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MediaGuardian: Hugo Dixon on Breakingviews – and the FT

Judith Townend — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:10:49 +0000

In a lengthy interview with the Guardian, Hugo Dixon, founder of BreakingViews.com (the financial commentary site recently sold to Thomson Reuters) comments on how the FT offered less competition to his venture than it might have:

“The fact that the FT took its eye off its core constituency, in the early part of the decade, was a huge boon for us. We were just focusing on that. We had a single-minded focus.

“In many ways, they’ve clearly tried to copy us,” says Dixon. “Almost everything we do, they try to copy us. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Sunday Times: Breakingviews.com in ‘advanced talks’ with Thomson Reuters

Judith Townend — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:51:49 +0000

The Sunday Times reports that Hugo Dixon is in ‘advanced talks’ to sell Breakingviews.com to Thomson Reuters – for a reported £10 million.

Dixon, former Lex editor at the Financial Times, co-founded the online financial analysis site in 1999 and could receive £2.7 million if the deal goes through. The other founder, Jonathan Ford, left in 2007 and has no remaining shares, according to the Sunday Times.

Full story at this link…

(via paidContent:UK)Similar Posts:

Breakingviews teams up with China’s Caijing

Laura Oliver — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:52:00 +0000

Financial news website breakingviews.com has added another content partner in the guise of Chinese financial title, Caijing.

Caijing’s editors will select a daily column from the site’s output for re-publication from today, a press release from breakingviews.com said.

The site, which was founded in 1999, has already entered into syndication deals with the Telegraph, New York Times and Fortune.Similar Posts:

SIIA: Blogs are ‘print journalism pornography’, says Andrew Neil

Laura Oliver — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:35:01 +0000

The need for editors is greater now in the online age than ever, according to BBC broadcaster and all-round media mogul Andrew Neil.

Speaking at the SIIA Global Information Industry Summit, Neil said the internet had created a world in which the reader is ‘information rich, but quality poor’.

“What we need are trusted gatekeepers to decide what is accurate and what isn’t,” he said, adding that news requires ‘a good old-fashioned editorial process’ and a ‘trusted brand name’.

But this process cannot be replaced by blogs: “I will still enjoy them [blogs] as a form of entertainment or print journalism pornography.”

Neil went on to praise The Spectator’s online offering Coffee House, forgetting to mention that it’s billed as a blog:

Discussing Coffee House, Neil claimed the site attracts 200,000 unique users and 2 million page impressions a month. The site will soon account for 20 per cent of the Spectator’s ‘bottom line’, he added.

Blogs also came under scrutiny from Hugo Dixon, editor-in-chief of BreakingViews.com, who said that in terms of financial news trusted media brands are demanded by readers.

“There are some good things on blogs, but they don’t have the brand consistency of media brands. Brand matters, because financial professionals do not have the time to hunt: they need to no where someone’s coming from, the ethical basis, and does it have good access [to news and information]. I think very few blogs have good access.”

Dixon made a convincing case for the need for quality journalism online and how this can drive subscription-based revenue models and help editorial staff gain access to subjects and clients.

One of the blogs sporting ‘good things’ must be FT’s Alphaville – a site Dixon praised (though he never called it a blog) throughout the opening of his keynote speech, and which won a Webby award this year for the best business blog…Similar Posts: