Today marks three years since we launched Quartz.
We set out to create a new kind of business news outlet, to invest in high-quality journalism that was distinctly digital. We vowed to pursue new storytelling methods, respect your time, and maintain a global perspective. We recruited writers and editors who were as worldly as our readers. We built products that were elegant and easy to use.
Three years on, thanks to your readership, Quartz is thriving. We have served 580 million pages to 173 million visitors on qz.com, and this month the website will see its largest audience yet. Millions more people read our stories on apps like Apple News, Flipboard, SmartNews, and Google Newsstand. We’re publishing scores of original pieces every day with intelligent coverage of the global economy, from debunking the Singapore miracle to investigating pilot selfies.
You can also now get Quartz in increasingly varied and creative forms. Atlas, our new platform for data visualization, has served up 20 million charts since its launch just three months ago. Our video team, also begun this year, has already generated about 35 million views on platforms like Facebook and YouTube. The Daily Brief now has 156,000 extremely loyal subscribers, and seems to have inspired a renaissance in email newsletters. We recently launched a podcast called Actuality in partnership with Marketplace.
Our global spirit remains as strong as ever. We launched Quartz Africa this year, while Quartz India continued to grow. Our events have ranged from Seattle to New York to London to Nairobi. Next month, we’ll be in New Delhi for the latest installment of The Next Billion, our defining obsession with the next wave of mobile internet users. Our team of more than 70 full-time journalists speaks 25 languages and has reported from over 100 countries.
We continue to grow—more than doubling the Quartz staff over the past year alone—because you have responded so positively to our vision for an online publication covering the new global economy. Smart, unique journalism and beautiful, useful advertising are hard things to replicate, which keeps us confident in spite of many changes and angst in the broader media industry. The opportunity here is bigger than ever.
Looking back over the past three years, one constant is that readers crave stories that are original, thoughtful, and creative. When hiring journalists at Quartz, most of my focus is on their ideas. Can they rattle off stories that I’d be excited to read, that I’d be jealous if they appeared elsewhere? Do they exhibit a genuine curiosity about the world? Can they identify where real change is happening?
Being excited by change, curious about the world, full of ideas—our standards are especially high in these areas because we think they help define who you are as Quartz readers.
We believe Quartz has the potential to grow into even more of a leading global news brand in the years to come. But we view its creation as an ongoing process, and one that benefits directly from your knowledge. We hope you will continue to be in touch with tips, suggestions, and submissions. You can always reach our newsroom directly by emailing hi@qz.com. And if you’re not already signed up for the Daily Brief email, you should do that now.
Thank you for your support over the past three years. We are very grateful.
Best,
Kevin J. Delaney
Editor in chief
@kevinjdelaney