Mic (media company)

Mic
Available in English
Founded 2011 (2011) (as PolicyMic)[1]
Headquarters New York City, New York, U.S.
Founder(s) Chris Altchek
Jake Horowitz
Slogan(s) "Rethink the World."
Website Official website
Alexa rank Decrease 3,655 (July 2017)[2]
Registration Optional
Current status Active

Mic is an American media company that caters to millennials.[3][4] The company reaches 19 million unique monthly visitors[5] and has a higher composition of 18- to 34-year-old readers than any other millennial-focused news site, including BuzzFeed and Vice.[6] Mic received early attention for its on-the-ground coverage during the revolution in Tunisia;[7][8] The Hollywood Reporter remarked that Mic features "stories that intelligently cover serious issues important to young people".[9]

History

Mic was founded in 2011 as PolicyMic by Chris Altchek and Jake Horowitz, two high school friends from New York.[7] Jim Clark, an investor and the founder of Netscape, has said that Altchek and Horowitz "remind me of my younger self".[5]

In 2014, PolicyMic announced they would re-brand their organization to target millennials, and renamed themselves as "Mic".[10]According to The New York Observer at the time, Mic had not made a profit and "is in the increasingly rare habit of actually paying each one of its contributors".[11] In March 2016, Mic acquired Hyper, as well as the developer, AntiHero.[12]

As of April 2017, the company has raised $52 million[13] in funding from investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lerer Ventures, Advancit Capital, Red Swan Ventures, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation,[14] Time Warner Investments, Kyu Collective and You & Mr Jones.[13] The company has not disclosed its valuation,[5] though The Wall Street Journal reported in April 2017 that it was “in the range of the ‘mid hundreds of millions’ of dollars.”[13]

Content

Mic features eight different sections: News, Policy, World, Arts, Music, Science, Connections, and Identities.[15] Forbes wrote that Mic is "closer than any of its competitors to finding the promised land for new media companies, a middle ground between deeply reported stories and listicles".[7]

In 2015, Mic launched "MicCheck", an iPhone app with a "curated stream of stories, from both Mic and other news sites".[16] Mic's news director, Jared Keller, was fired in February 2015 after Gawker found various levels of plagiarism in 20 different passages of his work.[17]

In April 2017, Mic announced nine additional content sections: Slay, focused on women’s issues; Payoff, focused on personal finance; Hype, focused on pop-culture; Multiplayer, focused on video games; Out of Office, focused on food and travel; Navigating Trump’s America, focused on politics; Strut, focused on style and beauty; The Future is Now, focused on technology; and The Movement, focused on social justice.[18]

People

Contributors to the site have included Senator Rand Paul,[19] former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,[20] Senator Kirsten Gillibrand[21] and radio host Daisy Rosario.[22] In December 2013, the White House worked with Mic on what was called an "Open Mic" competition to "make health care work for our generation".[23][24][25] Advisors to the company include David Shipley, executive editor of Bloomberg View and former op-ed editor at The New York Times, and Jacob Lewis, the former managing editor of The New Yorker.[26] Allison Goldberg, senior vice president of Time Warner Investments, joined Mic’s board of directors in April 2017.[13]

Revenue

Mic generates revenue through advertising known as "branded content". Digiday.com reported in November 2014 that "brands like Microsoft, Cole Haan, Cadillac and most recently GE have all tapped Mic in the last few months in the hopes of using its millennial expertise to reach the site's audience of educated 20-somethings".[27]

References

  1. ↑ "PolicyMic.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools". WHOIS. Retrieved 2016-07-05.
  2. ↑ "mic.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  3. ↑ "Mic's plans to become a millennial media powerhouse". Fortune.
  4. ↑ "Mic: Media company for millennials". Fox5NY.com.
  5. 1 2 3 Stelter, Brian (April 28, 2014). "Another $10 million in funding for PolicyMic, a startup with shades of BuzzFeed and Upworthy". CNNMoney. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  6. ↑ Moses, Lucia (September 11, 2014). "Which millennial news sites are really attracting millennials?". Digiday.com. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 Brown, Abram (May 28, 2014). "The Media Startup Getting 20-Year-Olds To Talk About More Than Cat Pictures". Forbes. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  8. ↑ Dietz, David (January 19, 2011). "Snapshot of a New Tunisia: An Uneasy, But Hopeful Calm". PolicyMic. Retrieved January 19, 2015.
  9. ↑ Lewis, Hilary (April 17, 2014). "The Next Buzzfeed? 5 Hot New Websites". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  10. ↑ "'Mic' Drop: PolicyMic Changes Its Name, Revamps Layout". Retrieved 2015-09-09.
  11. ↑ Smith, Jack, IV (April 29, 2014). "PolicyMic Raises $10 Million To Keep Chasing The Millennial News Audience". The New York Observer. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  12. ↑ "Mic Acquires Video App Hyper". AdWeek. March 8, 2016. Retrieved March 9, 2016.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Shields, Mike (2017-04-07). "Digital Publisher Mic Raises $21 Million in Series C Round". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
  14. ↑ Ha, Anthony (October 15, 2013). "PolicyMic Raises $3M, Betting That Millennials Want Substantive News and Commentary". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  15. ↑ "Mic [homepage]". Mic. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  16. ↑ Sterne, Peter (January 6, 2014). "Mic releases 'MicCheck' mobile app". Capital New York. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
  17. ↑ Barr, Jeremy (February 12, 2015). "Mic fires news director after plagiarism investigation". Capital New York. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
  18. ↑ Shields, Mike (2017-03-30). "Mic Is Rolling Out Nine New Digital Content Brands". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
  19. ↑ Paul, Rand (March 13, 2013). "I Filibustered to Defend Millennials". PolicyMic. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  20. ↑ Rice, Condoleezza (October 3, 2011). "America Tries its Best". PolicyMic. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  21. ↑ Gillibrand, Kirsten (April 30, 2013). "Ending the Epidemic of Sexual Assault in the Military". IdentityMic. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  22. ↑ "Daisy Rosario". Futuro Media Group. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  23. ↑ Bhuiyan, Johana (December 4, 2013). "White House taps PolicyMic to engage millennials on A.C.A.". Capital New York. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  24. ↑ Horowitz, Jake (December 12, 2013). "Here's What Millennials Think Obama Should Do to Make Health Care Better for Our Generation". PolicyMic. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  25. ↑ OpenMic Editors (March 31, 2014). "The White House Responds to PolicyMic's Health Care Open Mic". PolicyMic. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
  26. ↑ Bilton, Ricardo (February 7, 2014). "Can PolicyMic become the voice of the millennials?". Digiday.com. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  27. ↑ Bilton, Ricardo (November 25, 2014). "Inside Mic's millennial native ads pitch to brands". Digiday.com. Retrieved March 11, 2015.
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