The Scoop
Almost two decades after launching Business Insider, Henry Blodget wants to return to the things that brought him to media in the first place: writing and talking about what excites him in business and tech.
On August 18, Blodget is launching Solutions, an interview podcast. The show, produced in audio form and on YouTube in partnership with Vox Media, will center on a conversation with a guest or guests who are proposing solutions to the world’s greatest challenges in science, business, and society.
In an interview on Friday, the Business Insider founder and former CEO told Semafor that he spent years addicted to social media, where much of BI’s content is shared. But over time, he realized that much of what he was consuming was negative information and provocative opinions about the world’s problems, which often made him anxious and upset. Blodget said the realization prompted him to change his approach to his own posts on social media, as well as his journalism. With the new project, he is hoping to emphasize solutions to problems, rather than simply pointing out the problems themselves.
“The whole idea of this show is — we are all very aware of the problems in the world, and there is exceptional work being done every day by journalists and commentators and analysts on the depth of these problems,” he said. “There is also a huge group of people who are focusing their energy on trying to solve the problem, and often that is not rewarded on social or elsewhere.”
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While serving as CEO of Business Insider, Blodget felt that it was often counterproductive to write about topics he would’ve covered in the publication’s early years, telling Semafor his columns sometimes interfered with, or even contradicted, the work done by many in BI’s newsroom. But he missed exploring new ideas. After stepping down from Business Insider’s board at the end of 2024, Blodget didn’t take much time away from the media industry. Earlier this year, he launched Regenerator, a Substack focused on many of the same themes of his upcoming podcast.
In recent years, Blodget also became intrigued by the opportunity that podcasting gives journalists to go deep on complex topics. He recalled that in the early days of BI, the company operated under the assumption that viewers had short attention spans that could not follow lengthy video conversations. But he said he was encouraged by the recent success of conversational podcasts hosted by Lex Fridman, Joe Rogan, and others, which often stretch on uninterrupted for hours.
Asked whether the blog and the podcast were the first step toward building a bigger media company, Blodget told Semafor that he was open to the idea, but wanted to focus on getting back to the reason he started in media to begin with.
“I look at folks like Scott Galloway and Kara [Swisher], who have built this amazing franchise audience based on themselves. That’s a great way to go. And I look at publications like The Free Press and many others, and say, OK, that’s a great way to go too. So [I’m] very open to it, but I just wanted to start the same way. I started with what became Business Insider, which is me experimenting.”