Media Men

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 1, 2002 by Sarah Gonser

Byline: SARAH GONSER

ENTREPRENEURS

This probably isn't a big shocker, but among the undeniable truths about the publishing biz is that media types are obsessed with reading about ... well, other media types. Call it education, call it vanity, call it whatever. The bottom line is that there's an enormous appetite for media news.

Enter Jim Romenesko and Patrick Phillips, arguably two of the most influential figures in the publishing industry. From his studio apartment in Evanston, Illinois, Romenesko is the man behind the outrageously popular (40,000 hits a day) MediaNews. And from an apartment in New York City's West Village, Phillips is the man behind IWantMedia (2,000 hits a day). These two Web sites are the virtual hubs for media news, gossip, speculation, and general industry-related hullabaloo. You ignore them at your professional peril.

"Part of the fascination is you never know what he is going to play up as a major story," says New York Post media reporter Keith J. Kelly about Romenesko. "There is randomness and attitude and a sense that the half-crazed media junkie putting it all together is trying to be fair."

MediaNews.org started in early 1999 as a daily hobby site called MediaGossip.com which Romenesko updated in the wee hours before trucking off to his day job as an Internet reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. "I never saw stories from the alternative and mainstream press brought together online in one place, and that was my goal with Media Gossip," says Romenesko. The Poynter Institute, a Florida-based non-profit journalism school, got wind of Romenesko's site through an article in The New York Times and hired him to host the site fulltime in August 1999. "Now I'm an employee with a salary and benefits," says the 49-year-old newsie.

Phillips, 39, a native of Missouri, worked in promotions at The Kansas City Star, in publicity for USA Weekend, and finally in corporate communications at Hearst before launching IWantMedia.com. "At Hearst, I felt I'd gone as far as I could go. It was the height of the dot-com boom and I thought, if I'm going to get out, now's the time," says Phillips.

He lives and works in a spacious flat-great digs for a guy who is No. 2 in the race to be top Media Man. The impetus for IWantMedia came from the years he devoted to writing press releases and speeches at Hearst. "I spent all this time on the Web searching for information about major media mergers, magazine closings, bios for media company executives. There was no place online where you could access all that." So in July 2000, with the assistance of a few Web designer friends, Phillips launched his site. "It took off. The very first day, someone e-mailed me asking if they could advertise," says Phillips, still stunned by those early signs of acceptance. "I was so surprised. You want to give me money for this?" Over the past two years, says Phillips, a handful of potential buyers have stepped forward, but the plans didn't pan out. Today, he has licensing deals with the American Press Institute, the Publicity Club, and Mediabistro.com. His advertisers range from Variety to Media Industry Newsletter. Still, says Phillips, "it's not like I can make a living off this." He supplements the Web site's revenue - which he declines to reveal, saying only that it's "in the thousands" - with freelance writing assignments from corporations.

While the competing sites cover different aspects of the media - MediaNews links mainly to articles and press releases about print media, IWantMedia links to articles about print, TV, radio, advertising, and Internet - the two men have a lot in common. They both wake up at the crack of dawn (the better to get an early read on the world's media news), they both live alone, and they both drink a lot of coffee. Ultimately, though, it's their deep fascination with the inner workings of the media world that unites them in their predawn mission. "There's so much change happening in the media landscape with convergence, the advertising downturn, and media consolidation," says Phillips. "If you're a journalist, or a media corporate executive, or an ad-sales person - if you work anywhere in the media environment - you would be concerned about what all this activity means for you and your future livelihood. This stuff is important."

TOP FIVE TROLLERS

Web sites MediaNews.org and IWantMedia.com attract 40,000 and 2,000 visits a day, respectively. Here are the top five domain names that appeared most frequently this year on the two sites' user logs. - SG

Romenesko's MediaNews Time Inc. The Wall Street Journal Tribune Company The New York Times Knight Ridder

I Want Media Time Inc. Dow Jones & Company Tribune Company The New York Times The McGraw-Hill Companies