Business Insider launches in England

Ian Burrell of The Independent in London interviewed Business Insider founder Henry Blodget about the business news website’s expansion into Great Britain.

Burrell writes, “Blodget, 48, set up Business Insider in 2007, and it has grown to a staff of 200 and 55m monthly visitors. Around 3m of these are from the UK, which is why the new edition is being established with an initial team of seven journalists. The UK site debuted with stories on Angela Merkel’s Europe challenge to David Cameron, and the arrest of British banker Rurik Jutting on suspicion of ‘killing 2 hookers’, as the site phrased it. Blodget himself posted a blog in which he cooed at the BBC’s ‘stupendous’ headquarters but concluded that the broadcaster’s funding model would be ‘almost unfathomable in America’.

“Blodget’s pain at how his own story was reported partly explains why he never wants to see ‘snark’ – the snide and cynical tone of commentary associated with some business and tech blogs – appearing on his site. ‘Frankly [snark] repels me, and I say that having in my earlier years written a lot of it,’ said Blodget who established the blog Silicon Alley Insider after leaving Wall Street, and contributed to online publications such as Slate. Before becoming an analyst he had worked as a reporter in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and on CNN Business.

“He says his experience as an analyst was ‘very helpful’ in informing his journalism, but denies that the notoriety from his public fall from grace has been a benefit in establishing Business Insider as a challenger brand to established names such as the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.”

Read more here.