TechCrunch+'s founding editor about its launch to complement TechCrunch's ads and events revenue and its failure due to issues with finding business reporters
January was a brutal month for journalists, globally from death and locally from layoffs. The latter hit home this week … Threads: @firstadopter . Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to . X: @mjburnsy , @rezendi , @dannycrichton , @kevinsxu , @logtecheric , @wolfejosh , @jryedinak , @jasonlk , and @logtecheric . LinkedIn: Danny Crichton Threads: Tae Kim / @firstadopter : Good read: “media company that cannot convince enough readers to pay for it has a very limited time horizon in today's world. Subscription offers a path to true sustainability” https://www.luxcapital.com/... Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Insightful read on the failure of TechCrunch+. — The fundamental challenge of creating tech journalism worth paying for is that anyone who knows the tech well enough to write well about it can get a better job in tech than being a journalist. — I found the analysis of TechCrunch's core business to be insightful as well. … X: Matt Burns / @mjburnsy : @Techmeme @DannyCrichton Danny is spot on here, but failed to mention TC+'s *horrible* tech stack and Yahoo's unwillingness to invest in the service. The TC+ subscriber-only newsletter launched last month because that was the first time the TC+ team had the ability to email only subs. Think about that. Jon Evans / @rezendi : Excellent piece by @DannyCrichton on the trials and travails of our joint alma mater TechCrunch. If TC—which was, as Danny notes, in its heyday a site where one could reasonably expect ~100K views on a post—can't make it, you have to wonder who can. https://www.luxcapital.com/... Danny Crichton / @dannycrichton : I am saddened that @TechCrunchPlus, where I was founding editor, is being shuttered. Here's a reflection on the past and present of @TechCrunch's economics and business model within the maelstrom of the media hellscape: https://www.luxcapital.com/... Kevin Xu / @kevinsxu : Great analysis and meditation on the media business. As a one-time contributor to TC+, this saddens me. As a big reader of all types of journalism, this frustrates me. As a firm believer that a healthy, sustainable fourth estate is crucial to an open society, this worries me. Eric Johnson / @logtecheric : @DannyCrichton ... Sorry one more quote from this banger of a piece: “Passion plus perspective plus precision is asking a lot of one person or even a small band of reporters. Even if you can find that talent, then the challenge becomes one of compensation.” Josh Wolfe / @wolfejosh : Excellent by Lux's @DannyCrichton on malestrom of media hellscape I hope MANY talented writers + journalists will ping Danny to spend time w/our growing Lux team (riskgaming, freelancing, coauthoring, working w/Lux co's)—to not just tell stories but to WRITE THE FUTURE with Lux John Yedinak / @jryedinak : Must read for anyone thinking about launching paid subs to compliment a healthy advertising business. In depth analysis that people will pay for requires deep industry expertise and context - very few have it. Many can crank out rewritten press releases. Two different... @jasonlk : @DannyCrichton ... too many somehow miss this -> “The unique economics for TechCrunch around advertising and events funded the organization well, but they have an obvious flaw: they don't really scale” Eric Johnson / @logtecheric : @DannyCrichton ... This is, by a fair distance, the best thing I've read about why media is struggling right now. Just detail and insight after detail and insight. “A media company that cannot convince enough readers to pay for it has a very limited time horizon in today's world.” LinkedIn: Danny Crichton : I am saddened that TechCrunch+, where I was founding editor, is being shuttered. Here's a reflection on the past and present of TechCrunch's economics …
Context & Ripple Effects
TechCrunch+ was created as a reader-revenue complement to a business otherwise reliant on advertising and events, both described as difficult to scale indefinitely. The subsequent plan to wind down the paid product and cut staff makes the founding editor’s account useful as an explanation of a specific execution constraint: building a subscription proposition required a dependable supply of specialized business reporting.
The episode sits alongside a broader media split: some journalists have used smaller, direct-audience offerings to build livelihoods, as in the rise of creator-led paid media services, while institutionally run subscriptions must sustain a staffed editorial operation at scale.
First-order effects
- TechCrunch+’s closure removes a paid-revenue complement for TechCrunch and concentrates its near-term business around the advertising and events model it was meant to supplement.
- The reported difficulty recruiting qualified business reporters identifies specialized editorial capacity—not simply the decision to charge readers—as a binding constraint on the product.
Second-order effects
- TechCrunch and comparable publishers must weigh whether scarce specialist reporters generate more value in a standalone paid product or in coverage that supports their broader audience, advertising, and event businesses.
- The outcome strengthens the relative appeal of lower-overhead direct-to-reader models for individual journalists, while making publisher-run subscription launches more accountable to staffing depth and retention.
Third-order effects
- If specialist reporting remains hard to staff, paid news products may increasingly separate into scaled publishers with deep beats and smaller expert-led offerings, leaving mid-sized general-interest subscription bets under pressure.
- The larger test for digital media is whether subscription revenue can fund differentiated reporting continuously, rather than merely diversify revenue at launch.
The trend: Digital-media companies are moving from subscription experimentation toward a stricter test of whether their editorial specialization can support durable reader revenue.