He comes from social network 140 Proof. Before that, he was director of sales at Gawker Media for three-and-a half years and started the sale team for CollegeHumor.com’s Connected Ventures.

Cascio joins fellow Gawker alum Chris Batty, the Quartz launch publisher who was publisher and VP of marketing at Gawker Media. The rest of the top business launch team includes Taylor Gray, VP of global marketing; Kevin Delaney, the editor-in-chief hired away from the Wall Street Journal leads editorial.

They all report to Justin Smith, the president of Atlantic Media — who is, as he puts it, “acting as president of Quartz, running the business myself in a hands-on way.” That includes talking to me as Smith and his family travel through the Grand Canyon on vacation.

Smith’s direct involvement matters for a couple of very important reasons:

• It is, as he calls it, “by far the largest investment in a new brand” and the “most ambitious new effort” for Atlantic Media. He won’t put a price tag on it but with plans for a 25-person team and global scope, we’re talking millions.
• A veteran of The Economist and the International Herald-Tribune with stints in Hong Kong, London and Paris, Smith brings a large dose of the experience needed to launch a global publishing endeavor.

Gray, who was at Huffington Post (before and after AOL) in marketing and social media, is the top business-side hire with that kind of international experience. Gray’s resume includes Global Head of Brand, Thomson Reuters; Associate Publisher, Global Marketing Director, Time and president of the Time Magazine Interactive Group.

Cascio and Batty’s experience is domestic but they bring a different strength, explains Smith: “Innovation and disruption are also a very important priority and that’s where those guys come in.” To Smith, Cascio adds another element as the son of a global IBM executive; Quartz is targeting the 2012-and-beyond version of that exec.

Cascio is the client lead. Batty is building the digital advertising for Cascio to sell — designing digital advertising products, including branded content. “We want to represent digital advertising innovation in a really strong way,” says Smith.

He says Quartz will be announcing some launch sponsors in the near future and that at least one, possibly more, will be non-U.S. But Smith isn’t planning any international-based business hires until the fourth quarter at the earliest. He’s not adding anyone in biz dev either; that will be done at the corporate level.

Committed to free for near future

Why start free? With much of Quartz’s potential competitive set, including the IHT, WSJ, Financial Times and others, relying on paid content to a large extent on subscription revenue, sticking with advertising gives Quartz a chance to stand out. “Our strategy at the outset is to produce incredibly high-quality free products and attract a large engaged global audience through premium advertising at first. Likely over time, we’ll be experimenting with some premium content models.”

Staying power

Quartz is based in New York. Atlantic Media’s DC headquarters are across the Potomac from the offices of Allbritton Communications, a competitor to AM’s National Journal, The Hotline and other DC-power-based efforts through Politico. It offers examples of a major investment, Politico, that has been profitable and continues to scale, along with an example of investing substantially in a major project and quickly pulling the plug. That would be TBD, the local news effort that unwound rapidly when Robert Allbritton decided the investment wasn’t working.

Does Atlantic Media Chairman David Bradley have the staying power to see Quartz through? Smith insists so:

“It’s a really, really serious long-term venture. We’re building this for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years.”

He offers Bradley’s patience with The Atlantic as an example, owning it for a decade before it made a profit in 2010. “Now the atlantic is on tack to double its profits this year. He’s shown his patience and commitment to quality journalists and premium, and to digital business models.”

Where’s the opportunity?

Going global adds to the opportunity but also the complications and challenges. Where does Smith see the potential in a crowded space? The elevator pitch, of sorts: “to create a new brand that is designed from the outset for the way people consume information now and in the future.”

The more detailed version: “We’re really creating a mobile-first platform, almost a tablet-first platform without the friction of a paid model and with the power of some social content distribution — a rising tide and amazing phenomenon for quality content publishers. I think there’s an historic opportunity to create one of the largest brands in the marketplace.”

To most easily be available across platforms and devices, Quartz will emphasize HTML5 and browser-based access over apps.

“It’s also a great opportunity to introduce fresh thinking on the digital advertising side and you can expect us to do that,” he added. “That’s why we’ve hired people like Chris and Michael to lead the charge.” What that will mean in practice isn’t quite clear from the outside yet.

The hiring is far from over. While his direct reports are on board, the layer just below is taking shape. Expect more revenue hires in the next few weeks and the first woman to join the group. Atlantic Media has a good record on gender but the current Quartz list on business and editorial is all male: “Between a compressed time frame, looking for the best talent, a specialized new initiative, with all those factors, it’s frustrating we can’t line up a perfect gender balance.”

Editorial chief Delaney, who has substantial international experience as well, was the first to join, has made some key hires in editorial — Gideon Lichfield, formerly of The Economist, as global news editor and Zach Seward as a senior editor. More hires to come on that side, too.

Delaney, a star at the Wall Street Journal, left as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal (NSDQ: NWS) Online to lead the new venture, which will be based in New York rather than Atlantic’s Washington DC headquarters.
The premise/promise: a “digital-first brand” — to “provide high-quality content and services to business executives navigating the increasingly complex global economy.” Offices are planned in Asia and Europe. (The announcement, posted below, comes just ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos.)

The last time Atlantic went in this direction, the effort was headed by Slate founder Michael Kinsley, who is a brilliant editor but lacked a business background. The launch was delayed multiple times before Kinsley left and Atlantic finally admitted in mid-2010 that it was suspending efforts.

