Editor’s note: This article was originally published in December 2017 at simonowens.net

AARP, the 60-year-old special interest group that advocates for older Americans, has never been shy about flexing its policy muscles or leveraging its enormous reach to influence legislation that might affect its members.

And that reach truly is…

Do you work in the PR industry? Then chances are you’ve recently annoyed a journalist. Here how:

1. You sent us a needless follow-up email: Do not follow up with us repeatedly to see if we saw your email. Yes, we saw your email, and us not responding to it was…

Medium just rolled out three changes to the way it pays writers:

1. It requires them to have a minimum of 100 subscribers.
2. They have to have published a story within the last six months.
3. It allows writers to keep 50% of all revenue they drive through subscriber conversions

I explained why the company is doing this in the below video:

YouTube is now paying out $100 million for creators to produce Shorts videos, but the irony is that YouTube specifically rolled out incentives years ago to lure creators into making longer videos.

I talked about why the company did this in the below vide:

The New York Times’s Shira Ovide recently argued that YouTube is “underwhelming” because it currently generates far less per user than other major platforms like Twitter and Facebook. I explain why this assessment is premature and why YouTube still has massive growth ahead of it.

The New York Times just announced its Q2 earnings and it’s seen strong growth in both advertising and subscribers. It’s also continuing to diversify its business.

I provided my analysis below.

The Guardian published an opinion piece titled “Why indie podcasts are in peril,” but I actually think the next five years will be incredibly lucrative for small podcasts that aren’t associated with a larger media organization.

I talked about it in the below video.

Yesterday, I did something pretty drastic: I deleted the last 28 articles I’d published to Medium. These were longform pieces — most between 1,500 and 2,500 words — that required a lot of research and labor to write. …