WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:16.690 [upbeat music] This week's episode is presented by Beehiiv, the platform trusted by enterprise publishers like Newsweek and Time. 2 00:00:17.220 --> 00:00:26.330 Newsweek is in midst of an exciting transformation. With AI disrupting search traffic, they're building direct relationships with their audience through newsletters. 3 00:00:26.540 --> 00:00:32.940 Newsweek has aggressive newsletter plans designed around adding new audiences and launching new products. 4 00:00:33.320 --> 00:00:44.500 Barak Kirsch, Newsweek's Chief Product Officer, said this about why they chose Beehiiv: "Beehiiv's consumer-first, tech-driven DNA is exactly what we were looking for. 5 00:00:44.560 --> 00:00:51.840 The platform came from a B2C background and grew to become enterprise-ready. That startup mindset resonated with us. 6 00:00:52.080 --> 00:01:00.960 I'm excited about partnering with a team that's tech-first, engineering-first, and has an entrepreneurial mindset. We want to collaborate and grow together." 7 00:01:01.540 --> 00:01:11.660 With more and more industry leaders like Newsweek migrating to Beehiiv and twenty twenty-six planning in full effect, now is the time to see how Beehiiv can take your content to the next level. 8 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:27.420 If you wanna see what your next stage of growth could look like, and I hope you do, go to beehiiv.com/trb. That is spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com/trb. 9 00:01:28.120 --> 00:01:39.860 And you can meet with Beehiiv's team of growth and newsletter experts today. Thanks so much, Beehiiv, for your support and partnership. Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey. 10 00:01:39.960 --> 00:01:44.760 I find as I keep getting older, fellow older people keep trying to figure out what young people want from news. 11 00:01:45.120 --> 00:01:56.080 This landed home yet again with results from a new report from the News Literacy Project that detailed how teens appraise the news profession. Spoiler alert, it's not good. 12 00:01:56.680 --> 00:02:03.560 Almost half of teens said journalists do more harm to democracy than what they do to protect it. That's bad. 13 00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:15.100 Only a little over half teens, fifty-six percent, believe that journalists and news organizations take journalism standards such as accuracy and fairness seriously in their work. Also not good. 14 00:02:15.920 --> 00:02:25.960 Eighty percent of teens said that journalists fail to produce information that is more impartial than other content creators online. That is really disturbing. 15 00:02:26.700 --> 00:02:39.000 And then sixty-nine percent of teens thought news organizations intentionally add bias to coverage to advance a specific perspective. This one is kind of expected. Overall, in a word, yikes. 16 00:02:39.040 --> 00:02:44.799 And this isn't a Gen Z problem, of course, as trust in news has greatly diminished over the last couple of decades. 17 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:59.420 Ramin Beheshti is the former CTO at Dow Jones, and he believes that the way to get young people invested in news is to rebuild the product around how young people actually consume information now. 18 00:02:59.580 --> 00:03:11.900 That is not by lecturing at them, not by expecting them to come back to homepages, but by meeting them on the platforms where they already live and building formats that fit how they consume information. 19 00:03:12.140 --> 00:03:16.680 I mean, this is a, one of those simple but hard problems to solve. 20 00:03:17.220 --> 00:03:27.800 In Ramin's view, this industry's mistake has been assuming that audiences will adapt to news providers when it's obvious that the reverse needs to take place. 21 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:42.160 News providers have to adapt to how their audiences want the information, and that is the simple premise behind Caliber, where Ramin is the CEO. Caliber holds the News Movement, The Recount, Capsule, and now SaySo. 22 00:03:42.500 --> 00:03:47.680 They are all attempts to capture the next generation with news that fits into their lives. 23 00:03:47.740 --> 00:04:01.180 We get into how he thinks about product, platforms, the erosion of institutional trust, and of course, my favorite topic, why microtransactions might be a better bet than yet another recurring subscription. 24 00:04:02.060 --> 00:04:14.160 I hope you enjoy this conversation, I know I did, with Ramin. Let me know what kind of conversations that you wanna hear more of. Love to hear from listeners. My email is brian@therebooting.com. 25 00:04:14.340 --> 00:04:19.560 And I should add, if you can and you enjoy this podcast, leave it a rating and review. 26 00:04:19.920 --> 00:04:32.800 Everything I read, or at least when I go back and forth with ChatGPT about this, says that actually ratings and reviews do play some role in the mysterious algorithms that surface podcasts to other people. 27 00:04:33.020 --> 00:04:43.660 It is some kind of social proof, so it's important, and also, by the way, I like reading the reviews, particularly nice ones. So if you get a chance, please leave one. Now here's my conversation with Ramin. 28 00:04:43.700 --> 00:04:55.460 [upbeat music] Ramin, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Brian. How you doing? Good. Let's get into... 29 00:04:55.500 --> 00:05:06.790 First of all, for, for people who don't know, I mean, I have explained it u-up top, but Caliber encompasses, like, a few brands, and I think they're, they're really all getting at what is... 30 00:05:07.140 --> 00:05:20.040 what's the news product of the future, and particularly for the next generation of news consumers, right? You said it perfectly, Brian. Yeah, we actually rebranded to Caliber, uh, a couple of... 31 00:05:20.140 --> 00:05:39.640 well, in September, and it was to reflect the fact that we've got a stable of, of brands now that are coming at it from various different angles and on various different platforms, which I'm sure we'll get into, in order to be able to reach an audience that, when I was at The Journal, we just didn't seem to consume news content. 32 00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:51.920 And so how can we engage that audience in what you and I know to be news? Well, let's go, let's go through them, and then we can circle back to, to The Journal. So there's the News Movement, right? 33 00:05:52.000 --> 00:06:04.700 Which I feel like in the US is, is less well known as in the UK. Yeah. I think given our background, definitely the newsroom was led out of the UK for the first couple of years. 34 00:06:05.240 --> 00:06:12.620 Actually, interestingly, the audience now is kind of seventy percent in the USThirty percent- Yeah... in, in, in the UK. 35 00:06:12.720 --> 00:06:23.360 So the growth we've definitely seen here, and despite my inflection in my voice, I'm actually based in New York, probably not too far away from you. Yeah, like maybe like a mile. 36 00:06:23.720 --> 00:06:31.940 So for those who don't know, like explain, explain the origins of the News Movement and, and what it, it was and is trying to accomplish. Yeah. 37 00:06:31.980 --> 00:06:42.160 So we started the News Move room back in, uh, we were kind of a bit covert in '21. We built a very small newsroom in London. 38 00:06:42.940 --> 00:06:48.480 I had a couple of co-founders, people who'd been in the industry a long time, people I'd known a long time. 39 00:06:49.000 --> 00:07:04.760 And we started it to, to reach people who were not going to consume traditional media, and that happened to be a, the younger generation. And so we, we created this thing. We started putting out content on TikTok. 