Categories: OLD Media Moves

How to do online biz journalism and make money

Jessica Lessin

Noah Kulwin of Recode writes Thursday about the session at the tech news site’s conference featuring The Information’s Jessica Lessin, LinkedIn’s Daniel Roth and The Financial Times’ John Ridding.

Kulwin writes, “At the Code/Media conference at The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, Calif., the three explained to Re/code senior editor Peter Kafka that each one of them was doing the ‘right’ thing, because they were doing what worked for them.

“Though Lessin declined to share how many subscribers The Information has (‘[Business Insider] guessed 2,000 and I said many multiples of that’), she said the company is ‘cash-flow positive’ and that she wants to invest that cash back into the business.

“‘We want FT or Wall Street Journal scale,’ Lessin said.

“Financial Times boss Ridding said that the paywall and advertising revenue were only one part of the British newspaper’s strategy, highlighting the FT’s events business as part of a ‘multi-platform, multi-channel business model all based around premium content.’

“‘Once you’ve been through a couple financial crises … you think [advertising revenue] is no way to live,’ Ridding said. ‘Competing for scale is really hard; you’re up against tech and media giants.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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