If you need any further proof of the dispersion of authority in the media sector, here comes The Information, a technology focused media company. It was founded two-and-a-half years ago by former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin, who is now joined by seven other reporters (many from The Journal, including the brilliant Martin Peers). The Information seeks to “fill a void left by mainstream media, to provide quality and original business journalism,” Lessin told me in a phone conversation earlier this week. “We tell our reporters to spend 100 percent of their time on original breaking stories or news analysis that hasn’t been covered elsewhere.”
Lessin is trying to have “stories that are insanely valuable to our readers. And engagement on stories is insanely high.” She spoke about a recent story they did on Nest after its acquisition by Google. “The story became a must read in Silicon Valley. The CEO faces new challenges, the vibe is different. It was so popular that our site crashed.” Another favorite piece was on Google’s last minute effort to thwart Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp. Her team was also the first to report around a year ago that large institutional investors were marking down their positions in private pre-IPO tech companies and has published hordes of data on the subject
since.
She tells her reporters to chase stories that “are not really out there yet… deal news, funding. We do not want to cover the ones that are already up on Bloomberg or covered by the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times.” Her publishing rhythm is two to three stories a day, pushed out to clients, with pieces running about 800 words on average, up to 4,000 words at most. There is no video on the site, just text, photos and interactive graphics. There is one big interview a week, often with a CEO such as Reed Hastings of Netflix. “It does not have to be the CEO. We like interesting people in R&D as well.”
She has aggressive expansion plans beyond the San Francisco home base, into India, China, Europe and across beats like financial technology and artificial intelligence. The present subscriber base is from 45 nations and includes founders of 10 out of 10 of the most highly private U.S. tech companies, as well as investors, media moguls and others. A subscription is $399 a year.
Her business model relies completely on subscription, with free subscriber-only events. In 2015, The Information hosted a dozen subscriber-only events for their venture capital, investment bank and owner/CEO constituency. They attract impressive attendees from Ron Conway to Nathan Blecharcyzk to Mark Zuckerberg.
For communications people working on technology clients, The Information has to be one of the top choices for breaking important news. Edelman’s tech sector lead Maria Amundson said it best, “If you are looking to reach the top influencers in technology, by all means break your news in The Information. If you are looking for large numbers of eyeballs, you may be better off with a mass circulation publication.”
Richard Edelman is president and CEO.