Back in the saddle

I was recently featured in Corey Hutchins' weekly report for Columbia Journalism Review. If you want to get caught up on what I am doing, check this out.

Top Colorado newspaper editor --> instructor --> digital marketer

Last March, when Denver Post editor Greg Moore suddenly announced he was stepping down as editor after 14 years, he told staff that budget cuts and layoffs had taken a toll and he didn't like how he was using his brain. He also took himself out of the running for a position as public editor of The New York Times. (Maybe a dodged bullet: the Timesrecently killed that position.) Moore then taught journalism at The University of Colorado at Boulder. Now, in his new job as editor in chief of a Colorado online marketing company called Deke Digital, he's back to talking about his brain. It's tired, he says, but, "in a good way."

As a digital marketing editor, Moore says he's learning plenty about health care, entrepreneurship, financial tech and other areas. "It is great to be a part of a startup-like culture, building something new and different," he says. "I miss some aspects of daily journalism but this is firmly in my wheelhouse of experience as an editor and creator of content. It is meaningful work and my brain is tired— in a good way— at the end of the day."

So what does Deke do? When founder Dave Maney launched the company a few years ago, he sent an e-mail describing it like this: "Deke provides content-driven digital & social marketing services to companies that sell sophisticated financial services: wealth management firms, private equity funds, hedge funds, investment banks, insurance & benefits brokerage firms, accounting firms, and other related services." On its website the company says it helps clients "shape and edit their thoughts – helping them turn exceptional insights born from their life’s work into powerful essays and op-eds capable of broad impact." For a better idea, here are some examples of how the firm got some of its clients placed in media. 

Is there anything broader to say about this Moore move? Perhaps that it's just another mile marker in our state and nation's changing media landscape where well-worn journalists see brighter futures on the public relations horizon. (See: Hoover, Tim: think tank PR; Crummy, Karen: oil-and-gas PR; Hubbard, Curtis: public affairs PR; Murphy, Chuck: political PR; Bean, Joanna: university PR; Bartels, Lynne: government PR; Baca, Ricardo: cannabis PR; Marcus, Peter: Cannabis PR.) There are likely plenty more, but that's just what came off the top of my head.