Who is followthemedia.com

The two main guys are Michael Hedges and Philip Stone. They have much in common, having both spent many years on both sides of the Atlantic in senior media business positions. They ideally complement one another with their media expertise.

Michael Hedges

Michael Hedges' media career has spanned broadcast programming, brand management and audience research in the US and Europe. He programmed and consulted award winning radio stations in several markets. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he consulted financial institutions and broadcasters in the former Soviet Union, Sweden and Germany. He located to Geneva to head up a Reuters/Swiss Broadcasting Corporation joint-venture broadcast project.

After the successful launch of WRG-FM he consulted the European Broadcasting Union and turned his attention to writing about European media. Since 1998 he has written more than 1000 articles on European media, media brands, advertising and regulation. He writes each month for Radio World International. Many of those articles are posted on ftm. He is a regular speaker at European marketing and media conferences. He continues to advise European institutions on audiovisual media issues.

Contact Michael

Philip Stone

Phil Stone has held a wide variety of management positions with an American and a British news agency covering a period of some 30 years. He was most recently the Managing Director for Reuters Media, Europe, Middle East and Africa, running a business with a $75 million annual turnover.

His management experience ranges from the “traditional” media business of selling international news and news pictures to newspapers, news agencies and magazines to "new" media, launching sportsweb.com, which Reuters sold after two years for a sizeable profit.

He is head of Stone & Associates, a consultancy directed at media professionals to improve their bottom line.

Contact Phil

Why They Launched followthemedia.com

There's a story behind every project and the followthemedia.com story is no exception, and it is still unfolding.  The starting point - the moment when Phil and Michael said "OK, let's do this" - was in August 2004. Phil was looking at blogging as an output for his creative energies since leaving Reuters; Michael had been writing about media for several publications since leaving WRG FM.

Reuters was not their only common link. They had both lived in the American states of Indiana and Texas at the same times but doing different things and their paths did not cross. Both made moves to the same city in Europe, Geneva, Switzerland and this time they met. Fate had something in mind for them. This is it.

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