Henry Blodget and the golden age of journalism

Jessica Pressler of New York magazine writes about Business Insider co-founder and editor in chief Henry Blodget as it expands with tech news site Tech Insider.

Pressler writes, “One imagines that being able to generate love at the click of a button is particularly intoxicating for Blodget, who is still ‘deeply scarred,’ he says, ‘by what I went through with the bubble burst.’ Back then, there were few blogs and no Twitter, but ‘the media was still capable of turning people into piñatas,’ he points out.

“Now he is the media, which appears to be at the center of another boom. Over the past 12 months, media companies like BuzzFeed, Vox, and Vice have raised more than $700 million to fund expansions of their news businesses. Blodget is confident that these are not signs of a bubble. ‘If you look at the valuations, they’re elevated, but it’s nothing like it was,’ he says. ‘For a while people thought, Oh, $300 million is the high-water mark for digital forever,’ he says, referring to the amount AOL paid for the Huffington Post. ‘CNN is worth $11 billion. There are going to be digital-media companies that are worth $10 billion in ten years, 20 years.’

“As he said, change is accelerating at a phenomenal rate. One thing that hasn’t changed is his ability to make a bold prediction. ‘I think we’re in a golden age of journalism,’ he says. ‘Digital advertising is growing fast, our revenue is growing fast, and I don’t see anything that is going to stop that shift.'”

Read more here.