Quartz is a business-focused English-language international news organization, it launched from New York City in 2012, and is owned by Japanese business media company Uzabase. It operates editions globally, outside of the United States and Japan, including in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Africa, and India. The Quartz website and newsletters began as free digital news publications with no paywalls nor registration requirements. In 2018, it launched a paid membership product; in 2019, a paywall limited users to read 5 articles per month. Quartz targets high-earning readers, calling itself a "digitally native news outlet for business people in the new global economy". Sixty percent of its readers access the site via mobile devices, and nearly half of its readers are outside the United States. In August 2017, Quartzs website saw more than 22 million unique visitors. More than 700,000 people subscribe to its roster of email newsletters, which includes its flagship Daily Brief. According to AdAge, Quartz made around $30 million in revenue in 2016, and employed 175 people. The same year, Harvard's Nieman Lab described Quartz as "among the fastest-growing and most closely watched digital news sites". In 2017, revenue decreased to $27.6 million as advertising shrank. Uzabase purchased the organization for between $75 and $110 million.
History
According to a press release, the name Quartz was chosen for reasons related to its branding and the unusual combination of two infrequently used letters, q and z, in the title. On September 24, 2012, Quartz launched its website, designed to deliver content primarily to mobile and tablet users. Its founding team members were from news organizations including Bloomberg, The Economist, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. According to its website, Quartz's team reports in 115 countries and speaks 19 languages. The publication was initially led by Kevin Delaney, a former managing director of WSJ.com, Zach Seward, a former WSJ social media editor, and Gideon Lichfield, a global news editor from The Economist, among other editors. Quartzs main office is located in New York. It also has correspondents and staff reporters based in Hong Kong, India, London, Los Angeles, Thailand, Washington, DC, and elsewhere. According to Mashable, Quartz surpassed the United States web traffic of The Economist in 2013, and was closing in on that of the Financial Times. In 2014, Quartz expanded into India, launching Quartz India. In 2015, it launched Quartz Africa. In 2015, it launched Atlas, a chart-building platform. The publication has since launched Quartz at Work, a vertical that focuses on careers and the workplace, and Quartzy, a culture and lifestyle vertical. In July 2018, Japanese company Uzabase acquired Quartz from Atlantic Media. In October 2019, co-CEO and editor in chief Kevin Delaney, stepped down from his position. Zach Seward, the company's second employee, will be the company's new chief executive officer. That same month Apple removed the Quartz app from its Chinese App Store, as part of the Great Firewall, for reporting on the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests.
Content
In traditional newspaper "beats", news is divided into sections such as domestic, business and finance, and world economy. However, Quartz is structured around a collection of phenomena or "obsessions". Quartzglobal news editor Gideon Lichfield wrote that instead of using a fixed beats structure, its newsroom is structured around a collection of phenomena or patterns, trends, and seismic shifts that shape the world its readers live in. That structure, according to Lichfield, allows the organization to follow larger phenomena and adapt to pattern changes more quickly. Quartz extensively uses charts, created through their Atlas tool. The tool is also now used by many media organizations, including CNBC, FiveThirtyEight, NBC News, New Hampshire Public Radio, NPR, The New Yorker, The Press-Enterprise, CEOWORLD magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
