[upbeat music] Welcome to The Rebooting Show. I am Brian Morrissey.
One of the biggest challenges facing the media industry right now, and there are many, is the future of local news.
The collapse of the traditional business models has hollowed out local newspapers across the country, leaving many communities without coverage or the accountability that comes with that coverage.
But there are bright spots, and, and there are people who are building interesting models from scratch, and I'm gonna have them on this podcast 'cause I wanna talk more about this area. It's, it's really important.
But also those who are retrofitting, you know, legacy models. I think one of those bright spots is happening in Minnesota, where the Star Tribune is in the midst of a revival.
And it's not about nostalgia for print or necessarily just about, like, civic duty. It is about building a viable media business for the current reality.
Steve Grove, the CEO of the Star Tribune, is a, a former tech executive.
He was a former head of, uh, Google News Lab, and he spent many years at, at YouTube and Google, and he's trying to reimagine what a modern local newspaper can be.
And in this conversation, we talk about what's broken, what Steve learned from all of his time in Silicon Valley, and how that world sort of looks at the, the news world.
We talk about what needs to be rebuilt and the role that institutions like the Star Tribune can play in restoring trust and relevance in local journalism. One thing to know, we recorded this a few, a few weeks back.
I was in the midst of getting ready for Cannes, and so I wanted to have a few conversations so I wouldn't be overwhelmed.
It, it happened that we did this prior to the, the tragic political violence in Minneapolis, so that isn't addressed in this conversation. I just wanted to let you know why.
That said, I think while many of the details of, of that violence are still unknown, I do think it points to a lot of what Steve and I discuss here around the need for healthy civic engagement and the critical role that local news can play in fostering that.
As always, I love to hear from you. Uh, you can email me at brian@therebooting.com. Also, if you like the show, please leave it a rating and review. Now, on to my conversation with Steve.
[upbeat music] Steve, thank you so much for, for joining me. Wanna talk about a bunch of things, but wanna start off with, you know, you, you spent 12 years really in Google.
I mean, first as part of YouTube, and then, and then running the, the Google News Lab. This is a fraught time.
It's always been fraught, the relationship of all publishers, but particularly news publishers, I feel like, with Google, because news publishers, you know, are very dependent on Google, and Google's not dependent on news publishers.
[chuckles] I, I hate to break it to, to everyone out there. Mm-hmm.
And Google occasionally makes that clear where they're like, "Oh, we decided to make a test by taking out like news links," and it's like, you didn't just decide to do that.
You wanna make clear that this doesn't matter to you, [chuckles] your business. But I wanna talk to you about, like, how, obviously, you left, I think, was it 2018? Yeah. Or '18, '19, yeah. Yeah. There. 2018.
So it's been a while, but I, I, you know, we were talking beforehand, I've covered Google for a while, and, like, DNA is DNA, right?
And I think I've always felt, you know, being on the sort of media side and, and, and also y- covering as a reporter or just dealing with the, you know, the technology side that has now become the overlords, that there's just been this total disconnect, right?
But give me, like, your sort of top line about how a company like Google really even looks at the news business. Yeah. Well, my time there, you mentioned, is 12 years, had kinda three distinct chapters.
The first was actually at YouTube where I started in the very- Yeah...
early days when, you know, it was kind of the utopian phase of the internet, where it was all upside, and I was one of the early employees of YouTube just after the acquisition, and we really got the chance to build up a news and political team there that was exciting and disruptive, and we did such things as the CNN YouTube debates, and- I remember those...
interviewed the president [static] days. Remember those? Yeah, snowman asking about climate change, and- Yeah... candidates responding. It was- Barack Obama still follows me on Twitter. Does he really? There you go.
Yeah. [chuckles] Getting him on board the platform with YouTube early. At the time, at the time, he followed pretty much anyone. [chuckles] Yeah. Well, his, his team was revolutionary on that front. And- Yeah...
that was a fun period of time.
I would say in those days, you know, Google, at least YouTube, kinda just fell into the news space because, of course, it was created as a video sharing platform and suddenly was being used for citizen journalism and for political engagement, and that was my first job, was helping YouTube get that field off the ground.
I always felt then, and, and felt throughout my time at Google, and for subsequent chapters, that the DNA of the company was a little bit different than its contemporaries in Silicon Valley.
The idea of making the world's information accessible and useful is resonant with journalism at that core level, and so I felt- Yeah... a little bit of resonance with the media industry there.
I went on to have a chapter at Google Plus, the wildly successful social network, and then ended up down in the Google News Lab, my final period.
But, you know, I would say in the time of my work at Google, I was largely a bridge person between media and the company, and tried to translate kinda the news industry to Google and Google to the news industry, along with others.
And in a lot of ways, there was some areas for collaboration, and I think Google, for the time I was there, took pretty seriously the need to wanna connect with news organizations in proactive ways, realizing the cold, hard truth of having gobbled up an ad market that once fueled media organizations more effectively, so there's always that tension.
You know, I think today it feels, it feels different 'cause the world's different, right? Media's different. The journalism landscape is different.
Google is chasing other competitors and upstarts when it comes to AI, and so the, the business strategy shifts a little.
We still work with Google, full disclosure, at the Star Tribune, and we partner with them now that I'm in this sort of other side of the fence over here.
But the company and the relationship with the news industry between big tech more broadly has shifted rapidly, and it, it is more fraught, and it is more challenging, and it feels almost more existential by the day in terms of how, you know, now on this side of the fence in a, in a publishing roleHow we're gonna get traffic and attention and, and have our content valued and discovered.