Atlantic Media was formed by David Bradley in 1999 after the National Journal Group owner acquired the venerable Atlantic. The magazine’s digital expansion and financial turnaround under Bradley and Smith has attracted considerable attention.

They’ve been searching for ways to expand. This is a potentially lucrative area and tackling it without the costs of print attached could pay off; the lack of print doesn’t make it an inexpensive start-up proposition, though.

I’m not sure I see a stunning need for another business leadership publication but I look forward to being proven wrong.

———————-

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 19, 2011 – Atlantic Media Company President Justin B. Smith announced today that Kevin J. Delaney has joined the company as editor-in-chief of a new global business brand. The new digital-first brand will provide high-quality content and services to business executives navigating the increasingly complex global economy. It will be located in New York, with offices opening soon in Asia and Europe.

Delaney comes to Atlantic Media from The Wall Street Journal, where he served as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online. He was responsible for its editorial content and direction amid a period of rapid growth and successful expansion to new platforms such as the iPad. Prior to that post, he spent a decade as a reporter and senior special writer for the Journal, covering the Internet and other topics from the Paris and San Francisco bureaus.

The new business brand will be the first global venture launched by the Atlantic Media Company since its chairman, David Bradley, established the Washington-based firm 15 years ago.

“Atlantic Media Company has devoted the last several years to re-inventing our core businesses – The Atlantic, National Journal, and Government Executive – and transforming them into digital-first organizations. We are proud of our success,” said Smith. “We are now preparing for our most important new launch since The Atlantic Monthly in 1857 – the creation of a new digital-first global brand to serve the professional leadership class around the world. Kevin Delaney is a superstar – a brilliant journalist, digital strategist, and global thinker. We are thrilled to have him at the helm of this new global venture.”

Delaney began his career at Dow Jones & Co. in 1996, working as a producer for Wall Street Journal television projects before moving to report for SmartMoney, and then for The Wall Street Journal.

“This is a great moment to create a new digital service for a global readership and provide readers with news and real insights at the pace of the Web,” said Delaney. “Given its online and journalistic accomplishments, Atlantic Media is an excellent home for such an effort, and I’m proud to join.”

The new global business brand is scheduled to launch later this year.

He says the company plans to introduce paid services on Reuters.com this year, predicts that media M&A activity will pick up again by the end of the year, and even talks about how cannabilization can be a helpful spur for companies. See highlights of the interview below.

Full uncut Q&A

– Reuters.com: Wenig says the company will add “paid services” on top of its news site this year. The site, he says, is getting 30 million unique users a month. As for cannibalization of its other businesses, Wenig says the company would rather have cannibalization come from within its company than from others.

– Consolidation: Obviously, merger activity has fallen off since the Thomson-Reuters deal, but, Wenig predicts merger activity will come back in the sector. “We’re a b-to-b company but marriage of content and distribution has been critical,” he says, adding that others will want to do the same. “Reach and original content production can sit together. I would not be surprised at seeing mergers and acquisitions coming back.” Wenig says the company is still integrating its own big merger so won’t be making “massive acquisitions” of its own, but expect smaller deals — like its purchase of Breakingviews — instead.

– Breakingviews acquisition: “People want ideas,” he says, adding that ThomsonReuters had already been developing a commentary service of its own prior to the acquisition. “In essence we doubled down.” Denig says ThomsonReuters added 150 journalists last year.

– Syndication: Wenig says the company will soon begin to syndicate third-party content and make it available to its customers. “When we talk to clients they say that’s what we need,” he says. As part of that, Wenig says the company will also likely syndicate some local content (although it has no plans to produce local content of its own).

– Thomson Reuters’ labor issues: “We’re not cutting either staff or salaries,” Wenig says, referring to the ongoing labor negotiations which spurred a protest outside of the Times Center today. He says the company is thinking about structuring compensation in order to “play to win.”

Follow our livestream here.

Joining us are:

» Hilary Schneider, EVP, Yahoo Americas interviewed by yours truly on topics including the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium and Yahoo’s growth as an original content provider.

» Devin Wenig, CEO, Thomson Reuters Markets, who last spoke at one of our conferences as Reuters COO before the merger, will be interviewed by Kevin Delaney, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal Online. Questions for Wenig are sure to cover the mix of subscriptions that power Thomson Reuters and the strategy behind Reuters.com, including the expansion into opinion and the acquisition of BreakingViews.

» Amanda Richman, EVP & Managing Director, Digital, MediaVest USA interviewed by Jim Spanfeller, President & CEO, Spanfeller Group, former president & CEO of Forbes.com, and chairman emeritus of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Many of the models being discussed Friday are meant to supplement. But how do paywalls affect ad dollars? How much does traffic matter versus targeting?

All this and an unusual opportunity for a group interview with The New York Times Company top brass about plans to meter NYTimes.com and the company’s digital future:
» Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman and Publisher
» Janet L. Robinson, President and CEO
» Martin Nisenholtz, SVP, Digital Operations

As is traditional at our conferences, attendees are encouraged to participate in all sessions — not just listen.

The full paidContent 2010 agenda is here.

Register today to be part of the conversation in person — and feel free to leave ideas or possible questions in the comments here.

Special thanks to our paidContent 2010 sponsors: Platinum: Oracle; Gold: Rubicon Project, Gigya, RR Donnelley and Lunch: The New York Times