Online Journalism News

The next online business magazine for women: its editor-in-chief interviewed

Posted: 01/12/08 By: Judith Townend
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TheNextWomen.com, a new online magazine for women has launched. Journalism.co.uk dropped its editor-in-chief, Linde Wolters (pictured left) some questions.

What is it?
[Linde Wolters] TheNextWomen is an international online business magazine for female internet heroes: women who are (future) founders, CEOs and VCs of internet companies. We write about who these women are, what they do and where they are going.

We also bring daily news from all over the world, company and start-up profiles, lifestyle features and gadget reviews. We also have a strong offline presence, as we speak at conferences and report on and organise events, such as the one on December 3, in which female internet heroes will take the stage.

Why now?
Simone Brummelhuis, the founder of TheNextWomen (pictured right) came up with the idea when she attended a web conference and realised there was a severe lack of female speakers. She vowed to make a list of women in the web industry, but then realised that there was much more to be said about these women.

What's different about the site from other things out there?
We are the only online magazine bringing international business news about the internet industry. There are obviously a lot of sites like TechCrunch and Mashable, but they have predominantly male audiences. Also, we have a strong focus on the women that are shaping the industry and are making the news, rather than the companies they work for or the technology that drives their business.

What kind of web technology are you experimenting with?
We use Twitter a lot for networking, to keep in touch, to follow other web women and to let our followers know about new articles. We have a Linkedin group where women can connect and share information.

We also work with tools to spread our news across the internet. You can sign up to the news feed and add our stories to sites like Stumbleupon and Delicious.

Is it designed with journalists in mind?
It was designed with its users in mind, be that journalists or others. But, we always link to the people, sites and companies we write about and we almost always mention the source of our news. There are also a few journalists writing for us: Petra Kroon and Ruth Oei.

What are your next plans for the development of the site?
We are currently working on the design of the magazine and we are hoping to have that finished in the coming months, but that is still a work in progress.

We are also working on further developing our job forum, as well as making our database of female internet heroes accessible to our readers. Finally, we have readers all over the world, so we're working on further developing our international angle on news.

It's a difficult time financially for any journalistic enterprise: how do you intend to ride this out?
As with many others, we feel the crunch. We are in a crucial stage in which we need sponsorship or advertising to develop all the new plans and ideas we have, and that proves difficult.

We're trying to provide quality content that will eventually convince people that we really are unique in what we do. We try to keep our costs to a minimum and think of alternative ways - that users value - to get revenue through the site.

Got a story? Email our news team: Laura Oliver; Judith Townend or telephone +44 (0)1273 384290. You can also follow us on Twitter: @journalismnews / @LauraOliver / @JTownend.