Looking back at the history of Quartz

Zach Seward, the former editor in chief and CEO at financial news site Quartz, writes about its history after it was sold for the fifth time.

Seward writes, “It’s still not quite clear to me what Jim thought he was buying or why he was so desperate to have it. In the subject line of his email announcing the deal, he spelled our name ‘Quarts,’ and that set the tone for the level of care in what he had bought. But borrowing money was still incredibly cheap at that time (interest rates were about to surge, another case of good timing), and I guess the allure of an existing media brand was too hard to resist. In retrospect, ‘it’s impossible to kill’ sounds to me less like an adage and more like a challenge.

“Everyone who could quit did so as soon as they could. A few diehards held on longer, and were tortured or fired, or both, for their sacrifice. I left on the day my contract allowed it, exactly a year after the sale. G/O ultimately filled up the site with 2000s-era slideshows and AI-generated earnings stories. It took another two years for me to process the loss and for G/O to complete its demolition.

“The media business often feels like a battle between idealists and cynics. Most of my favorite news startups of the current era have chosen the non-profit path, which has its own major challenges, but at least cynicism is not one of them. Quartz is now a zombie brand, which is the most cynical move in media.”

Read more here.