Miguel Helft: In ‘97 the Merc was a big paper. Monday morning the classifieds would have five pages of ads for jobs at Intel, three pages for HP and Sun, two pages of Oracle, some small and some display, stuff like Senior Software Engineer, SQL Specialist…a year later, all of those ads were gone to Craigslist. The newspaper industry lost nearly a third of its revenue, almost overnight. I went to The Industry Standard, a magazine that’s gone now but at the time was riding the same rocket that was propelling the sector it covered: the internet. Every week there were more ads, more editorial to fill. Soon we had a big weekly cocktail party on the roof that was one of the can’t-miss networking events in the industry. It folded after the internet bubble burst. I went back to the Merc as an editorial writer covering tech policy. They had maybe 450 journalists then – it’s down to something like 60 or so now. As the paper started to implode, I came close to leaving journalism for PR. Then, The New York Times called and offered me a job. It was a lifeline that would keep me in journalism for another dozen years. I covered venture capital, then Google and Yahoo, Apple and Facebook.

Quentin Hardy: Sounds like a lot of fun.

MH: I loved it. There was almost never a dull day. I got to meet incredible people, had a front row seat to this incredible story that was unfolding in Silicon Valley, to this industry that was changing the world in good and bad ways. I got to interview the Steve Jobses, Larry Pages, and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, and to cover many of the most consequential companies in the world. 

QH: How was it, moving into competitive national reporting?

MH: Fun and infuriating, at the same time. It’s lots of fun when you are working on big stories, say, when Microsoft makes a $44 billion dollar bid for Yahoo, and you’re going to be on the front page with a story everybody’s talking about. It’s a lot less fun when your editors expect you to do it all; when it’s a 9 PM and you get a call from an editor telling you The Wall Street Journal has some little bitty story about YouTube, and somebody high up at the paper thinks this means it’s going to destroy Netflix. Your life is upended for 48 hours while you chase something you know is bullshit.

I then moved to Fortune where I got offered a plum gig, writing deeply reported features that said something new rather than having to chase day-to-day news. After three years, I moved to Forbes to do the same kind of long-form storytelling as both a writer and editor. But very quickly, the magazine started shrinking from 18 issues to 14 to 10. And increasingly the emphasis on big feature stories was being replaced by incremental, online reporting that added little value, like incessant stories about Elon Musk’s latest tweet. I quit at the beginning of 2018, to take some time off and think about what I wanted to do next. I thought it might be more journalism or something else.

QH: What mix of projects did you end up with?

MH: Freelance stuff, some journalism and some consulting to companies. Through another former journalist I met Ben Worthen, an ex-Wall Street Journal reporter who is the founder of Message Lab. At the time, it was an agency with just a handful of people doing content. I told Ben that marketing was not really my jam, but that I would do some editing for him. I started by doing 10 hours a week, but I liked what I saw, and grew my involvement gradually. I’ve been here for five years. Ben built an amazing company with a really great culture. We’ve grown to nearly 30 people and got acquired last fall by Berlin Rosen, a NY-based communications firm. 

We specialize in content marketing and thought leadership. We tend to create media sites for companies, not one-off stories. We try to develop editorial programs that align with business goals. That means working with a client at a strategic level to understand what issues they face and how content can help achieve their goals. Then we create that content, and our analytics and audience development teams, measures performance, reach and impact. And we use the insights from those analyses to adjust our programs or stay the course, depending on what the data is telling us about their effectiveness. 

QH: It’s a very different business from journalism. How hard a transition was it?

MH: I loved being a reporter and my identity was wrapped in it. But, I’d done journalism for 20 years, and I was ready for something new. And frankly, journalism had changed in ways I didn’t love.

QH: What are some of the things you picked up doing journalism that are particularly valuable in this new career?

MH: I’m still reporting,writing and editing. If a story doesn’t have integrity or credibility, it’s not going to work. We have to give clients something that will engage readers in a world where there are so many distractions and where it’s increasingly hard to break through. So it all starts with good storytelling.

QH: I used to say at Google, “People are too busy doing what they’re doing to explain it well.” That was my job. And they want their difficult, complex things explained in a way that makes sense to nonspecialists. That part wasn’t so different from most journalism tech writing.

MH: That’s true. There’s a lot of what I learned in journalism that I still use day to day. And then, there are things that are completely different. I’m not trying to get scoops or uncover corporate shenanigans. Clients and subjects get to review the stories we write about them, something that would give a lot of journalists a heart attack.

