Business Site Elevates an Editor

Business Insider, the online news franchise started by Henry Blodget nearly six years ago, is appointing an executive editor for the first time as it grapples with a good problem: growth.

The editor is Joe Weisenthal, the site’s lead financial blogger, whose frantic pace â€" he gets up most days around 4 a.m. and asks on Twitter, “What’d I miss” â€" has distinguished him from others on the beat and won him many fans on Wall Street.

Mr. Weisenthal’s nervous energy and obvious love of his subject matter is a personification of Business Insider, which Mr. Blodget says will turn a meaningful profit for the first time this quarter, a few quarters earlier than he expected.

Mr. Blodget will remain the Web site’s editor in chief. “But we have grown to the point where we need an executive editor to share the authority and responsibility for the entire site, especially because I often need to focus on other areas of the business,” Mr. Blodget said Sunday. Mr. Weisenthal will reportto him.

Business Insider was founded in July 2007 as the technology-focused Silicon Alley Insider, and later expanded into several other subject areas, including finance, politics and sports. It’s known for a snappy mix of aggregated articles, slide shows, commentaries and scoops of its own, all presented with headlines that draw interest. Speed is a priority.

A number of venture capitalists have invested a total of $13.6 million in Business Insider to date. The site briefly turned a profit in 2010, but it amounted to $2,127 â€" enough to “barely â€" just barely â€" buy us a MacBook Pro,” Mr. Blodget said in a blog post in 2011. The profit this quarter will be more meaningful, he said, though he declined to share the exact figures.

Mr. Blodget said the site now produces articles 18 hours a day, and wants to increase to 24 hours a day. It has a conferences business ! and a subscription service, called BI Intelligence. “We also now have about 50 journalists in the newsroom and hundreds of contributors, and we expect to continue to expand. We need to build an editorial infrastructure that can manage that,” he said.

This need led to the executive editor post for Mr. Weisenthal, who had been a deputy editor along with three others. Mr. Weisenthal, in an e-mail on Sunday from Puerto Rico, where he was on a rare vacation, described the new position as an extension of what he already does, editing articles and helping to set the editorial direction of the site.

“I really have a blast figuring out digital media, and the challenge of seeing what works and what doesn’t in this medium,” he said. “The new position should give me more of a perch to play around in that realm.”

The other deputies, Nicholas Carlson, Gus Lubin and Jim Edwards, and the managing editor Jessica Liebman will remain in their positions, Mr. Blodget said.

As executive editr, Mr. Weisenthal said he expects he will write a bit less, but will continue to wake up even before many traders do. “And I can’t imagine slowing down on Twitter,” he added.

Dog Expert\'s Dos and Don\'ts for Pet Owners in China

PowWow/National Geographic Wild Cesar Millan, the star of the “Dog Whisperer” television series, is planning an extensive celebrity branding campaign in China.

It has not always been easy for dogs in China. They have been beaten, eaten and, once, were banned in Beijing.

But China’s rapidly growing pet canine population will soon have a new media hero, in the person ofCesar Millan.

Mr. Millan, known here as the star of the “Dog Whisperer” television series, and soon to be seen in a new show, “Leader of the Pack,” is planning what his advisers describe as one of the first all-out celebrity branding campaigns in China.

It will include broadcasting the new series (which will have its debut here Tuesday on the Nat Geo Wild channel), translations of his books, personal appearances, a new Web site, and, of course, lots of e-commerce, with products like personally branded leashes, collars and treats.

But, most of all, said Mr. Millan, it is a rare chance to shape attitudes in a place where pet dogs are only now coming into their own.

“This is the time for China,” said Mr. Millan, who spoke of his campaign as an educational effort to teach the Chinese “how not to make mistakes other countries have made” with their dogs. Those mistakes, he explained, involve common confusion between loving a dog, and kno! wing what love really means to a dog.

“If he never made a nickel, Cesar would still want to do this,” said Mr. Millan’s partner in the venture, the China media consultant Rob Cain. But, Mr. Cain added, “He’s not opposed to making money.”

Mr. Cain, who said he and Mr. Millan are seeking additional investors, figures 30 million to 60 million pet dogs live in China. Many of their owners presumably are waiting to go upscale as followers of the world-renowned dog behaviorist and buyers of his products.

The “Dog Whisperer” program is already familiar in China, Mr. Cain noted. But Mr. Millan, he said, is poised to attract an emerging generation of Chinese dog lovers with the coordinated media effort and a tour, which will probably occur early next year. Mr. Millan said he was not daunted by the social and government restrictions that can still make the Chinese media business a challenge for outsiders.

“There are rules, values an limitations,” he said. But, he added: “I love that. That’s what I teach.”