And those are the challenges that we're trying to work through now, and they do feel different when you're not, you know, at, in big tech, but working, working with it. Yeah.
Are, are you, are you preparing for Google Zero or is that sort of overblown? [laughs] Yeah, I don't, I don't know about that.
I would say we have some dollars we've put into our strategic plan to focus specifically on how AI can help us reach new audiences. We're trying to build a brand that people wanna come to versus just bump into.
But, you know, it's hard not to look at a search results landing page these days and wonder how are news organizations gonna find their way into that future strategy for the company.
And, you know, we'd like to do that with tech platforms versus just fighting against them.
But, you know, you're in these jobs and you gotta wear two hats, on the one hand you're in DC fighting for copyright and, you know, licensing dynamics that favor your industry.
On the other hand, you're trying to innovate and try these tools in new ways and find ways that a trusted news brand, which people still care about and want, can actually provide some, some signal from the noise out there and, and differentiate too.
So we're preparing for any number of futures, but we're trying to own our future, and I think that to me feels different than, uh, many news organizations, and it's just the reality of the ecosystem.
It felt so much like the world was being done to them for the past 10 years, and we're trying- Yeah... to shift our orientation to be more proactive.
I know that's kinda just a cultural comment, but it's kinda central to us making it 'cause we can't rely on partners just to, to see- Yeah... us through. Well, you gotta, you gotta own it. Yeah.
And it's such a hard thing, so I always say like, you know, news and all of media is downstream of tech.
Everyone- everything is downstream of tech, and so it is, it's very difficult to make a product that, that people want, right?
But when you lose control of your distribution, it's really difficult to run [laughs] a business if you lose control- It is... of your distribution. It is.
I mean, not to jump straight to it, but I think if journalism is a public good, which I would hope we all can agree that it is, I think the funding models and the structure for it have to change to recognize that fact.
And, you know, as much as we are innovating on our business model, we can talk about the things we're trying here.
I do think, you know, more broadly, you're gonna need to find ways in which citizens and governments find ways to fund this aspect of our society that we need for a healthy democracy in ways that feel independent and are independent, but are funded to do at scale because only the subscription model and only the ads model aren't gonna do it anymore.
So we're, we're finding our other models, we can talk about those, but I think- Yeah... big picture, society needs to kind of take this on as a collective problem 'cause it's not only gonna be solved by, by publishers.
Right. So I wanna get there, but like let's, let's talk about you left, you left Google, you left tech a- and you ended up in news, which I, I don't know if the [laughs] it's like, you know,
clearly not like a, a purely financial decision, but you, you c- you, you moved back to, to, to Minnesota and one of the reasons we're talking is you have a book coming out, a memoir about- Yeah...
that, how you, how I reinvented myself, not me, how you reinvented yourself, but it's called How I Reinvented Myself in the Midwest. Mm-hmm.
And yeah, I'm, I'm interested in first you decided to go back and you worked for, for the state and, you know, your book's a lot about the value of, of civic engagement, right?
And I think at this time it, it's, it's never s- it seems like it's never been more fraught, like, you know, the, the civic engagement.
I, I'm not gonna like pin that just on the, the sort of, you know, travails of the local news industry- Mm-hmm... but I do think that, that that is part of it. First of all, why did you, why did you write the book?
And, and then also like what, what made you decide to, to leave, you know, I don't know, being part of Google, that's a good, [laughs] that's- Not reason-... that's a pretty good gig, you know?
Looked at through one lens, leaving Google to join state government and then a local newspaper- [laughs]... was a series of seriously questionable career decisions. Um- Yeah.
I don't, I don't know if the Minnesota state government has RSQs. [laughs] Yeah. Unfortunately not, um, the opposite. Well, you know, it was a life decision first and foremost.
My wife Mary, who also worked at Google, had started a team called Google for Startups. I had started the Google News Lab.
We were really enjoying living in Silicon Valley and, you know, felt like the world was our oyster like anybody at those companies does, especially, you know, eight, nine years ago when things were a little bit different.
But having kids change things, we had twins. We have eight-year-old twins now, but back then they'd just been born and so we thought about, gosh, maybe there's, maybe there's a different chapter outside of the valley.
Starting to feel a bit like the valley was a bubble for reasons that now I think many folks who have left the coasts have, have sensed as well.
So it was a bit of a life moment and like, "Hey, let's just try something new." We didn't know how long it would be. I'm from Minnesota. It's a state that anyone who's raised here would tell you they're very proud of.
There's kind of a, a homing beacon for folks to come back after a while that is, is relatively prevalent here, even the data will show that.
But ultimately it was a, a, a family decision and a chance to try something different.
Leaving Google for government was a chance to do that, and I did it under Governor Tim Walz, who had just been elected, to be his economic development commissioner in state government.
And my hope there was, you know, let's try something different. This is an adventure. If I'm gonna live in Minnesota, let's do something based here.
And my hope going in that, was that, you know, you bring some skills from one sector to another, maybe you can do some good. I mean, just- Mm-hmm... as simple as that.
You bring a, a fresh pair of glasses to some challenges, maybe you can reshape the work that you can do in government for the better. Of course, the pandemic hit, George Floyd was murdered.
My job as one of his cabinet officials shifted rapidly and spent four years really alongside the governor and so many others managing some crisis in ways that were really meaningful, frankly, in that, um, as much as I love the global scale of Google, the local tangible outcomes of local government were as inspiring if not more for me.
