Breathing life into digital business media

Josh Sternberg of Digiday profiles Kevin Delaney, the former Wall Street Journal journalist now running Quartz, the Atlantic’s business news site.

Sternberg writes, “With Quartz, he’s hacked the very notion of what an online magazine can do. With concise stories and attention-grabbing headlines, Quartz has been mobile-friendly from day one, yielding both impressive traffic and kudos from media critics.  According to comScore, Quartz enjoyed 1.8 million uniques in October. For comparison, the 170-year-old Economist saw 2.2 million uniques last month. Not bad for a newly-assembled 25-person edit team.

“Delaney, 41, has a history of breathing life into digital media. As the deputy managing editor and later as managing editor of WSJ.com, he brought a digital focus to the paper at a time in the organization when no one had done that before. He had a vision of what journalism could be in the digital age. This is precisely what Atlantic Media owner David Bradley had in mind when he and former CEO Justin Smith approached Delaney at the end of 2011 to run a new publication they thought would re-envision what a modern publication would look like.

“The new outlet would be mobile-first. It would be a startup with no operational or infrastructural issues established publications face. It would be journalistic, meaning deep reporting and analysis, not just kittens. And it would give Delaney a blank slate to shape a publication based on the years of covering new media companies.

“‘What I saw was the opportunity to act on some of my convictions of the future of media that would take longer to pursue within a traditional news organization,’ Delaney said.”

Read more here.