The Quartz Way (1)

Monday Note reporting:
I used to think the breadth and depth of older large newsrooms could guarantee their survival in a digital world plagued by mediocrity and loose ethics. But considering great pure players like Quartz — which is just the latest offspring of a larger league — I now come to think we are witnessing the emergence of a new breed of smaller, digital-only outlets that are closing the gap, quality-wise, with legacy media. In the context of an increasingly segmented and short-on-time readership, I can only wonder how long the legacy newsroom’s strategic advantage of size and scope will last.
Quartz editorial staff has nothing to do with the low-paid, poultry farm newsrooms of many digital outlets. Most of the 25 journalists and editors (out a staff of 50) were drawn from well established brands such as Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters, New York Magazine or The Wall Street Journal (Kevin Delaney, 41, is himself a former WSJ.com managing editor). “Our staff is slightly younger than the average newsroom, and it is steeped in the notion of entrepreneurial journalism”, says the Quartz editor-in-chief. “With Quartz, we had many opportunity to rethink the assumptions of traditional media”.
The original idea was to devise how The Economist would look like if it had been born in 2012 rather than in 1843, explains Delaney. It would be digital native, mostly for mobile reading, and focus on contemporary economic engines such as digital, globalization, e-commerce, the future of energy, debt, China, etc. Instead of abiding by the usual classification of business news that looks like a nomenclature from the Bureau of Labor Statistics  (Industry, Services, Markets, Trade, etc.), Quartz opted for a sexier taxonomy; its coverage is based on an evolving list of “Obsessions“, a much more cognitive-friendly way to consider the news cycle than the usual “beat” (read this on the matter). As an avid magazine reader, Delaney said he derived the idea from publications like New York 
Magazine...
 http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/10/06/the-quartz-way-1/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Monday+Note+%23292+-+The+Quartz+Way+-+Apple+Under+Siege&utm_campaign=20131006_m117465766_Monday+Note+%23292+-+The+Quartz+Way+-+Apple+Under+Siege&utm_term=The+Quartz+Way+_281_29