Mannion slides back to UBM from Hearst

It's like the good old days in B2B press with personnel leap-frogging from one  pub to another.  Patrick Mannion six months ago jumped from his post of editorial director of TechOnline at United Business Media to go take the newly created post of director of content at Hearst Electronics Group.Well, UBM thought that was a pretty neat idea and created a similar post for EDN and the Designlines.  Who would best fill that post then.... wait for it.... Patrick Mannion?


That opens a whole in the staff over at Hearst that's being filled temporarily by Murray Slovick on a consulting basis, while they look for a permanent replacement.


Director of content is a fairly new concept developed to handle the flood of information on the internet.  Where an editorial director sets policy direction for the editorial staff, the content produced by that staff is also under the supervision of the content director, whose job it is to coordinate and weave together that content with hundreds of blogs, white papers, contributed articles and outside news. it's a daunting task and something worthy of talking about.


Patrick, you up for it?

Comments

  1. SiliconcowboyMay 27, 2011 at 2:24 AM

    Many media companies are finding that content curation is a necessary and time-consuming task. At the same time, they seem to be learning that it's relatively easy to repurpose content for multiple highly targeted publications if the audiences are closely associated. So there's a content management function that wasn't there before. Interesting times. Good to hear that Patrick is back at UBM!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Patrick MannionJune 1, 2011 at 2:48 PM

    Hey Lou, hope all's well with you, thanks for noticing the move.
    It's important that you bring up the title issue. At APEC I had a chat with an ex-colleague from an earlier publication that I worked at and we got into discussing why I chose the title of "Director of Content" at Hearst, vs the typical Editorial Director or Editor in Chief. You're pretty much on the money in that it has to do with how the role of Editor has changed so much over the years that classic title just simply doesn't encompass what's involved. So absolutely, at some point we can sit and discuss what's changed and what it means. Looking forward to it. Patrick.

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