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Thank you so much to Beehiiv for their support. [upbeat music] Welcome to "The Reboot Show." I am Brian Morrissey. Before we get started, just something I wanna let you know.
We're gonna be doing a series of gatherings this spring. We just... We did a mixer in London a few weeks ago. My guest here, Dmitry, was there. Hopefully, he can speak to... He can endorse the, the, the mixer format.
We're gonna be doing another one in New York City on March 19th. Our friends at Beehiiv are our partners on that. We have a couple of spots left over. These are always, you know, invitational, so to speak.
But if you register your interest at a link I'm leaving, you know, you, you can get one of those slots.
And if you join TRB Pro, where we talk about subscriptions, you know, you'll get, you'll get preferential access to all of these. And we've got, we've got other gatherings lined up.
We're doing an audience strategy salon in early April. We're gonna do an AI in media salon in May. We've got the media product forum coming up in May. Look, this is media. This is what you do.
We're all in the events business. Dmitry, we can talk about that maybe. Dmitry Shishkin is my guest this week. Dmitry is a media strategist. He's best known for developing this user needs framework.
It's going on, like, a decade ago, but it really has, I think, reshaped how many news organizations think about their journalism product.
And right now is a time when I think it has to be rethought, and we're seeing a lot of resistance there.
A lot more resistance than, than I would've thought, honestly, because if you look at the, the marketplace, what is being shipped oftentimes out of a lot of newsrooms is not, is not doing well in the marketplace.
You can disagree with how Will Lewis certainly phrased things to the, the staff at The Washington Post with, "Nobody's reading your stuff," but what he was saying was absolutely true, and the data does back up that what The Washington Post has been shipping, and frankly, it's hasn't been sh-shipping that much, hasn't been very efficient, is losing in the market.
And so we wanna talk about, like, how to win in, in the market, because at least here in the United States, I don't see us going to a non-market-based system. Maybe, who knows? I do have some thoughts on that.
Anyway, Dmitry was, until recently, the CEO of Ringier Media International. He oversaw digital publication operations across Europe, and I think Africa too, right, Dmitry? In part. In part, okay.
He's got, he's got some ties to the Balkans. Maybe we'll get to that. Anyway, Dmitry, thank you for joining me.
I think, you know, you really sit between journalism, product, audience, and this is, this is where the future of this industry is gonna be. I, I actually pride myself for that.
I'm an editor by profession, and I have been trained closely as an editor, and spent many years editing things. But I...
About 20 years ago, I started getting into this internet thing and became really interested in product data and audience and content conversion, effectively, like, that intersection.
So you really cannot be a really good editor without really understanding product and data well. Yes. And I think that journalism, we need to make journalism indispensable in people's lives.
So I, as a consultant, I always ask my clients, like, "What would happen if your organization will disappear tomorrow?" And if there is a silence at the end, then there is a problem, right?
Because we are moving from kind of output-based journalism to usefulness-based journalism, and the user needs are the proxy for audience centricity and usefulness. Yeah. It's really interesting.
So you came up with this framework at the BBC, it was a decade ago. We should have a mixer- Well- We should have a mixer- We need to be- To, to celebrate this.
We, we need, need to be, need to be very, very honest about how it came about. The idea came from audience research people, and I am just...
I call myself enforcer, evangelizer, and collector of user needs in publishing, right? So I enforce it, and I spread it globally. So but sometimes I think what would have happened if we- Come on. It's brand new, Dmitry.
We, we, we can get that past that. Like, uh- No. No, I know. I know. But you need, you need to, you need to be very humble- I got you... about kind of the origin came from audience research, of course. Okay.
Of course, and that is how all innovations come about. Like... But, you know, so first of all, explain what, uh, explain what user needs are.
And, you know, in some ways, I think when people hear about them, well, we'll... You'll, you'll tell them. Like, it'll sound like, all right, that sounds pretty, that sounds pretty obvious.
[laughs] But, like, explain it. That, that makes my life as a consultant, right, so easy because I actually, I actually don't flag anything that people are saying, "Oh, no, this is so, so away- Yeah... from journalism."
This is the epitome of journalism. This, like, the beating heart of it, right? Because I, I basically say, "I don't really care what you output and what you want to write about. I can actually help you to do it better."
And why are you doing it better? Because some user needs you're trying to satisfy, they're not the user needs that people are actually needing or in need of being satisfied, so to speak.
So for example-It all started at the BBC when, because in, in two thousands we were growing like that, hockey stick growth across the world. Like, you know, it doesn't really matter, Bangladesh or Kenya or Brazil.
And then suddenly in twenty tens we started plateauing. And why we're sta- so, why we're plateauing?
Because the local competitors started doing journalism better than us, relevancy-wise, speed-wise, like, all of that type of stuff, innovation-wise.
So our guys went around the world and started asking questions, "Why y- do you consume news in the first place?"
And they, of course, came up with this idea of six user needs that created the model, that the model we started applying to all our content, and suddenly the growth started happening again.
Because on the day when Macron wins elections, you don't write an update me story because everybody else in the world will be writing update me story about that, but you will write an educate me story ab-about, um- Okay.
But, but, but explain. People don't know what it is, Dmitry. Well, you know, where have you been? On the what- I know. In Europe- What rock have you been-...
everyone knows what this is, but a lot of my audience- That's true... is in America, and they're, they're, they're gonna be confused. Yeah. I, I actually was asking myself, so, l- but with one caveat.
O-okay, so one of the cl- one of the people, the brightest people in our sector, who actually confirmed that I was on the right path was Louise Story when she was at Wall Street Journal.
Because when I approached her about this, she actually sent me some slides where already- Yeah... Wall Street Journal was already segmenting stories according to user needs.
And when Vogue created a model dedicated to their fashion co-coverage based on the BBC model, and then Vogue suddenly, and then Journal, I suddenly thought, "Okay, this is actually happening everywhere at the same time."
So it's very easy. People consume news because s- a piece of content does something to you.
That's why I never believe in those Frankenstein articles where many user needs are in the same article, because suddenly, what, what is your headline going to be?
So people either want to know something or they want to understand something or they want to feel something or they want to do something with news.
So effectively, you come to, to the newsroom and you say, "Well, this is all happening, but what are, what is the best way of delivering that to people?" Because people tend to jump to formats right from the start.
They think, "Okay, story first, format second." Which is completely wrong, because you need to say, "Story first, user need second, format third."
And because of that, you suddenly say, "Okay, well, currently 7% of our output only brings you something valuable. Everything else goes straight to the wastebasket."
Or it's probably something like Pareto principle, 8/20 or something like that. So 20% of your content brings 80% of your value. But you actually need to know what this 20% are.
I was just doing some reviews of my, of some of the clients and also titles at Ringier when we introduced user needs model.
And you do it section by section, and you start looking at what user needs collections you have, and you need to double down on some, and you need to stop doing some others because you're just not fit for that.