40 00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:16.240 And I remember actually at the time, a lot of people, you'd tell were like, "We can't do hard news on TikTok. No one's gonna watch." Yeah. "No one's gonna watch that. No one's gonna engage with it. 41 00:07:16.360 --> 00:07:28.240 Also, it's not proper journalism. You can't tell the Ukraine-Russian war inside sixty seconds." So we got, you know, everyone jumping, like, "Why are you doing this? And why are you not doing news on-" Yeah. 42 00:07:28.260 --> 00:07:37.750 Well, this is also, I mean, TikTok was more known, I feel like even just then. Maybe it, it was-- But it was, it was known as lip syncing and like skits and like, you know, performing. Not... 43 00:07:37.820 --> 00:07:43.860 I mean, now it's like I think much more, you know, well known- Invasive, yeah... and for everything, but. 44 00:07:44.280 --> 00:08:00.910 Yeah, so that, that was the start of origin, and we, we started to realize that, you know, the way the, the algorithm works, that even though we didn't really have a real brand or any kind of following, that we were able to connect this content with audiences. 45 00:08:01.330 --> 00:08:05.060 And so out of that, we, we built the, the News Movement. 46 00:08:05.080 --> 00:08:21.920 And, and the idea was to meet people where they were and where are they spending their time, what knowledge do they have about these subjects, and then how do we deliver content to them in a way that helps them understand what's going on in the world o-on their terms. 47 00:08:21.980 --> 00:08:34.400 I think that's the genesis of, of CNN and the News Movement. And like this, while a lot of that is on social platforms, it's because the audiences that we're going after spend a lot of time on social platforms. 48 00:08:34.820 --> 00:08:48.460 And so what we tried to do is create content that felt native to those platforms. Okay. And, and then y-you acquired the Recount. And Recount sort of I guess had a, had a somewhat similar. 49 00:08:48.520 --> 00:09:02.120 I mean, they were very active in packaging news for, for Twitter and for, for other platforms. Yeah. I, I met Jon Battelle. I was introduced to Jon Battelle, John Hide on the... 50 00:09:02.670 --> 00:09:04.760 And it, the courting process was quite a quick one. 51 00:09:04.980 --> 00:09:16.240 I think, you know, they'd got to the end of their journey with the Recount and were kind of thinking about what, where it was gonna go, and they were on kind of a timescale. And for us, it was a great opportunity. 52 00:09:16.280 --> 00:09:30.680 As you said, CNN were seen slightly more on the UK side- Yeah... at that point, and it was great to be able to bring in a brand that was kind of firmly US-focused, and that's what the Recount does. 53 00:09:31.300 --> 00:09:43.520 It's, it's moved slightly away from repackaging news to being able to kind of tell stories directly to its audience, but it's firmly focused in, in US followers. Right. 54 00:09:43.960 --> 00:09:53.620 And, and so the other parts of the business, expl-explain those, 'cause I mean, you have like a creator network, and you've got a, a trends and, and lifestyle- Yeah, so-... arm too. 55 00:09:54.220 --> 00:10:07.180 I, I'm sure we'll talk about the kind of idea generation that happens at, at Caliber, but, you know, one of our young hires was like, "I'd really like to do this fashion, lifestyle, internet trends newsletter." 56 00:10:07.700 --> 00:10:15.480 She created it. It's called Capsule. It's got... It, it's a, it's a newsletter product on, on Beehiiv. She's been doing it. 57 00:10:15.540 --> 00:10:29.059 It's almost like a passion project, but now has kind of quite a substantial following, a huge open rate, and is starting to bring in kind of commercial revenue. We just did our partnership with Schuh. 58 00:10:29.080 --> 00:10:42.200 We're new, the Schuh provider, um, in the UK. So that's another one of our brands. We're about to, which I'm sure we'll go into, is, is launch this new product called SaySo, 59 00:10:43.180 --> 00:10:59.820 um, which is this kind of app that brings together creators that we think try and meet the bar of journalism, and we created pro- we've created a product for them to be able to monetize their content and for audiences to be able to get the information they need on their terms. 60 00:11:00.320 --> 00:11:03.080 That's another thing that we're just about to launch. 61 00:11:03.540 --> 00:11:26.080 And then the commercial arm, we built a, for want of a better word, social media agency that, that rather s- that takes all of the learning, all of the data, all of the techniques that we do on the news side, on social, and then helps brands create content for their audiences on, on social media, and that's called The Caliber Collective. 62 00:11:26.110 --> 00:11:37.920 So we are now a range of different products, and there's more to come in twenty twenty-six in terms of different brands that are going to add to the stable, which is our. So talk to me about that strategy, right? 63 00:11:37.980 --> 00:11:44.360 I mean, building one brand is, is really hard, right? [chuckles] Like, so- Yeah... talk to me about what, why. 64 00:11:44.760 --> 00:11:55.440 Obviously, there was acquisitions there, but why, why, why, why have a stable of brands rather than a singular one? I think maybe it's to do with my background, right? 65 00:11:55.540 --> 00:12:08.640 I grew up in News Corp, and News Corp is nothing if not relentless at finding different ways of reaching audiences with different content. So maybe it was the environment that I planned, that we grew up in. 66 00:12:08.720 --> 00:12:31.004 But, but also, actually, if you look at modern media today, it allows you to create-Different content which people are interest, which different groups of people are interested in, rather than trying to be this kind of all-encompassing, all-serving product, uh, for different ages, different genders, different types of content. 67 00:12:31.244 --> 00:12:45.844 So that's, that's really the thinking behind Caliber actually, is, is the ability to create different content for different audiences depending on where they're spending their time, what level of understanding they're in, and also who they are as well. 68 00:12:46.504 --> 00:12:51.884 Yeah. So what-- explain to me your sort of theory of the case when it comes to news and Gen Z. 69 00:12:52.044 --> 00:12:59.824 I mean, before we got started, I, like, prepared you by saying, like, "I remember talking to all the people who were telling me news were, was broken for millennials." 70 00:13:00.404 --> 00:13:06.684 [laughs] And most of that, like, ended up not really coming to fruition. 71 00:13:06.904 --> 00:13:18.784 The people who said they were gonna remake news for millennial tastes, you know, it ended up being that the ones who did survive, you know, were just regular news providers, like The New York Times was, was the one. 72 00:13:19.444 --> 00:13:27.544 So tell me about, like, how there's obviously a ton of changes going on right now in the media ecosystem. 73 00:13:27.604 --> 00:13:39.824 Like, I call it, like, the information space because the, the media industry and the news industry is just a small part, right? And they're, in many cases, if not most cases, losing, right? 74 00:13:39.864 --> 00:13:48.284 Like, personalities are beating sort of institutional brands out there. Video is beating text, et cetera. 75 00:13:48.644 --> 00:13:59.304 Give me your sort of theory of the case about how news as a product needs to change in order to continue to be relevant with the next generation of news consumers. 76 00:13:59.504 --> 00:14:07.724 Because I'm not even sure if it's still as relevant with the sort of current generations [laughs], you know, like, if you look at the statistics. Yeah. 77 00:14:08.124 --> 00:14:16.884 And I, I think you're seeing, just to go back to the, the start of that, we had all of this thrown at us. You're trying to be the next Vice, you're trying to be this, you're trying to be that. 78 00:14:17.584 --> 00:14:27.194 I think there are lessons to be learned from some of those brands that they... What they did do was they created content that connected with those audiences. That's undeniable. 79 00:14:27.244 --> 00:14:37.804 Whether they were able to sustain is a different story, but they, they were disruptors. They just didn't, they didn't kind of have that long tail or that, that legacy. 80 00:14:38.574 --> 00:14:44.993 You know, part of that is some of the lessons that, that we're trying to incorporate. You grow old with your audience, right? 