How business journalism helps you run a media business

Lucia Moses of Digiday interviewed journalists who have started their own media operations, including Jessica Lessin, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who left to start The Information.

Moses writes, “In an era of free content, the former Wall Street Journal reporter made a big bet in starting a subscription-only site covering tech news in December costing $399 a year. She said that some of her journalism skills carried over into running a business, like figuring out what questions to ask and getting the answers. What she wasn’t prepared for was the decision-making that would follow and the need to prioritize.

“‘In business-building land, you have to make a lot of decisions,’ she said. “One of the things I had to learn quickly was which decisions take a lot of time and which don’t. Early on, I felt every decision was make-and-break.’

“Lessin credited her audience with helping in a couple of ways. As tech industry folks, they’re welcoming of entrepreneurs. Since the site doesn’t take advertising (at least not yet), they also are her main source of feedback, in the form of email, comments and readership numbers.“

Read more here.