''Wirecutter'' (formerly known as ''The Wirecutter'') is a product
review website owned by
The New York Times Company
The New York Times Company is an American mass media corporation that publishes ''The New York Times'' and its associated publications such as ''The New York Times International Edition'' and other media properties. The New York Times Company's ...
. It was founded by
Brian Lam in 2011 and purchased by The New York Times Company in 2016 for about $30 million.
Approach and business model
The site focuses on writing detailed guides to different categories of consumer products which recommend just one or two best items in the category. It earns most of its revenue from
affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which Affiliate (commerce), affiliates receive a wiktionary:commission, commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to Outsourcing, ...
by including links to its recommendations. To prevent bias, the staff who write its reviews are not informed about what commissions, if any, the site receives for different products.
Due to affiliate revenue, the site is less reliant than other blogs and news sites on advertising revenue, although the ''Wirecutter'' site has displayed banner ads in the past.
''Wirecutter'' has partnered with other websites including
Engadget
Engadget ( ) is a technology news, reviews and analysis website offering daily coverage of gadgets, consumer electronics, video games, gaming hardware, apps, social media, streaming, AI, space, robotics, electric vehicles and other potentially ...
(as of 2015) to provide guest posts sponsored by the company. In 2015, Amazon tested a partnership with ''Wirecutter'' on a similar sponsored posts format on Amazon's site for recommendations. While ''Wirecutter'' does perform their own testing of products, they also draw on and cite other reviews by sites like Ravingtechnology, Topyten,
Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports (CR), formerly Consumers Union (CU), is an American nonprofit consumer organization dedicated to independent product testing, investigative journalism, consumer-oriented research, public education, and consumer advocacy.
Founded ...
,
Reviewed,
CNET, and
America's Test Kitchen
''America's Test Kitchen'' (originally ''America's Test Kitchen from Cook's Illustrated Magazine'') is a half-hour long American cooking show broadcast by public television stations and Create and distributed by American Public Television. Orig ...
, often using those reviews to filter a large range of products on the market down to a small number of candidates for testing.
History
Brian Lam founded the site in 2011 after leaving the editor-in-chief position at
Gizmodo
''Gizmodo'' () is a design, technology, science, and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton. ''Gizmodo'' also includes the sub-blogs ''io9'' and ''Earther'', which focus on pop ...
. It was originally part of ''
The Awl
''The Awl'' was a website about "news, ideas and obscure Internet minutiae of the day" based in New York City. Its motto was "Be Less Stupid."
History
Founded in April 2009 by David Cho and former ''Gawker'' editors Choire Sicha and Alex Balk ...
''. In the five years from its launch in 2011 to 2016, the company generated $150 million in revenue from affiliate programs with its merchant partners. A sibling site called ''The Sweethome'' was started in 2013 and focused on home goods while ''The Wirecutter'' itself focused on electronics and tools. After forming an editorial partnership with ''The New York Times'' in 2015, ''The Wirecutter'' was acquired by the ''Times'' in October 2016 for a reported $30 million.
[ Ben French spearheaded the acquisition, recalling "The first day I ever met rian Lam after spending an hour or two with him, I was like, 'We should buy you. I want to work with you.' For me, it was love at first sight." The ''Wirecutter'' and ''Sweethome'' were combined into a single site in 2017, a year after the ''Times'' acquisition.]
Lam announced he had hired Jacqui Cheng as editor-in-chief for ''The Wirecutter'' in December 2013. After the ''Times'' acquisition, David Perpich was appointed to President and General Manager of ''The Wirecutter'' in March 2017. When Cheng stepped down in September 2018, the staff had grown from under 10 to over 100 employees. Ben Frumin succeeded Cheng in December 2018. The Wirecutter Union was formed in 2019 with approximately 65 employees, affiliated with NewsGuild-CWA
The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933. In addition to improving wages and working conditions, its constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practic ...
of New York. By 2020, ''Wirecutter'' had approximately 150 employees, with the majority working remotely away from the headquarters in Long Island City
Long Island City (LIC) is a neighborhood within the New York City borough of Queens. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; Sunnyside to the east; and Newtown Creek, which separates Queens from Greenpoint, Brook ...
.
In August 2021, the ''New York Times'' imposed a metered paywall
A paywall is a method of restricting access to content (media), content, with a purchase or a subscription business model, paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their website ...
on the site, no longer depending solely on affiliate marketing commissions for revenue. Later that year, ''Wirecutter'' staff went on strike, timed to coincide with the busy Black Friday shopping season in late November. The reporting structure of ''Wirecutter'' under Perpich was largely independent from the rest of the ''Times'' and the two pay scales were significantly different; Perpich was described as "disappointed" at the decision to strike. The ''Wirecutter'' Union reached a three-year agreement with The New York Times Company in December, with immediate wage increases averaging per employee.[
]
Reception
''Wirecutter'' has been described as a competitor to Consumer Reports
Consumer Reports (CR), formerly Consumers Union (CU), is an American nonprofit consumer organization dedicated to independent product testing, investigative journalism, consumer-oriented research, public education, and consumer advocacy.
Founded ...
, from which it differs by its explicit recommendations of top picks, a younger readership (with average age between 41 and 53 as of 2018), and its acceptance of vendor-supplied test units. Similar recommendation websites that compete with ''Wirecutter'' include ''Best Products'' (Hearst Communications
Hearst Corporation, Hearst Holdings Inc. and Hearst Communications Inc. comprise an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate owned by the Hearst family and based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan in New York ...
, 2015), ''The Strategist'' ( ''New York'', 2016), ''BuzzFeed Reviews'' (BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet mass media, media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John Seward Johnson III, John S. Johnson III to ...
, 2018), and ''The Inventory'' (G/O Media
G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company that owns and operates the digital media outlets '' Kotaku'' and '' The Root''.
It was formed in 2019 after the private equity firm Great Hill Partners purchased two digital portfolios from ...
, 2018).
''Wirecutter'' defines the ''Wirecutter effect'' as a phenomenon "in which recommendations become so popular that they sell out".
References
Further reading
*
{{The New York Times
American review websites
Wirecutter
Internet properties established in 2011