TheMarker

TheMarker is an Israeli economic media institution comprising a news website, a daily newspaper, a monthly magazine and, for a period, an online social network. Founded at the end of the 1990s, it did more than report on markets, companies and government policy. Through sustained reporting and investigation, it helped shape how Israelis discussed the cost of living, economic concentration, public accountability, security spending, infrastructure and opportunity.

Building an online newsroom

TheMarker was established in 1999 by journalists and entrepreneurs Guy Rolnik, Eytan Avriel and Ido Pollak, with the Haaretz Group and American investors. Its website became public in 2000 and was built as one of Israel's first independent online newsrooms. Approximately 30 journalists were recruited to create a system serving the website independently of Haaretz's existing business section.

The site covered the Israeli and global capital markets, high technology, advertising and media, real estate, employment, consumer affairs, law, transportation and automobiles. This range helped redefine economic journalism. The economy was presented not simply as a matter of stock prices and corporate results, but as a force affecting workers, families, businesses and public institutions.

In 2001, TheMarker acquired A-Online, a service providing real-time business and stock-market information, and integrated it into the site. Its early relationship with the American business-news website TheStreet.com also brought selected reporting about Israeli technology companies to audiences outside Israel. The partnership reflected the optimism of the early internet and technology boom, even though TheStreet.com later wrote off its investment after the dot-com bubble burst.

From website to national newspaper

In January 2005, the Haaretz Group adopted the online brand for its printed business coverage, relaunching the section as Haaretz TheMarker. The move was significant in Israeli media: a brand born online became the center of a print newspaper, while the website and newspaper developed an integrated content operation. At the beginning of 2008, the print edition also became available as a stand-alone daily, competing directly in Israel's economic newspaper market.

During its first years, the daily grew from roughly 50 pages to about 80. Its sections included news and opinion, high technology and communications, real estate and infrastructure, advertising and marketing, work and careers, law, consumer affairs, the global economy and financial markets. The Friday edition, Markerweek, adopted a more magazine-like character. This structure gave readers both specialist financial information and reporting on housing, employment, public services and the direction of the Israeli economy.

The website later adopted a mixed access model, with some articles open to all readers and others available to subscribers. That change reflected the wider transformation of journalism as print organizations sought sustainable digital models while maintaining professional reporting.

The monthly magazine and investigative journalism

TheMarker Magazine, founded in February 2001 and edited by Eytan Avriel, gave the brand a deeper investigative and analytical dimension. It examined business families, major investors, credit markets, government policy, the defense establishment, science, technology, transportation and climate. Annual lists such as Israel's 100 most influential people and 500 richest people attracted public attention and made economic power itself a subject of national discussion.

One of the magazine's notable investigations, published in July 2004, concerned the conduct of Finance Minister Avraham Hirchson. An indictment followed; Hirchson was convicted and imprisoned. The episode demonstrated how economic journalism can examine not only markets and policy, but also the use of public office and public money.

Through extensive coverage of economic concentration and the influence of major business families and financial groups, the magazine helped make the structure of Israel's economy a central public issue. Its reporting, together with the work of the website and daily newspaper, formed part of the public and professional context in which the government established the Committee for Increasing Competitiveness in the Economy in October 2010. The committee's work contributed to the background of the Law for Promotion of Competition and Reduction of Concentration, enacted at the end of 2013. The law was not the product of one publication alone, but TheMarker was among the most persistent media institutions bringing concentration and competition into public view.

During the financial crisis of 2008–2009, TheMarker Magazine closely examined demands by wealthy borrowers for debt write-offs and challenged the assumption that the public should automatically absorb private losses. Its coverage helped turn debt settlements and the distribution of financial risk among lenders, shareholders and the public into matters of broad civic concern. The magazine also reported extensively on Israel Defense Forces budgets, career-service pay and pensions, widening the security conversation beyond military operations to include the economic consequences of the defense system.

Connecting economics with Israeli life

TheMarker repeatedly linked economic data to everyday experience. Coverage of traffic congestion and infrastructure, employment, consumer affairs, housing, Israeli science and the climate crisis presented the economy as the foundation of shared social life. Reporting on public investigations, relations between wealth and government, the media, and civilian and commercial uses of technological knowledge associated with Unit 8200 further expanded the boundaries of economic journalism.

Press researcher Dr. Rafi Mann said that TheMarker helped lay public groundwork for Israel's 2011 tent protest. The observation captures the importance of sustained coverage: by repeatedly explaining living costs, concentration and inequality, a news organization can help establish the language through which citizens understand their circumstances and demand change. TheMarker's influence therefore extended beyond readership figures to the concepts and questions through which Israelis discussed their economy.

TheMarker Café and online community

In February 2007, TheMarker launched TheMarker Café, a social network and blogging platform initially aimed at managers and professionals. Edited by Adam Shuv, it used Web 2.0 technology and allowed users to create personal pages, write blogs, establish communities and forums, share photographs and video, and respond to one another's material. Marketing professionals, technology managers, lawyers and accountants were invited to contribute, while content moderation sought to protect reliability and prevent offensive material.

After about a year, the platform was no longer actively managed apart from moderation. As Facebook and other social networks grew, its audience declined, and in July 2020 TheMarker announced that the service would close and its content would be deleted. Although the experiment did not endure, it belonged to an important early stage in Israel's transition from one-way news publishing to online communities in which readers could also write, organize and share.

A journalistic and economic legacy

TheMarker created an economic media brand that made the structure of the economy a central subject of Israeli public life. By combining a website, daily newspaper, magazine and business events, it connected breaking news, investigations, professional information, interpretation and civic debate. Its sustained attention to concentration, debt, defense budgets, infrastructure and the relationship between wealth and government changed the way many Israelis understood the forces shaping their lives.

Why TheMarker belongs in Moreshet

TheMarker merits inclusion in the Moreshet archive because it documents a decisive chapter in Israeli social and media history: the transformation of economic reporting from a specialized field into a public conversation about work, housing, competition, government responsibility and shared prosperity. It built one of Israel's earliest online newsrooms, turned an internet brand into a daily newspaper, invested in investigations that influenced the national agenda and created an early platform for professional online communities.

TheMarker's legacy is not merely a collection of articles. It lies in the questions it taught readers to ask: Who holds economic power? How are decisions made? Who bears their costs? What would make the economy more competitive and fair? For these reasons, and because its history illuminates the relationship between journalism, economic life and Israeli democracy, TheMarker has a meaningful place on Moreshet.com as a record of an institution that helped shape Israel's public understanding of society and the economy.