Publishers are investing in more crypto reporters
The week the cryptocurrency market crashed in mid-June, Fortune sent Jeff Roberts an offer to become its crypto editor and oversee building a team of reporters.
Those circumstances led Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell to pause and sit internally with the company’s CFO and CEO before sending Roberts the offer, to discuss whether it still made sense to invest in a crypto team, she said.
“Are people going to think we’re crazy for launching our crypto vertical right now when we’re in the middle of crypto winter? But this was actually our dedication. We’re putting a flag in the ground,” Shontell said. “We think it’s a great time to launching an initiative that we believe will be a long-term play.”
The recent volatility and volatility in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain may explain why a number of publishers are hiring reporters to cover the space this summer. In addition to Fortune, Bloomberg, Forbes, Gizmodo and Money are growing their dedicated blockchain and crypto teams.
“When things go down, it’s even more important to have good credible, rigorous, comprehensive coverage of these things,” said Stacy-Marie Ishmael, who was named Bloomberg’s managing editor for crypto last September.
It’s a lesson she said she learned from covering the financial crisis in 2008. “When markets go down … that’s when people really need better information, better news, better data and better reporting. Bear markets are a great time to help people find out what’s going on,” Ishmael said.
Bloomberg
Nearly a year after she became the first person hired for Bloomberg’s dedicated crypto team, Ishmael has added more than a dozen people to join her. Two more reporters will start next month.
Bloomberg’s crypto coverage ranges from content on the Bloomberg Terminal subscription service, stories on Bloomberg.com, a twice-weekly newsletter and a daily podcast.
A big focus of Bloomberg’s coverage is on regulation, and how it will affect consumers, investors and institutions, Ishmael said. “One of the biggest stories in 2008 was regulation and how to think differently about banks. We’re seeing something similar in crypto right now,” she said.
Forbes
Forbes hired two reporters this summer to support Forbes Digital Assets, a hub launched earlier this year to house original content and research on the crypto market, as well as to aggregate crypto content written by Forbes staff and contributors across other beats, Forbes staff editor Michael Del Castillo said in an email. It now has six dedicated staff, including senior editors, researchers and reporters.
“We are exploring ways we can add to this team further,” he said. “I think in the early years of crypto reporting, the trade publications were leading the way. Mainstream publications weren’t as focused on this. What’s happening now is that major media players are realizing that crypto and digital assets aren’t going away, and they’re building newsrooms to last .”
Fortune
Fortune plans to officially debut its crypto vertical in mid-September. Roberts has two reporters on the team and will add two more next week.
When she joined Fortune as a senior editor in October, Shontell had four areas of coverage she wanted to focus on: technology, finance and investing, leadership—and crypto. Fortune’s last three cover stories featured founders in the Web3 and cryptocurrency space, including Katie Haun (founder of Haun Ventures), CZ Zhao (Binance founder), and Sam Bankman-Fried (who founded FTX).
“There is so much investment in the space happening, from new players to VC funds to big banks. We see a lot of action there. So I think it doesn’t make sense not to cover it in the business world. We truly believe that blockchain technology will do a lot for all industries going forward, so we want to be at the forefront of covering that,” said Shontell.
As crypto becomes “more mainstream,” Fortune’s financial reporters spend about a third of their time writing about the space, Roberts said.
Gizmodo
Gizmodo has a vacancy for its first full-time blockchain reporter, part of editor-in-chief David Ewalt’s plan to bolster the publication’s emerging technology coverage. So far, the beat has been covered by Gizmodo’s “general staff,” or those whose beats are closest to the news, such as reporters covering security, privacy or online communities, Ewalt said.
“It used to be that someone’s beat included blockchain. We’re at the point now where we’re like: we need a person to cover blockchain technology full-time,” Ewalt said. “These technologies are maturing now, and people are looking at blockchain technology in different ways — it’s going to be used in all kinds of different businesses.”
Money
Money has an open job posting for a cryptocurrency and fintech editor. It will be the publication’s first full-time employee for this beat. Currently, Money has two journalists who cover crypto in addition to their reporting on other investment areas.
Crypto has been one of Money’s “most widely read” areas of coverage over the past year, according to Mike Ayers, editor-in-chief of Money. He declined to share specific history statistics.
“What was considered by many to be a frontier area of money years ago, it is clear that crypto is here to stay,” Ayers said in an email. “Crypto adds another option for the average investor to diversify, and we want to provide that information daily,” he added.
