Former Times media editor Dan Sabbagh has joined the Guardian today to head up its media and technology coverage.
Sabbagh resigned after five years as Times media editor in January this year and promptly set up an independent media news blog called Beehive City with other former Times staffers Adam Sherwin and Tim Glanfield.
He reveals on that blog today that its mix of music, TV, publishing and other media news and views has helped it reach more than 300,000 unique users a month.
Publishing a graphic showing the speed of Beehive’s traffic growth, Sabbagh writes:
“Anybody in the serious media business of established brands should be a little bit scared of that graph. It takes little time at all to create a new media news site – the only initial barrier to entry is to be listed on Google News.
“Once you’re there, you find that readers are not fussy, barely distinguishing between ‘proper’ newspapers and other news sites – they just follow the links that interest them to get the news/info they want.”
Although he is moving on, Sabbagh says that Beehive will continue, in part, through what he describes as an “arm’s length partnership” with The Guardian.
Apparently The Guardian plans to work in partership with a variety of other media websites to “add to and amplify” its existing online reporting.
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