The financial journalist-as-brand seems to have already come and gone, with a few exceptions, Matt Levine at Bloomberg, Kara Swisher at recode and Izabella Kaminska at the FT are headliners that can bring in the crowd (+cognoscenti?) but even in the latter case, under Izabella and Dan McCrum, Alphaville seems to be even more of an ensemble than it already was.
Anyhoo, here's Vanity Fair's thinking:
Axios is hiring Felix Salmon and Courtenay Brown to spearhead its foray into coverage of the public markets.
Since it launched in early 2017, Axios has had a clear vision of its identity. After witnessing the historic success of reporter Mike Allen’s Politico Playbook, the company sought to hire uniquely wired reporters who could communicate direct, brief news and insights to an obsessive, busy audience—a post-narrative form that they termed “smart brevity.” Almost instantly, the plan worked. Allen successfully reprised and renewed his newsletter into the highly successful Axios A.M., while simultaneously helping to transform a young reporter named Jonathan Swan into a scoop machine with a newsletter of his own, Sneak Peek. Dan Primack, the obsessive cataloguer of private equity and venture funding, left behind his Term Sheet newsletter at Fortune to start Pro Rata. Ina Fried and Sara Fischer were hired to oversee newsletters on technology and media trends, respectively.Previously on Felix:
By late 2017, Axios had added to its initial $10 million fund-raising round with an additional haul of $20 million—backers from both rounds included Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau, NBC Universal, Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective, and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo. At the time, the company said it would use the extra dough for a major expansion of its newsroom, which has grown to about 50 journalists since the company’s debut. The latest beneficiary of this hiring spree, I can reveal, is Felix Salmon, the longtime financial columnist and inveterate provocateur. Salmon’s musings on Wall Street, money, and media have made him a hot get for past employers ranging from Condé Nast Portfolio, to Reuters, to Fusion, where he was reportedly being generously compensated before he resigned, rather cryptically, at the beginning of the year, as Fusion Media Group was beginning to implode.Most recently, Salmon has been hosting Slate’s Money podcast, a gig he’ll maintain as he launches a Sunday newsletter in the style of Swan’s Sneak Peek. The new tip sheet will be called Axios Edge, with “a focus on market trends, business, and economics,” as a spokesperson put it to me. With Axios Edge, the company is signaling an expansion of its coverage of markets and finance, an effort that also will include CNBC alumna Courtenay Brown, another fresh recruit....MORE
Catfishin': Creating Felix Salmon and the What, Why and How He Got Paid What He Got Paid
Reuters' Felix Salmon is the Columbia Journalism Review’s New Peter G. Peterson Fellow
Felix Salmon Reviews Martin Wolf's "The Shifts and Shocks"
Tart, bordering on acidic.
And from a 2010 post:
...For those who don't follow this stuff [he means people who have a life -ed] there was a dust-up between Felix and Henry a couple months ago.*
*Felix: "Kicked out of finance, and into journalism"
Henry: "Felix Salmon: Henry Blodget Should Be Banned From The Industry"
Felix: "Disclosing journalists’ pasts"
New York Magazine: "Financial Bloggers Felix Salmon and Henry Blodget Have a Fight, Make Up"