81 00:14:45.044 --> 00:14:53.644 We started this business four years ago when Gen Z were at, you know, at college, finishing high school. They're now in the world of work. 82 00:14:54.204 --> 00:15:03.844 We had a decision to make, and, and Gen Z is the focus of, of CNN, which is one of our brands. Does CNN grow older? Does it try and kind of stay young? 83 00:15:03.874 --> 00:15:11.614 And I know that's been, you know, in the, in the gravestones of media companies that have tried to do this in the past, that's been part of the, the challenge. 84 00:15:11.684 --> 00:15:17.084 Can you, can, can you continue to stay cool in here or do you kind of age up with your audience? 85 00:15:17.184 --> 00:15:27.464 So again, it's, it's something that we're gonna be talking about more publicly with just with a bit of a rebrand with, with, with CNN. And the idea is we're gonna grow with Gen Zs. 86 00:15:27.584 --> 00:15:38.124 What Gen Z were doing four years ago is very different to what Gen Z are thinking about and growing with, with now, and so that affects the content. It affects how we deliver that content. 87 00:15:38.624 --> 00:15:50.264 I'd say that's a lesson that, that we've learned from, from some of our predecessors. You know, I- Mm-hmm.... I have grown up in news, right? I've been doing it, I sometimes kind of pinch myself, for 15 years. 88 00:15:50.524 --> 00:16:04.514 It wasn't an industry I ever thought I'd be in, but it's one that I, I, I've been on the other side. But nothing more so now than at any point in the past, there is a fragmentation. We touched upon it, right? The... 89 00:16:04.544 --> 00:16:17.694 You are seeing more and more personalities go to the platforms and create content directly reaching audiences that previously would have subscribed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall, the Wall Street Journal. 90 00:16:17.764 --> 00:16:31.584 But that there is an erosion of, of trust for the institution, which, you know, personally, I think is kind of misguided, but that's the way the audiences are, are going, and the, the trust is in the individual. 91 00:16:31.704 --> 00:16:44.624 And so there is a huge opportunity to help facilitate that, that shift and that transition. Right. But w- like, talk to me about the product itself, right? 92 00:16:44.724 --> 00:17:00.344 So I mean, I think there's, I think there's a product challenge, right? Like, I mean, a lot of what... And I think this is, is beyond just Gen Z. You know, a lot of the news industry is shipping irrelevant product. 93 00:17:00.744 --> 00:17:10.464 You know, like, I mean, it... The idea of the webpage as the atomic unit is gonna seem kinda crazy in a few years, it seems pretty clear, right? 94 00:17:10.864 --> 00:17:25.864 You, you have the broadcast TV networks that almost look like parodies now when you, like, turn on the TV if you do, right? Because, like, the, the culture has seemingly m- moved on, right? And, and, and on and on. 95 00:17:26.164 --> 00:17:28.664 Obviously, I'm not getting into, like, the analog. 96 00:17:29.244 --> 00:17:44.324 And it's pretty clear that, you know, whether it's, it's TikTok or whether it's video podcasts, that there are, there's different news formats and products that are winning in the m- in the marketplace. 97 00:17:44.364 --> 00:17:54.404 They might not come from capital J journalists, but it doesn't really matter because you gotta compete [laughs]. You know? That is one cardinal rule of the information space. 98 00:17:54.624 --> 00:18:07.284 You better like competing, because you're gonna compete, and everyone is competing for attention out there. Journalism is not a credentialed profession, for, for good or for ill, and so, you know, good luck. 99 00:18:07.344 --> 00:18:18.764 You've got to battle with all of TikTok. How do you go... H- how do you need to change the n- the product that you're shipping? Yeah. I mean, it's a fascinating challenge, RJ, and I... 100 00:18:18.824 --> 00:18:32.468 If I, if I reflect on-Traditional media, and you said the webpage and the website that is pretty moved into digital. Like, there, there's not a lot of transformation that has really happened. 101 00:18:32.508 --> 00:18:46.628 If you strip it all back, it's, it's still editors deciding what you read and which order you read it predominantly. And I think there has been a reluctance as an industry to, to change. 102 00:18:46.668 --> 00:18:52.728 And you said it really, really well, and it's because this is something that you study and do, that it's already happened. 103 00:18:52.768 --> 00:19:02.648 Like, audiences have already moved away from receiving news in the way the news organizations would like them to go to kind of consume news. 104 00:19:02.688 --> 00:19:11.988 One of the things that I always say to the team is one of the most slightly arrogant things that the news industry did, like, I don't want to separate me from it. 105 00:19:12.048 --> 00:19:19.558 I was i- in a traditional news organization, and we implemented this feature, was the amount of time it takes to read an article. Yeah. 106 00:19:19.588 --> 00:19:27.308 Because what you're really saying is, if you don't have nine minutes or six minutes or five minutes, you can't consume this piece of information. 107 00:19:27.728 --> 00:19:49.528 In a world where everything is tailor-made for you as a consumer, the fact that that's what you move to from a news perspective rather than actually how do I fit news in with the amount of time that somebody actually has to give me or the level of understanding that they have, that is where I think the news or news industry as a whole doesn't serve its audience. 108 00:19:49.568 --> 00:20:06.468 And it's allowed or enabled, I would say, kind of non-capital J journalists or creators to come in and fill that space. I also think part of the challenge is people aren't as interested in the news as journalists are. 109 00:20:06.908 --> 00:20:18.288 And so the amount of content that's kind of created about a particular subject, people aren't that interested. They kind of want to know the, the, the rough facts, the, the rough set of information. 110 00:20:18.368 --> 00:20:31.408 They don't need five or six articles on a particular subject on a particular day, and it is overwhelming as well as, given the environment that we operate in kind of, uh, across the world, it's quite depressing. 111 00:20:31.758 --> 00:20:42.788 People want to know enough that they don't feel stupid, but they don't, they don't need to be, they don't need to be kind of over consumed- Yeah... about what's going on, uh, in Syria or... 112 00:20:43.528 --> 00:20:51.838 So it's, it's a level at which, and also I'll tell you one other final thing- I mean, how many shutdown articles do you need to read? I mean, honestly, like, I just, I feel like I, I, you're, uh, I don't know. 113 00:20:51.888 --> 00:21:04.608 I might have to like, you know, turn in my journalism card officially, like, with this. But, like, I mean, the reality is that people's lives should not be built around the news. Like, it shouldn't be. 114 00:21:04.748 --> 00:21:15.388 Like, I mean, I like, you know, reading like 10 stories a day about, like, wars that will never actually impact you, I don't think, I think that's like a mental health problem. 115 00:21:15.748 --> 00:21:20.078 Like, I [laughs] like, I, why would anyone do that to themselves? 116 00:21:20.188 --> 00:21:38.928 Like I, I'm in too deep, but, like, I understand news avoidance because the product is really depressing, and it, it is because of the algorithmic recommendation systems, and it moves towards, like, food fights and polarization. 117 00:21:39.588 --> 00:21:52.248 And so I wonder about whether news needs to be a feature, not a product. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. No, I, I couldn't agree more. For most people. It's- Like- For most people... 118 00:21:52.268 --> 00:22:06.168 like for most people- There, there is a, there is a, an oversupply, I would say now, of content for what I would call news junkies, people who can't get enough of this stuff, who want to read 10 articles about... 