Business Insider editor in chief Nicholas Carlson sent out the following to the staff as he departs the news organization:
Team!
Today is my last day as your editor-in-chief. It has been my honor and privilege.
Today is also, after 5,761 days, my very last day as a full-time employee at a company that was once called Silicon Alley Insider, located in the fishbowl conference room at another startup’s headquarters.
I wanted to take the opportunity to say goodbye, thank you, and to share some final thoughts.
First, thank you to every member of the newsroom, past and present. What an honor it was to work with so much talent. The main job of a reporter-turned-EIC like me is to hire reporters who would kick my ass on any beat and editors I would want to shape my stories. Building the video team, I hoped we could hire producers and editors that could tell engrossing, enlightening stories that made people feel something hours, weeks, or even years later. I will shamelessly pat myself on the back for nailing these hiring missions. You all are outstanding.
Thank you for your hard work, for taking ownership, and for being creative with your storytelling and problem-solving. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for being good eggs. Thank you for your dedication to our audience. Everything we’ve achieved – awards, impact, and the affection of so many readers and viewers – is because of you.
Thank you to my boss of 15 years, Henry Blodget. We should all try to be leaders and managers like him: caring, trusting, inspiring, humble, direct with feedback and always open to conversations that challenge his point of view.
Thank you to Jay Yarow, Dan Frommer, and Joe Weisenthal – my fellow bloggers from the early days of BI and friends for life. Thank you to Jess Liebman, who joined this company only a little while after I did, and was a partner in designing, building, and managing this newsroom. I will remember all the laughs, even in hard times, most of all.
Thank you to Julie Zeveloff West and Emily Cohn, close collaborators, confidants, and workplace pals. This newsroom and I benefited so much from your advice – especially when it was for me to say or do something different than I’d planned. Every leader should be surrounded by kind, but direct and fearless truth-tellers like you.
Thank you to Erica Berenstein and Matt Turner, Business Insider’s deputy EICs for video and web respectively. You are inspiring journalists and leaders.
Thank you to Axel Springer for seeing Henry’s vision and backing it so entirely. You’ve funded the creation of a brilliant newsroom. I know you’ll treasure it for years to come.
Thank you to my fellow executives, including our CEO Barbara Peng. We found the right strategy, and I can’t wait to see you execute it. I’m excited to be a happy subscriber for decades to come. Please continue to tell the truth to each other. Hold each other accountable to difficult goals and give each other the autonomy needed to reach them. Be courageous. Make decisions on principles and thoughtful analysis, and when challenged on them, remember that the truth is always the best explanation. Remember that the reason for this company is the journalism – the storytelling.
Thank you to our product and tech teams who built and developed our site alongside our newsroom, to the revenue teams who funded our investments, and to everyone from operations to finance to studios and HR who kept our global company effectively working toward one goal.
My fellow journalists have gotten years of advice from me, and I’m sorry to say, I will not resist the temptation to give just a bit more. To my newsroom colleagues:
Embrace failure. Some types of failure in journalism are unacceptable: being unfair, falsehoods, and stealing work. But the secret to success is embracing good failures, such as a flop after you try something new, being told no by a source or dozens of sources, or writing that first big story that doesn’t quite hang together. Managers, make space for your team members to fail.
Go all in on the work in front of you, even if you’re not sure it’s what you want to do forever. Managers notice excellent work, and opportunities will come your way. Then from those options, pick the work that focuses on your strengths, renews your energy, and provides value for your employer.
Know what your publication’s intended audience cares about, and what you care about, and build a career in the overlap. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but a helpful way to visualize this is with a Venn diagram.
It’s OK to get your workout in during lunch. I have for 14 years or so and it worked out OK for me. You come back to your desk focused and energized.
Just because the company or the newsroom has always done something one way, doesn’t mean you should keep doing it that way.
Never do something that you wouldn’t want to see reported on someone else’s homepage.
If you want to turn a fellowship into a full-time job, or a full-time job into a promotion, ask your boss what you need to do to prove you more than deserve it. Ask for their answer in writing, print it out, and put it next to your screen.
When in doubt, make something helpful for the audience.
Follow up! If you write a great story and people love it, revisit the topic and your sources six months later.
No one is going to assign you the story that will make your career. You have to come up with it.
Hold the rich and powerful and wealthy and social media-famous to account, but always be fair, even to subjects who seem the least deserving. Take pains to understand the point of view of every subject of every story.
Remember that slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. The worst mistakes in journalism happen when journalists rush.
Talent and ambition are not enough to have a great career. You also need persistence — that thing inside a journalist who encounters a great idea and throws themselves at it, overcoming every obstacle in the way. You need that. Like a muscle, this attribute grows with usage. So do it a lot.
Have fun. This place was founded by a blogger in a basement, laughing while he wrote. He hired people who felt the same, and together we made this place into something beloved and lasting. Keep that energy.
The final thing I want to say is that even though Business Insider is in the last quarter of its second decade, it has actually not been invented yet.
I cannot wait to see what you all build.
Ever yours,
Nicholas
