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Business Wire’s Serena Ehrlich joins host Shel Holtz to talk about a Pew study that found 7 in 10 Americans is suffering from news fatigue. Shel also talks with David Spark (from Spark Media Solutions) about Instagram’s plan to host long-form video. Also in this week’s episode:

• A follow-up to our report on Google employees opposing a contract the company has with the Pentagon
• A lemonade company takes a stand for children’s lemonade stands
• Apple’s new ARKit brings new advances to Augmented Reality
• A high-profile media exec is at the helm of a new blockchain-based platform for sustainable journalism
• Teenage girls have innovated a way to create advice resources on Instagram
• Dan York reports on Snapchat’s e-commerce play, Instagram’s long-form video plans, Facebook’s funding of news video content from mainstream news outlets, this week’s E3 Expo, WordCamp Europe, and the Internet Society’s Global Internet Report Survey (which he’d like you to take)

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog.

About our guests

Serena Ehrlich, Business Wire’s director of Product Marketing Management – Growth, provides guidance for internal and external content creation and distribution services, ranging from PR programming to mobile marketing to social media updates. Throughout her career, Ehrlich has worked to provide guidance on investor relations, public relations and overall consumer behavior relations trends. Before rejoining Business Wire in 2013, Ehrlich designed and implemented successful local, national and international social, influencer, mobile and traditional marketing campaigns for brands including Kraft, Kohls, Avon, Mattel, Mogreet and more. A ’91 graduate of Brandeis University with a B.A. in History, Ehrlich was named one of the 2013 Top 25 Women in Mobile to Watch by Mobile Marketer.

David Spark is a veteran tech journalist and founder the brand journalism firm Spark Media Solutions. Spark has worked with brands such as IBM, Microsoft, HP, and Indycar Racing. He’s reported on the tech scene for more than 18 years in more than 40 media outlets, and is the author of “THREE FEET FROM SEVEN FIGURES: One-on-One Engagement Techniques to Qualify More Leads at Trade Shows” available at ThreeFeetBook.com.

Links from This Week’s Show

• June 2018 “Circle of Fellows” broadcast
• Google Employees Discuss Staging Protest Of Their Own Company
• Google ‘to end’ Pentagon Artificial Intelligence project
• Alphabet Shareholders Reject Diversity Proposal Backed by Employees
• Kraft Heinz paying kids slapped with lemonade stand fines
• In five years, VR could be as big in the US as Netflix
• Apple is taking mobile AR to the next level
• Almost seven-in-ten Americans have news fatigue, more among Republicans
• Why I’m Joining Civil
• Instagram plans to launch Snapchat Discover-style video hub
• How Instagram Threads Because the WikiHow for Gen Z

Links from Dan York’s Report

• Snapchat adds ticket buying through SeatGeek integration
• Instagram is targeting one of YouTube’s weaknesses with plans for long-form video
• Coming soon to your Facebook: news shows from CNN, Fox, ABC
• E3 Expo
• WordCamp Europe 2018
• Internet Society’s Global Internet Report Survey

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio