I had breakfast with Alyson Shontell, Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider, last week. As it is nearly five years since its acquisition by Axel Springer, it is a good time to take a look at its progress as an important voice in business journalism.
She told me that Insider Inc., which encompasses BusinessInsider.com and Insider.com, generates 170 million global monthly unique views and 1 billion monthly page views while also launching a successful subscription business. The demographic of readers is 30-45 years old, so-called future leaders. One-half of US millennials read Business Insider.
The combined newsrooms have over 300 journalists, 150 of whom work for Business Insider. She said that the company is considering a significant expansion in reporter numbers this year.
The bureaus are in New York, San Francisco, London, and Los Angeles. The international editions are in more than 15 countries including Japan, Holland, South Africa and Germany via license deals.
Their goal is to make business stories accessible and interesting to everybody, and a must-read for all professionals. The areas of special emphasis are finance/markets, advertising/media, technology, retail, entrepreneurship and career strategy.
Some top recent stories include more than 300 separate articles on the unraveling at WeWork and Softbank's portfolio, the implosion of MoviePass, the failure of Publicis to build AI engine Marcel and the ongoing delivery and manufacturing issues within Tesla.
I have found BI reporters to be tireless, knowledgeable about sector and determined to beat the competition with breaking news. Kudos to founders Kevin Ryan and Henry Blodget for understanding that there was a real place for an always-on digital publication focused on business.
Richard Edelman is CEO.
