{"id":341112,"date":"2017-05-17T07:21:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T23:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1491784"},"modified":"2017-05-17T07:21:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T23:21:53","slug":"mike-allen-of-axios-people-want-sophisticated-explanations-not-long-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/mike-allen-of-axios-people-want-sophisticated-explanations-not-long-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Allen of Axios: People want sophisticated explanations, not long ones"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Mike Allen, the co-founder and executive editor of business, tech and politics\u00a0news site\u00a0Axios.com<\/a>, is spending a lot of time these days thinking about information today, and how best to deliver it.<\/p>\n

As the former chief political reporter of Politico, and now at Axios, he\u2019s among a set of journalists who\u00a0have helped to elevate the process of writing a newsletter to an art and a habit,\u00a0and an early morning one at that. (He wakes up to write these at a crazy early hour, 3am with NO ALARM CLOCK, and he says doesn\u2019t skip writing these even while on vacation, unless he has connectivity issues.)<\/p>\n

While at Politico, he wrote the\u00a0popular Playbook, which earned him the moniker,\u00a0\u201cThe Man The White House Wakes Up To.\u201d\u00a0Now, at Axios, he\u2019s hoping to spin that concept out further.<\/p>\n

Allen\u00a0himself writes the Axios AM, a bullet-pointed list of need-to-know items for the day, which sits among a longer list of newsletters<\/a> covering other topics. These form the backbone of Axios\u2019 content strategy, which might best be summed up as: short, informative and (ideally) exclusive and scoopy, and most of all avoiding \u201cthe Crap Trap.\u201d (Axios means \u201cworthy\u201d in Greek.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The source:\u00a0<\/strong>Allen appeared earlier today on the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, in a fireside chat with Anthony Ha. Alongside his observations on what form need-to-know information needs to take today, he also\u00a0talked about how, despite what seems like life in a chaos baked in hell,\u00a0Trump is supremely predictable: \u201cDonald Trump is being Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brevity is the soul of wit, and of news:<\/strong> \u201cWhen we push ourselves to explain something in a sentence or two, you have to really understand what you are working on,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have it all\u2026. People want sophisticated explanations, but those do not mean long explanations.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a startup, too:<\/strong> Axios announced\u00a0in September 2016<\/a> that it would be launching with $10 million in funding from a pretty illustrious set of media-savvy tech investors. They include\u00a0Lerer Hippeau Ventures (the VC firm that helped launch BuzzFeed and HuffPost),\u00a0Comcast Corp.\u2019s<\/span> NBC News,\u00a0Emerson Collective (a social justice group headed by Laurene Powell Jobs),\u00a0Greycroft Partners and Atlantic\/Quartz owners David and Katherine Bradley.<\/p>\n

Still, that\u2019s only $10 million, and although Axios has advertising and more monetization up its sleeve, growing can be pricey.\u00a0Are you raising more money, I asked? \u201cIt\u2019s only been 118 days,\u201d Allen fired\u00a0back to\u00a0me backstage. I\u2019ll take that as a no\/no comment.<\/p>\n

Why it matters<\/strong>: Media is dying, we\u2019ve all been told, and yet it sometimes feels like everywhere you turn, a new media company is starting up, with a new spin on how to bring us what we need to know, and what we might just like to know. Axios.com believes it\u2019s come up with the right formula\u00a0to successfully\u00a0make the leap from the burning platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Mike Allen, the co-founder and executive editor of business, tech and politics\u00a0news site\u00a0Axios.com, is spending a lot of time these days thinking about information today, and how best to deliver it. As the former chief political reporter of Politico, and now at Axios, he’s among a set of journalists who\u00a0have helped to elevate the process of writing a newsletter to an art and a… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

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