What It Means to Be a ‘New’ Business News Organization

Editor's note: This piece is part of our Columnist Network series, which explores the tactical thoughts and actions from Adweek’s community of high-level experts. Today, Natalie Diamond, chief revenue officer at Quartz, highlights the importance of creating an authentic content strategy. Below, in her own words, she offers questions that every business news organization should be asking themselves. The challenge When Quartz launched nearly nine years ago, the business news landscape was already crowded. What did the world need with another business site? Since our inception, Quartz has set out to be a "new" kind of business news site that serves the next generation of leaders—one that demands authenticity, perspective and utility. We strove to create an organization that challenged the status quo, embraced a more global and inclusive worldview and was built for a mobile-first user experience. At the time, these qualities were unprecedented. Legacy publishers have since caught up with their own mobile-optimized websites, and a new wave of digital-first, newsletter-heavy aggregators have emerged. Layer onto that a pandemic, a circus of a U.S. presidential election and an increased readership appetite for breaking news—all of these factors considered, where and how do we continue to stay relevant and vital to business leaders? The process It’s easy for organizations to look where competitors are seeing success and want to conform, though it’s important to keep in mind your core offerings should be tailored to creating a new experience for your audience and filling a gap for them. Explore the needs of your audience (whether that’s readers, viewers, listeners, etc.) and match that with your expertise and the unique specialties you bring to the table. At Quartz, we put this into practice by identifying ways that readers can take something concrete away from everything they read, exemplified in our editorial products, features and the type of coverage we know our audience is looking to gather insights from. Ask yourself: As a news organization, what’s our specialty? Do we ride the breaking news wave? Are we the first to know about changes in our niche industries? Do we want to help teach our audience a skill? Maybe we aren’t among the first to break a story, but do we specialize in presenting opinions and commentary on the latest topics? Not every news site, podcast and blog can be all of these things—wouldn’t it be a cluttered landscape if they were? Find what applies to you and focus on hypertargeting your coverage and offerings to align. The payoff is that you’ll be able to build a loyal and engaged audience that seeks you out for what you do best. When trying to determine what approach is best, data usually has the answers. We constantly survey our audiences to ensure we’re staying on the pulse of their media consumption and habit preferences. What we know from our readers is, while breaking news is necessary to have in their media mix, they’re craving the context and understanding on how and why industries, parts of the world and people’s lives are changing—and how these changes will affect business. This drove our decision to double down on a business lens for our coverage. The takeaway Every decision we make—from what stories to write, to which products to build, to what advertising solutions to offer—considers these criteria: Is this useful for our readers? Will this help them directly (or indirectly) in their work? News organizations that are just emerging or reevaluating their approach should follow a similar process, asking themselves what will help their readers most, turning to the data for validation and how they can offer value in those areas. That’s the key to carving your own path in the media landscape and building lasting relationships with your audience.

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What It Means to Be a ‘New’ Kind of Business News Organization

Quartz CRO Natalie Diamond serves an emerging class of leadership

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