Now, of course, we live in a thoroughly digital media world, and users can’t get enough of their Netflix and Twitter, their iPads and Kindles, their Tumblr and Instagram.

As digital media has evolved, so have we. There’s a lot of stasis in the media business, and we try to ignore that. In the last year, we’ve made a concerted effort to focus on the experimentation. We cover new platforms, new content creation tools, new distribution strategies, new business models and the new class of star content creators. Wherever the innovation is happening in digital publishing, that’s where we want to be.

As you probably know, about a year ago, paidContent was acquired by GigaOM Media. GigaOM is all about emerging technology, and the paidContent of today aims to be very much in keeping with that mission. We try to cover the most disruptive forces in new media, to look across the entire digital content ecosystem — from ebooks, apps and tablets, to curation tools, social media and streaming video — and report on the most interesting shifts in the way people and companies produce, distribute and consume media. Then we try to bring those storylines to life with lively and authoritative posts.

Please take a minute to take our survey — you’ll find it here. Tell us how you think we’re doing, and what you would like to see more of from us. A few lucky winners will even get a Jawbone Jambox, or a free ticket to our event next month, paidContent Live.

Meantime, let me introduce you — or hopefully reintroduce you –to the paidContent/GigaOM media team:

Mathew Ingram (@mathewi)

Mathew writes about the evolution of print media in all its forms, with particular attention to the ways that traditional players are evolving and adapting (or not evolving and adapting) to the digital world. He also writes about the challenges facing new players and the media ambitions of existing web companies like Twitter and Facebook.

Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen)

Laura covers the book publishing industry and the ways that digital reading of all types is changing. That includes areas like pricing and consumption trends, new lengths and formats, and self-publishing.

Janko Roettgers (@jank0)

Janko writes about the rise of online video, including premium content, the engagement gap between TV and online, and the dilemma facing content owners over whether to provide a true over-the-top experience for consumers or keep the traditional bundled programming model intact.

Jeff Roberts (@jeffjohnroberts)

Jeff writes about new media and tech companies that are emerging as dominant sources of news and culture. He is also a lawyer who explains how court conflicts symbolize a clash between new and old media business models.

But these big ideas weren’t always big ideas. They may have first popped up in a research paper somewhere, or surfaced when a couple of no-name startups began offering a new product or service. Over time, they’ve become powerful movements. We like to think we were ahead of the pack in spotting some of them before they became truly disruptive.

We’re looking for a reporter who can build on that tradition: We want someone who has a deep interest in technology and science, and business and innovation — and who has a knack for finding interesting and important stories before other reporters.

This person would be a sort of roving emerging-technology reporter, schmoozing with researchers and engineers and technologists to learn about cool projects in the works and ideas that are bubbling up. Who’s doing the most interesting research on 3D printing? What are scientists buzzing about in the world of robotics? What’s coming down the road in materials science? This reporter will tell us.

The ideal candidate will be able to take complex ideas and turn them into clear and compelling stories. He or she will be able to write news stories about research and technologies, and also come up with memorable features about the people and companies and challenges behind these projects. This person should be comforable writing a range of different types of posts — shorter, longer, newsier, bloggier, graphical and so on.

We’re looking for a reporter who is curious, plugged in, and, of course, a great colleague.

If this describes you, please drop us a email at jobs@gigaom.com

Today, we launched phase one of our new responsive site design, and the changes we’re introducing to GigaOM and paidContent will ensure that doesn’t happen to you here. At a time when readers are using so many different devices, one big challenge for digital publishers is retaining the quality and consistency of the reading experience not only across devices but also across different operating systems and browsers.

Now, whether you’re on a desktop or a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, our sites will automatically adjust, rendering the content in the way that best fits that particular environment. We know, for example, that it’s harder to hit a target on the page with your finger than with a mouse, and so if you’re reading us on a tablet, we’ve enlarged the target to make it easier to strike. Similarly, rather than try to cram our entire site onto a 4-inch smartphone display, we’ve removed some content from the mobile view so as to focus the presentation of the most essential information. In all cases, the site simply readjusts to fit the real estate on the screen that you’re on at the time.

