What’s behind Business Insider’s British success

Ian Burrell of The Drum looks at Business Insider’s success in England, where it’s receiving more page views and visitors than traditional business news media.

Burrell writes, “The reason it is thriving, Edwards believes, is that mainstream British business news coverage had fallen into a ‘traditional, ritualised’ approach, leaving a gaping opportunity for BI, which is governed by Blodget’s own watchwords: ‘smart, helpful, accurate, fearless, fast, fun.’

“Edwards states it baldly. ‘The traditional British media has not done a very good job in terms of business journalism,’ he says, and while he concedes that the FT is ‘very good’ he points out that it is ‘behind a paywall and the newspaper circulation is microscopic.’

“As for the rest of the business news market, they are simply out of step with the audience. The BBC, he says, ‘is a fine organisation [but] its business coverage is shallow.’ The public broadcaster is uncomfortable with a subject it regards as ‘slightly grubby’ and is terrified of producing content that might ‘sound like a press release.’ BI, by contrast, sees business stories as ‘human drama with money attached.’

“In their ritual-driven mindset, legacy media business desks obsess over a few listed British companies with high public profile, such as Whitbread or Ladbrokes, he says. ‘We tried that initially. [We said] ‘Let’s cover these British companies that are publicly-traded’. And there’s no audience for it.'”

Read more here.