John McDermott of Digiday spoke with Jessica Lessin of The Information about the new tech news site’s strategy.
Here is an excerpt:
There’s plenty of blogs and publications devoted to tech news. What’s missing?
What we thought was missing was a publication geared toward professionals; people who either work in tech — entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists — or people who work in industries that are closely related to tech.How are you going to balance in-depth reporting with the cadence of Web publishing?
We’re going to have new content every day. Not a ton, maybe just a few pieces a day to start. But it’s going to be stuff worth reading and that our readers are going to stop and read and learn from. You don’t build a great brand by flooding people with information they can read elsewhere. You build a great brand by having something different and unique.Why aren’t you taking any advertising?
Right now we’re not. I really don’t think the ad business model is aligned with our mission. Any publication that makes a meaningful amount of money through advertising ends up writing stories that generate a lot of traffic to generate a lot of ad dollars. Publications wrestle with that editorial decision. The bar for each of our articles is “is this worth paying for?”
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