119 00:22:06.208 --> 00:22:17.608 There's lots of different publications who now- Yeah... service that audience. Over here, there's lots of people who, they, they wanna know enough, but it isn't all-consuming for them. I mean, is it? 120 00:22:18.508 --> 00:22:24.768 Dare I say their job. They're not going over the maps in Donetsk. I mean, it, I, I don't mean to trivialize what's going on, but, like, I don't... 121 00:22:24.828 --> 00:22:31.708 I think that is a very niche behavior, and it should be a very niche behavior. And, and but, but I will say people care, right? 122 00:22:31.748 --> 00:22:42.448 Like, some of the things that have gone big for us was like where we did a piece a couple of years ago about the coup in Gabon on TikTok. I didn't think anyone would care about the coup in Gabon. 123 00:22:42.458 --> 00:22:45.888 They do, but they don't want- Sounds interesting to me. I didn't even know about it. 124 00:22:46.388 --> 00:22:54.528 [laughs] But they don't want six videos about it, and they want 30 seconds of information, so they're better informed than they were 100 seconds ago. 125 00:22:54.948 --> 00:23:07.198 But it's not their be all and end all, and I think recognizing, recognizing that is, is quite a hard thing for, you know, newsrooms, traditional newsrooms to, to, to understand. 126 00:23:07.778 --> 00:23:20.927 And then I think the other thing is, and again, this is, this has been a long-standing factor, this generation, the, the kind of, the younger generation, including Gen Z's, the, the, the millennials as well, they don't wanna be talked down to. 127 00:23:21.038 --> 00:23:26.088 They don't wanna be told or made to feel stupid, and actually news does do that. 128 00:23:26.168 --> 00:23:36.388 It's kind of like we did this piece really early on, but it's been a feature of how we cover the, the news about Ukraine and Russia, and it's assumed that you know 129 00:23:37.388 --> 00:23:50.868 the history of, you know, the Soviet Union, the, the separation, the, the annex- annexing of Crimea. Actually, most people don't know where Ukraine was on a map. Like, this is, uh, talking three years ago. Yeah. 130 00:23:50.878 --> 00:24:01.738 And you have to start there and take people on, on, on a journey. And, and I think like, again, people don't wanna consume news sometimes because it makes them feel stupid. 131 00:24:01.788 --> 00:24:08.458 They're like, "Well, I don't really know what the, the history of the Middle East is." Yeah. "I don't understand what, what's actually happening. 132 00:24:08.548 --> 00:24:20.028 How can I understand it in a way that where someone is alongside me informing me of this rather than talking down to me like a, like a teacher-student relationship?" Well, yeah. 133 00:24:20.068 --> 00:24:28.508 I mean, it's like, it's a t- it's a double-edged sword, right? Like, I mean, you can't assume prior knowledge. I mean, this is always the problem, right, of, of news, but I think it's more acute now. 134 00:24:28.928 --> 00:24:38.884 But at the same time-Like I go back to the Skimm, right? I mean, the Skimm was going to make a digestible news product for millennial women. 135 00:24:39.464 --> 00:24:54.224 Now, as like a Gen X man, I felt like I was like, "Okay, this isn't for me," so maybe I can't like pass judgments on it, but I was like, "I don't-- I can't imagine this is the way [chuckles] people want to..." 136 00:24:54.824 --> 00:25:03.044 I don't know if anyone wants to go back and like the sort of Skimm like archives about how they, they package the, the news. It was, to me, it was... 137 00:25:03.504 --> 00:25:12.124 It, it went a little bit like too far in, in trying to be, you know, it had a little bit of that Steve Buscemi meme- Yes... like, "How do you do, fellow kids?" 138 00:25:12.704 --> 00:25:21.464 The thing about the things like the Skimm, Vice, it did connect with the audience. Like that fact is actually undeniable. 139 00:25:21.504 --> 00:25:39.724 The businesses that you can build around it is where I think for various reasons, be it timing, be it patience of investors, be it valuations that were set based on audience numbers and then have to be lifted up to, that's where those businesses you would, you could argue lost, lost their ways. 140 00:25:40.104 --> 00:25:50.504 But they created content that held the attention of millennial women- Yeah... and millennial generation in, in, in the case of- Mm-hmm... in the case of Vice. 141 00:25:50.524 --> 00:26:02.744 And, um, I think it's what you do with it next that, that is the, the learning, especially that I've taken away. So are you gonna... Uh, do you try to avoid ideological... 142 00:26:02.944 --> 00:26:11.604 I mean, the recount was pretty, was pretty left, at least in an American context. I don't know if it, if it had changed- No, it is. It is... since then. It's pretty left. 143 00:26:11.814 --> 00:26:25.964 Like, and I, [chuckles] you know, there's no monolith of like, you know, younger people that were, they're apparent- about to elect the Democratic socialist in, in New York City and younger people have, have powered that. 144 00:26:26.604 --> 00:26:36.644 How do you think about that? 'Cause I, I do feel, you know, it's a fraught area in some ways because, again, no generation is like monolithic, right? 145 00:26:36.684 --> 00:26:49.694 But I kinda feel like the news organizations studiously saying that they are not going to... That they're completely, quote unquote, "unbiased" just doesn't... 146 00:26:49.724 --> 00:27:01.584 Those kind of like niceties I think like are, are finished with a, a younger generation. I could be wrong. No, I think you're right. I think we, we... CNN in particular started that, right? 147 00:27:01.624 --> 00:27:06.164 We were talking about, you know, trying to be unbiased, trying to show both sides of the story. 148 00:27:06.644 --> 00:27:18.424 That is the kind of ideology, but I would imagine that people can construe us any way that they, they want to, depending on which content they consume from us. But that certainly is at the core of CNN. 149 00:27:18.484 --> 00:27:30.324 The recount, again, the recount is, you know, if you, you had to pick a side, it's definitely more left-leaning. But within that, we tried to create other products. 150 00:27:30.404 --> 00:27:44.104 The, the core of actually CNN as well is trying not to tell you what to think. So we might take stories that you would argue is this, this side leaning or that side leaning, but we're not trying to talk down to you. 151 00:27:44.144 --> 00:27:52.524 So if you look at the way that we approach drugs in society, we're not saying taking drugs is bad. We're saying, "Here's how to take drugs safely." 152 00:27:52.564 --> 00:28:01.024 I know that's not politics per se, but it's, it's not taking a view as to this is right, this is wrong, that's okay, that's not okay. 153 00:28:01.444 --> 00:28:10.104 We're kinda saying like, "If you're gonna do it all, this is what you need to be aware of. These are some of the more rare things that are going on in, in the, in this, in the culture." 154 00:28:10.144 --> 00:28:36.524 With the recount, we've just launched actually a new product under the recount umbrella called Who Broke It, which is a newsletter product that assumes that a lot of people are not consuming politics from mainstream media anymore, and the, the, the old way that the recount does is it brings together what people are saying from the left and the right, but instead of news outlets, it's creators. 155 00:28:36.584 --> 00:28:44.284 So there's a fantastic journalist who works for us, Grace Winsted, who was doing this anyway, and she came back and she said, "Look, we turn this into a product." 156 00:28:44.324 --> 00:28:57.134 It's like, "This is what the left is saying about what Trump did today, creators- Yeah... and this is what the right was saying that, that Trump did today," and slightly taking the telling you what to think out of it. 157 00:28:57.264 --> 00:29:04.384 It's kind of like actually, if you wanna know what the next generation are reading, saying, or thinking, here's what the left and the right are doing. 