Insights
What’s on comms leaders’ minds?
February 28, 2025
In today’s edition, we share insights from our salon dinner, “Navigating Communications Strategy + Reputation in the 2025 Environment,” with corporate tech, nonprofit, and global policy communications leaders, along with a roundup of media news and moves.
Coming soon: A deep dive into today’s media landscape
Amid plummeting trust in traditional media, a decline in readers and viewers, and the meteoric rise of AI and newsfluencers, Global Gateway Advisors will soon release our 2025 report on the media landscape. It includes our latest insights and recommendations for communicators. Keep an eye out next week.
Comms leaders discuss challenges in a noisy environment
Communications leaders are struggling to sort through priorities and determine whether, when, and how they should say anything (and to whom) with the flood of issues coming out of Washington, D.C.
This week in Seattle, Global Gateway Advisors brought together a select group of corporate affairs and communications strategists to talk through these challenges under Chatham House Rules.
Several common themes emerged during our conversation:
- There is an avalanche of news and activity impacting every sector, and every organization is grappling with how to respond to each new event. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most prevalent topic on communications leaders’ minds is diversity, equity and inclusion.
- Organizations are navigating the topic knowing that some language they use comes with inherent risk. Many felt that changing words does not change their values.
- Some leaders said their CEOs are relieved to step back from the spotlight on DEI – not because they disagree with the principles, but due to general discomfort with discussing these issues when they are not connected to business goals.
- Still, we heard a shared acknowledgment that employees expect their organizations to uphold company principles and values. Diverse voices are essential for organizations to innovate and thrive.
Here are our key takeaways to guide communications strategy and reputation management in the months ahead.
- Lead with your values: There is no one-size-fits-all playbook, but every organization should ensure messaging tracks closely with their values. One attendee suggested that communicators look to the future: “You don’t want to make a statement today that four years from now will show you weren’t true to your values.”
- Learn from your peers: Engage your network to discuss which approaches are working, which tactics are ineffective, and how others are handling this environment. Don’t feel pressured to respond to everything. It’s acceptable to wait and see how issues develop before taking a position.
- Internal communication is critical: Employees know whether messaging is hollow. Many organizations are focused on internal communications to reassure and provide clarity for employees, rather than making external statements.
What’s next: Reach out if you’re interested in joining our upcoming salon dinners in New York City or San Francisco.
Media news + moves
- Jeff Bezos announces major changes to WaPo opinion pages:“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos wrote to the paper’s staff. “We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.” Opinion editor David Shipley is leaving the organization in response to the change.
- Meta begins signups for Community Notes: Following the platform’s decision to end its third-party fact-checking program and switch to a Community Notes model, users can now sign up to be the first contributors to the program.
- Axios launches premium media product: Axios introduced the Media Trends Executive Membership ($495/year), providing in-depth insights, actionable data, exclusive events, and networking opportunities with industry leaders, curated by media correspondent Sara Fischer and reporter Kerry Flynn.
- BuzzFeed rolls out BF Island: A new social media platform from BuzzFeed was built “specifically to spread joy and enable playful creative expression,” allowing users to leverage AI to create and share content. BuzzFeed founder and CEO Jonah Peretti wants to counterbalance the SNARF (stakes, novelty, anger, retention, and fear – his term) that has dominated social content.
- Substack doubles down on video creators: The company announced last week that it will allow creators to monetize their videos on the platform and publish video posts directly from the Substack app.
- STAT launches newsletter on AI in medicine: STAT debuted AI Prognosis, a weekly newsletter authored by Brittany Trang, exploring the role of artificial intelligence in science, medicine, and health.
Media moves
- The Verge hired Marina Galperina as senior technology editor.
- Bloomberg promoted Mark Gurman to managing editor for global consumer tech.
- Bloomberg hired Madison Darbyshire, formerly at the Financial Times, as a senior writer for Bloomberg Weekend.
- Business Insider senior reporter Geoff Weiss is rejoining the media desk, with a focus on companies like YouTube and Netflix.
- Ece Yildirim joined Quartz as a staff reporter focusing on tech and innovation.
- James Fontanella-Khan was named U.S. finance editor at the Financial Times.
- Kat Tenbarge, formerly a tech and culture reporter at NBC News, left the organization to launch a newsletter, Spitfire News.
- Oliver Darcy’s Status media newsletter (featured this week in The Wall Street Journal) hired Jonathan Passantino, a CNN deputy managing editor, as executive editor.
- Departures…