You know, so it's, that's why the connection between content data and product is so crucial here, because suddenly you start creating products based on user needs. Yeah.
But you also need to have your data super clean in order to actually capture everything properly. Okay, I just wanna level set. I'm gonna, I'm gonna describe what the user needs are, 'cause I can get 'em out of you.
[laughs] Update me, all right? That is- Yeah... keeping, that's the, that's the classic. And most news organizations over-index, I think, on, on that. Well, update me story is crazy now. And that is like news.
It's like, what's new? What's ha- what's happening? Like, you know, who's the new, who's the new ayatollah? It's, it's m- No. Who is the new a- who, who is the new ayatollah is actually educate me, but- Okay... continue.
Okay. No, well, I mean, like, it literally the name of the ayatollah is, is, is, is update me. The, the, the i- the, the ayatollah, the new ayatollah got chosen. Educate me is to help to understand an issue.
Who is Moushtaba? Like, who is this guy? Yeah. Okay. Give me perspective. You know, that's the analysis function, right? And that is- It's h-help, help me- That, that's like, that's-... help me to form my opinion.
That, let me just finish. [laughs] That, I know you're passionate about this, okay? But I'm gonna go through these. Uh, give me perspective is provide the analysis and interpretation and different viewpoints.
What does this mean for the war? What does this, like, you know, what does this mean for, for the regional stability? Inspire me, probably not applicable here.
[laughs] Oh, a new, a new, uh, history of the Middle East is gonna be re-rewritten. This is, you know, but this is something that, you know, news organizations need to provide.
And I think oftentimes do not provide enough of, because it's like, you know, if it bleeds, it leads in news.
Help me, which is, you know, this used to be, to me, like service journalism, which is practical advice, information to make decisions.
You know, more than just gift guides, if you will, during the affiliate little boomlet. And then divert me, which is give me something different. Give me a game to play.
You know, look at the New York Times with its games thing. So that is... And then there's, there's, there's, wait, two supporting needs, right?
There's connect me, which is part of a community, and then there's reassure me, providing clarity and confidence in uncertain situations. Do I have that right? Well, then there...
Well, there are, y-you were quoting from different models. Okay.
But if you look at the comprehe- most comprehensive model, which I analyzed about, like, I don't know, 30 different models, and we created the most comprehensive one.
So in know area, you've got update me and keep me, uh, keep me engaged. In the, in the understand, it's educate me and give me perspective. In feel, it's inspire me and divert me. And in do, it's connect me and help me.
And you would say reassure me is probably part of the help me, potentially. But the idea here is, Brian, is not, is, uh, individual topic is not connected to user needs directly.
Like for example, entertain me is always divert me or something. Like, or entertainment is always divert me.
It's actually you take a story, and you try to apply any type of user need which you consider the most interesting one for this particular topic.
And I, there is a really easy lesson that you can do or play, you can play with your newsroom, where you g-give them a topic and ask them to bring you all the headlines representing each of your user needs on that particular topic, and that's a really healthy way of doing it.Yeah.
So, like, did you... Have you done, like, analysis as far... I mean, it, it obviously varies across publications, right?
But if you're The Atlantic, I'm gonna use a lot of American examples, but, like, if you're The Atlantic, you know, you're, you're gonna break news, like, every now and again, but they're always going to be more perspective.
It's a magazine, like, brand. And, and... But if you're the AP, it's gonna be update. I mean, I mean, that's, like, what they, they, they do, right? Well, not, not, not necessarily. So going to Atlantic.
Atlantic actually, together with Journal and Vogue, were one of the first people who actually created their own models based on the BBC one.
But I vividly remember when Atlantic published a couple of internal documents of how they came about with their model and everything, and one particular user need they were promoting was they introduced me to the authors at the top of their game, which was an incredible, I, I guess, confirmation that you actually need to have a model which will be different, a little bit different from others, to actually create, justify your specific space in the market.
Yeah. So like when, when you're looking at this, like, why, why is this, like, needed necessarily? Like, I would have thought that, like, newsrooms would be focused on their audience needs.
I mean, they should be just- By default... by default. Like, it's kind of strange that this is...
It would be like a, I don't know, a candy bar company being like, "You know, we should actually focus on, like, the candy people wanna eat," and like [chuckles] we'll- Shocking. Shock, shock, shocking. Is this- Shocking.
Is this just because, like... And I, I wanna get at the culture bottom.
I'm, like, joking about it a little bit because sometimes I wonder whether there is, like, a real cultural change that needs to take place in that you're operating in a market and you need to create a product that the market needs and cannot get, get from others.
Like, this is one-on-one stuff in some ways of anyone who's operating within a marketplace. And I sometimes wonder if there's a cultural...
culture that thinks that this profession doesn't have to op-operate in a marketplace, and that's why there's the... always the pining for the benevolent, the quote unquote, "benevolent billionaire" who isn't going to...
You know, and then the benevolent billionaire is like, "I'm losing a hundred million dollars a year." Sorry. Yeah, but you, you, you still can argue that journalists and editors are interested in stories. Yeah.
And there is nothing wrong with it. But what they're not interested in is how they can deliver those stories to the audience at large.
I used to be so cross at the BBC when my editors would say something like, "But we're a public service, we have to tell, we have to report on this."
Yes, I agree, but if you are just reporting on something in the most boring way possible, i.e. satisfying this proverbial update me type of thing, then you don't...
It's your failure of not having done it properly so people get engaged with those, that type of stories.
And that's where give me perspective comes in, this is where educate me comes in, help me comes in, and all of those. So it's actually about always asking yourself, "What does this piece of journalism do to my audience?"
In full stop. Nobody's questioning the, the, that we need to report on news, but there are just better ways of doing it.
And, I mean, we'll talk about it l-later, but the more niche you become, the better return on investment there is because you actually understand your audience much, much better than journalists.
Because you actually understand what drives your community and what they need from you and, you know, I see time and time again, the deeper you go in the kind of pyramid of output, the more effective you become. Yeah.
And so what, what I wonder is, like, first of all, w-what... then why do you think that there's a resistance to, to this? Why, why was this even needed? It's not, like, widely... So w-why? What is your diagnosis?
Well, it's kind of, you know, it's, it's kind of we, we have done a little- I mean, the BBC is a particular sort of...
You know, it's like in the y- I mean, here they're, they're gonna be a little bit more exposed to market forces, but it isn't as much there. But why, why outside- But, but-...
of those particular instances do you think that this is not, like, caught on? Well, because everybody has a problem of overproducing wrong type of content, right?
And because u-ulti-ultimately people are just always thinking, "Okay, well, we need to cover this and that and that and that and that."
And by coverage, it's just like, I remember being an editor myself, it's like, "Okay, this happened.
