Why Poets & Quants has been successful: The journalism

Matt Symonds of Forbes writes about the Poets & Quants website, which covers business schools and was founded by business journalist John Byrne.

Symonds writes, “Instead, Byrne moved to the West Coast after leaving Businessweek at the end of 2009 and began work on Poets&quants.com. He knew the business school landscape well, having created and launched the first regularly published MBA rankings at Businessweek in 1988. ‘At the magazine, I also was the Editor-in-Chief of our online operations and I saw firsthand the immense advantages of digital media. The barriers to entry were low. The potential audience was huge. And the right idea in the right niche could serve a valuable service to an audience.’

“He founded C-Change Media just outside San Francisco and launched the first of five websites. The immediate success of Poets&Quants caused Byrne to do a classic entrepreneurial pivot into higher education and subsequent websites for undergraduate business, executive MBAs, law schools and social enterprise. Since the start of Poets&Quants, some 30 million unique users have absorbed more than 200 million page views.

“What makes Poets&Quants successful is Byrne’s journalistic chops. He has recruited a team of four writers and editors, plus a half dozen freelancers, to cover business education as if they were at the New York Times writing about politics or public policy. Old-fashioned scoops are a high priority but so is thoughtful analysis and perspective brought to every breaking news item, from his deep analysis of business school rankings to the costs and rewards of an MBA degree. Poets&Quants own annual composite MBA rankings, launched from day one, are among the most closely followed rankings in the world, right behind U.S. News & World Report and the Financial Times. In fact, in the U.S., a recent third party survey of MBA applicants found that more candidates rely on Poets&Quants’ ranking than Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist, Forbes, The Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal.”