Bootstrapping MT Newswires

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Brooks McFeely has quietly built MT Newswires into one of the fastest growing and most trusted financial news organizations in the world.

And he bootstrapped it from a newsletter started as a side hustle towards the end of his time in the Navy 25 years ago.

MT provides news for the websites of most of the largest financial firms in North America including Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, JPMorgan and Bank of America.

The company’s 200 reporters publish 2,000 articles a day. It is currently growing faster than 20 percent a year, fueled by an expansion in Europe and Asia.

How MT is accomplishing this at a time when so many news organizations are wailing and gnashing their teeth is worth a closer look.

The Philadelphia Inquirer last week published the first major profile of Brooks since he launched the company. The article by Joseph DiStefano highlighted:

--A focus on actionable news. Articles tend to be short, factual summaries of corporate press releases, SEC filings, Wall Street analyst reports and global coverage of major asset classes, including crypto.

--Selling bulk subscription licenses. The company’s B2B strategy sells directly to businesses that need content. Those deals are hard to land, but more consistent than relying on advertising.

--Keeping costs low. The company started out with reporters working remotely, avoiding the large expenses of offices in major cities. Brooks said turnover is low.

--Maintaining a Scrappy Culture. MT has worked to maintain an independent, scrappy culture from the days when it started with the name Midnight Trader.

I met Brooks perhaps a decade ago when I was the Global Head of News Product at Bloomberg. We did a deal to include MT news on the professional terminal.

The fact that big-league investors who buy Bloomberg systems found the content valuable should tell you that the company was on to something.

MT Newswires has a lower profile than Dow Jones, Reuters, and Bloomberg in part because it's newer but also because the articles appear behind paywalls.

The insight Brooks had was that a growing number of companies wanted content for their websites. And they wanted to “host” that content, not encourage people to click away.

Fidelity is an example. Clients logging in to Fidelity’s website to see news on companies in their portfolios rely on content from MT.

Keith Lanigan, MT’s executive editor, told the Philly Inquirer: “Licensing our news across most of the major retail and institutional trading houses” has served the company well.

It’s turned out to be a bigger market than expected, particularly overseas.

MT sticks to breaking news on companies and markets and doesn’t do the type of CEO profiles or enterprise reporting produced by other media companies.

Nevertheless, given the dire state of much of the media, MT offers lessons about how to provide information clients need while keeping costs low.

Check out the full article in this link. 

It has more details and even quotes from me!

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

SOHO, NYC: Amazing how in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in the world there remain unrenovated, unused properties.

RULES FOR STUDENTS: Love this list from the Merce Cunningham studio, especially No. 7. “The only rule is work. If you work, it will lead to something.”

SWOOSH: The backstory behind the swoosh is kind of wonderful.

SUBHEADINGS: I love to discover that things we do as editors -- like putting in subheads — are done for a good reason.

SOCIAL MEDIA QUESTIONS: Every time I write, people send me get emails and direct messages and even tweets with more suggestions. It’s the magic of social media and it’s appreciated.