"While Sorkin basks in Wall Street’s attention, his image at the Times is more conflicted. His rise at the paper was jet-propelled—he was a kind of legend before he was 20. And he was one of the first at the paper to realize the centrality of the web and also one of the first to realize that on the web, a journalist’s personal brand can sometimes be more valuable than that of the institution that employs him. With his DealBook e-mail, read by some 200,000 people, plus the blog, with 2.5 million unique monthly visitors, plus the weekly column, breaking news scoops, television appearances, and 60,000 Twitter followers, he is one of the Times’ most visible players. Media ubiquity is a strategic decision. In the cubicle jungle of the Times, he’s an entrepreneur. “All of it is self-reinforcing,” Sorkin says."
—
No matter where you are, no matter what you do, you have to market yourself. I’m not talking about any of that “ten secrets to inflating your personal brand” BS. I’m saying that at a minimum, you have to understand at a base level that the game has intrinsically changed.
The Internet creates a lot of noise and it’s a challenge to rise above the din. Yet for those who do, it creates opportunities that in the past were unheard of and impossible.