And government, of course, also operates at scale, and so there was a sense that, you know, we were making a real impact in, in saving lives and saving businesses and getting unemployment insurance payments out and all the rest.
This local news chapter was sort of another, another journey in that path to, to invest in what makes our local communities connected, which is journalism stories and in facts and information.
And I guess I wrote the book 'cause I felt like when you kind of shift yourself into different contexts, so, so-So fully, and you have a different pair of, you know, eyes looking at a challenge, you can kinda transit between those areas hopefully.
And, you know, for those in Silicon Valley, I can share a bit more about the, the tech ecosystem in the middle of the country, or those in tech, I can talk about how government actually has some elements that, that are working and that can work, and that need, need help and attention.
And, and then in local news, again, you know, here, this latest chapter for me, and it's, it's a really meaningful one, not only to try to reimagine our model, but to help those outside of news understand its importance and also contribute to helping us figure it out is a new opportunity.
And the book, I guess, came out of sharing w- with others who are on other sides of my reinvention pathways what I was learning, and having a sense that maybe there's something here to share that could be useful.
But that kind of thread of going local to make a, an impact at a time when the national context does seem so fraught, I think, has ended up becoming one of the major themes I'm trying to lift up here.
Yeah, and I also sensed a little bit of, I don't wanna say disillusionment, but like, you know, I mean, you spent a lot of time in, in, in, in the tech world, right? And- Yeah... particularly that was a different time.
I think sometimes, for my many Gen Z listeners out there, it was, it was a different time in the mid two, in the mid-2000s because tech was thought of as a force for good.
This was a time of, you know, like you said, like the Obama digital campaign and the, the Shepard Fairey and the Hope stuff, and Tahrir Square happened, and, you know, there was this idea that, you know, this was going to create a, a, a better world.
We were gonna have a... We were all gonna have... It was gonna democratize access to information and, and it was going to lead to sh- a stronger foundations in, in society and change, and we were all gonna be connected.
And it obviously turned out to be fa- a fairly mixed bag [laughs] would be, would I would say. Yeah. You know, obviously, you know, Google created like the, the greatest economic engine like ever, I think right now.
But, you know, the, the impact on society, I don't know how it's gonna be viewed in history. I don't. I hope for the better, but I think that's kind of up to us, quite honestly.
And yeah, I would say that over time, you spend a long period of your life in these big tech companies, and you do get a sense for what's working and what isn't.
And we did start to realize, gosh, you know, I mean, you mentioned Tahrir Square and the Arab Spring.
We knew that many of the protesters using YouTube to, you know, document these moments were then being targeted because of the technology that we had and the ability to identify a person's face, and being arrested and, and pulled off the streets because of that exposure.
And, you know, we wouldn't, we couldn't catch up to that. We wouldn't have a face blurring technology and, and YouTube's uploading cycle for another several years.
So I think there's always a feeling that it's just moving faster than you can catch up to it in terms of its effect, and the 2016 election was, I think, a, a kinda watershed moment for anybody in tech, and just seeing how, in some cases, bad actors had used these platforms to manipulate, and I think it kinda shocked a lot of folks that this was happening at the scale that it was.
And then a lot's happened since then. So I think a little bit of disillusionment is fair to say. I also think my story, I hope in the book and beyond, is a bit more about hope in the sense that- Mm...
I do think that's, technology isn't inherently good or bad, it's how we use it.
And while companies like Google have done tremendous things to create a new economic engine for the internet, as you say, I'm as excited about, if not more, companies that are starting outside the Valley and local tech companies that are happening every day in ecosystems that aren't a part of that sort of bubble of the Valley.
And here in Minnesota, you know, we're a med tech mecca really.
There is a, a tremendous amount of purpose-driven startups here solving major medical challenges through the network of the, of Mayo Clinic, the number one hospital in the country, over to U of M that has one of the top medical R&D units in the, in the world.
And so I'm hopeful tech can be used for good and that we aren't disillusioned forever.
But I think it takes a bit of the swagger of the Valley, which is that [chuckles] kind of confidence that you need to try something new and fail, but also that kind of purpose-driven, a bit more grounded sensibility of places like Minnesota where entrepreneurs aren't creating startups just to grab your attention, but to try to solve real problems, whether they're, you know, how to feed ourselves or take care of ourselves.
And that's been a bit of my journey of leaving the Valley is, is finding some more of that outside of, outside of the big tech companies.
I think another thing that's challenging is when you're working at scale at Google or YouTube and you do one thing and it affects a lot of people at once, and that also even just affects the problems you try to solve.
'Cause you, you pick a problem that you think can apply to the but- largest group of people, and you might, you might tack it in different directions because of that. But when you start local,
you know, you, you build for a specific audience in ways that are useful fundamentally to that audience 'cause they have to be, otherwise you won't take off. And it just, it, it's a different life cycle.
So those ecosystems happening outside the Valley is, I think, good for our, good for our country. But, you know, it's, verdict's out, you're right, on the effect of all these things.
We have to, we have to own their future and really invest in development that tries to anticipate the moral challenges that might lie ahead. But it's hard. Yeah. I don't know. It's a spotty, it's a spotty track record.
And- Well-... with AI coming, you know, it's, the stakes are gonna be even higher. And- Wow... so I just think that there's been a track record of not really...
They like to talk about first principles thinking, not a lot about second order and third order effects. [laughs] A lot of first principles thinking, not enough about second order and third order effects.
