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May 25, 2016, 10:51 a.m.
Business Models
LINK: denverite.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Laura Hazard Owen   |   May 25, 2016

Here’s a new stab at local news: A new media company founded by Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal; Kevin Ryan, the founder of Business Insider; and Jim Friedlich, a former Journal exec, is launching a line of city-specific news properties under the umbrella of a still-unnamed media company.

First up is Denver. Denverite will launch as an email newsletter in June. According to a release:

In addition to breaking news and telling stories worth sharing, Denverite will create resources that help explain the sometimes hidden or confusing systems and rules of the Mile High City and the state of Colorado, and will point to great reporting, writing and storytelling in the metro area, even if it didn’t appear in a Denverite product.

Denverite’s editor-in-chief is Dave Burdick, who was previously the deputy features editor at The Denver Post. “The mission of Denverite is to provide our subscribers, followers, and readers with the finite amount of information that really matters right now,” Burdick said in a statement.

The ultimate plan is to expand the model of aggregation, curation, and original reporting to cities across the U.S. Denverite, with eight to ten writers, will probably be in operation for almost a year before any expansion takes place, Ken Doctor reported in Politico. After beginning as an email newsletter, Denverite will expand to a website and responsive mobile site by the end of June. There will be no advertising for at least the first six months.

Denverite can perhaps be seen in the model of Billy Penn, the mobile-first Philadelphia news site. Billy Penn’s parent company, Spirited Media, plans to launch a second site called The Incline, focused on Pittsburgh, later this summer.

Photo of Denver by Al Case used under a Creative Commons license.

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