Quartz is successful because it goes against the status quo

Quartz executive editor Zach Seward spoke with Rick Edmunds of The Poynter Institute about the business news site’s success that led to it being sold to a Japanese company on Monday for as much as $110 million.

Edmunds wrote, “Executive editor Zach Seward spoke with me Monday afternoon about how the publication grew and prospered, beginning with that good idea.

“‘The one-sentence summary is that we are a guide to the new global economy,’ Seward said. ‘So we are focused on explanation’ — not so much investigations or event-driven news breaks.

“‘Also, we have a bias against the status quo,’ he said. ‘Not everything is interesting — even some whole industries.’

“Content is organized around themes, ‘obsessions’ in Quartz parlance, with topics like media, tech and an assortment of others getting attention, but not in a traditional beats and lines-of-business way.

“An early obsession, maybe the first, Seward said, was ‘the next billion’ — people coming online for the first time, that is.

“‘That’s multi-disciplinary… a tech story but also a finance story and a health care story,’ he said.”

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