So why, why the Star Tribune? And why get into n- why, I mean- Yeah, I-... local news is not, you know, is not exactly known as a growth industry these days.
So, so what did you see there that could, that could fit with, with this, and particularly around, you know, serving as a vehicle for civic engagement? Yeah.
Well, I think it's not hyperbole to say that local journalism is under a completely existential threat. I mean, in Minnesota alone in the past 10 years we've lost two-thirds of our journalists.
I mean, that's the level of drop-off we're seeing. And we're- Mm-hmm... that, that tracks national trends, right?
So the crisis is, is real.I certainly never had newspaper publisher on my dance card, you know [laughs] at any moment. I didn't think I'd be in a position like this.
Quite honestly, part of my time in government was realizing just how broken our information ecosystem is, and how fundamental it is to a stronger society.
I mean, the data will show you that communities that have strong local news have higher voter participation, less polarization, higher donations to charity, more belief in the system.
These are, these are direct correlations done by social scientists.
So all that's true, but uniquely The Strib for me, quite honestly, was that we are, uh, you know, I wish this wasn't true, but one of the few local and regional papers in the country that has a- an independent owner who's investing and really dedicated to, to evolving and changing it in a pretty dramatic way.
And so Glen Taylor is our owner. He also owns the Timberwolves and Lynx for now, although he's recently sold them. And he is investing in this paper for its future.
And I think when he and the board came to me and said, "Look, we want an outsider. We're willing to weather some disruption and change. We know we don't have the thing totally figured out.
We want somebody new to come in. We're gonna fund it. Not fund it in perpetuity without any business model, but, like, we wanna invest," that seemed like a pretty neat opportunity.
I mean, it felt, it felt like a really, a really purpose-driven opportunity.
I didn't come in thinking I had it all figured out, but I was convinced that the problem mattered, and that we had the right ownership and board to make it possible. So those conditions made it interesting.
Minnesotans also do love their news. The Strib has punched above its weight for some time. We had the largest newsroom in the entire Midwest, even larger than newsrooms in Chicago, for example.
So there's some fundamentals here, some tailwinds, if you will. But it felt like a problem worth unpacking.
And on the one hand, you're like, gosh, this could be really hard and it could fail, 'cause of course anything can. But on the other hand, I'm like, uh, why not us? Why not make it work? Yeah.
Why not figure out, uh, maybe that Minnesota can be a model for the rest of the country? And that's, that's what we believe we can do, but it's gonna take some, take a lot of work and, and attention. Okay. So what is...
What, what's your playbook for- Yeah... reviving this? I mean, 'cause you, you changed it to, to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Strib is the, I guess, the local...
I wasn't gonna use it, 'cause I was like, I'm not from Minnesota. You can use it. We, we- But for those who are listening. I don't know.
It's like people who aren't from Philadelphia saying jawn, I always think- Yeah, yeah, yeah... it's just for you. You gotta, you gotta ha- respect it. You got, you gotta earn that.
But you expanded the, the, the, the market really by, by saying, you know, Minnesota, which I think for me, as someone who grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, was, was smart, you know?
Because the, you know, so mu- so mu- so many people had moved out of Philadelphia over the decades, and The Philadelphia Inquirer acted like that didn't happen. And they were- Right...
you know, and it, it was, it was crazy- Yeah...
because their circulation was increasingly outside of, you know, the technical boundaries of Philadelphia, but you would think that everyone lived, like, in the city of Philadelphia. Yeah.
But w- walk me through the, the sort of playbook. I mean, you, you spent some time, like, figuring it, figuring it out, I'm sure, listening to people, and then, you know, you started to enact the changes. Yeah.
I mean, I... If I had to boil it down, I think there's, like, four or five steps that we're kinda going through right now that we think will get us in a much stronger place.
The first one, to the point you just made, is just to revitalize our brand and our, our position in the market, and that was part of the, the nod to being the Minnesota Star Tribune.
We had earned that name, but we've hired over a dozen reporters outside of the Twin Cities. The suburbs, as you mentioned a moment ago in Philly, same is true here.
That's where our biggest digital subscription headroom is. But embracing this kind of sense of identity and a brand that we can build other businesses underneath was really important.
I think you face a challenge if you just assume that everyone knows you're here because you've been here for 158 years.
Revitalizing our whole look and feel and name and iconography, you know, isn't the solution, but it was the first step to say, "Hey, we're here. Pay attention to us. We're expanding.
We have ambitions, and the brand that you trust, we hope, gives us permission to do some other things."
I mean, the second thing is not unlike any media leader I'm sure you speak to here, is knowing our audience a lot better. The Star Tribune was still kinda dripping in ink when I arrived.
It was still very much a newspaper. There's a high print adoption rate in Minnesota compared to other places, but it is going down 20% year over year.
So just investing in data analytics and understanding who we're reaching and, and how we're reaching them is, this is table stakes in media today, to be clear, but The Strib just needed to kind of invest in that audience-focused, you know, data and insights to better sharpen our journalism.
And then the third thing, of course, is while the bundle is nice and the sense of identity in a state, you know, that you believe in the, in the kind of s- importance of a local news product, gets a little squishy, and we can't imagine that everybody's just gonna wanna buy a paper because it's, like, the Minnesota paper.
It has to be unique to you. So we're working really hard to build habits with a specific affinity group. So, for example, we're going really deep on high school sports right now.
It's the most local of things- Oh, yeah... right? But man, you know, if a parent wants to see their kid's name in the, in the news, they're gonna subscribe.
