Veteran Forbes reporter Alex Konrad recently joined a growing list of tech reporters taking their talents independent. Among them: Eric Newcomer's Newcomer; Alex Kantrowitz's Big Technology; and Casey Newton's Platformer (with over ~200K subscribers).
They’re following what’s been a successful playbook — The Information and Axios both began as personal projects from former mainstream reporters. But these writers are acting as solo voices (for now, at least) and using newer self-publishing platforms along with other content formats to give readers a more personal relationship and POV.
With the independence to pursue stories and niche topics for targeted audiences, many are quickly gaining influence. And building resonance and reach that has deteriorated in mainstream over recent years.
This is a signal for not only the tech startups and growth-stage companies who are finding more hurdles getting media interest in national outlets — where diminishing newsrooms are prioritizing tech giants, policy and the economy and even trade media are facing resource issues.
It's for more mature companies, too, who are defending an industry leadership position, working to influence category conversations and topics, or needing to reposition themselves and demonstrate transformation.
But this shift and splintering of the media landscape isn't a loss. In fact, we believe earned media has never had more potential or storytelling opportunity.
We talk a lot about this at SHIFT of late … how we help clients connect with their audiences when the media landscape, and its reach and influence, has been completely decentralized.
What the best technology PR agencies are doing today is architecting a hybrid media relations approach — looking at visibility and narrative-building as an integrated effort across earned, owned and shared content and across three distinct categories of press:
1. Big press / traditional outlets as credibility builders
2. Niche, new media and shared sources for ICP reach, influence and demand creation
3. Category-focused coverage for LLM visibility
Here is how we are building across each in B2B technology PR programs today.
Niche & New Media Storytelling
Get deliberate about podcasts and newsletters. Coverage and community engagement in them humanizes a brand, grows its executives’ profiles, offers deeper and longer-form storytelling than traditional outlets and often comes with impactful social media exposure. Many also have a strong cost/value equation on paid visibility, particularly compared to astronomical sponsored content fees in most business press.
We wrote about this over a year ago in our 2025 emerging strategies post as did the head of marketing at Bain Capital Ventures, Allison Braley, a great communications thought leader on LinkedIn herself.
It's not that we should ditch traditional business press and trade media, which are important credibility builders and continue to create awareness that delivers traffic and inbounds for our clients). But we should reconsider who/what comprises our media target lists (and who/what we consider "Tier 1" media).
Founder/Executive-led Storytelling
Champion your own vision, stories and insights. CEOs (and those supporting them) are generating real momentum doing their own bidding on LinkedIn (plus branded content series, to a degree) and other community/distribution channels.
And it's no longer just for scrappy startup founders or trailblazing execs. Fortune summed it up well, declaring “social media is reshaping leadership.”
Today, it's more the standard than the exception for CEOs to make social media a top channel in their communications flywheel. It's not only beneficial in building reputation, influence and demand with buyers, but also for greasing the wheels for press and speaking opportunities (or, better yet, driving inbound requests).
Even though you retain total control over what’s posted, creating resonance with your audience requires 1) intentionality, aka it’s guided by an objective, strategy, ownable narrative and conversation pillars and 2) powerful delivery, whether through a trademark style/format or very compelling POVs/copywriting. Consistency is also key.
Modernizing Traditional Media Strategies
Yes, we’ve just spent time lauding the emergence of new media and direct channels for PR. Yes, trust in traditional media is waning, by the numbers. That said, earned coverage remains irreplaceable. We see its impact in our program measurement and our clients consistently share non-attributable impact (pings from customers, prospects, investors, employees, partners when coverage hits).
Legacy outlets still retain credibility (and a reach) that most tech companies likely can’t get through owned or new media alone. So, reaching traditional media remains a core focus for us at SHIFT.
However, we (and all communicators) have had to get more creative to secure it. That means custom-building assets and data for press, upleveling spokespeople's thought leadership and better connecting company stories/POVs to major news events.
Working across all of these channels while understanding their nuances and role in B2B tech PR strategies, is what will develop strong market positioning, sustainable visibility and outcomes. Ignore one, old or new, at your own peril.
If you're looking for help boosting your visibility, we would love to talk about our approach of combining traditional/new channels for maximum reach and results.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
