The Scoop
Business Insider’s global editor-in-chief is stepping down as the company begins a search for his replacement.
In a meeting with the publication’s leadership Tuesday morning, Nicholas Carlson announced that he would leave his position as the top editor of the business-focused digital news outlet, and become an editor-at-large focused on longer-term projects.
In an internal memo first obtained by Semafor, Carlson thanked staff and leadership of Business Insider’s parent company Axel Springer.
But he also clarified that the move was not motivated by recent criticism of the publication, an allusion to Business Insider’s recent reporting on academic writings by Neri Oxman, which prompted lengthy online screeds and legal threats from her husband, billionaire businessman Bill Ackman.
“Every year I’ve been in this job we’ve published journalism that, though fair, has left very powerful people mad at us,” he wrote. “That’s a fact of journalism, and that’s never going away.”
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Carlson was one of the first employees at the outlet, and oversaw much of its growth and transformation into a general interest publication in the late 2010s. The publication changed its name to Insider, and built out large lifestyle and political reporting teams, hoping to capture a broader audience. But like many digital news outlets whose content was primarily distributed on social media, it faced challenges over the past several years as Facebook tweaked its algorithm away from news. In 2023, CEO Barbara Peng announced that the news organization was changing its name back to Business Insider, focusing on its roots as a tech and markets-focused publication.
Semafor first reported last month that Carlson was likely to leave the role later this year. Axel Springer stood by Carlson amid legal threats from Ackman over BI’s stories about parts of his wife’s academic writings that appeared to be lifted from other places. But as Semafor previously reported, the company’s CEO Mathias Döpfner privately considered firing Carlson during the intense online backlash from Ackman and his supporters online.
An Axel Springer spokesperson said that “Carlson’s leadership enabled Business Insider to become an award-winning newsroom that reaches hundreds of millions of readers and viewers monthly around the world.” But the company also noted that its renewed focus on business news would heavily influence the search for Carlson’s successor.
“We’re proud to see Business Insider’s renewed focus on what it does best: deeply reported, unafraid coverage of business, tech, and innovation, and we are excited for CEO Barbara Peng to lead the search for Business Insider’s next Editor in Chief,” the spokesperson said.
Correction: CEO Barbara Peng announced the outlet was changing it’s name back to Business Insider in 2023, not Henry Blodget in 2022.