And so we're really investing in how to use AI to scale stats and summaries for every single game in the state.
We're gonna launch a whole new property called Strib Varsity that is really focused on high school sports, and we hope ultimately a standalone subscription.
But trying to build these habits and franchises that make the subscription worth it alone for that one, you know, that one piece of the bundle, if you will. So that's a major piece of it.
We're trying to think big and put ourselves on the map. We're holding our first ever ideas festival this fall called the North Star Summit. You know, events of course are their own business model in media.
We all know that. But part of it for us is the double whammy of that and the brand and just putting ourselves on notice a little bit.
And then there's a piece of it that's about just sou- sounding the battle cry to the state. We've really invested in philanthropy as a new lane.
We have some inherent challenges there given our o- we're owned by a billionaire, but we know that long term we're gonna need to have some avenues for revenue that aren't subscriptions and ads, so philanthropy is one of them.
Events is another. We're leaning heavily into content marketing and, and, and sort of cause marketing. Mm-hmm. This is a dense Fortune 500 market, and it kinda punches above its weight there.
And so doing kinda pay-to-play storytelling, not from the newsroom of course, but from other sources about the kinda corporate good that business leaders are doing here, has resonated really well. So we'll launch that.
And then probably some other business models that we haven't navigated yet.AI is probably the biggest one that we're, we're leaning into now, and how we can be kind of the Minnesota guide, if you will.
If we can train these models on our own archives, for which we have, you know, almost 200 years of, and help people understand our state in a more trusted manner for a generative AI platform.
We're bullish there, but we have miles to go on that piece. So I don't know. That's the broadest possible plug I could give. There's lots of pieces to it, but- Yeah...
ultimately in local news, you gotta like stick your head up, and I think many just haven't had the opportunity to do that. Right. So I'm sure, like, a big part of it is, is driving subscription growth, right? Yeah.
It's not the only part. Yeah. I think there was a, a time a few years back where people were like, "Oh, okay, yeah, subscriptions. We just need to do subscriptions." It's like, no, that's not enough. Yeah.
You're gonna have to do like five, five different things. But, you know, uh, like you said, if you're gonna be audience-focused, okay, the best foreseen function is to make the audience your customers. Like- Yeah...
it, it just forces you to, to listen- Mm-hmm... to, to them very closely. Yeah. Digital subs are, are central to our future, and we had to take some time just to redo our piping, you know? Like under the hood- Yeah...
and above the hood, do we have the modern tools to target our subscribers? So we've done that, and we've seen some good growth early. You know, the bigger threat any media company faces, is the subscription worth it?
Do people wanna pay for news? And so we're having to make that argument where we can to target our audience more effectively. We're trying all kinds of enterprise subscriptions for the first time with local businesses.
That's had some good momentum for us of, you know, local universities or colleges buying them in bulk, which has, you know, its place. But, you know, we talk all the time about we have to make it worth it.
We can't bemoan the fact that a subscription isn't just a part of someone's, you know, daily habit like it once was. Yes. We gotta make it really worth subscribing to us. It's a product.
You got- [laughs] It is a product. You gotta go out... It's like any product. You gotta listen to the customer, you gotta make the, and then you gotta go out and sell it. [laughs] There's a lot of- That's it... items.
There's a lot of names- I know it sounds simple, but there's a lot of people in the news business who think, I don't know if it's like a sense of entitlement, but just because of the work is very worthy doesn't mean that you don't operate within a market, and you- 1,000- There's other people in the market selling products.
1,000%, yeah. There's no... We can't sit around and just wish people saw the civic virtues of good journalism. I mean, come on. You're, you're competing against a lot of other subscription types when you're out there.
So- Yeah. I mean- And I think one of the things that I, I wanna talk about with that is, you know, you've sort of... 'Cause I, we are in this sort of more with less year.
I always go on about it, but you have to make choices, and every single news publisher is making choices, right? And when I grew up, the Philadelphia Inquirer had a Jerusalem bureau. Fantastic.
It does not have a Jerusalem bureau now. It has, like, 40,000 print subscribers, right? And it's a different era, and you've gotta focus on...
And I think any publisher, uh, probably any company or person, you gotta focus on where you're gonna win. And- Mm-hmm... so talk about the, the areas that, that you've, like, identified as where you gotta win.
I mean, you talked about, like, high school sports, but what, what are the others? Yeah.
Well, broadly speaking, we've had to get ourselves out of relying on, on national stories or national perspectives and really figuring out where local plays a big difference.
I think food is an area where any local paper will tell you that's an area where we think we can do a lot with, and we convert a lot of subscribers off of that.
Unique to Minnesota, the outdoors is a choice that we've made. You know, this is the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Yeah. People love to get outside. They want a good guide and a good experience.
We've had a ton of excitement around our outdoors franchise as one where it feels of the place. You know? It feels legit and, and, and open and connected.
When it comes to mediums, you know, this is more top of the funnel, so it's challenging 'cause you gotta, you gotta justify it, but we're making some bets on audio for ourselves.
It's a crowded marketplace, but we know that people listen. I mean, we're talking to your audience right now through their ears- Yeah... and that's, and that's... We have to be there.
So we've, we've launched a few franchise podcasts as well. And video too, a bit more, again, top of funnel, but... So we're making some medium investments there.
You know, I think we're trying to move away from the paper of record notion. There's this kind of culture in a newsroom of our size and history where you sort of have to be everywhere, and if it didn't end up in- Yeah...
your pages, it didn't happen. And that's just, that is not a luxury that we have anymore. And it's been a hard culture change for us, you know?
