Ad Age editor, Scott Donaton discusses the of sipping his own medicinal tea:
I’m not just the hair-club president; I’m also a client. From my perch overlooking the
marketing landscape, I can report on, even judge, how companies react to the issues confronting them. But I’m in the middle of it as well, part of a small team at Ad Age tasked with figuring out the future of this brand and ensuring its long-term leadership.
Ad Age is no longer a weekly publication; it’s the world’s leading source of news, information and data on advertising, marketing and media. And it’s delivered through whatever platforms make the most sense for our audience and advertisers. It’s why we run a real-time news operation online and publish a range of e-mail newsletters dedicated to such topics as branded entertainment (Madison & Vine), media (MediaWorks) and China. It’s why we run video reports on the Web and podcasts on iTunes. It’s why we host events and conferences to directly connect members of our community.
We are a news operation, but we are also our own subjects. We must confront the same issues as the businesses we cover. And we’re no less critical of ourselves than we are at times of others. We question whether we’re moving quickly enough to change our mind-sets and supporting structures, whether we’re laying the right bets.
I don’t know about the “world’s leading source” claim from atop his perch, nor how well Ad Age is doing with the challenges Donaton mentions. VNU’s Adweek has a much better blog, that’s for sure. Certainly, that’s not the only measure, but it’s a leading indicator.
I agree that Adfreak is better than Small Agency Diary. But I believe that’s because the Adfreak writers are exactly that: writers solely dedicated to the blog (and occasionaly, Adweek itself). Small Agency Diary has some truly talented people contributing to it, but they’re part-timers whose main job is actually producing agency work. I think this topic is valuable in that this medium can’t be a part-time job if you want to do it well (with the possible exception of those delightful folks at Why SAdvertising Sucks, and the wonderfully deranged Copyranter.)
I like Small Agency Diary. I’m merely saying Adweek seems the more adaptive of the two mainstream trade rags.