The publisher of Fast Co. and Inc. magazines recently eliminated its digital division, laid off 20 employees and merged responsibilities for the company’s print and online publishing products. That doesn’t mean the company has lost faith in digital. John Koten, CEO of Mansueto Ventures, expects his company will grow through digital markets and a smarter use of people and technology to expand online audiences and revenue. That includes aggregation of content from other sources. Koten told Forbes:
I think social publishing is going to play a bigger and bigger role in journalism whether we professional journalists like it or not…The professional journalist becomes a coach and a mentor to people who are doing this [blogging and writing] for free. Our strength is trying to be the spokesman into communities and trying to build a business that works around that…I think people with strong intelligent voices will find a way to monetize those voices in the future, but I don’t know that people who are just following the traditional journalistic approach of gathering information and then presenting it in a stylistically pleasing way [are] going to survive. It’s too dull.
