Journalist covering the business of travel and hospitality. Sunderland, Springsteen and Great White Sharks. ZFG.
Joined January 2012
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The replies to this post are (mostly) moronic, like they've never heard of B2B media and don't understand audience
The team at Colossus is breaking something in magazine journalism in a fascinating way. Let me try to articulate.
Even just a few years ago, if you wanted to read a beautifully written, exhaustively reported and actually interesting piece on someone shaping a corner of the world, you'd have to choose from the handful of journalistic outlets that had the ability to deliver them: on the production side, a stable of seasoned writers & editors who knew how to weave narrative, reportage and literary rigor into an engaging longform story, and on the distribution side a sizable audience that appreciated such work. Think: The New Yorker, Businessweek, NYT Mag, Atavist, Wired, The Atlantic, old Esquire, etc.
The problem: Such outlets will produce a warts-and-all piece, diving deep into parts of a protagonist's journey that she may not want spotlighted. Journalists are pushed to find the "balance" or "tension" in the story, and oftentimes they force it by going negative/hyping up the bad. The subject that gave the outlet access might come to regret that decision. The alternative might be going to a friendly outlet, however, those tend to 1. Not have the skills to produce a sufficiently high-quality piece 2. Are dismissed as unserious by the audiences you're trying to reach – people can smell a puff piece from a mile away (Sequoia's SBF profile is an all-timer of the genre)
So, in sum, your choices as a tech/business mogul used to be: trust a trad outlet with your story and pray they don't come in too hot, or have your message put out with a Pravda type rag and have it be ignored. Both bad options, so many subjects opted to stay on the sidelines and not talk at all.
Along came Colossus: It is NOT a journalistic outlet – their mission is not "truth to power" etc. etc. (Zero judgment btw, just facts – I'm an admirer of what they're building). Their mission IS to create the most compelling archive of business & investing content, for an audience of B&I folks, a cozy audience of heavy-hitters. However, the brilliance of their approach is that their stuff feels like the real thing. Their pieces are often exquisitely crafted, deeply reported, produced with a clear understanding of what makes magazines so special. The punches will be pulled, but the reading pleasure isn't sacrificed. And they've hired real talent for it - EIC Jeremy Stern, whose engrossing new Josh Kushner piece is breaking the Internet today, wrote what I thought was the profile of the year in '24 for Tablet, of Anduril's Palmer Luckey.
Thus Colossus becomes an incredibly compelling place for machers to trust with their stories. Why go to TNY/Atlantic etc. if you can get a similar level of quality w/o the downside reputational risk? This is content marketing, but done so beautifully that the intended audience won't care.
Not a critique of the story, which I read in a single sitting and enjoyed heaps. Just wanted to share some observations of the model and how it's going to box out the trad outlets. Access will be restricted to those whose pens are kind.
Patrick Whyte retweeted
One of the biggest problems in British politics is that increasingly 'doing government is bad politics' because policy simply doesn't interest most political journalists.
Struggling to think of anyone comparable to Jimmy Anderson in terms of elite sporting performance aged 40+. David Ortiz's last season at the Red Sox was pretty impressive, anyone else in recent years?
This sounds great. But also, The Roots are an amazingly underrated band. Of course Things Fall Apart, but Game Theory and Undun are both excellent
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This is so dumb and cynical. Why waste your time trying to improve things when you can just “lay traps” for the next guys?
Analysis | Hunt’s budget is likely to be stuffed with smaller measures designed to boost growth, fix the problems with our tax system – and lay traps for a future Labour government
🖋️ @HugoGye
🚨 Follow live updates here trib.al/W341pn9
Patrick Whyte retweeted
Sunderland fan holds up a banner during the Barclays Premier League match between Sunderland and Newcastle United at Stadium of Light in Sunderland, England (2015)
Patrick Whyte retweeted
just remember, no saudi government involvement in the ownership and definitely NOT sportswashing
Reading this at the moment - it’s absolutely fantastic and I haven’t even started on the music press stuff.
Enjoyed @rafat's unflinching story on the Culture Trip sale. An "inconsequential blip on the face of heavily funded travel startups." The writing has been on the wall for a while now... skift.com/2019/10/12/culture…
CultureTrip Sold To CEO and Is Now Trying To Sell Itself, After Failing At Everything Else skift.com/blog/culturetrip-s… << it raised $175 million or so over the years, a scam all along.
Of course the Manchester Evening News can become just like the New York Times under Reach’s ownership.
The world needs a deep dive on the short-lived Jimmy Nail phenomenon of the mid 90s.
It’s a small thing but you can totally trace the progression of this kind of framing with the destruction of faith in media.
