Why Yahoo's Chief Comms Officer rejects the "legacy vs. new media" divide

And later in this issue: a million new awards and events (I thought December was supposed to be slow?!)

I was recently given the chance to connect with Sona Iliffe-Moon, who has led comms at Meta, Lyft, Toyota, and now, serves as Chief Communications Officer at Yahoo. It’s rare to talk to someone who is living on both sides of the table: running comms for major brands and operating inside a media company. Our conversation covered a lot of ground, but these were the five things that stuck with me:

She doesn’t buy the “legacy vs. new media” divide.

Sona believes the traditional vs. new media distinction is outdated. This means something coming from someone working at a brand most people would instinctively label “legacy.” As she put it: “It’s less about categorizing outlets, and more about understanding where meaningful conversations are happening and how to show up authentically in those spaces.”

It’s a helpful reminder that tech people often over-index on labels (“traditional = critical, new media = friendly”). In reality, most outlets don’t identify themselves that way. It’s important to remind ourselves and our stakeholders that every publication should be evaluated individually, not bucketed based on vibe alone.

Can we forget the divide between new media and trad media?

You don’t go “identify” emerging newsletters — you encounter them.

Sona doesn’t use frameworks, intern research, or media lists to spot rising Substacks or podcasts. Media discovery, for her, is part of the craft. “The best communicators are readers, listeners, and participants themselves,” she told me.

Her team constantly trades links, shares what they’re reading, and pays close attention to what younger users are obsessed with. One tip that I loved: she watches for agenda-setting signs. She explains, “When other journalists or creators reference their work, that’s a multiplier effect.” The TLDR: Be on the lookout for who your favorite top tier journalists are linking to in their articles or tweeting about!

Nontraditional channels only work when your story naturally belongs in their world.

Yahoo’s recent collaboration with Graza — the tongue-in-cheek “Keyboard Oil” launch — is the perfect example. Sona said the whole point was to “show up in culture in fun and unexpected ways.” That cultural fluency is what unlocked coverage in places Yahoo normally wouldn’t appear, like CPG newsletters (The Citrus Diaries) and food creator accounts (Snaxshot). “When you show up in culture in unexpected ways, you can often earn coverage in spaces that might not traditionally cover you.”

It’s a reminder that if you want to show up somewhere new, you have to do something new — you can’t recycle the same story and playbook and expect a whole new category of journalists to suddenly care. Think of a fintech startup that wants coverage in food and culture newsletters. If they pitch their new dashboard feature, it’s not going to land. But if they partner with a buzzy restaurant to release an “inflation menu” that shows how payments data shapes food trends, they’re relevant to an entirely different category.

To pitch Yahoo well, you need to understand how Yahoo actually works.

I couldn’t have a conversation with Sona without asking her about pitching Yahoo. “Yahoo is an aggregator,” she reminded me — meaning if your story runs with one of their premium partners (to name a few: AP, CNN, The Atlantic, People, NBC News, USA Today, Elle, and Cosmopolitan), you can pitch Yahoo editors to elevate it on-platform. Most PR people miss this.

For net-new stories, she urged people to “familiarize yourself with our original franchises” across lifestyle, shopping, travel, health, entertainment, and more. “Consider telling the human story behind the business and pitching it to our lifestyle teams. We also have independent creators with expertise across a variety of lifestyle topics, so consider pitching them directly.”

And when it comes to Yahoo Finance: “Because we cover markets in real time, pitches should tie directly to something happening now or imminently.” If your founder has a POV on a market trend that’s breaking that week, that’s your entry point.

Awards 🏆

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