International Business Times

• 1. Introduction

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  International Business Times launched in late 2005 from the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, built by two men who had just moved to New York City with a single website and a plan to cover the world's business news differently. By 2014, the publication was claiming forty million unique visitors each month. That number placed it among the largest online news sources on the planet. But the path from a student idea to a global operation raises real questions: who built IBTimes, why did they build it the way they did, and what happened when the journalism started winning awards at the same moment the newsroom was shedding a third of its staff?

• 2. A Student's Global Bet

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  Etienne Uzac, a native of France, first conceived of a worldwide business news site while studying at the London School of Economics. His observation was specific: the strongest business newspapers of the time kept their focus tightly on the United States and Europe, leaving the rest of the world's economies underserved. That gap became his business model. Uzac recruited Johnathan Davis to join the venture. In late 2005, the two moved to New York City to get it running. Uzac took charge of business strategy while Davis coded the site and personally wrote the first articles published under the IBTimes name. The ibtimes.com domain went live in April 2006, initially offering a summary of news from around the globe. A dedicated Foreign Exchange portal followed in November 2007, giving traders around-the-clock Forex coverage. The early site would go through several revamps as the company adjusted to shifts in the online landscape, eventually landing on a design in 2017 meant to highlight its journalism and better serve advertisers.

• 3. Leadership and Acquisitions

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  In May 2012, IBTimes made a significant editorial hire: Jeffery Rothfeder, a former national news editor at Bloomberg, came on board as editor-in-chief. Davis moved up at the same time, shifting from executive editor to chief content officer. The following year, in 2013, the company bought Newsweek magazine from Barry Diller, taking over a struggling legacy title along with the newsweek.com domain, which IBT acquired from IAC/InterActiveCorp on the 4th of August, 2013. Peter S. Goodman, who had previously served as executive business editor and global news editor at The Huffington Post, became editor-in-chief in 2014. Goodman departed in 2016 and was followed by Dayan Candappa, the former deputy managing editor of Reuters, who stepped into the Editor-in-Chief role. Also in 2016, Dev Pragad was brought from London to serve as global CEO of both Newsweek and IBT's parent company. January 2017 brought the appointment of Alan Press to what the company described as a newly created, strategic role of President. In 2018, Newsweek was spun off as an independent entity jointly owned by Davis and Pragad.

• 4. Investigative Work and Awards

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  From 2012 onward, IBTimes began collecting recognition in competitive journalism awards, earning nominations and wins for categories including best investigative journalism, editor of the year, best video journalism, and best writer of the year. In 2015, the publication was nominated for a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism, specifically for its beat reporting on state pension corruption. That series of reports prompted New Jersey state government to open a formal pay-to-play investigation and to divest state holdings in a venture capital firm. The same reporting led San Francisco officials to delay a proposed three-billion-dollar investment in hedge funds. In 2016, IBT received four "Best in Business" awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the most of any publication that year. One winning piece, an international explainer titled "Lebanon's Refugee Economy," examined the economic and human dimensions of the crisis in Syria. Another investigation into fees charged to prisoners prompted a response from the FCC. A series on the business of marijuana took the Small Business Category. Goodman called those awards validation of the company's investment in original reporting and storytelling. In June 2017, Jason Murdock, who covers cybersecurity for IBTimes UK, won Digital Writer of the Year at the Drum Online Media Awards. Later that year, IBT's reporting on a last-minute revision to what would become the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 spread widely enough to draw responses from senators and lawmakers, and it won a SABEW Breaking News award for 2017.

• 5. Tensions in the Newsroom

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  Former journalists told The Guardian in 2014 that at times IBTimes operated more as a content farm than a source of quality journalism, demanding high-volume output from its reporters. At least two journalists were allegedly threatened with firing unless readership to their articles increased sharply. The pressure became more visible in 2016, when employees complained publicly about missed payroll, meager or nonexistent severance packages, and one-sided nondisclosure agreements. From March to July of that same year, IBT laid off an estimated thirty percent of its editorial staff. The tension between high-volume digital output and award-winning investigative work ran through the organization simultaneously, with the same year that produced the layoffs also producing the SABEW haul of four "Best in Business" awards.

• 6. Controversies and Connections

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  Reports in The Guardian and other outlets described links in IBT Media's early years to Olivet University, an evangelical institution founded by David Jang. According to those reports, some Olivet students assisted IBT Media with translation and editorial work. IBT representatives stated that the company operates independently and that its association with Olivet is limited to educational and professional collaborations. Both Uzac and Davis have acknowledged past academic and professional involvement with the university. Davis said that while he identifies with Christian values, he keeps a clear distinction between his personal faith and his professional work. A separate dispute touched on IBT's relationship to a Christian sect known as The Community, also led by David Jang. IBT stated that many reports about its connections to The Community are false or exaggerated. Christianity Today claimed in 2012 that it had obtained an email in which Davis wrote that he could not join a certain Jang-affiliated organization because his commission was, in his words, inherently covert. Davis denied the claim. The legal dimension of the Newsweek split added another chapter: a dispute initiated by IBT Media in 2022 over the terms of the separation from Newsweek was dismissed, with the decision upheld on appeal in 2023, and the matter was considered closed by 2024 due to the statute of limitations.