Below, you can see how the presentation of an actual story changes as the screen shrinks.

Those aren’t the only improvements that we’ve made. Among the other things you’ll notice about GigaOM and paidContent:

• More curation: If you’re time-stretched, our new “Must Reads” section tells you what you absolutely shouldn’t miss.
• Easier sharing: We’ve made it easier to share not only whole stories and also pieces of content within stories.
• Better performance: Because the pages are lighter weight, they will load faster.
• Crisper display: We’ve added blur-resistant icons and new text-size controls, so there’s no more squinting to read text or straining to hit a small target when navigating the site.
• A cleaner look: We’ve ditched a lot of widgets that had simply built up over the years but no longer serve their original purpose.

For phase one of the redesign, we’ve intentionally simplified the look and feel of the site — it’s more akin to updating the plumbing in a house than redoing the facade. But without reliable plumbing, a house isn’t very habitable. These upgrades pave the way for subsequent phases of this redesign over the next few months that will include more changes in how we present our content.

Finally, I wanted to thank the fantastic team that has been slaving away on the redesign for last several months: our head of product management Raza Zaidi; engineers Casey Bisson, Matt Batchelder, Zach Tirrell and Jamie Poitra; designers Stephen Engert, Arlo Jamrog and Jonathan Koshi; and our product guys Adam Kazwell and Ian Kennedy. They’ve worked long hours — and tested countless iterations in QA — and we think the results are great.

We’d love to know what you think. If you have suggestions or comments (positive or negative), please leave them in the comment thread in this post.

Thanks again for being loyal readers.

Images courtesy of PlaceIt by Breezi.

Today, we launched phase one of our new responsive site design, and the changes we’re introducing to paidContent and GigaOM will ensure that doesn’t happen to you here. At a time when readers are using so many different devices, one big challenge for digital publishers is retaining the quality and consistency of the reading experience not only across devices but also across different operating systems and browsers.

Now, whether you’re on a desktop or a laptop, a tablet or a smartphone, our sites will automatically adjust, rendering the content in the way that best fits that particular environment. We know, for example, that it’s harder to hit a target on the page with your finger than with a mouse, and so if you’re reading us on a tablet, we’ve enlarged the target to make it easier to strike. Similarly, rather than try to cram our entire site onto a 4-inch smartphone display, we’ve removed some content from the mobile view so as to focus the presentation of the most essential information. In all cases, the site simply readjusts to fit the real estate on the screen that you’re on at the time.

Below, you can see how the presentation of an actual story changes as the screen shrinks.

Those aren’t the only improvements that we’ve made. Among the other things you’ll notice about paidContent and GigaOM:

• More curation: If you’re time-stretched, our new “Must Reads” section tells you what you absolutely shouldn’t miss.
• Easier sharing: We’ve made it easier to share not only whole stories and also pieces of content within stories.
• Better performance: Because the pages are lighter weight, they will load faster.
• Crisper display: We’ve added blur-resistant icons and new text-size controls, so there’s no more squinting to read text or straining to hit a small target when navigating the site.
• A cleaner look: We’ve ditched a lot of widgets that had simply built up over the years but no longer serve their original purpose.

For phase one of the redesign, we’ve intentionally simplified the look and feel of the site — it’s more akin to updating the plumbing in a house than redoing the facade. But without reliable plumbing, a house isn’t very habitable. These upgrades pave the way for subsequent phases of this redesign over the next few months that will include more changes in how we present our content.

Finally, I wanted to thank the fantastic team that has been slaving away on the redesign for last several months: our head of product management Raza Zaidi; engineers Casey Bisson, Matt Batchelder, Zach Tirrell and Jamie Poitra; designers Stephen Engert, Arlo Jamrog and Jonathan Koshi; and our product guys Adam Kazwell and Ian Kennedy. They’ve worked long hours — and tested countless iterations in QA — and we think the results are great.

We’d love to know what you think. If you have suggestions or comments (positive or negative), please leave them in the comment thread in this post.

