Business news as an email newsletter

Frederic Filloux of MondayNote.com examines how some business news organizations are sending the latest news to your inbox.

Filloux writes, “Again, I’ll refer to Quartz, the business site launched a year ago by the Atlantic Media Group (see a previous Monday Note series here). Their email newsletter is called ‘The Daily Brief’; it is 800-words long, no images, cleverly written and edited, sent to about 45,000 subscribers worldwide, in three editions (US, Asia, Europe and Africa.)

“Here is how it looks on mobile devices:

“The structure is simple: Five main headers containing five to seven items, each summing up what the story you might click on is about. The headers are: ‘What to watch today’, ‘While you were sleeping’, ‘Quartz obsession interlude’ (it refers to Quartz’ proprietary revision of the old beat structure), ‘Matter of Debate’, and ‘Surprising discoveries’. A good mixture of news, fun, serendipity, thoughtful items. The links do not always send back to qz.com, they can lead anywhere.

“Sounds pretty simple at first. But, as Quartz editor Kevin Delaney recently told me, the Daily Brief is the result of a thorough editorial process. The email newsletter is touched by no less than four people, including two seasoned editors, Gideon Lichfield, Quartz global news editor who spent 16 years at the Economist, and Adam Pasick, the Asia editor and a 10-year Reuters veteran. Newsrooms who assign junior writers to expedite email newsletters should think again… Quartz is one of the few media I know to actually devote sizable resources for such a ‘simple’ news product.”

Read more here.