Go and write a story about this," without really giving people a proper, proper feedback of what exactly you need to, to, to, to go and report. But if you are, uh, sitting your correspondent down...
And by the way, news gatherers, i.e. correspondents, are content providers by default, and they, as long as you tell them exactly what you need to bring, they will bring it.
So actually working with news gatherers for me was much easier than working with people who sit behind the desks and actually output, well, who actually commission output. So it wasn't...
I think it requires newsrooms to change how they think about journalism in the first place. Like, what is this conversation? It's about audience value, it's about...
And that's not really comfortable because suddenly you're questioning the fact that people really don't think about your audiences that much.
And that's why when I wrote the speech about, well, I spoke at Digiday Conference about few months ago, and they called my point controversial when I said that the new editor-in-chief, the next editor-in-chief cohort should be coming from audience development teams rather than from individual beats areas.
Because audience engagement people by default, if they are classically trained as editors, they have been exposed to so many useful verticals and disciplines that regular editors are not.
And we're talking about product, about data, about audience development, about all of those skills that, uh, regular beat editors are not really strong at. Right.
So I think you, you'd mentioned before, a lot of times, you know, people focus on the format versus, like, the need. You know, and that kinda comes down to is it an article? Is it a short video?
And these are all very important. Like, I think the atomic unit of a lot of particularly news has been the, the, the written article, right? And there have been a lot of attempts to reinvent the article over the years.
It, it is not, it is not a native format to the digital age. The seven hundred word inverted pyramid news article is like... If it's not already dead, but, like, it is still shipped-A lot of times.
Said- Like the fact that Axios, you know, came out with some bullet points over a decade ago that...
And I joke about that, but it, it was like, you know, that that was an innovation in the article format, which is to me a sign of, oh my God, this is really far behind.
And now we have AI barreling down the pike, and it d- it seems to me that there has not been enough attempts to really rethink what-- how this content is packaged.
Let me be clear about what I, well, what I think about this. First of all, remember this famous quartz graph where they, there was a peak for short form, there was a peak for long form- Mm...
and there was a big, big drop in the middle, and that middle is classic online coverage. Yes. Story coverage, like seven hundred words. That was already done more than ten years ago. Right. That, that slide.
I remember using that slide even when I was at the BBC already, was showing it's either we do short and fast or we do really in-depth, different and original blah, blah, blah, all of that, but still people defaulting to that.
Before we go into, like, um, it's inevitable that we will touch on multimodality here because I am really interested in how user needs can help you with multimodality.
And actually my Nieman Lab predictions for this year was about that.
You only will be able to achieve true multimodality in media if you are not going to stick a button, listen to this article or, you know, turn it this into a video type of thing for every article you do, but you need to be much more strategic about how you select different modes for different type of output and different user needs.
So and that's why you need to have firstly, super, super clean data at the, your performance based on formats and based on topics, and based on user needs. So those three things are really important ones.
And then you start applying the multimodal thinking to that, and you think, okay, that constellation of user needs, topics, and formats should go into that. And by formats, I actually mean...
I don't mean audio, video, and text, because audio, video, and text are content types.
Every format can be applied to that content type because it can ex- have an explainer in video, it can have an explainer in text, it can have explainer in audio. So it doesn't really...
You, you can't really jump into an mode without really figuring out what format you need to have. But I do a lot of work with newsrooms exactly on that.
So kind of before jumping into all of those execution of how you do things, you actually need to understand what exactly you're trying to do.
And then it's a lot, it's a lot to ask of people like that because it's, it's a, it's a big thing to introduce all of those things.
But once you do it, you can see a real value because suddenly your output becomes much more structured and becomes much more persistent and, what's the word? Directional. Intentional.
So that's the word I was looking for. Mm-hmm. You, you need to be intentional with every single decision you are making about every single piece of content that you're outputting.
And that goes back to my point about the niche publications and the individual kind of discipline publications that actually understand it very, very well.
That's where we actually will take user needs probably next, because I guess the articleization of output will be... initification of output will be the next frontier that we really need to- Yeah...
to properly, properly go into. So, I mean, when you're talking about this, you're talking a lot about like
kind of basically like editorial decisions, and I think the question that I end up having is, is how many of those are gonna be made by editors themselves, right?
Like we've a- already see algorithms are doing the, the, the job of, of selecting, you know, the stories that, uh, that most people see, and that's a reality.
And I feel like there's this parallel reality that goes on where there's meetings about things that go on the like front page and stuff [chuckles] and like it literally doesn't matter.
So I think what I end up wondering is whether all of these decisions are just even gonna be made by the, by the quote unquote news organization, by an editor or a- anyone.
Like at the end of the day, like we all have different user needs, right? For the same, the same thing that's happening. Mojtaba, I like, I know that he... I, I know, I know the information.
You don't need to update me, okay? Yeah, exactly. What I personally, what I need is I need to know whether this is going... whether this means that this thing's gonna last even longer or, or what.
Like that's where I wanna jump to. Now, someone else, they've never heard of this Mojtaba guy. You know, I'm a little, you know, I'm, I'm, I, I'm, I'm a, I'm in deep, like so with this, this topic.
Won't that inevitably be made with AI? So this is what really excites me about this.
So let's just take one step back and before we go into this like complete future where you turn your content into any type of thing that you might even consider thinking about.
But one thing is about actually starting training a muscle inside the newsroom to start reacting to algorithmic notifications about what works, what doesn't.
So when I was at Ringier, for example, I actually introduced a role into a, every newsroom I was running that was only reacting to algorithmic notifications about what is working for their content or what is, what needs to be improved immediately on the day.
So because, because if algorithms sends you hundred notifications a day about what can be improved immediately and you only react to twenty percent, you're already losing, right?
So you need to be, you need to be aware of those things because frankly speaking, human brain, everybody knows that human brain is not able to ca-calculate all the permutations as much.
And I think the challenge here, Brian, will be to, in order to get to the future that you just described, which I completely agree with, and I think that every story probably will be delivered in about, I don't know, thirty, forty different ways, and that will include user needs, formats, and content types, i.e.
audio, video, text, whatever.And any- everything in between. But what needs to happen is that you need to nor-normalize, for example, all your data points that you are gathering across your network.
And what I mean by that is that let... indulge me for 30 seconds. Mm-hmm. Imagine you have a host of URLs that are interacting with 10 third-party products that you have in your newsroom.
One of them is editorial analytics, one of them is email marketing tool, one of them is the push notification tool, all of those tools that one of the w- they create reality about what goods l- good looks like only for that tool specifically.
But the only thing that really unites them together are the URLs that you are producing one way or another.
My ambition would be to get to a, to a state where all of those metrics, different metrics, different kind of points of view and everything are normalized with each other and actually create one single point of view, which actually is unified for one newsroom.
So instead of showing me 10 different dashboards and saying, "Well, according to this, this works. According to that, that works." No, that needs to be normalized one way or another.
