Jennifer Merritt is the editor of BBC Capital, the new business news website launched Thursday by the British television network.
She came from Reuters, where she had been working on the wealth management coverage team. Before that, she was financial markets editor at the Associated Press.
She also had senior editorial positions overseeing personal finance, wealth and markets coverage at the Florida Times-Union, Money and smartmoney.com and wsj.com. She also has been department editor of management education at Business Week.
BBC Capital is as an opportunity to deepen the media company’s relationship with the readers of BBC.com. With Capital, it expects to see users spend longer time on each visit and return to the site more often.
Capital was designed with both audiences and advertisers in mind. As with the BBC’s other feature sections, Capital will be supported by advertising.
Merritt spoke by email on Thursday with Talking Biz News about the new site. What follows is an edited transcript.
Why did the BBC decide to launch this website?
The purpose of Capital, like all of BBC.com’s feature sections, is to offer BBC’s global perspective on key stories. BBC has been doing business newsgathering for ages and Capital aims to tap into that content and brings it to a more relatable level.
BBC has had business news, and to some extent, news features, but Capital adds additional focus and content that readers are interested in but that is not found elsewhere on BBC.com.
Who do you see as its biggest competitors?
In the broader sense of trusted, smart, non-commodity stories that inform and make you think, I’d say it’s the same competitor group for the broader BBC, including WSJ and CNN (CNNMoney in this case), NYT, The Economist.
But our goal with Capital is to bring a global perspective to the topics of careers, leadership and management, workplace, personal finance and risk. In that sense — making sure as many of our stories as possible bring a global perspective — I don’t see too many other publications doing that.
What will you do on this site that will be different than other business sites?
The main thing: Bring global perspective to these business of life topics. Capital is focused on the individual, from career to finances and other decisions — all at a global level.
Are there specific areas of coverage that you will focus on?
Careers, leadership, management, workplace (including special packages on women and work), risk, personal finance (including investing, saving, spending and retirement), and good business (including workplace ethics).
How big is your staff, and where will all of the content come from?
Currently, there are two editors in New York, with a third to be hired outside the U.S. Our content comes from a group of trusted freelancers with strong expertise in the topic areas they write about.
For instance, Ronald Alsop, former WSJ editor and writer and author of a book on millennials, is writing a column for Capital on the changing workplace. Sydney Finkelstein, Dartmouth professor who focuses on executive failures, is writing a column on executive and leadership issues. Elizabeth Garone, former WSJ Career Q&A columnist, is handling a career Q&A for Capital. Those are just a few examples.
We’re also tapping into the broader BBC correspondent and stringer Rolodex to bring stories and other content from all over the globe.
What have you brought to this job that you have learned from your other business journalism positions?
For starters, connections. That’s not so much something I’ve learned, but more developed over the years. Some of the freelancers working with Capital, I’ve known since my years at BusinessWeek (2000-2005). I also learned to manage massive projects in prior jobs at BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal (2007-2011) and that’s helped me immensely in developing and getting Capital off the ground.
A stronger eye for good stories and images (which can be tough for some business pieces), for interesting ways to approach topics and a framework for figuring out the right tone are other things I’ve learned elsewhere that I’ve brought to this job.
Oh, and when you ask people to go above and beyond, make sure you’re going above and beyond for them. Doughnuts, cupcakes and cookies all help!
Is the goal to make the BBC a more important player in U.S. business journalism?
That may be one of the goals. But among the key goals was to provide the sort of content people reading BBC.com already are looking for. The audience comes to BBC.com for its news, and increasingly its business news. Extending that to “the business of life” topics adds more for those readers. It all makes BBC.com more engaging.
And, yes, there’s a hope — like with most new BBC efforts around the world—to expand the audience and be an important player.
Tell us about what you have been doing to get the site up and going since leaving Reuters.
Working non-stop! I started by developing the focus and perspective, including brainstorming and deciding on the columns and video series we would feature. From there, I pulled in freelancers to take those columns and series on.
Add to that broadening the freelancer base to add to the mix of smart stories, finalizing design elements, editing stories for the site, and the nitty-gritty of producing what you see on BBC Capital.
In the middle of all that, I’ve been talking to potential content partners, brainstorming new ideas for the future, and helped interview and hire a deputy editor, Chelsea Emery, also from Reuters.
