Robert Diamond started out in digital media publishing by creating a Michael Crawford fan site, which he received an infringement for but he got a job out of it. Robert provides detail on his background and the lessons he's learned in building Broadway World.

Here's a rundown of EP 5 of the State of Digital Publishing podcast:

* Robert's and Broadway World's background

* The history of how journalists initially covered Broadway and its contribution to the industry. How has this changed today?

* Broadway World's audience

* Do show reviews still work?

* Insights on Broadway World's website redesign and Industry Insider

* Trends in Broadway news and events publishing

* Broadway World upcoming plans and initiatives

* Career progression advice.

Podcast Transcription

Vahe Arabian: Welcome to episode five of the State of Digital Publishing. The State of Digital Publishing is an online publication and community providing resources, perspectives, collaboration, and news for digital media and publishing professionals in digital media technology and audience involvement. I'm with Robert Diamond, editor in chief of Broadway World. Hi, Rob, how are you?

Robert Diamond: I'm doing very well, and you?

Vahe Arabian: I'm not bad, thanks. You were mentioning to me just before we started around the awards that you guys were running for the end of the year. How's that going?

Robert Diamond: It's going very well. When the website started 15 years ago, the very first thing that we offered was the Broadway World Theater Fans' Choice Awards, which mirrored the category of the Tony's for Broadway shows, and we let the fans vote on it. So, that was a very popular feature. It was literally the only thing on the website when we launched. And shortly after that, like with everything else we do, we were thinking about how to expand it, and when we expanded it into regional content, we started adding regional awards as well. And every year, we try and increase the number of areas that we do it in. We did it in, I think, 60 markets last year. We're at 75 this year. So, it's exponentially growing and exponentially giving us all gray hairs.

Vahe Arabian: Yeah, it sounds like a pretty big job, but yeah, I'm sure it's exciting for the fans and also just for you just to pick out the best of the best so, hopefully, that balances it out.

Robert Diamond: The awards are voted on either by journalists or members in the industry or in some weird combination, it's around all of entertainment. So, we like stuff that makes it a more democratic process, which lets the people that are actually buying tickets be able to weigh in as well.

Vahe Arabian: 100% agree on that. And, Rob, just for those who don't know much about Broadway World and about yourself, are you able to just give a bit of a background and, yeah, just as well in the intro about you, if you could just give a background about your day-to-day and how your team's structured at the moment.

Robert Diamond: Sure. I come from a technology background. I started as a high school intern, as a web developer for a technical publishing company called SYS-CON media, which published magazines and events and websites for web developers in a variety of programming languages. So, when I started there, I started as a junior intern making $7 an hour and reporting to a very highly paid consultant. And they realized very quickly thereafter that I could do the same stuff that they were paying this consultant to do, so they promoted me to the $7.25 an hour and put me in charge of their web properties. It was 1996, I believe, as a high school senior. I kept working for them all through college,