So you need to create some kind of ontology of metrics that really you understand very well what works, what doesn't on... in the bigger scheme of things.
And only then you will be able to say, "Okay, now I understand how complex all of that interaction with different distribution strategies and different user needs and different all of those, how they all work together, and how they can be leveraged and optimized."
That I am really excited about, and I think we can get somewhere because it's not, not about optimization of front page, it's actually about optimization of everything that you are outputting. Yeah.
And I, I guess the, the point I was trying to get at was like, like it seems to me like a choose your own adventure will be like the sort of successor and that.
And I don't know how-- I don't really know if it's gonna be done on the publication basis. I think in many cases it won't be.
I think The Atlantic and BBC, like these are, these are the minority of the minority of the minority, okay? These are the top of the top. The reality is, you know, the 98% are not the a- at that level, right?
And so what I, I don't know if, if people are going to be going to specific...
Like you talk about URLs, like I have no idea if we're gonna be talking about U- the idea of like URLs like in five years, I don't know, Dmitry, we might, we might have to have a bet on, on that because like I don't know if that's gonna really even matter at the end of the day.
With the acceleration that's going on w- with, particularly with agents, it seems pretty clear that, that people are gonna have their own news agent that's tuned to their own needs.
The idea of a publication trying to divine the quote unquote user needs, like in some conference room in London or New York for all these diverse people just seems to me to run counter to everything that is happening in the broader ecosystem.
And if we've learned anything in the last generation, it is that media is downstream of technology and has to adapt to, to technology. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And we can talk about the mistakes of the quote unquote pivot to video. Turns out that it was actually right. But there-- that's just reality. And so the... I, I...
Like, so I'd, I'd love your reaction to that idea that like, you know, maybe it's a little provocative, but like none of this really matters because ultimately the packaging is gonna be done by AI agents anyway based on my user needs.
You don't have to like guess my user needs, 'cause I've, I've yet to see one news pu- provider that has been able to guess my user needs. None of them.
Let's, let's, let's, let's be maybe talk about steps that actually need to happen before we go into the future, which you described.
Because I, I, I still believe that actually one-to-one relationship between media production and individual person- Mm-hmm... is the way forward. I actually think that the...
I agree with you that once you establish the, those relationship, and then people understand so much about me as their user and their audience member and their community member, then they will be serving my needs much better than before, for sure.
But in order to do that, in order to y- actually, let's not overestimate the ability of agents to redo things in a way that actually will, will be helpful to people.
Because, for example, you know, turning an update me story, an educate me story you can do with agents because you have archive and you have all of those things.
But, you know, in order to create connect me article on that topic or inspire me article, or if we talk about recently launched sports model, which we just launched about a month ago, take me behind the scenes or relive it with me, the...
all of those user needs you, you will need to be ba- to base it on reporting and on actually kind of people going and talking to other people and creating the regional connection between humans, which is really important.
And then the te- technology for me is secondary, and my answer, I understand that it is very, very, very editorial from that perspective.
But I actually think that this what have we as an industry have been missing in the last couple of years.
The point of view of a editorial vision on that, because it's very easy to become futuristic if you talk to technologists, if you talk to people who understand the a- agentic work- workflow.
And I as an editor, I, I understand it as well, but I still have my editorial sensibility in terms of what needs to happen in order to your editorial to be connecting to people in a way that is meaningful.
And going back to our user needs conversations, if you don't understand-- if you can't answer the question, what user needs were the three top po- most popular for you, for y- this particular section in the last quarter, and then make a differentiation between different platforms where you are, you're already in big trouble because you, you don't understand your ABC.
And those ABC things, they really need to be in place like probably, you know, three years ago when we're talking about, but not now. Yeah. With- We- Yeah.
I mean, I guess it, it seems to me that, look, the things that are, are, are most at risk from AI are like update me-And a lot of aggregation is, is at risk.
I don't think-- I think some forms of, I think explainers are at risk. Like, I don't go, I don't, I don't rely on, on news provider. Like, that, that, that to me is probably...
Like, we, we started like an explainer series at Digiday around like programmatic stuff. I don't, I don't think it's relevant anymore, honestly. And they still do them.
But like- Well, I was recently interviewed for the article WTF- Yeah... Is Liquid Content by Digiday, right? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's- Explainer are still needed... they still exist, but I don't...
Like, that's just a lag, honestly be- Yeah... because, you know, even people in this space are, are a little bit behind because there's no... There's, there's not gonna be a market for that kind of stuff.
I mean, look, I think there's lots of stuff we, we, we keep doing, but there's no future for it, right?
I still think- But I do think that perspective is going to be, is, is most protected, but also just, like, breaking news. Unique data sets are incredibly valuable in this world.
And so in some ways it's like a return to the future.
I think the, the mechanisms are gonna be very different as far as how that is packaged and delivered to the audience, whether it's through agents or whether it's through editors. I have my, my point of view.
But ultimately, you know, like News Corp's CEO Robert Thompson, you know, recently took to describing how news organizations will end up being, you know, inputs for AI, you know.
I mean, because they're, they're striking deals with, with these and ultimately, you know, marketplace is going to, to be, to be developed, and that is where- But let's, let-... I see a...
Some people will be able to pull off these DTC models of, like, subscriptions and stuff. That is gonna be-- And I think that is the future of being very audience-focused.
But a lot of the future of this business seems to me is, it is gonna be, it is gonna be as, as an input to, to more centralized AI systems and other AI products.
You touched upon the future of the setup of the industry overall, because they probably will be, even on the level of individual countries, they probably will be a winner-takes-it-all type of player, like a generalist who will continue, whose brand is so strong that people will still consume it one way or another.
Mm. Whether it will be whatever, whatever, whatever platform they will be consuming that content on is secondary. But- Yeah, niche luxury products... um, I still think- Sure. Yeah.
I actually think that maybe generalists... Well, I do a lot of work with generalists, and I actually think that they, one, the way for them to survive is to start treating themselves as a collection of 50 or 60 niches.
Yeah. Because every single section they do is a niche competing with other niches and everything else, and there is nothing...
Your health coverage and your personal finance coverage actually are not really connected, and they shouldn't be, and then the as-audience, audiences, they are not, and the competitors are different and all of that.
So the, the issue, the biggest problem will be for people who are not different to anybody else, and what, what that means is also quite, you know, can be different from market to market.
But I would still say that niches and individual specialized content, you probably will still be okay for, for some time, I don't know.
But if you can't, in one sentence, describe how you're different and what role you're, what different role you play in that market, that is already a really big problem for you right now. Well, yeah. Right now.
Like, and I think a lot of this, like, when we talk about this more with less era, you know, there's... This industry is under compression, right? And it is under severe compression, and it is- Yeah...
gonna continue to be compressed. Like, everyone is for sale.