'Cause the watchdog component of journalism would tell you we should be at every single meeting of every single public body, and we're really pushing a model here of the p- of the platform of relevance over a paper of record, if that makes sense, of just really focusing- Yeah...
on what's relevant. No, 100%. To our readers at the given moment, and that's a culture change. Yeah. All these things- I mean, I used to call it the, like, the, the burden of comprehensiveness. Like, it is a burden.
Yeah, yeah. [laughs] That's a way to put it. Okay. Yeah. Because, like, once you decide that you're going to be comprehensive, I used to work at, at Adweek, and it was like Adweek versus Ad Age.
And so half the time was spent matching a story that Ad Age had about, like, the five finalists for the Pentawell Review or something. And I'm like, "Shouldn't we just be doing [laughs] another story?"
I mean, like, I, I, congrats. Congrats for getting the five finalists. Like, those five agencies and the five that didn't get in are gonna be, are, are gonna be very interested.
But, like, why don't we do other stuff rather than trying to just do the same commodity stuff? And, and you know, I think, I think the outdoors, I think, is an interesting...
It's interesting to find a, a lane because it seems to me that, like, a lot of news publishers need to think more broadly of what news is, right?
And I mean, I think just even with, like, local papers, like, one of the big misses has been, you know, ignoring the business [laughs] of, of, of the city, right?
Like, the, the city, the city business journals had better... They've fared way better, you know? And those business models, I can resonate with them 'cause they're much more B2B. You know?
You, you, you've got a lot of different ways. You can do awards. You can do events. You- There's lots of different ways to make money off those audiences.
And I, I honor this sort of, you know, holding power to account thing, but, like, it can't be the only thing you're doing in, in the, in these markets, I don't think. No, I, I completely agree with that.
I mean, we just held an event yesterday called Top Workplaces, where every year we survey- Yeah... the, the employees of a lot of top new businesses here, and then we just celebrate the ones with the best scores.
Like, who, which businesses are the best places to work in Minnesota.It's, we've been doing it for a while, and, you know, we're not below lists and rankings and celebration.
You can do that and still do watchdog reporting. And, you know, business is an expensive audience for us and an influential one, and you're right, like, we've had some...
There's some really good business publications here who have kind of eaten the St- the Star Tribune's lunch on that sort of lifting up of innovation and growth here. And so we think we can do more there.
We launched a franchise called The Idea Lab recently, which just lifts up some of what's innovative things happening in this really rich, innovative, you know, business ecosystem that
we hope just puts us in a place where, you know, we're not only looking after, you know, exposing CEO pay and what have you, or looking for business fraud, but more, a h- more holistic look at what your community has.
I mean, this speaks to a broader issue, Brian, of just, like, news fatigue and trying to find joy in your local paper. I mean, you know, we've- Yeah...
we talk to, like, college counselors who will say, "We're prescribing our students not to read your newspaper because we don't want them to get bummed out, and they're having mental health challenges."
Like, that's a business challenge for us if we're... I mean, even I take news vacations from time to time, right? So- Yeah... how do you bring joy? That's a big, a big piece.
But I think it's more than a business cha- it's a product problem to me. Yeah. Like, because if you're going to be, like you say, like relevant, like everyone wants to be essential, right? Like, and you have to be...
Y- you can't just do, do that. Like, you ha- like I just always, ah, like in Miami, like I just saw, like with the Miami Herald, no offense to my friends in McClatchy, like, it has completely lost its way.
It was completely irrelevant to the issues of, you know, of the community, honestly, and there were plenty of issues, right?
But the, the kinds of things people, like, talk about, and the, the kinds of things people need to know about.
And sometimes they aren't, quote-unquote, "hard news," and, and that, to me, is, is, is an interesting lane, is like how do you build a bundle that has, you know, the hard news, but it also has the high school sports, you know?
It also- Yeah Like, there's like, do you know 6:00 AM, 6:00 A- 6:00 AM City? No. It's like a collection of newsletters, and this is like something that, you know, I give them, uh, of local newsletters.
I give them a lot of credit for, they've just skipped the entire news part and gone to, you know, the what's going on this weekend- Mm-hmm... you know, what's happening. I know. And, and that is... Look, I get that.
That's a, that's a lane.
It's almost like kinda like how The Athletic took the sports section and was like, "You know, we're gonna, we're gonna let you do the crime and let you do [laughs] let the newspapers do the crime.
Let them do the, the crooked city councilmen, and we're just gonna do the sports part."
And, you know, that, that model is, is working for them, and I think a lot of it is, is they're giving people information that is beyond just news. I'm not against news. I'm very pro-news.
[laughs] I agree with that, and I think it's about, you know, Nelson Poynter, I think, was the guy who once said, "A newspaper should be owned by the community that loves it most," which is- Yeah...
a bit of a relationship statement, right?
We don't want people thinking of us as that paywall you gotta jump over, but being part of something a little bit bigger and that makes your life more useful and helpful and joyful.
And so that idea of almost like a membership model with a l- with some of the basics of a loyalty economy built into it that are oriented around, you know, joy or navigating your life, or y- if you, you metaphorically pick up the paper, you read it, you put it down, and you, you can live a better life that day 'cause you understand what's happening in your community, but you also feel some joy and direction about it.
Like, we can't lose our way on that front.
