I interviewed Jack Neff who is the editor-at-large for Ad Age. He is a man that's written some big and intriguing stories about how things work in media and advertising.

He has covered a lot on TV and how media is measured and valued, which actually has a lot of drama to it. He also writes about trade organizations and brands and big platforms like Meta. In a nutshell, Jack is in the middle of some interesting things we don’t usually think about but can impact our lives.

In our interview, he talks about what it means to be a journalist, how hard that can be, and why it is rewarding.

(And special thanks to Brittany at OpenAP for providing a space to meet and talk to Jack.)

Rio Damata: What's your name? And what do you do for a living?

Jack Neff: I'm Jack Neff. I'm editor-at-large of Ad Age.

Rio Damata: And what is Ad Age?

Jack Neff: It is a trade journal covering the marketing industry.

Rio Damata: And what exactly does it cover?

Jack Neff: Everything in marketing, so you know, soup to nuts from agencies, marketers, measurement companies, ad tech, media companies everywhere.

Rio Damata: And how does it cover these topics exactly?

Jack Neff: Oh, we have reporters, largely in New York, but really all over the place. I'm based in Cincinnati. We have people in Chicago, people in LA. We don't have anybody outside of those areas now, and, you know, basically, our journalists cover a beat or several beats. They learn about what happens, learn about the people, develop relationships, and talk with them. Yeah.

Rio Damata: And you're a journalist?

Jack Neff:  Yes.

Rio Damata: How long have you been a journalist?

Jack Neff: Seemingly my whole life. But I actually started in high school. I was on a speech team, and there was a local newspaper reporter from the Dayton Daily News looking for journalists to cover school board meetings and city council meetings. They found that people on the speech team ended up being pretty good. So I did that. And, you know, this was the early days before technology. I would write things on a notepad, call them into his tape recorder, and he would transcribe them and they would end up in the newspaper. It was kind of an amazing thing.

Rio Damata: Interesting! Wow, I wasn't quite around for that. And what led you to Ad Age?

Jack Neff: I worked for some community papers, then I started freelancing. I had an idea for something related to advertising and pitched it to an editor there. They weren't looking for that particular story, but they were looking for somebody in Cincinnati to help cover Procter and Gamble. So I started doing that, and it just kind of grew from there.

Rio Damata: Interesting. And what's your message to up-and-coming journalists?

Jack Neff: Don't do it. The industry is going to hell in a handbasket. I wish I could say something better, but it's a very hard business to be in. You've got to love it. People still go into it, but my own daughter asked me about being a journalist once and I strongly discouraged her. It's just a hard industry to be in.

Rio Damata: How's it going to hell?

Jack Neff: The economics, basically. Advertising has shifted elsewhere; it doesn't tend to pay for content the way it used to. The model has shifted somewhat back toward subscription revenue, but there are only so many subscriptions that people can do. So the economics are just challenged.

Rio Damata: What do you love about journalism?

Jack Neff: You get to meet people, you get to learn about things you wouldn't learn about otherwise. And honestly, even working on the trade side of things, there's the underlying desire to make the world a better place, to help people do things better. As the old saying goes, "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." It's still what it's about, no matter where you're doing it.

Rio Damata: Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Jack Neff: You're welcome.