158 00:29:04.484 --> 00:29:12.144 So I guess what we're trying to do is find elements of balance in other parts of what, what we do. 159 00:29:12.234 --> 00:29:24.764 It's incredibly hard to, to do it in politics, and also when you've got brands that have got preconceptions like the recount, for example. Yeah. So how do you think about the platform question, right? 160 00:29:24.844 --> 00:29:33.584 Like I mean, they're... You're gonna wanna reach young people where they are, and they're on TikTok, they're on Instagram, et cetera. 161 00:29:34.024 --> 00:29:41.564 And obviously, the previous generation of, [chuckles] of news did not do great with the platforms. 162 00:29:41.644 --> 00:29:52.964 We used to have a, a GIF in my last job of, of Charlie Brown getting the football snatched out from him and him going flying, and put that on stories where it applied. 163 00:29:53.424 --> 00:30:02.384 Pretty much every story that dealt with publishers dealing with technology [chuckles] platforms got that GIF. We had to stop using it at some point. H-How do you think about that? 164 00:30:02.424 --> 00:30:18.944 Because I mean, you have to, again, you have to like follow, you know, user behaviors, and I, I, I find it really difficult to believe that Gen Z is gonna be like typing www.usatoday.com in a browser, [chuckles] so you're like, 165 00:30:19.844 --> 00:30:26.916 "Sorry, our friends at Gadget, but Robin was the one who laughed at that."I assume that's not your strategy [laughs] No. No. 166 00:30:27.116 --> 00:30:34.196 But I-- look, and really they're not gonna type anything into the browser, be it CNET, be it the, the, the Journal. Now that was the... 167 00:30:34.576 --> 00:30:42.956 I think that was the revelation, revelation that we had four years ago, was that these audiences are not coming to the web, and they're certainly not coming to the web directly. 168 00:30:43.296 --> 00:30:52.826 Fast-forward four years and you've got the whole disruption, which is probably another... Well, you've done it already, podcasting around AI and how people are even- Yeah... getting information. 169 00:30:53.576 --> 00:31:00.756 I mean, it, it's definitely not coming back to the, the website. So no disrespect to CNET, bro. It, it's happened to all, all publishers. 170 00:31:00.996 --> 00:31:16.496 But, but the, the, the thing around the social platforms, and again, you know, past experience and probably most of the gray in my beard is, you know, remember when you wrote the Journal is we recognized a lot that these are never going to be your friends. 171 00:31:16.556 --> 00:31:26.936 They have their own business objectives, their own outcomes. They're a great distribution platform and channel to reach the audiences that, that we want. 172 00:31:26.976 --> 00:31:46.736 But it goes back to what else are we building for some parts of our audience to engage and, and, and, and entice them to go deeper, and how we're building products that that audience actually want to, to consume rather than the products that I wanna consume, which is not, is not the same thing. 173 00:31:46.816 --> 00:31:55.506 And so that's, that's really the focus of, of Caliber going forward. We have built audiences now. We reach 100 million, 100... 174 00:31:55.536 --> 00:32:08.686 I think 120 million people a month consume either Recount or C&EN content, kind of 60 to 70%, depending on the publication or under 35. It's brilliant. Mm-hmm. 175 00:32:08.756 --> 00:32:13.326 As you said in the previous podcast, that is a rented audience. That is not my audience. Right. 176 00:32:13.376 --> 00:32:23.676 That is an audience that I'm getting via someone else's distribution, and that is fine as long as you go into it knowing that that is, this can't be your business model forever. But we have 177 00:32:24.596 --> 00:32:37.956 built that audience, and now for us, it's kind of what products do we have? There's several niches, groups, parts of our audience are going to be interested in being able to kind of go deeper and being able to engage. 178 00:32:38.416 --> 00:32:52.656 Who Broke It is a great example of there will be a subset of that recount audience that will want to subscribe to a newsletter to understand what all those creators are saying, because they're time poor, and this is a great way of understanding what the left and the right think. 179 00:32:53.256 --> 00:33:09.836 Say/Say is a big, big bet for us, which is that how do we remove the noise from social media and have news on your terms as an audience member with people that you trust that are not brands people- Mm-hmm... 180 00:33:09.845 --> 00:33:12.836 can we create a product that, that, that delivers that? 181 00:33:12.876 --> 00:33:25.276 So that's, that's really where Caliber's going, is, is building these products that we've got this scale of audience, what can we now engage them with where that is on their terms? Okay. 182 00:33:25.976 --> 00:33:31.236 So talk to me about the business model. I mean, how do you make this, this work? 183 00:33:31.276 --> 00:33:40.286 I mean, I think about Now This, and I think Now This in many ways got a lot of things right, you know, as, as far as, like, the product and, and what it... 184 00:33:40.446 --> 00:33:51.536 and how they approached, you know, taking news and reaching a younger demographic. I mean, they went all in on platforms, and they amassed massive numbers. 185 00:33:51.796 --> 00:34:03.476 You know, Ben Lair would, would come on my podcast and talk, you know, the millions became billions of video views and, and it didn't work. How do you build a business? Again, you don't rely... 186 00:34:04.336 --> 00:34:09.666 Again, we're very lu- We're lucky in the sense that we can see what happened with some of these businesses and learn from it. Yes. 187 00:34:09.696 --> 00:34:25.226 You don't rely on platform revenues, because the moment the algorithm shifts, the moment that they s- change the splits between how much you get from the ad revenue and, and they, they shut down this product to launch a different product, your business models are, are jeopardized. 188 00:34:25.276 --> 00:34:34.376 So what, what we've done, what was the News Movement of now Caliber, is, first of all, we found that we can build a business. 189 00:34:35.116 --> 00:34:46.996 Again, news industry, news companies do this today, but they do it for, for digital and they do it for the web, but not so much for social. We built a business which is helping brands create content on social. 190 00:34:47.616 --> 00:34:56.286 More and more brands are trying to cut through and talk directly to their consumers, engage with consumers, and create o-original content. 191 00:34:56.396 --> 00:35:11.096 And, and so actually we've said, "Well, if we're doing this every single day for ourselves, what's the learnings? What's the data that we've got that we can help brands reach audiences?" Again, it's not just Gen Z. 192 00:35:11.196 --> 00:35:15.316 We're, we're working with several brands that are reaching kind of older audiences. 193 00:35:15.356 --> 00:35:32.276 We did a piece with a, a large Big Four consultancy where we created social content for their AI report, and it's the first time we're creating social content talking about a headed subject like AI and the effect it's going to have, and this is reaching kind of working professionals that are 35 and up. 194 00:35:32.896 --> 00:35:44.496 But the, but the principles are still exactly the same. So we have built a social media agency. That's been the first half of the, of the business model, and it's making good, good money, right? 195 00:35:44.596 --> 00:35:55.036 I'd like it to make more, but we've grown... It sounds like I'm showing off, but I am. But we've grown. Last year we did, we did in the low seven figures. 196 00:35:55.256 --> 00:36:04.276 We-- Well, the reason I'm showing off is that this is a question that always gets asked. Mm-hmm. "Well, how are you making money?" And it's like we did low seven- Well, it's a relevant question. Of course it is. Yeah. 197 00:36:04.296 --> 00:36:07.616 So I can probably love this. So we did low seven figures last year. 198 00:36:07.696 --> 00:36:19.096 This year we're gonna do kind of high seven figures and, you know, that is a huge growth for a company that's only been doing business in this space for two years, and we've got huge brands. 