The importance of CNNMoney.com

Douglas McIntyre of 24/7WallSt.com writes about why CNNMoney.com’s success is tied to its partnerships.

McIntyre writes, “CNNMoney’s success almost certainly draws from its arrangement as a three-legged stool. It can relay on the traditional business reporting from Fortune, and its company lists that include the Fortune 500. It can rely on Money for personal finance. Both Money and Fortune have relatively large editorial staffs because of their print products. These staffs and their production allow CNNMoney to have a lean staff of its own. And the CNNMoney audience and the advertising its draws helps to offset the financial trouble of the print versions of Money and Fortune. The relationships build a clever and effective balancing act.

“CNNMoney may end up being the best model for future success in the financial website industry. CNBC and Yahoo! already have begun to move toward that set-up. News service sites that have their own huge staffs — Reuters and Bloomberg (which did buy BusinessWeek for almost nothing) — may never to do this. Their trading terminal bases financially support their news organizations.

“Still left without partners are Forbes, which has traditionally competed with Fortune, TheStreet and IBTimes. None of these three is based on the alliances that other business sites have forged over recent years that create more efficiency in news gathering, infrastructure and sales.

“The online finance website business is crowded enough as it is. Independence has become a disadvantage. A look at the benefits of the CNNMoney, Fortune and Money alliance is a proof of that.”

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.