Joe Pompeo examines how media companies are adapting to the pandemic and reports that Business Insider plans fewer hires this year.
Pompeo reports, “Still, it’s not impossible to find optimism even in these most despairing of times. ‘You do wonder if certain types of media will come back from this,’ said Nicholas Carlson, global editor in chief of Insider Inc., the parent entity of Business Insider, which also has a strong subscription component. (The company doesn’t anticipate any COVID-related cuts, but it won’t be able to hire as many people as it was planning to in 2020.) ‘We’ve been saying for 20 years that newspapers are dying, and now it looks like this could really be it, and that’s horrible. But people still need journalism, and the model for it is being developed. If people want or need information that they can’t get anywhere else, they will subscribe to what you’re doing. For those who are well capitalized and have diverse business models and are not too cost heavy, this is an environment for them to really fortify themselves and even flourish when things go back to normal.’
“Business Insider, Carlson pointed out, got its start amid the 2008 financial crash. ‘Great companies are founded in these moments,’ he said, ‘so I’m optimistic that there’s capital that can be moved into trying to figure that out.'”
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