And, and, and there's gonna be a lot of roll-ups that are gonna happen, and if you don't like what, what's happening now, you're not gonna like what's go- what's gonna happen for a, a, a period of time, because there's still...
And that is reality, and there's gonna be a lot of protests, and this is unfair. I, I'm telling you, it is gonna happen one way or the other. And so a lot of organizations are going to need to change.
So you mentioned something about, like, generalists. I don't think there's a future for most generalist publications. You can talk with, about, you know, a couple of small little examples, and I'll agree with them.
But again, they're the exception to the norm. The idea that you can be great at food and health and business and politics- Mm... and foreign po- It's ridiculous. It's not gonna happen. A- and- Yeah, I agree with you.
And so, like, people can cry about The Washington Post cutting certain coverage areas because they remember how it won a Pulitzer for this and that. Mm. That is, that's the reality of the market.
Trying to be all things to, to everyone is a losing strategy to me. A- and so you're gonna have to pick where you're going to make your impacts, it seems. Exactly.
And remember how I told you about this blank, blank piece of paper where you say, "Well, write your mission statement in one sentence."
If, if you are unable to do it for every section and every category, and you, you need to start thinking about all of them differently, those niches and everything separately.
And the user needs model are going to be different, and that's why I met a publication that covers legal news and everything. They have their own model based on the original BBC model.
And then I would love, would love to create a model for personal finance.
I would love to create a model for retail, for example, because everybody, everybody's a publisher right now, everybody's in media right now, and you really need to start creating things that are going to be different.
And a model that is created by, I don't know, Net-a-Porter will be different to a model of Vogue.
But will Selfridges listen and create their own model for their own coverage and how they actually create things for retail and for fashion and everything else?
So everybody needs to remember that you need to satisfy people's intention or really need to be there where the intent is there from- Yeah... the audience.
So, you know, I've been circling around this this conversation, but, like, I'll be more direct about it.
Like, the, like, I listen to, and I take mostly seriously the, the tech guys, and because they're, they're astride, you know, the distribution and the monetization, I don't see that changing.
I, I only see their power getting greater.I don't see a future where large numbers of people are typing in the URLs that [chuckles] we're talking about. Like, I just don't see it. I really don't.
And I think, like, you know, a lot of publishers need to get out and talk to, like, regular people. Like, it's just not part of their lives, and, like, there's a lot of habits, and you can ride that stuff to, to the end.
I mean, people are still with, with print as a distribution, but, like, it ends.
And so what I end up, like, thinking about a lot is whether or not culturally these organizations should fight being what Robert Thompson says of being AI input companies because he says that. He's the CEO, right?
He's, like, talking to, like, investors and whatnot. It... You cut down to the newsroom level, and I think people are throwing up in their mouths a little bit.
Well, it is a radical thing to, to, to, to, to make that connection between are we just providing content for other people's interfaces and everything else, and we already...
People have been burned so badly by big tech, the first age of big tech, and then suddenly, oh my God- I definitely wouldn't trust them. I'll put it that way.
[chuckles] Well, that-- what, what I'm saying is that the-- you need to start with something, and that something will be saying, well, even, like, even remember that we are going to be an input. Okay.
You're lucky if you're going to be cited because even AI overviews on, uh, everything, you know... How many, how many citation things that there are?
There are like three pe- three companies that are going to be presented to people and, and that's it for one particular topic, and then on the current interface or current UX and everything else.
And you're thinking, okay, well, there is no speaking the world to anybody else at all. And, and you're already seeing, like, the... You already see the companies that are striking deals with AI companies.
You understand that all they're interested in is basically in language co- output coverage. That's it.
As long as you have Le Monde in French, you actually don't need any other French publication, and that's completely irregular because, you know, there will be publications in that area that will be providing content that, mm, Le Monde will never provide, right?
Well- So the question is- I don't know. I mean, I... Like, look, I, I... So I'll take the, the, the opposite side just for fun. Yeah. I-if you look at it from
the, the position of, like, the AI, like, company side, right? They need unique, valuable data sets. It's very obvious- Mm-hmm... that these models themselves are somewhat commoditized, right? And so what,
what is going to differentiate them is access unique data sets that others do not have. They took all the old stuff. Okay. Boo-hoo. We can try- Yeah... you can lawyer up a little bit. Let The New York Times lawyer up.
Let, let them try to fight these titanic battles. I don't think, like, regular news publishers should spend much time thinking about it- No... 'cause it's not something they can control.
Maybe a marketplace, like, emerges, but from their perspective, they wanna have unique data sets, and they wanna be able to use that as branding, right?
So if you're the only, let's say, uh, let's just use AI chatbots because, you know, everyone kn- everyone focuses there first and foremost. If, if Claude is the only...
I-if Claude has access to New York Times content, Guardian content, Financial Times content, Wall Street Journal content, and others do not, then that is really good marketing.
Now, whether they use other sources and mix it in, the fact that, like, they're displaying the, the logos of those, that actually makes a, a big difference.
I don't think it's, like, something people want to, like, think about necessarily, but, like, there is a possible path where increasingly what news organizations are doing, and I think this is the model that Silicon Valley is, is pushing, so I think it's, it's good to pay attention to it.
I think they view news organizations like, like raw, like raw material producers. They go, and they dig nuggets out of the earth, and then they're refined through the economic chain and value is added, okay?
Now, that is w-where what, what journalism organizations have been doing is they've been digging the rocks out of the earth. They've been doing the refining. You know, they've been, they, they've been enhancing it.
They've been marketing it. They've been packaging it and etc. Uh, and I think what the vision of these tech people is that actually journalism is just some AI input and that they're just gonna be an AI input company.
And if you're an AI input company, you radically change, like, what you're doing, and the shape of your organization changes quite a bit. That's my theory. I, I don't disagree with that.
I would just add a caveat to that, that if you're in Jakarta or La Paz or... You probably need other providers rather than the pr- relevant providers for your own market rather than the ones which you mentioned.
The fact that- Well, I'm not gonna mention every single freaking... Like- No, no, no. But what I'm, what I'm saying-... Indonesia news provider...
what I'm saying, what I'm, what I'm saying is that translating your Wall Street Journal coverage into Bahasa Indonesia will not solve their problem because actually the user need will not be satisfied because the local coverage probably will not be there.
No, no, this is not- So the question is-... what I meant at all.
Uh, I, what I meant is that the role of news organizations will be to, to be inputs into the, these models, whether you're the Indonesian Wall Street Journal or The Wall Street Journal. It doesn't really matter. Okay.
Okay, I understand. I understand. However, I agree with you with that, but the question here is that i-in order for you to start to be...
to become relevant for AI companies, because at some point of time, AI companies also probably will... Like, what is your view?
Will they stop at some point of time, or will they be just hoovering everything that there is? And then they also will n-need to understand which source is more relevant than others, and what is the trust?
