OLD Media Moves

How to do online biz journalism and make money

February 18, 2016

Posted by Chris Roush

Jessica Lessin
Jessica Lessin

Noah Kulwin of Recode writes Thursday about the session at the tech news site’s conference featuring The Information’s Jessica Lessin, LinkedIn’s Daniel Roth and The Financial Times’ John Ridding.

Kulwin writes, “At the Code/Media conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, Calif., the three explained to Re/code senior editor Peter Kafka that each one of them was doing the ‘right’ thing, because they were doing what worked for them.

“Though Lessin declined to share how many subscribers The Information has (‘[Business Insider] guessed 2,000 and I said many multiples of that’), she said the company is ‘cash-flow positive’ and that she wants to invest that cash back into the business.

“‘We want FT or Wall Street Journal scale,’ Lessin said.

“Financial Times boss Ridding said that the paywall and advertising revenue were only one part of the British newspaper’s strategy, highlighting the FT’s events business as part of a ‘multi-platform, multi-channel business model all based around premium content.’

“‘Once you’ve been through a couple financial crises … you think [advertising revenue] is no way to live,’ Ridding said. ‘Competing for scale is really hard; you’re up against tech and media giants.'”

Read more here.

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