The Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free

Can I request a change of title? This is essentially an ad for The Information, a news service. I get it's a clever play on words from the famous internet phrase "information wants to be free" but many people clicking on it probably don't know that. It is pretty close to clickbait.

EDIT: not that it isn't interesting. It would just be beneficial to readers to know what they are getting into.

Sidenote: Stewart Brand's full quote is more complex: "Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive...That tension will not go away."

Summary: The Information is a subscription-only news publication covering Silicon Valley and the tech business. It has 10,000 subscribers and is a must-read for tech elites.

Its founder, Jessica Lessin, argues that ad revenue promotes high-volume sensationalist noise, whereas subscription revenue promotes deep journalism. Lessin is running an accelerator for subscription-only science and local news: https://www.theinformation.com/announcing-the-information-ac...

Others argue that B2B publications are easiest to run subscription-only. The Information provides exclusive business value such as earnings calls and org charts.

The meta lesson of this article is an example of decent content marketing.

Back in the day, we had Esther Dyson's Release 1.0, which similarly had a limited but very influential audience who paid for the rather pricey subscription, and was published in an archaic medium (email is the new paper, I guess).

They also have a podcast which covers their biggest stories of the week with interviews of reporters who wrote them. It is free and not very long, so if you like podcasts I would check it out.

Don't want to give away email to anybody so is the first part of the article the gist of things?

So much capital movement in VC circles, don't be surprised that the gossip about it sells too.