We could write cri- crime stories all day, and we need to cover the things that happen, but only when they're really relevant and we think there is something there to be said that is useful for people.
And I think joy is important. I think feeling a sense of connection to your news organization and to the community of subscribers that are in it is what we're going for.
We kind of lean into that sense of community when we talk about our news organization, and here we're lucky that Minnesota's a bit unique.
When social scientists look at the regions of the country where there's a really strong kind of regional sensibility- Mm...
they highlight Minnesota, Texas, and Maine, as, like, three states where there's, you know, more often than not, like, a kinda connection to a statewide sensibility.
I don't mean to say it's Pollyanna over here, that we've got it all figured out, but there is a certain Minnesotaness that we're trying to bank on that we hope ho- holds people together in a, in a powerful way.
That's very interesting. I wouldn't have picked Maine in that. Texas, yes. You know someone's from Texas, they'll tell you. Yeah, you do. Definitely. [laughs] Uh, [laughs] Pennsylvania, no.
But [laughs] no real affiliations- That's right... to Pennsylvania for me. So, what are you doing? How are you baking that into the product? 'Cause I think that's another interesting...
I know you, you, you brought on, like, I, I guess it's a chief product officer, but, like, I, I think it's...
You know, I, I focus a lot on product because, you know, when people talk about, you know, news and building sustainable news models, sometimes they gloss over the fact that the product needs- Oh, yeah...
needs, needs work. And I'm sure, you know, coming from, coming from Google, yeah, I'm sure, you know... I, I don't know. I don't wanna, like... But what did you sort of see on the, the, the product front?
Well, yeah, it's a great point. I mean, we just hired a brand new editor, Kathleen Hennessey, from The New York Times.
She's a Minnesota native, grew up here, went on to do amazing things at The Times, and The AP, and other places, and has returned to her home state paper to help us reimagine our news outlet.
And I mention it because, as she and I were talking about the potential of her coming, and as she came on board, she was very clear, as was I, that you could do the best journalism in the world, but if you don't have a product effort that helps showcase it and target it and shape it and, and connect it to people, then you're, you're not gonna make the kind of progress that you need to make.
So, I would say here we had some tech debt to make up for. I mean, we launched a whole new website. We got Code and Theory on board to help us reimagine startribune.com.
We won a innovation award from Fast Company for that, which we're proud of. But it w- really was just kinda getting us to the, the place where we look and feel like a modern site.
I think, you know, we did the same thing for our app.
So at two years in, there's not a pixel on the strip that looks the same as it did two years ago in terms of both, not even fr- just the front end, but also underneath with our CMS and what have you.
So that's been the first step. I think now it's like, how do we build-The right kind of product features for a particular content vertical that makes sense for that space.
So we've invested heavily in voice, for example, in columnists and personalities, and again, that, back to that relationship. So how does that play out from a product perspective?
Well, you know, subscribing to an individual journalist, elevating voice and, and image and video into your product are really important.
You know, the basics of even retention and sort of the, the marketing cycle of coming back to people on email and other places where they're at is a big part of our product strategy too.
You know, we're not gonna be able to have the same size of a product team as the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, so we have- Yeah...
to kind of appropriately scale what we can and, and can't do, and we wanna keep it simple.
But we hope that as the product work is getting it right, it also shapes the journalism itself and what we, how we think about possibility and what we can do with that, with that journalism.
So the product news relationship here has been a lot closer than it had been in the past.
One of the things I noticed when I came in is, and many media leaders probably see this, is there are just a lot of silos, and some of those are institutional and historical. Like, no one touches the newsroom.
You can't even walk across the floor- [laughs]... if you're a product or a business person. We weren't quite there, but we've tr- we, but we were, we needed some collaboration.
So part of this has just been getting, like, a product manager who walks across all the newsroom and almost thinks of our editors like PMs, if you will, because they're gonna have ideas that a, a strictly product person won't.
And that's a culture shift- Yeah... in terms of how you build your journalism. Yeah, I wanna talk about the culture for a bit, because, like, there's...
It's funny, when you said that, I was just thinking about magazines, and, like, magazines had this...
Like, they would have different CMSs for different magazines that are in the same company because, you know, that was the way it was done. It was like the magazine was run the editor, the editor runs...
And, and, uh, obviously that does not make sense. I, I forget the exact number of various CMSs that Conde Nast at one point [laughs] had. Really? Wow. It was dozens.
But talk to me about the, the culture and instilling a culture that is growth-oriented while you're making, while you're making changes. I mean, I'm sure you see what's going on at The Washington Post.
I'm, I'm sure that, like, their leaders love the fact that anytime they [laughs], anytime they do anything, a recording of the, of the meeting is, is, is, is then sent off- Yeah...
to, to the various people at Puck and vari- and other places that are- Right... are covering this at, ad nauseam. And change is difficult. I think it's kinda nonsense that people l- like embrace change.
Most people don't like change. So talk to me about, like, what, uh, uh, like, how you've sort of approached the culture piece. Yeah.
Well, it's a great question, 'cause I think all these transformations, you can talk about all the business model strategies and the digital shifts and, you know, from paper to pixels and all of it, but if the culture isn't there, you're just gonna fall flat on your face.
So we have invested a lot in culture here. It's an ongoing journey for all of us, and you've got a, a, a newsroom that at its core has a really purpose-driven sensibility. So you, you really can't take that for granted.
It's a, it's a great cultural thread that I think most media organizations have, right? You're here to do it because you care about the mission and what you're trying to, to accomplish. Yeah.
