Stephen Downes

Quartz was great; I linked to a number of its articles over the years. Among other things, it covered tech, media and academia, and so was right in my wheelhouse. Then it added a paywall so I stopped linking to it, then it dropped the paywall but by then it was too late. Quartz the publication didn't fare so well as it went through a number of sales, finally landing in the hands of private equity, which stripped it of value and sold the shell. Ben Werdmuller remarks: "Quartz grew with an enormous amount of venture investment but couldn't realize the scale necessary to make good on it. This is the story of almost all venture-funded media." The same story will be true of educational media.