Quartz: A media start-up case study
Facts
Quartz (qz.com) is a digital global business news publication, owned by Atlantic Media Co., the publisher of The Atlantic, National Journal, and Government Executive. Its team of 175 staff members was pulled together from prominent brands in business journalism: Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The New York Times. The four initial sponsors of Quartz were Boeing, Chevron, Cadillac, and Credit Suisse.
Quartz is a free digital news publication with no paywalls or registration. It relies entirely on native advertising and sponsored content to fund its business. It targets high-earning readers who traditionally read other left-leaning publications. 60% of its readers access the site via mobile devices, and 40% of its readers are outside the United States. As of November 2015, there are 180,000 subscribers to the Quartz Daily Brief.
Why “quartz”?
Quartz is a type of mineral that can be found all over the world and contributed to intense geological activity. Furthermore, the word “Quartz” contains two of the rarest letters in English Language, Q and Z, making it a special-looking word.
When referring to the Quartz publication website, the Quartz team took off all the ordinary characters leaving behind qz.com, making it a distinctive website. Also, the fact that there are fewer letters to type into a small mobile keyboard makes it a more user-friendly website.
Timeline
In September 2012, Quartz officially launched its website, qz.com. Rather than a traditional homepage, it was designed as a mobile-first design website. The webpage was designed to deliver contents primarily to users of tablet and mobile first then website later in this order.Quartz’s main office is located in New York, with correspondents and staff reporters In London, India, Hong Kong, Thailand, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.
Quartz launched its first podcast in partnership with Marketplace, called Actuality. The podcast focuses on top international news and the conversations journalists might have when discussing how to cover a news story.
What is quartz? (Value propositions)
According to the team behind it, “Quartz is a digitally native news outlet, born in 2012, for business people in the new global economy. We publish bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview, built primarily for the devices closest at hand: tablets and mobile phones.” They focus on digital storytelling, creating a newsroom where developers and journalists co-exist and work hand in hand to create an innovative experience.
While building Quartz, they focused on the touchscreen and mobile devices. The first device on their minds was the Apple ipad, gradually modifying the design to match smartphones and then personal computers. Their goal is an experience which shifts seamlessly “from phone to tablet to laptop and back again”. They prefer to be called a web- app rather than a website.This mentality is also reflected in the Quartz mobile app, launched in February 2016, first for ios and then for android devices. It is a semi-interactive app, because of the text-like design and the plentiful use of gifs and emojis.
Last but not least, the people of Quartz proclaim that they embrace openness, whether that means open source code, an open newsroom, or open access to the data behind their journalism. They aspire to be transparent with their audience, both about their decisions and the website’s direction.
Quartz did not become successful by accident. It is presenting global news in a way that is insightful and, more importantly, just plain fun. And this is not just my opinion; 17 million unique visitors per month probably attest to that.
