Dan Primack of Fortune reports on the new tech news site Re/code launched by former Wall Street Journal reporters Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher.
The duo have brought over all 18 full-time journalists from All Things Digital.
Primack writes, “In addition to its investment, NBCUniversal has signed a separate operational agreement that will, among other things, provide it with access to Re/code content and codify NBCNews as the new company’s preferred media partner. That means you should expect to be seeing lots of Swisher and Mossberg on CNBC, MSNBC and NBC News properties like The Today Show.
“‘This gives us an expanded and deeper presence in Silicon Valley, and they are just the best in this space,’ says Patricia Fili-Krushel, chairman of NBCUniversal News Group. She adds that Re/code will complement an expanded NBCNews.com tech vertical that recently began staffing up, but that the two organizations will operate independent of one another.
“The Windsor Media relationship is more about advice than synergy, with Swisher and Mossberg expected to regularly bend the ear of group founder Terry Semel, a onetime Warner Brothers chairman who is best known for running Yahoo between April 2001 and June 2007. (And, yes, there is all sorts of irony that Kara Swisher’s new venture is being funded with Yahoo-related riches. Swisher is notorious in media circles for breaking so much news about Yahoo that the board went out of its way to make sure she didn’t learn about Marissa Mayer becoming CEO, and have also taken various other unsuccessful defensive maneuvers to thwart her.)
“Both Semel and Fili-Krushel acknowledge that Re/code’s conference business is what currently fuels margin, but that they see additional revenue opportunity on the content side as well. Neither had previously entered into serious negotiations to back another tech-focused media property.”
Read more here.
