Covering exchange-traded fund news

Drew Voros is the editor-in chief for ETF.com, where he supervises ETF.com, monthly magazine ETF Report and HardAssetsInvestor.com.

Voros has more than 25 years of experience in journalism, including serving as the business editor for the Oakland Tribune and sister papers of the Bay Area News Group for 10 years, as well as covering public entertainment companies for Hollywood trade papers Daily Variety and Variety.

He also served as managing editor for commodity news website HardAssetsInvestor.com prior to his appointment as U.S. editor-in-chief.

Voros is a 1986 graduate of the University of Southern California.

Founded in 2001, ETF.com is a leading authority on exchange-traded funds, which have more than $2 trillion in assets in the U.S. ETF.com offers investors  insights through its publications, events, analysis and data.

Voros spoke with Talking Biz News by phone on Wednesday about covering exchange-traded fund news. What follows is an edited transcript.

Why did you decide to leave print business journalism?

For years, I was the business editor for the Oakland Tribune and a handful of papers in the Bay Area. I had been there almost 15 years and in the business for almost 25. And frankly the handwriting was on the wall, particularly coming out of the recession. The revenue arrows were going down. It was not a good time to be in newspapers, but at the same time I wasn’t going to leave for anything.

I was intrigued with moving into niche journalism online. That seemed to be the way the world was going. To be honest, it was a scary jump. I knew I wasn’t going to be welcomed back. So the impetus was looking for a new start.

A lot of my anxiety was wondering what I was walking in to and whether I would be a journalist. And it worked out. The company was looking for experienced journalism management at that time. So as I worked there and got familiar with the company and as they got familiar with me, I started implementing a newsroom strategy. And three years ago, I moved over to become editor in chief. It was a testament that what I was doing works.

How is your job different?

The transfer of skills, I have been lucky. We do have an independent editorial voice. Going from print to an online organization and maintaining editorial independence worked.

The biggest difference is we know who are reading us and where they are — parts of the country and parts of the world. It helps as an editor that the readers are telling you what they like to read.

At the newspaper, I used to get frustrated with the sports section getting a lot of the resources. I didn’t believe it at the time, particularly during the recession when people were losing jobs, that sports should be getting the lions share of resources.

Right now, I can tell you what the best story of the day is, and I love that.

Tell me about ETF.com. What is its editorial mission?

Our basic mission is to help and educate investors. And “investors” has a broad range definition. Investor means advisers because they are helping people invest. It also means retail. It also means institutional investors as well, who were early adopters in ETFs. So the coverage has to be of interest to that broad spectrum.

We sometimes do educational pieces about what is an ETF. We know people don’t know, and we also know that people are searching online for information about ETFs. We may have done that story six months ago, but we need to do it again.

Before I came, the coverage was more industry focused. We moved away from the industry, but we haven’t abandoned it. But our real focus is to help advisors and investors to make the right decision.

How big is the target audience?

I couldn’t tell you. There are a couple of hundred thousand advisers and millions of investors. A lot of advisers are moving from mutual funds to ETFs. And they need to be able to understand what is going on. They need to know the difference between exchange traded funds and exchange traded notes. And they need to be able to convey it to investors.

What has the growth been since you started?

Since I started three years ago, we have more than tripled page views. And the goal is to double again as soon as possible. A year ago, we had a branding change. In January 2014, we switched to ETF.com, and it was very successful. It’s easier to remember, and people are going to remember where they saw a story about ETFs.

Where does your content come from?

A couple of places.

We do have writers and editors. I do both. So we have a news side where we’re doing features, news, Q&As, perspective pieces.

We also have a team of analysts. They write blogs. We don’t make investment calls, but they will do comparisons and point out things.

We also have data and analytics on our site. You can get a fund report from our site with a rating and every piece of information you will need. We consider that content.

We also have outside contributors. We have something calling ETF Strategist Corner. They construct portfolios. We have a dozen or more ETF strategists who write for us a couple of times a week. So that gives a little different perspective.

We also have what we call Index Investing Corner. They are advisers, but they are passive investors. They are the Jack Bogles of the world.

And we have something called Alpha Think Tank. It’s a subscription service now. We interview thought leaders like Nouriel Roubini. It’s a big picture kind of thing.

How does your content differ from others covering ETFs?

More in-depth. A lot of other competitors write short and quick, which is fine. But we go a little bit more involved, keeping in mind readability. We also have more of it. And having analysts and advisers write for us. That’s a good mix that few can beat.

There are some very good ETF writers out there at Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. But on the aggregate, ours is better and more in-depth. We don’t just report on ETFs. We have analytical tools and research, all for free.

Do you syndicate your content to other websites or media?

We do have our content on Yahoo Finance. Fidelity picks up our RSS feed. We are also in the midst of doing some partnerships that I can’t talk about right now. We’re careful about doing that. We purposely don’t send our information to Seeking Alpha because there’s no reciprocal return.

How big is your staff?

The editorial staff includes Europe and HardAssetInvestor.com. We have roughly nine people. In terms of content contributors, there are a half-dozen of our own analysts, a dozen or so ETF strategists, and three index investing advisers.

In terms of hiring, we don’t have any openings. There could be an expansion down the road. It is a different environment than newspapers. I have never heard the words layoffs and cutbacks here. We do have our hurdles, but at the same token we need to do more and more, not more with less.