OLD Media Moves

The Information is eschewing advertising

December 5, 2013

Posted by Chris Roush

John McDermott of Digiday spoke with Jessica Lessin of The Information about the new tech news site’s strategy.

Here is an excerpt:

There’s plenty of blogs and publications devoted to tech news. What’s missing?
What we thought was missing was a publication geared toward professionals; people who either work in tech — entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists — or people who work in industries that are closely related to tech.

How are you going to balance in-depth reporting with the cadence of Web publishing?
We’re going to have new content every day. Not a ton, maybe just a few pieces a day to start. But it’s going to be stuff worth reading and that our readers are going to stop and read and learn from. You don’t build a great brand by flooding people with information they can read elsewhere. You build a great brand by having something different and unique.

Why aren’t you taking any advertising?
Right now we’re not. I really don’t think the ad business model is aligned with our mission. Any publication that makes a meaningful amount of money through advertising ends up writing stories that generate a lot of traffic to generate a lot of ad dollars. Publications wrestle with that editorial decision. The bar for each of our articles is “is this worth paying for?”

Read more here.

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