage audiences.

Mainstream media organizations have struggled mightily in the digital era, but there are those that are…

When newspapers first started publishing to the web, the content was free. Back then, the web was a secondary source, a supplement to newspaper that landed on your doorstep (or in your gutter) every day. As digital content grew more popular and newspaper subscriptions rates started their descent, publishers struggled to find ways to replace the income from paid subscriptions…

Memorial Day Weekend is upon us here in the United States. I remember when holidays like this means most stores were closed, TV offered nothing but stale reruns and third-string news teams, and the world seemed to grind to a halt. The Web, however, never rests, and it seems everyone else tries frantically to keep up. Do yourself a favor.…

I review a lot of content during the week. Much of it comes from curated collections I follow, such as Smart Briefs. I get email updates from several sites, like AdAge and ZD Net. I subscribe to the RSS feeds of hundreds of blogs. I check the links that cross my Twitter stream, thanks to my Paper.li daily. I click…

This morning I learned that Vocus, the public relations services company, has acquired email marketer iContact.

That Vocus would add email marketing to its portfolio is interesting enough, but for now, let’s focus on how I found out about the acquisition.

Not too long ago, I would have read about it in the business section of my daily newspaper, in my weekly edition of

To hear some tell it, the press embargo is dead.

It’s not, of course. I’ve written before that the embargo, when executed correctly, is a respected and useful tool. It thrives outside of the technology world. In medicine, where major journals publish comprehensive studies, embargoes are routine.

The key requirement for an effective embargo is an agreement between the news outlet and the news…