And the trust is becoming the most important metric that we can still leverage against the big tech because I think that a lot of companies, somebody, somebody will need to say what is the most trusted organization for this particular part of the world or whatever, and that is where the fight will happen.
And that fight will be won by companies that treat data product and editorial equally as equal important parts.Equally important parts because only then you will be able to start packaging things or start presenting things for, you know, becoming almost like AI feeder clubs.
But you still need to have that kind of idea of what good looks like. And if you are-- if your editorial is rubbish, you will not make it. If your product is rubbish, you will not make it.
If your da-data is rubbish, you will not make it. But if, if you have an ability to actually improve all three of them, you will, uh, have a much better way of existing in the future, one way or another.
We don't know what the future is going to be, but if you don't have any of those three things taken care of, then it is going to be a problem. Yeah.
I just wonder how much the packaging part of journalism will continue to be as, as prominent a source of value, right? So you mentioned- Well, let- You mentioned the stories. Like story is a package, right?
And we've been telling each other stories since the caves. And I don't- Yeah. I'm long stories because I just look at like- Yeah...
we've been doing it since the cave, so I assume that we're gonna continue to relate to the, the world around us by telling each other stories. I don't know if the storytelling function...
And I think there's an argument to be made that, that, that, that there can be too much storytelling mixed in with, with news. I think that there is a lot of confusion. I know, I know- Mm...
reading The New York Times now, I don't think people recognize it. I, I would encourage you to go back- Yeah... twenty years. It's like a bracingly different experience of what, of what this product is.
And I don't mean the, the short form videos and whatnot, I just mean how they approach the journalism product is very different. It's very, very, very story heavy, and, and that's very different.
But also, you also go to some kind of proverbial front page, and you will see thirteen different stories on Iran all scattered around k- different parts of, of, of that front page without really...
Never understood why, and, uh, I was thinking, okay, well the- I guess when I think of story, I think of like narrative, you know? And- Yeah. Mm-hmm...
and, you know, again, there-- I think, I think it's interesting 'cause there, there's these two... There's like we are data providers, we're information services providers, right?
And that's like a straightforward lane, right? And then there's the we're, we're, we're packaging, you know. Like look at the value that Apple derives.
A, a lot of the va- it's designed in California, it's not built in Cal... Uh, it, it's not built in California. The, it's built in China.
You know, a lot of the value is in the, is, is in the, the packaging of, of the technology. And
I, I just think that there's going to be this push and pull about whether journalism becomes an input and a feature of a di- of different products, or whether it, it, it, it can persist, not just, not in the most prominent cases, but overall as a, as a packaged product.
Do, do you know what I mean by that? I, I, I actually will build on what you just said, and I will say, yes, I understand what you mean by that.
I'm going back to all our ki-kind of earlier points of our conversation is that media, media right now, they have... They don't have a content problem as such, okay?
Because, you know, we are drawing content and all of that. But what media currently is, the biggest problem they have currently is the utility problem.
So you need to justify why you are needed by the audience and by people and everybody else. And y- every media needs to, to, to solve that problem, utility problem by itself.
Because then if, if, if, say, for example, your company needs to be known as a educate me type of company. Let's take Vox, for example.
When Vox was launched, they had six user needs all sitting under educate me and give me perspective area. They basically had six very distinctive user needs all sitting under big explain to me type of thing.
And that, you know, that is a nice differentiation because you can say that every single th- type will always will be applying six different ways of telling you an educate me or give me perspective user need story.
Okay, fine. But the question is, this is now a time where ninety percent of media will probably disappear because actually they are not even to answer themselves the question like, "What am I outputting and why?
Why am I ou- how... And how my output actually is connected to the P&L which I post every quarter?" Or something like that.
And I think that the faster we do it, the, the better product we're going to have, and then- Yeah... we'll have to survive the future however it comes. I think, and you talk about sports. You're into sports, right?
Like, you know, sports is a great example in that the score, like [chuckles] what happened in the game, like the idea of...
And you know, people mourn, you know, The Washington Post giving up on its sports section, and again, like the same people are now working for The Athletic. I'm not gonna mourn because like what is the difference?
Like whether The Washington Post like does it or The Athletic does it, like it doesn't really matter. Like I'm not really gonna like spend much time crying about that.
Great that the people like, you know, hopefully they got raises. Who knows? Maybe they have better benefits. I don't know. But like sports, like there's no economic value really in recapping the game.
The idea that you used to send, and you know, there's a lot of warning of this, you used to send the beat reporter to, to, you know, on the road with the team to go to the press conference and ask the coach the same question.
"You know, you guys seem like you played with a lot of energy in the second half." Like, yeah, okay, that's gone.
But like what I've noticed with sports coverage, and I don't know where this fits in the user needs, is it's gotten so much more sophisticated in why this happened.
Diagramming plays and diagramming for the hardcore people who I don't necessarily just wanna know that the Sixers, you know, won.
I wanna know like how they're, you know, how they're executing and the, the, the pick and roll without Joel Embiid.
And, and that kind of like expertise to me i- is, is indicative of, of where, of where things are, are, are going.
There's always gonna be the storytelling aspect-Getting the behind-the-scenes, Shams Charania, like, you know, like this is a guy, like guys breaking, breaking...
You know, he's, he's got all the agents feeding him the stuff. But like, you know, he's like breaking who's going what, who's fighting with who, gambling scandals and whatnot. That'll always be fun.
I, I'm, I'm, I'm very glad that you mentioned it because when we launched the sports model, we created the model basically looking at, you know, athletic coverage, looking at BBC sports coverage, b- like all of those big guys.
And when we ran the model by them afterwards, we're saying, "Does it make sense?" They said, "Actually, we... It never even occurred to us to even think about capturing user needs measurably, like numerically, okay?
But yes, we do all of those things, and I, I'm an avid Athletic reader. I'm a big Chelsea fan.
I understand that Chelsea coverage will be the best on Athletic, and I, I understand that relieve it with me, get me behind the... take me behind the scenes, fire me up. What else is there?
Introduce me, introduce me to, or any other user needs in there." The model is very similar to news. People still want to know something, understand something, feel something, and do something.
But the plethora of user needs, and actually it's very clear why creators, they satisfy fire me up user need much better than any other sports media publication, because it was not in nature of a sports media publication to actually create a fire me up user need story.
And at the same time, if you're looking at the output of a club, the club will never do a, an educate me type of piece because they will not explain why they had the fourth coach in the last, in the last year, why they have fired the previous three ones.
It's just not what they do. But they still will do relieve it with me and, you know, take me behind the scenes and all of that, because they understand it intrinsically that the value of engagement fans.
And when you do the analysis of the sports user needs model, you can see that it's kind of not dissimilar to news. The model is different, but the output is not.
People overproduce wrong type of content in astronomical numbers. Yeah.
But once you start looking at the engagement metrics like loyalty, new people, returning people, conversions, it's incredible how individual user needs actually drive those numbers. Right.
