Weekly Digest: Reuters expansion, Robinhood launching a media arm

Reuters will create 100 editorial jobs across the world thanks to an expansion of its partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group.

According to the announcement, the new positions added by the agency will be focused in four areas: financial markets, mergers and acquisitions, the energy transition, and data visualisation. The plan also includes doubling down on covering the Chinese and Indian markets.

The agreement will also bring forward Reuters’ plan to launch its consumer-facing paywall, which had previously been announced but delayed. However, a timeline for its launch hasn’t been specified. 

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Robinhood, a US-based trading platform, is launching a media arm called Sherwood and led by experienced journalist Joshua Topolsky, former chief editor of The Verge and Engadget.

As Axios notes, “the entity will build on the success of Robinhood’s popular daily markets newsletter, Snacks, and will serve as a branding and customer acquisition tool”. As of early last year, the email newsletter had 40 million subscribers and was claimed by Robinhood to be the most popular newsletter in the United States. 

Sherwood will be a separate entity, supported by Robinhood but aiming to make money independently, Axios reports. Topolsky, who will be responsible both for editorial coverage and for business development, plans to hire “dozens of employees” in 2023.

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Semafor, a US-based media startup launched last fall, was reported this week to have received a $10 million investment from Sam Bankman-Fried before its launch. Since the investment had been made, Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency exchange company FTX collapsed and its founder was accused of fraud by the US government.

Bankman-Fried’s investment in Semafor had been revealed by the company before, but its scale  – close to 40% of Semafor’s initial funding, the biggest outside investment – hadn’t been known until this week. The New York Times, which broke the news, reports that “Semafor is planning to buy out Mr. Bankman-Fried’s ownership while it explores raising new money”.

The New York Times’ reporting shows that Semafor is in a relatively good financial position as it “struck deals worth more than $2 million each with several advertisers before it began publishing” and plans make at least $15 million in revenue this year, exceeding its plans for ad revenue.

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