Slate Reaches for a Slice of the Business Pie
Important Details: Today, Slate launches “The Big Money,” a business commentary and tools site aimed at a relatively young group, those in their ’20s and ’30s. While accessible through Slate, it will also have its own URL and dedicated staff of four or more staff. Ad sales and marketing will be handled by Slate. Slate, after 12 years about to enter its adolescence, is owned by the Washington Post Co. For Slate, it’s a move beyond its politics and culture niche, though focusing more on commentary than on breaking news. The business beachhead will feature three to six articles a day, says The Big Money editor Jim Ledbetter, former managing editor of CNN Money and the early Industry Standard. Serving as deputy editor with be Elinor Shields, former managing editor of The Huffington Post. In those resumes, one can see the mix-and-match nature of the new web business.
Featured at launch will be two blogs, (“Feeling Lucky, Everything about Google” and the “Daily Bread,” focused on the business implications of food), two areas that its target readership likes to know about. Ledbetter says the site understands the power of brand these days, and in fact is working the SAGA acronym – Starbucks, Apple, Google and Amazon, four companies that have dominated younger adult consumer lives. “They are the four companies that matter,” says Ledbetter.
“Today’s Business Press,” already a Slate feature, will become a “Big Money” feature, a best-of weblog of sorts, pointing to top business news coverage of the day.
Ledbetter says the site will largely steer clear of personal finance coverage. “There’s a kind of dishonesty behind it,” says Ledbetter. “If everyone can get rich, they would.” The Big Money, though, will test some interactive tools, and one of them will be a Socially Responsive Investing Screen, allowing readers to sort companies, and potential investments, by screens such as “green,” “vice” and “military involvement”. The site plans more such tools, focusing on those that are not otherwise available on the web.
As a reader interactive test, the site launches with YouTube Brand Watch, asking readers to rate the cream of online-only advertising.
Implications: The Big Money reinforces a key lesson of the web age. It’s not about topic, or subject matter. It’s about subject matter for a certain group of people, often at certain life stage. Outsell’s recent report, News Publishers Have Moms in Their Sites (Aug. 15, 2008), focused on one such niche. The Big Money’s target market is narrow — but large. Educated readers, early in their careers, in their experience of business, and in their financial planning, form a group that makes sense to target. Many business sites cater to those older and deeper in their experience, so The Big Money zigs to others’ zags. For top financial sites — from Dow Jones to FT to Reuters to Bloomberg and beyond — that’s a lesson worth pondering. For local news sites, it’s also an essential one. Most business and personal finance content in newspapers, and thus on their websites, is broadly general, aiming at a general audience and one spanning generations. It is mass business news, with a little commentary, in a time when niche makes more sense.
The Big Money is a relatively small foray, in staff investment and in weekly content production, so it won’t have a big impact. It’s worth watching though, for its intent.
Further, The Big Money signals how non-legacy news websites, including The Huffington Post, are branching out from politics — a core interest area — especially as the post-Bush era dawns in the US. Political news readership may well slacken as 2009 plays out, and developing niche businesses in areas such as sports, “green” and others is all the rage. In fact, these alternative political sites are beginning to look remarkably like newspapers in their breadth.