199 00:36:19.136 --> 00:36:30.372 We've just launched a new tube channel for Movember. Movember being the guys, the charity for men's health-The, the most famous thing is growing the most mustache during Movember to raise money for prostate cancer. 200 00:36:30.612 --> 00:36:41.652 We just had a new YouTube series around men's mental health, and it's widely labeled as Movember. Again, appropriate division between- Okay, so agency, agency services are a big part of the business right now. 201 00:36:41.712 --> 00:36:46.052 Big part of the business. Yeah. Okay. And that's, that's been our, I guess, our lifeblood. 202 00:36:46.472 --> 00:36:55.372 It-- Where we're now going is what products do we build that are direct to consumer that are going to take the hundred and twenty-two million. 203 00:36:55.652 --> 00:37:23.152 We're never gonna move a hundred and twenty-two million people a month from social into one of our products, but we can take half a million, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand and have direct, uh, products, be it the subscription product that's Who Broke It, be it Cap- Capsule, which is, uh, which is the newsletter that I talked about early, be it Say So, where actually we're rounding up all of these creators and creating a news product for this generation. 204 00:37:23.752 --> 00:37:36.052 But again, not everybody is going to want a news product on their phones from this generation, but there will be a subset, and those will become monetizable relationships that, that, that we have. 205 00:37:36.632 --> 00:37:53.372 Combine that with the agency, and you've got what I think will be... well, I know will be a robust business model. Again, the other challenge with traditional news is not having to scale fixed, fixed costs, right? 206 00:37:53.432 --> 00:38:03.872 Mm-hmm. If I look at any news organization that I've worked for, they never had trouble bringing in money. What they had was the cost to service that money was incredibly high. The fixed cost part of it. 207 00:38:04.052 --> 00:38:06.612 Well, you, you know it, right? Like- Yeah... 208 00:38:06.732 --> 00:38:17.312 you can very quickly keep adding journalists, keep adding people to the newsroom, and then all of a sudden, you now need to make twice as much money just to, to, to, to, to kind of stand still. 209 00:38:17.352 --> 00:38:30.232 And I think we're being really thoughtful around how we work with creators inside of our newsrooms, inside TNN, inside The Recap, so that we don't have to keep adding more and more fixed costs- Yeah... 210 00:38:30.312 --> 00:38:45.152 to the, to the business. But I think the challenge is... Look, I, I think about it, like, as, like, added value, right? Like, actually digging, digging the sort of nuggets out of the ground is very time-consuming. 211 00:38:45.382 --> 00:38:46.872 It's very expensive. 212 00:38:47.392 --> 00:39:04.692 And there's a lot of people, I'm one of them, honestly, who [chuckles] make a sensible decision and are like, "Yeah, I'm gonna skip the raw materials part, and I'm going to actually do the value add on top of, of the raw materials," and that's the packaging. 213 00:39:04.772 --> 00:39:18.112 That's the sort of the commentary. I mean, that's why podcasting is such a good business if you get to the other side of that po- if you're on the right side of the power wall, because th- there's minimal costs, right? 214 00:39:18.232 --> 00:39:30.772 Like, I mean, Scott Galloway is very open with, you know, his, what he, what he makes. It's, like, a really good business, right? And you're actually unearthing, digging the things out of the earth. 215 00:39:30.872 --> 00:39:44.222 That's, that's expensive, time-consuming, makes people hate you. Advertisers run away from you, and all, [chuckles] and so on and so forth. So, I mean, is this like a bet that, like, you just skip the reporting part? No. 216 00:39:44.432 --> 00:39:57.352 Actually, we just, we just hired a, a senior correspondent who is being brought in to do the capital J journalism stuff and help us get stories that make people sit up and pay attention. 217 00:39:57.402 --> 00:40:05.072 Like, our, our tagline is, "Journalism that moves at the speed of culture." Capital J journalism is a core part- Yeah... of what we do. 218 00:40:05.392 --> 00:40:18.392 My challenge back to you would be, like, how much of the cost of a newsroom is actually going into unearthing those gems or raw- Oh, fair. Look, I know it's not- Completely fair. Yes. Yeah. Yes, those things take quite- 219 00:40:19.352 --> 00:40:27.412 That's, that's, that's- Like, they take quite a lot of time to see fruition. Yeah. Hundred percent. You're paying a lot, but it is not the majority of the cost. The majority of the cost is the regurgitation. 220 00:40:27.452 --> 00:40:33.072 It's- It's the, it's the infrastructure. It's the infrastructure around. I don't mean infrastructure, just technology infrastructure. 221 00:40:33.112 --> 00:40:38.172 It's, it's, it's the human infrastructure that is, you know, p- the, the publishing function. 222 00:40:38.912 --> 00:40:51.402 And I th- look, I think a lot of the creators have just sort of done a way with that infrastructure and come up with models where they don't need to support that. And, and, you know, that I think... Look, 223 00:40:52.332 --> 00:41:00.372 I-- God bless Bari Weiss and whoever they wanna bring into Paramount, but, like, that is a compression story. They're going to have to compress. 224 00:41:00.452 --> 00:41:10.822 You know, CBS News is going to be smaller, and the numbers just simply don't work in these organizations. And I think that's, that's what I'm- Mm-hmm... you know, we talked a lot 225 00:41:11.772 --> 00:41:30.792 today about, like, the people who've come with us from, uh, so come before us in the past and what I can take away, and it's kind of like when they got mine, they grew the, the, the newsrooms and we've, we, we, you know, have been reported, we've just had a, an investment and we will make strategic hire. 226 00:41:30.852 --> 00:41:41.272 But the idea isn't just, you know, to scale to crazy numbers because we can't sustain it in a, in a meaningful way. And so a lot of the work that we've done, I'll give you an example. 227 00:41:41.472 --> 00:41:47.822 One of our entertainment correspondents, a fantastic woman, decided to leave. She's written for Freya. 228 00:41:48.492 --> 00:41:58.102 And instead of replacing her, the editor was like, "Actually, we found a creator who does this, and so we can partner with them and jointly create content that's on their channel and that's on our channel." 229 00:41:58.122 --> 00:42:08.952 And I was like, "Exactly." So we don't have to go and hire somebody and pay them all of the fixed costs that are involved in hiring people, but we can work with a creator who's got their audience. 230 00:42:08.992 --> 00:42:15.732 They can leverage our audience. We give them some of the, quote unquote, "infrastructure" that they need to be able to do their job better. 231 00:42:16.082 --> 00:42:27.932 And it's just, it's a different way of being able to scale out and, and one that I think is slightly more cost effective. Yeah. So tell me about, I mean, you, you mentioned the funding. I saw it at ten million dollars. 232 00:42:28.352 --> 00:42:36.847 You can either confirm or not there with that. But you, you took fundingAnd, you know, I mean, this is another one where [laughs] I go back to it. 233 00:42:37.328 --> 00:42:52.108 Unfortunately, I've gone through a lot of these cycles, and like, so when I hear like news and I hear venture funding, I, I think, uh-oh. I would say it's a good amount of money. They're not new in-investors. 234 00:42:52.148 --> 00:43:04.108 They've been with us on the journey for the first few years. They're not venture in the way that I think, again, some of our predecessors raised money, and the demands were very different. 235 00:43:04.148 --> 00:43:13.888 They're very patient, very hands-off, which is really important when you think about how you run a newsroom and how we run several different newsrooms. 