Publishers Battle for the C-Suite

When the digital news start-up Semafor began in 2022, its founders talked about reaching a vast global audience of 200 million college-educated, English-speaking people.But their latest push is aimed at just a tiny — albeit moneyed — sliver of that: top executives.The company said Thursday that it would start an invitation-only newsletter for chief executives, The CEO Signal, in January.It will be free but available only to the leaders of companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue.Semafor’s newest project is the latest in a series of moves among media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Axios and Fortune, which are battling for attention inside the C-suite.Despite a crowded marketplace, each sees an opportunity for its newsletters and events to cater to the highest echelon of corporate leaders and to tap into a lucrative world of sponsorships and subscriptions.

New sources of revenue have become increasingly important for many publications in the face of a tough digital advertising market and faltering social media traffic.“It truly is an example of the reversal of this 20-year trend in media of prioritizing scale,” said Justin Smith, the chief executive and a co-founder of Semafor.He added, “We’re really not talking about small business or midsize business but the C.E.O.s of the biggest companies in the world, which is a micromarket.”Mr.

Smith said he had realized shortly after Semafor began that its journalists and articles were “tilting our whole model, at least in the initial phase of Semafor’s existence, toward a very, very clear audience segment, which I would call the global leadership class.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscribe...