Exclusive Interview: Rising Star Aaron Task Molds Yahoo Finance’s Future as Editor-in-Chief

on a larger career track while also helping to create something at Yahoo Finance where there is a tremendous opportunity to build a new team that gets exposed to a big audience.

Wall St. Cheat Sheet: So, what types of things are you and your team doing to make sure people to start their morning at Yahoo Finance?

Aaron: Great question. First and foremost, Yahoo Finance is already a first stop for a lot of folks. So, we’re trying to create the understanding that a lot of this great stuff you are reading is being produced by Yahoo itself, and we’re not just an aggregator of other people’s content. Aggregating good content is still part of what we do for sure and a big part of what we’re going to do moving forward, but original content will play an increasing role in our offering to readers.

For example, our daily goal is to create three to five stories where we can add value and analysis. At the Daily Ticker and Breakout, our sister program, we say, “These are the stories where we think we have an edge, and we can bring unique analysis to our readers.” Now, we’re trying to take that model beyond video.

Currently, people perceive Yahoo Finance as a one-stop-shop to get all their financial news information. In addition to that, I’m going to get them great original reporting and content from our Yahoo Finance editorial team.

We’re hiring some great people. We recently brought on Michael Santoli from Barron’s. Michael is very well known and respected on Wall Street. This sends a signal to our users and other journalists that Yahoo Finance is also a great destination for original content.

Wall St. Cheat Sheet: Yahoo Finance serves such a large audience. How do you please novice investors, home gamers who are hobbyists – what I consider intermediate level investors —  as well as professional investors?

Aaron: We are definitely trying to reach as many different segments and as broad an audience as possible. You are right, at Yahoo Finance we do have all of those groupings of investors that you describe, and I think you described them very well.

If you look at our blog The Exchange, you will see a mix of more hardcore investing stories — for the advanced retail, institutional, or sophisticated Wall Street audience — all the way to stories geared for a broader audience.

So, again, we have to deliver content for the core investing audience and also try to broaden our reach to more of the mainstream consumer audience. For example, we are creating a lot more personal finance stories. In fact, we have a relatively new video program called Just Explain It geared toward…