236 00:43:14.568 --> 00:43:23.668 I wouldn't be so arrogant to say they're the perfect investor, but it's, it's not somebody who's come in last month and gone, "Ooh, there's a new shiny thing here." 237 00:43:24.178 --> 00:43:35.228 They've been with us pretty much since the beginning, and they see value in what we're doing and what we're building, and then stay out of the things that I think are important for them to stay out of. 238 00:43:35.788 --> 00:43:46.768 So but, and, and, and we need that patience, right? Like this is, this is, this is a reality. It, it is very difficult to do what we were doing and not have some patient investors. 239 00:43:46.928 --> 00:43:54.768 We wouldn't be sitting here if we didn't have, um- Okay. So they understand. I mean, this is, this is, this is a UK-based fund, Forte, I, I believe it's called. 240 00:43:54.848 --> 00:43:58.268 I don't know them, but there's some Qatari investors involved, et cetera. 241 00:43:58.568 --> 00:44:08.148 And, you know, I, I, I, I was just having a conversation with Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo, and they're, they're now twenty-five years old. 242 00:44:08.188 --> 00:44:11.748 They're like a survivor from the blog era, you know, the [chuckles] news blog era. 243 00:44:11.848 --> 00:44:25.228 And, you know, they had all of these articles for the twenty-fifth anniversary, and for Josh's, he chose to claim that the, the, the original sin was treating media like technology. So this is... 244 00:44:25.758 --> 00:44:43.208 Th-th-this fund understands that, you know, n-the news business and media in general do not scale like technology. Yeah. I mean, you'd have to ask them [chuckles] that. That's their- Well, you, you pitched them. 245 00:44:43.328 --> 00:44:52.548 I assume. [laughs] That's true, but I, I would say that they, they know what we... They know who we are, and they know what we're doing because they've been with us- Okay... for four years, right? 246 00:44:52.558 --> 00:45:04.088 So they're not suddenly expecting us to make a hard pivot and become a tech and deliver tech company multiples, but they see the value in being able to reach a younger- Okay... audience with Politan. 247 00:45:04.528 --> 00:45:17.508 Um, the, the bit I find a bit like, a bit difficult in answering that is I'm a technologist at heart, right? Like I was a CTO in a previous life. The guy, my co-founder, who, Dion, who's with us as a CT. 248 00:45:18.068 --> 00:45:27.868 We all absolutely all interested in tech, but I would never profess to claim that we're going to become a tech company or become a platform- Yeah. But it's not like a SaaS business, right? 249 00:45:27.968 --> 00:45:35.988 Like, I mean, like it's not- We're not focus- That, that news is a- We're not... Again, our straddle line, our core is journalism that moves at the speed of culture. Right. 250 00:45:36.048 --> 00:45:48.868 And a human being, you know, that is a quite a hard thing. Like capital J journalism, as we just discussed, is something that takes investment, is something that takes time if- Yeah. Well, that's-... to see fruition. 251 00:45:48.908 --> 00:46:00.028 That's, that's the tension, right? I mean, you mentioned that... I mean, you couple, you mentioned Vice and you mentioned the, The Skimm as having created interesting products that resonated with their audiences. 252 00:46:00.628 --> 00:46:14.088 I would... I could very easily make the argument that in both instances, their real errors l- were, were really on the cap table and, and just the financial part of those businesses. 253 00:46:14.528 --> 00:46:26.308 They raised massive sums of money in, in the case of Vice, and really for an email newsletter, at the end of the day, you know, The Skimm raised a ton of money for an email newsletter. It's like... Tell me about SaySo. 254 00:46:26.688 --> 00:46:38.208 What, what are you trying to accomplish there? Is that... Are you gonna get Gen Z to pay for news? 'Cause there are s-signs, by the way, that they will pay for, for news. It's not like all grim on that front. 255 00:46:38.808 --> 00:46:51.708 I don't think it's all grim. I think y-you... We talked about the, the, the Beehives, the Substacks, the Patreons. They're all great examples of people pay for things that add value to their, to their lives. 256 00:46:51.727 --> 00:47:04.268 And look, SaySo's a couple of things. One is this long-standing belief I've had, that Dion, my co-founder, has had, that news needs to fit in with people's lives, not the other way around. 257 00:47:04.608 --> 00:47:13.108 News has always been appointment viewing on news's terms. The paper was delivered at such a time in the morning. The news is on at eight o'clock at night, right? 258 00:47:13.468 --> 00:47:17.568 Obviously, that has changed, but still some of those principles are there. 259 00:47:17.608 --> 00:47:26.988 And so the first thing that SaySo's trying to do is say, "If you've only got 30 seconds, we'll give you 30 seconds worth of information that will help you get on with your day. 260 00:47:27.028 --> 00:47:36.638 If you've got a minute, we'll give you a minute. If you've got more, we'll give you more, and we will fit in, and we will learn your habits rather than making you fit in with ours." 261 00:47:36.708 --> 00:47:51.128 So that's one of the core tenets of SaySo. The second core tenet um, is there are a bunch of brilliant, and we've got to know over the past couple of years, creators who are doing news as a, as a hobby. 262 00:47:51.508 --> 00:47:57.068 And we can sit here and we can say, "That's not journalism. You know, they're not the credentialed journalism." 263 00:47:57.688 --> 00:48:10.708 But audiences are taking it much more at face value than they are what the capital J journalists are, are doing. Yeah. And the, the problem those creators have got is they've got these huge followings, huge audiences. 264 00:48:11.108 --> 00:48:18.988 They're struggling to monetize it 'cause often they're not writing, right? So Beehive might not be an option. Substack might not be an option for them. 265 00:48:19.448 --> 00:48:24.708 Um, they're creating video-based content, and it's really hard to monetize it, uh, on the platforms. 266 00:48:24.748 --> 00:48:35.588 And so what we thought about actually was we were gonna build a product for ourselves, like with our content, and we were like, "Well, that's what every other news organization has done. Here's more TNM. 267 00:48:35.628 --> 00:48:38.968 Here's more recap. You know, this is how we see the world." 268 00:48:39.328 --> 00:48:57.194 I mean, actually, when we've got all these relationships with these fasta- fantastic creators, what about if we could actually help them make money from their content?More directly, but also service to the audience, a whole bunch of different viewpoints in one place without all of the noise that you get from social media. 269 00:48:57.284 --> 00:49:09.094 Yeah. Right? Social media is, you get one story, well, these are more so now, there's AI smart, one story, th- one video, sorry, that's funny, o- one... And, and it's this hodgepodge. 270 00:49:09.114 --> 00:49:26.914 So having a creator space that doesn't have a lot of that noise, has creators that we feel or we think are trying to do things in the right way, doesn't mean they agree with us, we're not editing them, but they are trying to do things in a trustworthy way for all parts of the, the spectrum- Yeah... 271 00:49:26.973 --> 00:49:32.894 and put them in one place, and then add a layer of technology that makes it easy for you, the consumer, to, to consume. 272 00:49:33.004 --> 00:49:52.964 The thing that I wanna be painstakingly clear is, I've worked in sub- I, I've built subscription businesses at "The Journal" at the "Times" of London, charging people for a monthly fee that you struggle sometimes to figure out how you're going to cancel, and you don't get necessarily feel you're getting value from. 273 00:49:53.504 --> 00:50:05.324 It isn't a business that we're going to be trying to replicate. We're much more about kind of micro transaction, micro payments, and also less about paywalling of content. 274 00:50:05.824 --> 00:50:15.114 If you think about paywalling of content, what you do is paywall your curiosity. Interesting. So the moment I get curious about something, it's like, here's a paywall. And you're paywalling curiosity. Exactly. 