But it's, it's interesting, like you use sports, but I think it's across the, these, what I call like the information space, in that the economic value accrues more to the sort of commentary and, and packaging and point of view and perspective and analysis side than it does in, in the...
Literally, it's like news, I think, in some ways has been like commoditized because the reason you float to, to that, you don't have to pay to unearth the facts.
Like, it is almost like an uneconomic activity of unearthing, like, news, and I think that is like a societal challenge, [chuckles] right? But like- It's, it's, it's, it's completely how user needs were created. Why?
Because in 2000, or 2010s when BBC started losing its grip on all the markets around the world, well, in, not in the English language ones, but in vernacular language ones. Why?
Because some- somebody, anybody who subscribed to Reuters feed, they can get the commodity international news and the BBC value was just not there anymore.
And b- but once BBC started covering international news with different lenses of user need, suddenly that value became evident again. So I completely agree with you that commodity is done.
It's done and dusted, and that's why the sooner everybody goes into null update me user needs, the better it's going to be for ecosystem. Right. I think the big risk is that everyone respon...
Like look, institutional media is losing to creators right now for the most part in the marketplace, okay?
And the economics of the creator world are far better than the economics of institutional media trying to be comprehensive, sending people into dangerous situations and all of the costs, and then on top of that, you can't even monetize the output because advertisers don't wanna be around your investigation of the US blowing up that school as, as it, as it seems apparent, right?
Like, I mean, good luck like telling Procter & Gamble like that that's like something they wanna... You know, they'll talk about it on conference stages, but then, you know, in reality they, they- Yeah...
they don't want anything to do with that. So that's a loss leader, you know? And that, you know, that is a societal benefit.
But I think the big danger is, and we've seen this with optimization, is you optimize yourself into so, i- into areas that are against the mission.
And I think journalism is unique as a business and really difficult to run in many ways because it has a mission and most, most companies, if you're, if you're a candy bar, you, you, you might talk about a mission like, you know, in, you know, PR or whatnot, but you know, y- you're, the job is pretty clear.
Yeah. You just gotta sell more candy bars. [chuckles] You sell... Yeah.
Yeah, but, but, but that's why, you know, that's why I'm so interested in looking in, into niche publications and creating individual user needs models for them and with them because suddenly you say, "Okay, well, I was..."
You know, the Bureau for Investigative Journalism has created a model for itself. Why?
Because they suddenly say, "Well, we work on something for a couple of months and then, you know, the story is gone the following day and we are trying to make more impact of that."
And then that's why you understand actually showing me your inner workings of how you actually conducted the investigation was a really int- needed need. So sorry for the tautology. [chuckles] That's okay.
But what I mean is that people who read the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, for them, the process of you creating the story and how you do it and how many people you called, how many people refused to talk to you is equally important as the, the investigation itself.
So you just need to understand why you exist in the market in the first place and for your audience, your community. Rule number one, newsroom is not allowed to create its own model of user needs.
It, they, they always come from the audience itself, right? And the audience will tell you actually, like, "PleaseShow me more, take me behind the scenes type of stuff rather than update me. Yeah.
Although, so let's talk about that for a little bit because, you know, it's the, the old saying is, is if Henry Ford asked people what they wanted, they would've said like a faster horse, right? Yeah.
And I've just noticed in like user surveys, like, and user res- like, a lot of times people say things and they don't necessarily a- there's a big difference between what people say and how they act, and a lot of times it's depressing because like [chuckles] how they, they'll say that w- you know, like in B2B they always say, "Ah, we want research.
We absolutely..." And, and then you do the research, you pay a lot of money to do it, and they, they, they don't want that. They just wanna know, they just wanna know what's, how much other people make for a living.
And, you know, in consumer it's even worse. Like, there's a reason that, like, that, that every publication is doing Game of Thrones recaps, right? And you can...
Listening to the audience can be, can be kind of dangerous to the mission in some ways because a lot of times you're listening to the audience through algorithms that are, are interpreting what the audience, quote unquote, "needs."
But let, let me be clear, clear. Mm-hmm. We are much more sophisticated than that, okay? So it's not just listening to the audience verbatim, it's kind of looking at the data across time, looking at cohorts.
So I'm not interested in how a particular topic performed over the last month.
Give me the da- data for the last two years, then I actually will see the peaks and troughs and p- people pe- the kind of all of those things will even themselves out and everything. But I'll give you an example.
So I, I live in Wimbledon in London, and I never read Wimbledon Guardian local newspaper. I subscribe to it, but I never read it because they tend to write about, about crime and traffic jams and everything else.
And I, I live in an area of Wimbledon where every street is called after something or called l- linked to Australia.
If Wimbledon Guardian were to write a feature about why it w- it is the thing, I will send it to everybody I know in Wimbledon. And the local newsletter, which they just set up, just passed the 10 million subscribers.
It's called The Wimble, and they are using the user needs methodology, maybe inadvertently without really knowing it, and suddenly they write about interesting people who live in Wimbledon, and they answer people's questions about Wimbledon.
Mm-hmm. And no wonder 10,000 subscribers. Okay, it's a free newsletter and probably it's paid for by a local shopping center or something like that, but it's not promoting the shopping center.
It still gives me a month, a weekly thing that Wimbledon Guardian is not doing. Very simple, right? Going back to creators and all of that.
And I, in my thinking about niches and turning every single section of your generalist news- newsletter, newspaper into a kind of niche publication about something, it will...
This was my last parting gift to Ringier before I left. I wrote a paper for them about the newsroom of the future, what it should l- look like, what it should consist of. Okay.
Original content, commodity content via AI, point of view, and people, people being associated with a topic and everything else.
And also a so- a, a utility, a, some kind of a tool, because content by itself is not enough for people to engage with your con- with you, with your brand day in, day out.
You also need to give them some kind of utility as well.
So all of those things, they are super complicated to do, but you need to tackle them methodically and consistently and strategically, one by one, and very, very patiently, because that's the only way to survive.
So the final thing is like, so let's talk about that newsroom of the, of the future of like in, in five years, right? Yep. With everything that's going on with, with AI, I see like a paralysis in, uh, in many companies.
You don't know what you're, what you should be building. You don't know what you're gonna need. I mean, people are saying we're not gonna have nurses in like a couple years. Like, I don't know, or doctors.
Your radiologists are done. Everyone is cooked. If I go on X, everyone is cooked. I just wanna go back to bed. Whoa. And so I wonder what is... What does that look like?
'Cause you talked about AI doing commodity content, and I feel like there's this third rail of journalism with AI in, in, in the journalistic process.
It seems very clear that, that AI is going to be embedded in most information services, if not the entire economy. Now, whether it will work or not, I don't know.
But it is going to be em- it's gonna be tried, that, that is for sure. So what does that, what does that end up looking like?
