Quartz (publication)

Quartz
Available in English
Owner Uzabase
Editor Kevin J. Delaney
Key people Jay Lauf
Website qz.com
Alexa rank Increase 1827 [1] (Global, October 2017)
Commercial Yes
Launched September 24, 2012 (2012-09-24)

Quartz is a news website.[2] It launched in 2012 and operates editions in Africa and India.[3] The Quartz website and newsletters are free digital news publications with no paywalls nor registration requirements. In 2018, Quartz was sold to Uzabase, a Japanese business media company, for between $75 and $110 million.[4][5]

Quartz targets high-earning readers, calling itself a “digitally native news outlet for business people in the new global economy”.[6][7] 60% of its readers access the site via mobile devices, and 40% of its readers are outside the United States.

In August 2017, Quartz's website saw more than 22 million unique visitors.[8] More than 700,000 people subscribe to its roster of email newsletters, which includes its flagship Daily Brief.[9]

According to AdAge, Quartz made around $30 million in revenue in 2016, and employed 175 people.[10] The same year, Harvard's Nieman Lab described Quartz as “among the fastest-growing and most closely watched digital news sites”.[11][12]

History

According to a press release, the name "Quartz" was chosen for reasons related to its branding and the unusual combination of two infrequently used letters, "q" and "z", in the title.[6]

On September 24, 2012, Quartz launched its website, qz.com. The site was designed to deliver content primarily to mobile and tablet users. Its founding team members were from news organizations including Bloomberg, The Economist, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.[13][14] According to its website, Quartz's team reports in 115 countries and speaks 19 languages.[15] The publication was initially led by Kevin Delaney, a former managing director of WSJ.com, Zach Seward, a former WSJ social media editor, and Gideon Lichfield, a global news editor from The Economist, among other editors.[6]

Quartz's main office is located in New York. It also has correspondents and staff reporters based in Hong Kong, India, London, Los Angeles, Thailand, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.[15]

According to Mashable, Quartz surpassed the United States web traffic of The Economist in 2013, and was closing in on that of the Financial Times.[16]

In 2014, Quartz expanded into India, launching Quartz India. In 2015, it launched Quartz Africa.[17][18]

In 2015, it launched Atlas, a chart-building platform.[19] The publication has since launched Quartz at Work, a vertical that focuses on careers and the workplace, and Quartzy, a culture and lifestyle vertical.

In July 2018, Japanese company Uzabase acquired Quartz from Atlantic Media.[20]

Content

In traditional newspaper "beats", news is divided into sections such as domestic, business and finance, and world economy. However, Quartz is structured around a collection of phenomena or "obsessions".[21] Quartz global news editor Gideon Lichfield wrote that instead of using a fixed beats structure, its newsroom is structured around a collection of phenomena or patterns, trends, and seismic shifts that shape the world its readers live in. That structure, according to Lichfield, allows the organization to follow larger phenomena and adapt to pattern changes more quickly. [22]

Quartz extensively uses charts, created through their Atlas tool. The tool is also now used by many media organizations, including CNBC, FiveThirtyEight, NBC News, New Hampshire Public Radio, NPR, The New Yorker, The Press-Enterprise, and The Wall Street Journal.[23][24]

References

  1. "qz.com Site Info". Alexa Internet.
  2. "About". Quartz. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  3. Jackson, Jasper (3 November 2015). "Quartz Africa site to launch in June". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  4. Purdy, Chase (2 July 2018). "Quartz is being sold to Uzabase, a Japanese business media company". Quartz. Archived from the original on 2 July 2018.
  5. Heath, Thomas (2 July 2018). "Atlantic Media sells Quartz to Japanese media company". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on 3 July 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 Sonderman, Jeff (17 September 2012). "5 things journalists should know about Quartz, Atlantic Media's business news startup". Poynter. Retrieved 11 August 2017.
  7. "About Quartz". Quartz. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  8. "Thank you, readers: Quartz is turning five years old. Here's what comes next". Quartz. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  9. "Why Quartz has gone niche with newsletter topics". Digiday. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  10. "Quartz said to near $30 million in revenue, without clickbait or standard ad units". AdAge. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  11. "Thank you, readers: Quartz is turning five years old. Here's what comes next". Quartz. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  12. "Quartz sees its readers' behaviors evolving, so it's evolving with them: It's launching its first major app". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  13. "The Atlantic Launches Mobile-First Business Publication". Mashable. 24 September 2012. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  14. "Atlantic Media business website, Quartz, staffs up and strategizes". Politico. 28 May 2012. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  15. 1 2 "Welcome to Quartz". Quartz. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  16. "'Quartz' Passes 'The Economist' in U.S. Web Traffic, 'Mashable'". Mashable. 15 August 2013. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  17. Jackson, Jasper. "Quartz Africa site to launch in June". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  18. "Africa rising: Why and how Quartz, GE (Media) want in". fipp.com. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  19. "Quartz's Atlas becomes open platform for building charts, data visualizations". ijnet.org. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  20. "Japan's Uzabase to acquire online news platform Quartz". The Associated Press. July 3, 2018.
  21. "The newsonomics of Quartz, 19 months in". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  22. "What happens when news organizations move from "beats" to "obsessions"?". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 25 October 2017.
  23. "The most important things we learned in our first two years of chartbuildering". quartzthings.tumblr.com. Retrieved 4 November 2015.
  24. "Quartz maps a future for its interactive charts with Atla". Nieman Lab. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
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