Forget breaking news – Unherd.com plans to dive deeper

A new London-based online news service, headed up by former Times Columnist, Tim Montgomerie, will not chase breaking news because it believes “the latest things are rarely the most important”.

Unherd.com, will instead allow it’s journalists to spend more time “to dive deeply into their subject areas” and “challenge out-of-date, incorrect and even dangerous thinking”.

Speaking about the soon-to-be-launched news site Montgomerie told journalists: “Unherd won’t be following hourly, daily or even weekly developments closely. We’ll be using the skills of the journalists we employ to understand the five big topics we aim to focus upon.

“We will largely be looking upstream at what is coming at us all – rather than at what is happening yesterday and today.”

Montgomerie insists that the website will not focus on UK, US or any other nation’s specific news but instead allow journalists to cover global movements in politics, economics, technology, religion and the media.

According to Montgomerie, Unherd.com has the financial backing to see the fledging news site develop over the next four years while focusing on its core activities. Investors in the site include Paul Marshall, the founder of one of Europe’s largest hedge fund groups and Theodore Agnew, a highly successful businessman, philanthropist and Conservative Party donor.

Despite such high-profile backers, Montgomerie is however keen to highlight the site will be built on solid business principals, telling journalists that the team behind the site has identified “more than a dozen funding streams”. Unherd.com hopes to be completely self-funding by its fifth year of operation.

Unherd.com will employ the equivalent of 12 to 15 full-time journalists when it launches.

Despite its vow to “dive deep” into the news, its recruitment drive isn’t looking for longwinded hacks. Alongside the standard application process, aspiring Unherd.com journalists must submit “a one paragraph statement of no more than 150 words identifying the most dangerous consensus that you think exists in the world today.”