Categories: OLD Media Moves

Why Quartz is the future of business journalism

Frederic Filloux of MondayNote.com writes about Quartz, the business news website run by The Atlantic.

Filloux writes, “While listening to Delaney describing his organization, I couldn’t help but mentally itemize what separates its super-agile setup from traditional media. A couple of months ago, I met the digital management of a major UK newspaper. There, execs kept whining about the slow pace evolution of the news staff and the struggle to get writers to add links and basic metadata (don’t even think about pix or graphics) to their work product. By and large, most legacy media I know of, in France, UK and the United States, are years behind swift boats such as Quartz, Politico or the older but still sharp Slate.

“I used to think the breadth and depth of older large newsrooms could guarantee their survival in a digital world plagued by mediocrity and loose ethics. But considering great pure players like Quartz — which is just the latest offspring of a larger league — I now come to think we are witnessing the emergence of a new breed of smaller, digital-only outlets that are closing the gap, quality-wise, with legacy media. In the context of an increasingly segmented and short-on-time readership, I can only wonder how long the legacy newsroom’s strategic advantage of size and scope will last.

“Quartz editorial staff has nothing to do with the low-paid, poultry farm newsrooms of many digital outlets. Most of the 25 journalists and editors (out a staff of 50) were drawn from well established brands such as Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters, New York Magazine or The Wall Street Journal (Kevin Delaney, 41, is himself a former WSJ.com managing editor). ‘Our staff is slightly younger than the average newsroom, and it is steeped in the notion of entrepreneurial journalism’, says the Quartz editor-in-chief. ‘With Quartz, we had many opportunity to rethink the assumptions of traditional media’.”

Read more here.

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.

View Comments

    Recent Posts

    Is this the end of CoinDesk as we know it?

    Former CoinDesk editorial staffer Michael McSweeney writes about the recent happenings at the cryptocurrency news site, where…

    6 hours ago

    LinkedIn finance editor Singh departs

    Manas Pratap Singh, finance editor for LinkedIn News Europe, has left for a new opportunity…

    1 day ago

    Washington Post announces start of third newsroom

    Washington Post executive editor Matt Murray sent out the following on Friday: Dear All, Over the last…

    2 days ago

    FT hires Moens to cover competition and tech in Brussels

    The Financial Times has hired Barbara Moens to cover competition and tech in Brussels. She will start…

    2 days ago

    Deputy tech editor Haselton departs CNBC for The Verge

    CNBC.com deputy technology editor Todd Haselton is leaving the news organization for a job at The Verge.…

    2 days ago

    “Power Lunch” co-anchor Tyler Mathisen is leaving CNBC

    Note from CNBC Business News senior vice president Dan Colarusso: After more than 27 years…

    2 days ago