We will embrace rising power of individual journalism: Semafor co-founder

For readers, breaking news and opinion separately are important, said Smith

Why would anyone come up with a news start-up when news and journalism are under pressure globally? That, among other things, is what Justin Smith, co-founder of Semafor, answered in conversation with Vanita Kohli-Khandekar in Mumbai. Semafor, derived from semaphore, means a carrier of signal. And, it means that in 35 different languages. It plans to be a premium global news organisation that Smith and The New York Times ex-media columnist Ben Smith set up earlier this year. Edited excerpts:

Why Semafor, why now?

The whole project is a culmination of my years in media from the International Herald Tribune in Hong Kong in the nineties, The Economist (where he was head of strategy), The Week, Atlantic (where he co-founded Quartz) and Bloomberg Media (where Smith was CEO for eight years). In 1993, when I started, English language global news was very niche but it is no longer so. If you define the target audience as college-educated, English language people is now 200-250 million worldwide. About 80 million of them are in the Americas, 80 million in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and 40-50 million across Asia-Pacific. That is a big demographic change. Then layer on top of that the launch of Facebook and Twitter (2006), iPhone (2007) and WhatsApp (2009). It blows your mind to even contemplate the amount of transformation that has been compressed across the last 15 years in global news consumption. Who is serving this 200-million plus market that is more connected to the news cycle through smartphones and social media? And yet, the dominant English language news media was created in the nineteenth century. The New York Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post in the 1880s and The Economist in the 1840s. All the big global brands in text were created in the colonial era. They are considered the global news media but if you analyse their editorial product and business models, these are domestic news companies that are treating the international news market as an afterthought. The New York Times and The Washington Post have 90 per cent of their business in the US. And, 100 per cent of their brand reflects the US. CNN gets 95 per cent domestically.

BBC is the most global. These big incumbents from the nineteenth century are not organised or reflect the new reality of this global news market. That is the first reason for Semafor. The second is that readers have become disgusted by the impact of social media on news. The corruption of the news ecosystem with misinformation and algorithmic distortion forces bias and polarisation. Therefore, consumer trust levels in news media have plummeted. In the US, only 11 per cent and globally only 8 per cent of people trust news. This is down from 70-80 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s.

When, where and in what format is Semafor launching?

We launch in October with a suite of products for the global audience, say in India, which will be digital text and video. Then, we will have a very strong US edition and an Africa edition. Those are the three geographic areas we are starting with. We will then extend to the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

What will it look like editorially?

There are three things we are focused on. One, trust in the media has shifted from institutions to individuals. We would embrace the rising power of individual journalism and elevate the journalist to hero status. Two, news articles ask people to trust what they read, but readers can’t make out whether what they are reading is opinion or analysis. People end up having their own vetting service for journalism. So, we decided to reinvent the article. We created a structure which exposes the architecture of our journalism. For example if Alison Valley gets a scoop, we will call it The Scoop. The next section will be labelled Alison’s view. This is separating news and analysis and you also know it is Alison’s analysis. Then, there is a third section called Disagreement where Alison will work with the newsroom to find an outside source that has the most intelligent and opposite analysis or counter-analysis. The last part, View From, is the international perspective from Mumbai or Dubai or Brussels. This will be the base format for Semafor’s journalism. Since there is so much information overload, we will offer a daily newsletter, Semafor Flagship, which is a modern day digital newspaper.

Doesn’t good journalism imply that all this be offered anyway?

For readers, breaking news and opinion separately are important. Also, the international piece (View From) is a way of forcing a global perspective in anything we do. The fact is newsrooms do nothing for global perspective. What The New York Times offers is a US perspective. The idea is to offer a kaleidoscopic view from across ideological and geographical perspectives.

Semafor has raised $25 million from investors. What is the road to monetisation?

We should break even in the first 3-4 years. In 4-5 years, we should be looking at $100 million in revenue. For the first 12-24 months, we would make money from advertising and live events. From 18-24 months, we will be testing paywalls and going pay.

What is your India plan?

Within two years we should launch in India.