(1) A brief twitterflurry on the *business* of market commentary, something near and dear to the @EpsilonTheory heart. wsj.com/articles/bloom…
(2) When Big Media makes a business out of multi-author commentary (Gadfly had 19 columnists + 10 editors, god only knows how many people are at Heard on the Street), it's ALWAYS pablum. Why? For the same reason that a portfolio with 30 equity ETFs is ALWAYS pablum.
(3) It wasn't always this way. Pre-internet, the "Citizen Kane model" of buying a lot of expensive columnists and editors could work, at least from a biz perspective.
(4) Post-internet, though, the only viable biz model of Big Media is distribution. Period, full stop. They are the gramophone, not the music. 
(5) So what biz model works for market commentary today? Well, if elitism a la Gadfly fails, you can try populism. Enter Zerohedge, Business Insider and the like.
(6) The problem with the populist biz model is that you quickly descend into fringe lunacy (ZH) or click-bait hell (BI). Either way, you end up with zero equity value, and have to get lucky in finding a greater fool like Axel Springer to buy you.
(7) Is there a populist biz model for market commentary that works (enough eyeballs for ad-supported revs and enough merit to create equity value)? I think so. It's snarky commentary. It's MST3K for market news.
(8) But what I'm really interested in creating is a viable biz model for market commentary that's neither pablum nor fringe nor click-bait nor snark. That's the @EpsilonTheory dream. Still trying to figure it out ...
