Quartz needs to return to its innovative ways

Josh Sternberg writes in his media newsletter about why business news site Quartz has been put up for sale by its Japanese owners and what it needs to do to turn itself around.

Sternberg writes, “And if I pull a Thornton Mellon reading the wind, much like many media outlets recently (just yesterday, for example, Bonnier sold off several outlets to a venture equity [new term for me, maybe it’s a mix of VC and PE? Don’t know!] firm, North Equity Partners) some private equity firm will pick up Quartz.

“Quartz was a great idea, executed very well, and then not as much. It experimented with forms, both editorial and advertising, building an audience along the way. But in the end, compromise begat compromise, mobile-first morphed regressed back to the desktop mean, advertising went from high-touch creative to run-of-the-mill display, stories focused on and for the business executive bled into stories about everything meaning the once-valued content became a commodity.

“Quartz is a familiar tale of modern media, where a company chases that pot of gold only to find out that it’s difficult to get there. Here’s to hoping that whoever picks it up, lets Quartz return to its innovative, Twitter-powered-lightbulb ways.”

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