Doing what you love

Joe Grimm writes on the Poynter Institute’s site how the sale of Footnoted.org to Morningstar allows its founder, business journalist Michelle Leder, to focus on what she loves to do the most — dig through SEC filings for news nuggets.

Grimm writes, “Leder did not build footnoted to sell it, but she sure wanted a bigger take from the investors who made money on the nuggets she was panning. She said she never contemplated giving up on the site. She made money off it, gained a great amount of satisfaction in the process and earned respect from colleagues and investors.

“But Leder said she spent a lot of time thinking about how to make the site better. It needed to generate more money to do that. She had sponsors and premium subscribers, but it wasn’t enough. ‘I wanted to find someone who believed in me enough to let me do it and to give me enough rope to do it,’ she said.

“She thought constantly about putting more content behind pay walls or delaying content for those who weren’t paying for it. Now, Morningstar can do the worrying, the marketing and the selling. She can concentrate on her passion: digging.”

Read more here.