275 00:50:15.164 --> 00:50:25.444 And so I... What we, what we're trying to do is provide a utility and then charge people based on how often they use that utility. We'll cap it, right? 276 00:50:25.504 --> 00:50:33.284 So it's not a never-ending thing, but the idea is you pay as you, as you go, and at some point, if you use it enough, you won't pay anymore. 277 00:50:33.784 --> 00:50:41.344 And that's, that's the payment model, and the idea is you're getting your information on your terms from people who you trust. So explain this to me. 278 00:50:41.404 --> 00:50:54.004 I know this is, this is really interesting because, you know, I, I always go back to micro, micro payments as, like, one of those [chuckles] ideas that's, like, failed a thousand times, but has to work. It has to work. 279 00:50:54.124 --> 00:51:02.264 That's my theory. And people can explain to me a mil- like, all the reasons it didn't work. I understand that. I understand that. However, 280 00:51:03.184 --> 00:51:13.704 I think if you're going to be aligned with your audience, and that is what everyone says, then you need to have these models that are not adversarial. 281 00:51:13.924 --> 00:51:30.104 Because we think about adversarial business models, and think about the ad industrial complex. Subscriptions have just as many, if not more, adversarial dark patterns to them, [chuckles] you know? It is a truism. 282 00:51:30.964 --> 00:51:44.614 You make it hard to cancel, you add a little friction, and you gotta call between 9:00 and 5:00. [chuckles] Like, there's a reason the AOL, News Corp, come on. Anyone from "The Wall Street Journal"- What? What?... 283 00:51:44.664 --> 00:51:54.683 I'm not canceling my subscription, but I'd have to set my alarm to do it. That's really interesting. How is this, how is this gonna, how is this gonna work? Give us a little detour. How is this gonna work? 284 00:51:55.544 --> 00:52:04.993 The, the way it's going to work is, there's a lot that we still need to learn, but the, the, the principles around it are, people pay for utility. Like, they... You know, I, I... 285 00:52:05.264 --> 00:52:12.324 This is probably not the best example, and, you know, no one's, no one has told the CEO that it's not a great example, so I'll keep using it. 286 00:52:12.724 --> 00:52:22.784 But, like, people use the subway in New York to get to and from work, and they pay per journey. They're paying for that, they're paying for that utility, and they- Yeah... they will pay for it. 287 00:52:22.824 --> 00:52:26.524 And at some point, after the 30th journey, it's capped, and they don't pay any more. 288 00:52:26.624 --> 00:52:35.844 And so what I wanna find is, I don't know whether it's after seven uses or eight uses, but, like, the more that you use it, the smarter the, the, the technology gets. 289 00:52:35.904 --> 00:52:46.724 It learns when you're coming to it, how long you're spending with it- Yeah... so next time it's got your news ready for it. Yeah. My bet, my bet is that it doesn't matter that... 290 00:52:47.124 --> 00:53:01.144 If you think about news organizing, the way news models work is like, we need to keep you for longer so that you feel like you're getting even more value out of your subscription, so you won't wake up or set your alarm at, to 12 o'clock to call the call center to cancel. 291 00:53:01.584 --> 00:53:09.394 What we're trying to say is, if you only spend 30 seconds- They send me emails for every single thing, not before my subscription [chuckles] expires. I know this is coming up for renewal. 292 00:53:09.404 --> 00:53:21.024 I would also say it's not just loyalty. It's not just loyalty to our renewal time. I nudge it, set my alarm to cancel- Oh, no, no, no. This is, this is, these, these are well-known, these are well-known things out there. 293 00:53:21.034 --> 00:53:32.884 But, but, but I think what we, what we're trying to figure out is, if you get 60 seconds of value from us a day, or 30 seconds of value from us, that's something that we think is worth paying a small amount for. 294 00:53:33.264 --> 00:53:42.544 And the other part of this is that a lot of that will be redistributed back to creators, both creators who bring their audiences- Yeah... 295 00:53:42.584 --> 00:53:50.444 to the, to the plat- to the product, but also as they come and consume content from, from those creators. So that's, that's our bet. 296 00:53:50.454 --> 00:53:58.084 And we also are going to experiment and try, you know, are there certain features that people would pay, pay more for? 297 00:53:58.344 --> 00:54:12.834 But one of the things I wanna get, that I keep pushing the team to do, and they're being receptive to it, is the content itself doesn't necessarily have to be the thing that you, you, you pay for. Yeah. 298 00:54:12.844 --> 00:54:24.244 Because actually that content is available in lots of different places, and I don't wanna kill the curiosity of someone who's like, "Actually, I wanna learn a little bit more. Oh, I've gotta sign up now. 299 00:54:24.304 --> 00:54:31.644 Gotta pay more money." Yeah. That's fascinating. I mean, I, I hope you make it work, honestly, because, like, there needs to be more... 300 00:54:31.684 --> 00:54:44.984 When people talk about trust issues, they sort of skip over the fact that there are still a lot of practices in the business, and I know the reasons for it, et cetera, that don't exactly engender trust. 301 00:54:45.184 --> 00:55:02.364 If your business modelis to dangle some dollar a month before jacking it up five hundred percent, and by the way, staying super quiet before that happens, then that's not exactly a way to engender trust, I don't think. 302 00:55:02.484 --> 00:55:03.543 I mean, I get it. 303 00:55:03.604 --> 00:55:18.464 Like, Amazon gets away with all kinds of dark patterns, and that is sort of the coin of the realm in this, in, in this, you know, in this world where everyone is trying to hook you into sub- a subscription and make it really difficult to, to cancel. 304 00:55:18.594 --> 00:55:26.484 I mean, I s- I'm still in some, like, wine of the month club. I stopped drinking like ten months ago. Like, I don't... [laughs] Still. Anyone wants wine, let me know. 305 00:55:26.604 --> 00:55:32.933 I have a- You've got crates and crates stacking up at home. I have to start drinking again just to get rid of this wine. 306 00:55:32.964 --> 00:55:43.034 But also, like, since I was-- since we do some of those funnels, everything has become a subscription. I mean, like subscriptions for socks- Right... for razors, for like- You go on Amazon- Everything you do... 307 00:55:43.034 --> 00:55:47.214 you can't, you can't buy anything without- Without subscribing something... trying to get you into a subscription. 308 00:55:47.324 --> 00:55:56.864 It-- And I think there are different, there are different ways of delivering content that doesn't involve... Those subscriptions are lovely as well because it's nice recurring revenue. 309 00:55:57.234 --> 00:56:06.684 You know you're gonna get it every month. Yes. But, but it does- Everyone should join TRB Pro, by the way. Absolutely. Because I don't like starting the year from zero with revenue. [laughs] We will. 310 00:56:06.844 --> 00:56:21.464 We, we have, I think, the ability to experiment and learn and, and trial different ways of being able to monetize this safe zone product. And, and that's the, the, the thing that I'm really planning to try. Okay. Cool. 311 00:56:21.584 --> 00:56:31.634 When, when, when, when, when am I gonna get my hands on this? If you're one of the lucky few in the next couple of months in the beta, which you might be because you've been a gracious host. Yeah. Please do. 312 00:56:31.634 --> 00:56:38.074 The beta goes live in the next couple of weeks, but we're probably... Again, we wanna learn, so we're gonna use a couple of months- Yeah... 313 00:56:38.084 --> 00:56:47.864 to test out what works and what doesn't, and then make a song and a dance about it in the new year, in twenty twenty-six. Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much, Robin. This was really great. Lovely, Brian. Thank you. 314 00:56:50.144 --> 00:56:57.153 [outro jingle]