Ed Johnson

You may not like it, but this is unbelievable forecasting performance

"Squint very hard—to the point of risking permanent eye damage—and you can almost see in Goonworld the realization of the Nineties dream of the internet as an incorporeal, judgment-free, gender-fluid sexual playground."

The team at Colossus is breaking something in magazine journalism in a fascinating way. Let me try to articulate. Even just a few years ago, if you wanted to read a beautifully written, exhaustively reported and actually interesting piece on someone shaping a corner of the world, you'd have to choose from the handful of journalistic outlets that had the ability to deliver them: on the production side, a stable of seasoned writers & editors who knew how to weave narrative, reportage and literary rigor into an engaging longform story, and on the distribution side a sizable audience that appreciated such work. Think: The New Yorker, Businessweek, NYT Mag, Atavist, Wired, The Atlantic, old Esquire, etc. The problem: Such outlets will produce a warts-and-all piece, diving deep into parts of a protagonist's journey that she may not want spotlighted. Journalists are pushed to find the "balance" or "tension" in the story, and oftentimes they force it by going negative/hyping up the bad. The subject that gave the outlet access might come to regret that decision. The alternative might be going to a friendly outlet, however, those tend to 1. Not have the skills to produce a sufficiently high-quality piece 2. Are dismissed as unserious by the audiences you're trying to reach – people can smell a puff piece from a mile away (Sequoia's SBF profile is an all-timer of the genre) So, in sum, your choices as a tech/business mogul used to be: trust a trad outlet with your story and pray they don't come in too hot, or have your message put out with a Pravda type rag and have it be ignored. Both bad options, so many subjects opted to stay on the sidelines and not talk at all. Along came Colossus: It is NOT a journalistic outlet – their mission is not "truth to power" etc. etc. (Zero judgment btw, just facts – I'm an admirer of what they're building). Their mission IS to create the most compelling archive of business & investing content, for an audience of B&I folks, a cozy audience of heavy-hitters. However, the brilliance of their approach is that their stuff feels like the real thing. Their pieces are often exquisitely crafted, deeply reported, produced with a clear understanding of what makes magazines so special. The punches will be pulled, but the reading pleasure isn't sacrificed. And they've hired real talent for it - EIC Jeremy Stern, whose engrossing new Josh Kushner piece is breaking the Internet today, wrote what I thought was the profile of the year in '24 for Tablet, of Anduril's Palmer Luckey. Thus Colossus becomes an incredibly compelling place for machers to trust with their stories. Why go to TNY/Atlantic etc. if you can get a similar level of quality w/o the downside reputational risk? This is content marketing, but done so beautifully that the intended audience won't care. Not a critique of the story, which I read in a single sitting and enjoyed heaps. Just wanted to share some observations of the model and how it's going to box out the trad outlets. Access will be restricted to those whose pens are kind.