Quartz, The New “digitally native news outlet” Is a Giant Step Forward For Content Management

Publishers, news orgs, and design mavens are paying close attention to the launch of Quartz, the new business news site, or as they call it, a “digitally native news outlet” from Atlantic Media. The reason for much of the attention is QZ.com’s primary target is tablets and smartphones, the holy grail of the new publishing world. While this new publication has a new focus on that new audience is drawing all of that attention for being so, well, new, it’s using what has become relatively old platform, WordPress.

That’s right, the same service that allows anyone (including this site) to be a publisher in just a few clicks. Started in 2003 as an Open Source project that has grown into the “largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world.”

As Nieman Journalism Lab, The Poynter Institute, AllThingsDigital.com, and many others point out, the platform is simple and furthers the goal of Responsive Design; when “content layout is formatted on the fly across multiple devices.” This is another voice that is speaking up for divorcing content from form, using content management systems that can make your content available to everyone.

The Daily, the iPad-only news app that was supposed to save the journalism industry, has been a disappointment to most. Whether it is because of their subscription-only model, or their content, they haven’t been a success in just about anyone’s eyes. Quartz, is a “free” site that will employ an interesting new business model the Ken Doctor explains in great detail in his story at Niemanlab.org.

There is a lot riding on this site from a publishing standpoint. Will it be a success, and if so, what will define its success? Traffic? Profit? ROI? In any case, it is already a success for content management, and WordPress.