Thanks again for being loyal readers.

Images courtesy of PlaceIt by Breezi.

So how do these guest posts come to be? Every week, we get dozens of emails asking us that very question. Some of the emails include story pitches, others simply want to know more about the process for contributing articles. So, below, we’ve provided answers to the most commonly asked questions. Take a minute to read through this — hopefully it will clear up any confusion. We look forward to seeing your submissions.

The purpose of guest posts

Similar to op-eds, guest posts are unpaid, bylined articles by our readers. They’re a place for you and other industry experts to discuss what keeps you up at night — and gets you going in the morning. What are you most optimistic, or concerned, about right now? What do you find yourself excitedly talking about over beers with your colleagues? Which new technologies do you think will change the world? And how will they have this impact? This is what we want to hear about.

CEOs, VCs and startup founders look to our guest posts to have their own ideas challenged, to discover new technologies or better solutions to their business problems, and to learn something that they couldn’t learn elsewhere. They’re not interested in hearing the conventional wisdom on well-covered issues (no matter how masterfully crafted the piece is). So stop haranguing your spouse and co-workers with your brilliant idea, and share your contrarian viewpoints with us.

What to include — and not include — in a guest post

Aim for about 800 words. That’s not a lot of room, so stay focused on one main idea. Clearly make your case in a sentence or so in the first or second paragraph. And then back it up throughout the rest of the post, with examples, data points, anecdotes or other evidence. To put it bluntly, our readers have a really high bullshit detector. So your article needs to provide fresh, well-articulated insight into a topic that is important to them.

Guest posts should not be overly formal. Avoid jargon, acronyms and highfalutin words.  Cut out the middleman (sorry, publicists) and write in your natural-speaking voice. It’s your name in the byline — it should sound like it was written by you.

No self-promotional posts

We want to hear your insider take on things, but we won’t run anything that is either explicitly or implicitly self-promotional. Guest posts aren’t a platform to tell us how great your company or industry is — the purpose of the posts is to enlighten readers and provoke them to think about important and topical issues/questions in new ways.

We’re very strict about all potential conflicts of interest. If you (or the company that you work for) have had any relationship — paid or unpaid — with any company mentioned in the story, you need to clearly disclose the nature of that relationship within the post and in the two- or three-sentence bio at the end of the piece. This includes (but is not limited to) partners, customers and advisors.

We prefer to receive guest posts as .txt or Word docs, with any links to outside sources pasted below the relevant paragraph.

Is there an editing process?

Yes, guest posts go through our regular editing process. We’ll add comments and questions to your first draft. We might move a few paragraphs around, so that the ideas flow better, or change the wording here and there to add clarity. We will send you the final text before we publish the piece to make sure that we didn’t alter your meaning in the edits. We never publish an article without getting the author’s approval first. Please note, however, that we do not fact-check guest posts, so you are solely responsible for the factual accuracy of the post.

After we get your okay, we will slate it for publication. GigaOM retains all publishing rights to contributor posts, and we ask that the content not be published elsewhere — either before or after we publish it.

But your role doesn’t end when we hit publish. Like all posts on GigaOM and paidContent, our guest posts are meant to be part of an ongoing conversation. After the post is published, we expect you to jump in and engage with readers.

How to pitch a post

Send your pitches to guestpost@gigaom.com. If your guest post is connected to a news story, or is time sensitive for any other reason, please say so in the subject heading. Because of the volume of pitches we get, we can’t respond to all of them. If you don’t hear back from us within two weeks, you can assume that we won’t be taking the piece, and we’ll understand when you run it with a different publication.

If you’ve already written the post, of course, include it in the pitch. If you haven’t, please include the following information in your pitch email:

1. A sentence or two — or short paragraph — explaining the point of the piece.
2. A sentence or two outlining how you you will tell your story or prove your thesis.
3. A sentence or two telling us why now. What is the larger context for the article? What is happening in the industry that makes this post particularly important to our readers today?
4. A sentence or two with your bio, including where you currently work and your relevant background. Why should people listen to what you have to say about the proposed topic?