Because we see a lot of pushback, and I mentioned this, like, you know, the, the Cleveland newspaper here in the US, you know, the editor wrote this piece that they sensibly put behind a paywall.
It, the, it w- about like how interns now were not doing writing, they were just doing reporting.
And, you know, the AP had, had a little kerfuffle around, around this recently, and I, I just thought there was always a debot- divide between like editors and, and the reporters 'cause pr- a lot of editors, they probably weren't going on X or LinkedIn saying that we're like, "Hmm, yeah, that sounds me- good."
Because anyone who knows, a lot of reporters are not good writers, and a lot of write- a lot of good writers are not good reporters. So what does that look like?
What is AI doing, and what, what is the most valuable skills in that newsroom of the future in like five years?
So I actually made a point to Ringier that the most valuable trait of a person for the future will be their flexibility. So because the... Everything can be learned. El- all the traits can...
All, all the, all the skills can be learned. But your, uh, flexibility to actually move from one thing to another after six months or after a year or something like that, because I remember the time when I would...
Wanted to do something different at the BBC. You would ask somebody, and they will say, "Well, it's not in my job description. I will not do it." Wow.
Well, it's a little bit different in the States, I would imagine, but it's, um- [chuckles]... like, it is a conversation.
It is a conversation where people would say something like, uh- News is increasingly unionized here and, and that is a, a wrinkle that...
I mean, the reality is, no matter how you feel about, about unions and, and their place in, in these, in these types of businesses, isI mean, the whole point of it is to be resistant to change.
Like I, I don't- No, pro-protecting, pro-protecting- Yeah... workforce is a very- Yeah... very important thing. The spillover of that is- But, but-...
is throughout their history, unions have, have been, have tried to hold back the application of technology to the workplace, and, and to be fair, a lot of this technology is explicitly trying to replace the, a labor function with software.
That's the point of it. It's on the tin. But I also made... Well, okay, but I also made a point. Okay.
Say, for example, you know, everybody, it's, it's everybody is asking that question, okay, if AI makes you 20% more efficient in a shift, not in a, in a month, but in a shift, okay?
So you can do so- your, your thing faster. What do you do in another two hours that suddenly, you know, become available to you, okay?
So you either introduce kind of ongoing learning and upskilling type of thing, but you don't ask people to actually learn, work more because we already have, we are already dealing with people who are flat out and who are overworked and everything else.
And you actually, sometimes it's, it's a very important thing to say, you do it faster, but you need to go and experiment with something that you have never done before, and you need to publish it, and you, you need to show it to me after a month that I have done those experiments, and I, in my, in my kind of free time, but not, not free time, but the, the time that- Oh, people are just gonna work more, Dmitry...
you spend on this kind of thing or something like that. The, the studies have shown here, people just do... people just have to work more.
I think it's about the messages that your C level and your board is actually going to go publicly and talk publicly about what you, what you exist and why you exist and everything else.
But I'm, I, I really am great believer that the progress always comes when the intersection of disciplines start to work together, and ac-actually, if you suddenly, you and somebody else has more time to go and speak to each other about something else, then something really nice can be published in, like, in a month's time or something like that.
But the problem here is not about publishing just for the sake of publishing.
It's actually about productizing, because that's another problem with we, we not even asked, because the innovation is one thing, but the biggest, biggest hurdle to innovation in media is about actually making it into a regular thing after you have done it once.
We have seen lots of CTOs and CPOs publicly saying it that, yeah, no problem with innovation at all. Problem with actually embedding it in your own daily life and daily output and everything else.
So I think that we will see a lot of interesting things and agents and, you know, all of this, but I'm only interested in things that actually become productized and becoming, becoming regular rather than one-offs.
So give me an example beyond the obvious. Like, so give me a European example for a, for...
like, like, not New York Times, please, of someone who i-is really pushing forward with rethinking the journalism, the product of journalism, and the product is the journalism, like of these news organizations.
That is the product. It's not an app.
[laughs] Yeah, you, you, you, you see some interesting things which say, for example, commodity content happening in Axel Springer, for example, how they automize, automat- automize hoovering everything around that is happening and rewriting it in their own style and then, and kind of not spending any time on those things and really allowing people to actually go and do proper regional reporting and, you know, and then that's what we are trying to do.
I still work with Ringier, and I help them to make the niche work happen.
And without a doubt, that niche segmentation from one topic to another always will be based on two things, your regional reporting and your commodity reporting, and you need to find a way of actually rewriting things.
Like for example, I created this... I wrote this thing in my head and then gave it to technologists to, to build it, a tool for reversioning content from one Ringier publication to another Ringier publication.
So you come in the morning, you don't have a night shift. Another company that had night shift is already in your system as well, and you see all the articles that can be rewritten. You don't need to spend time on that.
You just press the button, and those articles are already in your CMS, written in the style of your organization.
You, and that is a really important thing, a really helpful thing because you don't need to do that commodity thing right from, from the very beginning because somebody else has already done it potentially for you.
So- I think what I'm trying to get at- I want to- Is it better to be a reporter or an editor? I don't know. I, I did both, and I love both, and I think that it's, um- No, I mean in the market- You, you, you-...
not what you'd like. [laughs] You will be, you will, you will become- Everyone likes being an editor versus a reporter. Being a reporter is exhausting.
Being an editor is like, "Uh, let's do a story about this or that," and like, it's much, it's, it's being a house cat versus being, like, an outdoor cat.
Become a better reporter if your surrounding disciplines are better at their jobs, that will, they will make your job better- Okay, good... and easier and more interesting and everything else.
I think there's gonna be- And vice versa. I think there's gonna be, there's gonna be more, there's gonna be more value that ac-accrues to the reporting le-layer than to the pushing copy around layer.
So I agree with that. And I say this as someone whose career, you know, shifted into the pushing copy around part function.
That's why I've gone back to actually making stuff in this part of my career because I think it's a really, I think...
It's not like there's not gonna be a lot of managers out there, but if you're not, like, literally producing and shipping the product, I think that's gonna, that's gonna be tough.
There is gonna be a lot more orchestration, so maybe, I don't know, maybe I'll change my mind on that. I think the editor, the editing function will be far different than it, it, it was. Obviously, we've seen the copy...
I like to say the copy editors always go first, RIP. I like, I love a good copy editor, particularly when they're crotchety, you know? Like, I like a stereotypical copy editor.
[laughs] Yeah, but, but ultimately, you're right. The, your originality, whatever you're doing, needs to be so different than it is. I mean, you show it by the actual existence of Rebooting Show, right?
That the niches are the future. We just need to treat every single topic- Yeah... around us as a niche and micro niche and to try to make it work financially as well. Yeah. Well, part two, that's, that's the tough part.
All right, Dmitry, this is great. I love talking about this stuff with you. Thank you. Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting me. Bye-bye. [outro music]