OLD Media Moves

Quartz launches new website called Glass

May 12, 2014

Posted by Chris Roush

Business news site Quartz announced Monday it has launched Glass, an expanded obsession with the future of TV.

Glass will cover what’s next for television, internet video, and the rest of the living room — an obsession that intertwines culture and business — published in real time. It takes the format of a notebook, or outline, powered by Fargo (a software developed by Dave Winer, the entrepreneur who originally came up with RSS and podcasting).

The editor of Glass is Zach Seward.

“On a broader level, it’s an opportunity to experiment with giving an obsession more of a home and seeing how readers respond,” says Seward. “The name is an argument: that media are best understood as competition for attention on screens connected to the internet. Phones, tablets, laptops, monitors, television sets—it’s all just glass.”

Television is in flux, right down to what that word even means. Just this week in the United States, the FCC is expected to vote on net neutrality rules that will affect the future of internet TV, and the major broadcast networks will unveil their latest attempts to beat back stiff competition from cable channels and services like Netflix. Just this week! Meanwhile, TV is widely considered to be having an artistic renaissance and has never enjoyed more cultural currency than it does right now.
Accessible at glass.qz.com, the project will consist of stories aggregated from Quartz within the obsession, notes about other top news in the TV industry and may eventually expand to include tools for steaming media.

Quartz has hired two additional reporters to work exclusively on Glass, along with other Quartz reporters who already write on the subject and has appointed Sam Williams as the lead developer on the project. A Quartz spokeswoman declined to disclose the names of the two new reporters.

Subscribe to TBN

Receive updates about new stories in the industry daily or weekly.

Subscribe to TBN

Receive updates about new stories in the industry.