TheWrap Turns 8 With a Mission That’s More Critical Than Ever

TheWrap, which leaped into a world ruled by Gawker (now gone) with just five staffers, is now a thriving company of 50 incredible journalists and business staffers

thewrap 8th birthday

Eight years ago today, TheWrap launched into the digital news universe with more hope than certainty.

Twitter was an infant, Facebook still hadn’t monetized, MySpace had barely faded into the background and Netflix was still mainly a postal DVD service.

And TheWrap leaped into a world ruled by Gawker (now gone) and Deadline (now long without founder Nikki Finke) with five staffers, a shaky content management system and determination to bring solid journalistic values to the web.

I’m happy to report that today we are a thriving company of 50 incredible journalists and business staffers driving essential news reporting on movies and television, politics and culture, tech and media business to a monthly audience of 9 million readers on the site and 35 million across all our channels.

We’ve won multiple awards, including for our photography, investigative journalism and commentary. 

We are publishing 12 beautiful print magazines a year, including our latest CollegeWrap ranking the top film and business schools in the country.

We have built a thriving and fast-growing events department, anchored by our signature Grill business conference and debuting the new BE Conference in March in Austin, Texas, to support the careers of millennial women in media, entertainment and technology.

We continue to grow a high-quality branded content department, producing video in our studio and working with network partners to bring new insights into the beating heart of their programming.

All of those things make for a humming, multiplatform media organization that has, I am very proud to say, become a financial success while earning the trust of our high-value readership. In the treacherous world of modern media, that is no small feat.

We are also incredibly proud to watch the growth of the young journalists who have learned and trained at TheWrap, many of them now mainstays of our newsroom.

This past year has seen TheWrap’s coverage expand significantly into the political arena as the presidential race intersected with culture and entertainment in ways never seen before.

Now, with a Trump presidency and the ongoing uncertainty in media, TheWrap is even more committed to professional journalism and our core mission to speak truth to power.

While covering the business of entertainment and media is always our core focus, we believe that holding firm to our standards of truth-telling, fact-checking and fair-minded news judgement is more essential than ever. In Hollywood as anywhere else, these principles are the bedrock of who we are, and why we are excited to greet the next eight years at TheWrap.

Onward and Upward!

P.S. Here’s a look back with admittedly cheesy gaze at our earlier iterations:

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