I love that I still write and edit. I really enjoy working with clients on ideas—ideas about who they are, what makes their companies, technologies, or markets unique, what their business goals are—and turning those ideas into stories that further their goals. 

There’s another dimension that’s been exciting for me on a personal and professional level: helping to grow Message Lab from a tiny startup into a successful business. All of that was super fun. So that’s a lot of itches I’m getting to scratch. 

QH: You’ve now hired and managed a lot of former journalists. What do you think is the hard thing for most people coming out of the profession?

MH: I feel very lucky that I landed on a gig that’s largely editorial. Journalists who go to traditional public relations often have a tough adjustment. I have nothing against PR, but I don’t think I would enjoy pitching reporters, or dealing with crises and having to spin a company’s story in ways that may feel uncomfortable.

I’ve never had to hold my nose at something we do. Message Lab is the kind of that where if a client or company asks us to do something that doesn’t align with our values, we’ll turn them down. I saw it happen more than once. 

Also, being on the company side of the “journalist/company divide” works for me. I enjoy being analytic, explaining complex things, editing things so they are clear. But it’s not for every journalist.. For some journalists, this kind of work will never fit right for a number of reasons, whether it is that they thrive on confrontation, or are fiercely independent, or feel like working for a company is tantamount to selling out. One of the adjustments that can be hard for journalists is that you are going to lose a lot of that access you have to the people at the top. In the work we do, you’re going to be interacting with people in the marketing department or product managers. 

QH: A friend of mine used to say, “I worry about when I lose my last name ‘…of The New York Times.’” But of course, everybody does eventually. I think the biggest problem I’ve seen is people moving on with a sense of loss of what they had, or cynicism of what they’ll do next. In that sense, journalism is a tough profession for people, because it can take over their identity, make them idealize their work.

What do you advise journalists who are out of work now? 

MH: People can always find new places to channel their strengths. All those people who were at the Mercury News, I bet three-quarters aren’t doing journalism now. They are analysts for financial or strategy firms, they found work at a university doing some kind of writing or communications, they may be editing or ghostwriting books for other people, or something else entirely.

If you’re thinking about a post-journalism career, I think the sector I’m in, content marketing, has a lot to offer. And you may find that it’s a growing sector. Today every company has a website, and that makes them a publisher. Some take content seriously, and if so, it’s likely they need help, that they could use a journalist or two or more on their staff. Go and take a look. Start with your area of expertise. You’ll find that companies in that sector need people with editorial skills, people who can say what’s distinctive about a company or a product, people who can tell how a message will resonate with audiences or who understand the industry’s regulatory issues. There’s so much happening in the world of content these days. And of course, PR firms will often hire content people. Their focus tends to be on ghostwriting op-eds for executives. I see that as a small subset of what content in the corporate world can be.  

QH: I’m interested in what you say about concentrating in one area.

MH: Some kind of specialization has been key to survival in journalism for 20 years. It certainly has been for me, as a tech reporter. As the news industry has shrunk, people with general reporting skills but no specific field of expertise were often the first to be cut and among those who found it hardest to reinvent themselves. If you were an expert on something, especially a business topic like tech or real estate or finance or pharma, that probably helped you stay in journalism, and it’s likely to be a viable skill to find something new outside of journalism.

Say you were someone who covered real estate in South Florida. There’s probably a ton of people who could use not only your writing and analytic skills, but also your knowledge, whether it’s a realtor, a local chamber of commerce, a company like Zillow or Redfin, a home insurer, or some other industry player.

QH: The people who were once your sources are now your network. What else would a journalist bring to clients?

MH: You have an expertise and you have connections, and both are extremely valuable. Another thing that helps is being good with numbers. Financial literacy, the ability to interpret  statistics is still valuable in journalism, and in plenty of other fields. A lot of reporters tend to have a little math anxiety, so if you are the type who can really understand a balance sheet, that will be helpful in life after journalism.

QH: Changing gears here. You hire a lot of ex-reporters. What’s the most effective way to manage journalists?

MH: Be clear about expectations at the start. We have a memo that we often share with freelancers working with us for the first time, covering the ways in which what we do is and isn’t like journalism. We expect them to do serious independent reporting, to verify what sources say, and to fact check things. 

QH: One of the attractions of journalism is that you get to be blunt with powerful people. That kind of goes away, yeah?

MH: Oh yes. As a reporter, you get used to calling a PR person and saying, “put Sundar on the line!” Forget about that. Things are going to feel more pedestrian and are going to move more slowly. For some people that may feel like a comedown. 

QH: Does it feel like a comedown to you?

MH: I’m having a lot of fun and I’m glad to be here, doing something I love.