Robert “Bo” Sacks has worked in the printing and publishing industry for more than 40 years. He likes to say he began his career where most people’s end because – unlike most employees who get their start working as an intern or assistant – he launched his career founding a weekly newspaper in the city. He then went on to “become one of the founding fathers” of High Times Magazine and mediaIDEAS, a now-defunct consulting company that specialized in digital, mobile, and social research. Over the course of his career, Sacks has worked as a publisher, editor, freelance writer, director of manufacturing and distribution, senior sales manager, circulator, chief of operations, pressman, cameraman, lecturer, and web site developer.
Today, he owns Precision Media Group, a performance-based marketing firm that connects advertisers with consumers. In addition to private consulting services, it publishes Heard on the Web: Media Intelligence, a “daily e-newsletter that delivers pertinent industry news to a diverse, worldwide publishing community of over 11,750 media industry leaders.” Founded in 1993, it is one of the longest running e-newsletters in the United States.
Heard on the Web focuses primarily on the digital and magazine industries. Sacks describes it as “a very personal and slanted collection of news gathered daily over the Internet, which to me seems relevant and useful about the publishing industry. I do this as a labor of love and to keep myself as up-to-date as is possible with the ever-changing and advancing ‘Information Distribution Industry’ formerly known as ‘Publishing.'”
Bo Sacks today (left) and Bo Sacks when he started publishing in the ’70s (far right). Images courtesy of BoSacks Precision Media Group.
You can find a sample newsletter here. Like our blog, Sacks also lists a number of publishing links he feels are useful to industry-insiders on his website. He also publishes the BoSacks Daily Gazette, a media-career news site.
Sacks delivered the Business Media Leadership Summit’s keynote address in Toronto in November 2016 for Magazines Canada. You can watch his presentation below: