The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 15 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
The Wall Street Journal Has Shifted Away From Exclusive Reporting
“And I think the journal and other publications have broadened their focus away from that kind of journalism, but it's something that I've certainly taken from the journal”
All Top 10 U.S. Tech Unicorn Founders Subscribe to The Information
“Our subscribers range from Entrepreneurs who are just starting out on their first Y Combinator company, to executives in the management teams at the most highly valued public tech companies, to 10 out of 10 of the founders of the most highly valued U.S. Privat…”
Original Tech Journalism Is Not a Zero-Sum Market
“If you're writing stories that have new information about business and technology, it's not like our audience will only read one of those. They literally have a thirst for as much that's valuable to them as humanly possible. It's not like there are only X hour…”
Digital Publications Waste Great Reporters on Trending Twitter Stories
“So many other publications are having their great reporters spend their time on less than great stories. Again, on these stories that are real-time, regurgitation, written because, you know, they're trending on Twitter, and God forbid a publication doesn't hav…”
Media Companies Lacking Must-Read Content Will Fail Long Term
“And if you're not writing stories that people feel like they have to read, you know, you may get blips and traffic here and there. You may even grow your audience for a couple of years. But you're not going to be around years and years and years from now.”
Subscriptions Are the Only Media Model Aligned Purely With Readers
“And I think if you're in a world where you're dependent on advertising, you're going to serve multiple masters. You're going to serve the traffic master, the advertising master. You know, if you're dependent on events, you're going to serve the sponsorship mas…”
The Information Will Not Build Products for a Billion-User Audience
“I think if you're writing a publication or building a tech product for a billion people, you know, that's going to look a certain way, and we don't want to build that product.”
The Digital Media Industry Is Becoming Increasingly Broad and Shallow
“I think most of it comes down to the fact the industry is getting very broad and shallow. And what I mean by that is there are more publications by the day, but they're all essentially covering the same kind of news for mass audiences.”
Media Quality Is Defined by Audience Value, Not the Medium
“Quality isn't something that is abstract. It's based on the value of that information to a particular audience.”
Media Outlets Compete With All Time-Occupying Content, Including Instagram
“Anything that takes our subscribers time that they find valuable from Instagram to The Economist is in some ways competitive, right? I mean, I think that is actually the bar for anyone in the media business.”
Subscription Media Scales on Product Value, Not Sales Capacity
“It's also insanely scalable, right? That doesn't tap out at how, you know, many business development deals you can cut or how many ad packages you can sell, right? It taps out based on the inherent value of the product.”
The Information's Early Growth Was Organic and Eerily Linear
“So actually to date, our growth has been The organic word of mouth side and incredibly linear, sort of eerily linear.”
The Information Has 10x More Email Contacts Than Paid Subscribers
“I think, you know, we have orders of magnitude more than emails and we have subscribers right now, maybe one order of magnitude more, just from people who have expressed interest in the information.”