Quartz is a nod to the smartness of its readers

New Quartz executive editor at large Mitra Kalita spoke to the World Editors Forum’s Julie Posetti at the International Newsroom Summit in Amsterdam.

Here is an excerpt:

If we can move now to the very idea behind Quartz. From your point of view what’s good about it? Why does it work? What’s the core mission?

Kalita: The core mission is rooted in a reader; somebody who cares so much about the global economy, feels a member of that economy and yet is overwhelmed [with content]. So we run everything from stories about CEOs exiting to when you should never have your cell phone out in front of your child, because our reader cares about both of those issues. I don’t think that we treated it as an either/or proposition. I think we really do nod to smartness of our readers and this desire to serve them with content that’s both important but also interesting. I look for an emotional connection with readers but I also look for a bit of an instructional component.

I feel like what Quartz has going for it is that we are honest. I often tell reporters to eliminate the BS as far as “on one hand and on the other hand”, there might be many hands of a story and that’s OK. Your readers, I think, respect you more if you nod to the complexities of that, but again in a very accessible way. I feel like a lot of our readers, at least the ones that I interact with, feel like we are one of them in our interactions.

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