Nothing about that article surprises me regarding G/O but there is one point that Zach makes about his transaction that he is wrong about:

"Thanks to G/O's stubborn insistence that it only wanted Quartz's assets and not the corporate entity"...

this is not stubborn it's quite common and is absolutely the right thing to do for many companies interested in another business. If they buy your entity (stock transaction) it comes with all the legal liability.

Zach probably doesn't understand how much more likely his deal was to close as an asset purchase rather than a stock purchase. A stock purchase comes with lots more diligence and legalese. If they are buying your stock they are buying all your baggage and potential legal matters, it requires a lot more work including a laundry list of representations by the seller. G/O did everyone a favor by sticking to an asset purchase and getting the deal done. that's where the positives end it seems.

Quartz wasn't "destroyed" by cynicism; it collapsed due to its own financial unsustainability.

Investors didn’t kill Quartz—they stopped subsidizing losses once it was clear Quartz couldn't become self-sufficient.

The "cynical" narrative obscures Quartz’s fundamental flaw: lack of a viable business model.

Calling Quartz a victim overlooks that it repeatedly failed commercially, despite many chances and significant investment.

Ultimately, Quartz’s fate wasn't about cynicism, but about investors deciding to stop throwing money into a losing bet.

> it. In the subject line of his email announcing the deal, he spelled our name "Quarts," and that set the tone for the level of care in what he had bought.

This little detail seems to sum up so much about this kind of acquisition.

Zach nails it. He is the reason why I was involved briefly at the start and for where I am today.

It was my first time leading a product team. We tried a lot of things that seemed strange at the time; no homepage, no app, native ads (done well imho), a scrolling stream instead of pages. Some of that broke. Some of it worked. A lot of it stuck around.

RIP Quartz.

The "Roshamon Effect" always kicks in when people share their personal perspectives about time working at a turbulent organization, but even so, I was surprised that this piece made no mention of Quartz's founding editor-in-chief and co-CEO, Kevin Delaney.

I'd overlapped with Kevin during a different period, and he was always a fountain of fascinating ideas. At Quartz, I though he showed great skill in championing expertise in niche areas, under the banner "Our Obsessions." He (or his team) were uniquely bold online in the way they let memorable photos carry more of the weight.

Once Kevin left in 2019, at least from my reader's perspective, all the air went out of the balloon