Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin quit her job and founded The Information, which chose Silicon Valley employees as its target audience. The annual subscription of the news site is $400.
Technology news publication for Silicon Valley residents, The Information, reached 225 thousand active users, revealing the rise of a new business model based on subscriptions from experts in a certain field of journalism.
Jessica E. Lessin is an American journalist who serves as editor-in-chief of the technology website The Information, which she founded in December 2013. Lessin had previously spent eight years at The Wall Street Journal covering the technology and media industries.
Founded in 2013 by former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin, the San Francisco-based publication goes beyond news and analysis with its new weekend lifestyle release. “To make tech news all day long, it's all about realizing that it's not just about companies anymore,” says Lessin, CEO of The Information. For example, how does Silicon Valley spend its weekends?”
When Lessin founded The Information, she relied on tech industry executives to pay hundreds of dollars a year for exceptional knowledge and analysis in their field. She states that subscriber growth has been “quite solid and stable” in recent years. Nearly three-quarters of readers are under the age of 45.
While a slowdown in the number of readers of well-established publishers has been observed this year after the stormy Trump era, Lessin says, "We neither jumped when Trump came nor collapsed when he left." The Information is one of the subscription-based youth media initiatives for experts. The common goal of similar undertakings is to provide valuable information to a specific and wealthy target audience.
The Information charges $400 per year for unlimited access. Among the 225 thousand members, there are those who subscribe to free newsletters as well as paid subscribers. Although Lessin says that The Information, which she founded with her own capital and currently employs 49 people, is profitable, she avoids giving figures.
During the summer, Lessin was considering starting a new publication with a focus on Hollywood. However, she changed her mind when she saw the weekend lifestyle broadcast opportunity. The publication presented on Fridays has different content from detailed articles to suggestions, from short interviews to parents' corners. Lessin brought in former San Francisco Magazine editor Jon Steinberg and Vanity Fair's Josh Duboff to head the project. As The Information grows, major media groups want to share in the profits. For example, Bloomberg started offering a joint subscription package with The Information last year. But the partnership didn't work out because, as Lessin puts it, "a lot of other growth ideas have surfaced."
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