The Atlantic entered the crowded business news market today with online-only magazine Quartz News.
Built on blogging platform Wordpress with compelling graphics optimized for the mobile user Quartz definitely has a different look and feel than most of its business brethren. While it works smoothly on the iPad, navigation and scrolling actually feel a bit clunky on the desktop. And that’s OK with the Editor-in-Chief, as the Atlantic clearly has the tablet and mobile reader in mind.
While the field is crowded, I do think there is still room for another player in this space, if well executed. Others who have tried, both in print and online, have clearly stumbled (Portfolio, Big Money). Yet the Atlantic has shown in the equally crowded political space, that they can carve out a strong niche, through the assembly of a strong team of writers like James Fallows, Alexis Madrigal and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
At the same time, most financial news providers have stumbled in initial efforts to support tablet and mobile devices. Bloomberg and Reuters are both delivering great commentary today, but their blogs frequently don’t reach a mainstream audience. Aggregators like Pulse News or Flipboard remain niche products for the technology savvy. There’s definitely room in the market for a new entrant, particularly one unhindered by a print title or legacy platform.
The mix of long form articles, big glossy images and short linkfests is one that works well on mobile and the web. The challenge will be in the delivery of compelling enough information that users will seek it out and/or share it via social platforms. For Day One, I score the content about a 6 on a 1-10 scale. The Facebook Zero article is somewhat interesting, but I don’t quite see how it commands the top position nor justifies its length. The Brazilian cocaine chart seems random and doesn’t seem to meet the lofty target of core topics and knotty questions of seismic importance to business professionals which Quartz sets as its focus.
Conversely, Manufacturers are thinking of ditching no-longer-cheap Chinese labor is an article which seems to meet that standard and is also quite timely, in the context both of political debate and last night’s riots at the FoxConn factory. I’m surprised this story wasn’t pinned to the top for today’s launch.
Quartz News will be free for readers, funded through sponsorships. The initial sponsors include Cadillac, Chevron, Boeing and Credit Suisse. Perhaps their ad sales reps sorted their targets alphabetically. The sponsorship model is common for tablet apps where the old metrics like page views are no longer meaningful, and has been used effectively by the New York Times, The Daily and others. Unlike either of those two, Quartz News is being built on a low budget.
By using Wordpress and HTML5, rather than building a native app, The Atlantic is keeping costs under control while they test the market viability.
It’s too early to tell whether Quartz News will be successful. While the field is crowded, there’s no one title that seems to be reaching mainstream business users on mobile platforms. With the right content, Quartz News could find itself a compelling niche.
