Job: publisher, Mail Online
Age: 47
Industry: digital media
2011 ranking: 46
Martin Clarke is the UK's most powerful digital journalist. "Is he the future of all of us?" joked one of our panel. Attracting more than 6.1 million daily unique browsers in July, Mail Online has long been the most popular newspaper site – or guilty pleasure, depending how you want to see it – in the UK. And it vies with the New York Times for the title of the leading online English-language newspaper. No wonder Clarke is a climber.
If that's not enough, the website became profitable for the first time in June after achieving a near-80% year-on-year rise in revenues and it is set to generate almost £30m this year, having benefited hugely from ad spend during the diamond jubilee and the Euro 2012 football championship.
Much of this is down to what many regard as the news judgment and popular touch of this former executive editor of the Mail on Sunday.
This achievement is all the more remarkable given that it is done all this with fewer than 30 staff in the UK, a team of 20 in New York and 10 more in Los Angeles. "He has proved you don't have to be the same brand online and in print – whatever works, works," said our panel.