And at the same time, you know, you've got people who've been here for, for decades, and they co- have been brought up in a print environment, and so that's the environment that they know, and change is really hard.
I think the good news for me coming in is there was nobody here that I met who was like, "Oh, no, we don't need to change." Like, intellectually, people understood change is needed.
But in your heart, when you start to move things around, that's hard, 'cause you're gonna move some cheese around, if you will, and you're gonna ask people to do things they haven't done before, and you're gonna have to push the limits of where data informs what you do versus where the journalism informs what you do, and you're gonna have to, you know, do the art of journalism itself very differently, and you can't have that sort of siloed luxury anymore that if you're a business person, you don't have to think about the journalism, or if you're a journalist, you don't have to think about the business.
Like, yes, those are different roles for a reason, and lanes are really essential to any organization being successful, but you all gotta be kind of on the same page of change.
So we've just tried to, you know, our, our kind of theory here, our, our slogan for the company is, "Swift, clear, and brave." You know, swift is the course. We don't have time to go slow.
The market demands we move very quickly. Clear means we have to be communicating all the time. I have found [laughs]...
We kind of chuckle internally that even though a news organization's job is to convey media to the world and communicate, uh, I've learned that internally news organizations oftentimes don't have the clearest- Oh, yeah...
internal comms on things. And so that's been a, a focus for us of just, like, I do a Friday note every Friday sharing to the company what I'm up to, where we're headed. We do town halls regularly.
We do a, a company-wide kind of strip update every month where we talk about the financials and where we're going. So there's been that kind of communication that helps with culture.
And then brave is just like, we have to encourage each other to make courageous decisions.
And culturally, news organizations, for good reason, have a history of things need to be really polished up before you put 'em out there, right?
Because of course, if you get the facts wrong in a story, that's detrimental, and you, you can't screw that up.
But you can't apply that same impulse to, say, trying a new franchise or launch-launching a new product or making a change to your, your front end, because we're only gonna learn if we launch and iterate.
That was kind of a Google thing that I'd, I'm trying to bring here, which is not everything's perfect once you launch it, but you need to get it out into the market and get user feedback on it to figure out how you're gonna make it better, and that cultural shift has taken some time.
And I, and I know why, and I, I get why it's challenging, but we can't afford not to do that.
And you gotta celebrate when it works well, and you also gotta celebrate failure, because if you don't, then people will be afraid to try new things.
So, you know, some of the Google cultural things that I think has made that company so successful I've tried to translate to a news environment, and some are landing, some are more challenging.
But if you don't get the culture right, strategy means almost nothing. [laughs] Okay, I have a rule. Anytime says, anytime anyone says, "Celebrate failure," I ask them to celebrate one. Oh, I like it. Let's celebrate.
Oh, gosh. Okay. [laughs] Let's celebrate failure. Let's, let's not just do- You go first. [laughs] I go first. Gosh. We tried to do something last year with sports betting.
We thought, "Okay, there's, there's all this money- Oh... out there with sports betting." Yeah. "People are searching for it." It wasn't even legal in Minnesota, but we thought, "You know what? Let's go for it.
We think we can squeeze some digital pr-... pennies out of the marketplace, and we spent all this- And it's a gold rush... golden money on a sports betting- It's a gold rush. Sell picks and shovels always works.
[laughs] I mean, we, we got maybe a, an eighth of the revenue that we thought we would get Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, there were some brand challenges with it too, but that's a one, that's one very simple one I would say where we just, we chased something we probably shouldn't have chased.
But it was probably good that we did it 'cause we then were a little bit more hesitant to f- to tackle affiliate marketing as a strategy, and that turned out- Yeah [laughs]...
to be good 'cause, I mean, after Google [laughs] sort of upended that market, so I think it was a failure that we probably learned the right lesson from, but it was painful. That's to put it mildly. Yeah, upended.
[laughs] Yeah. Yeah, I remember last, last year was when they came, they came for the coupons, came for the coupons- Oh, man... pages on, on- I know... papers', uh, websites. No, that's a good one.
So, uh, uh, one last thing is how do you build the sort of connective tissue with the community?
I mean, 'cause like, you know, you write in the book a, a lot about, like, civic engagement, and really coming back to, to Minnesota is about going... You know, it's, it's a more rooted place, you know? I don't wanna...
I'm not gonna...
I live on the East Coast, so I, [laughs] I live in New York City, so I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say that, you know, that we don't have a rootedness, but it is, you know, it is different wh- when, when you get into to other parts of the, of the country.
So, how do you build that- Yeah... that sort of connective tissue? 'Cause I always think, you know, a lot of times, like, publishers of all kinds, you know, they just haven't been out in the community.
They haven't like, you know, they're still, you know, "We're gonna write it, and then we're gonna push it out," and it's like- Yeah... how do you build that connective tissue with the community in tangible ways? Yeah.
It's a, it's a, something I think a lot about, and it kinda drives me crazy that news organizations who were once seen as like the voice of the people, you know, deeply rooted in community and out there fighting for the rights of their fellow citizens, have somehow ended up in an ivory tower disconnect- at least, you know, from perception standpoint, disconnected from their community, and that social media platforms and other technology institutions have somehow now been the, the new voice of the people.
I think some of that's true based on how technology's evolved, but I do think news organizations have to be more proactive in this space.
So, I think it's essential to our, our business survival that we're in the community.
We've done three different statewide tours where we'll just show up in cities across Minnesota, big and small, and hold convenings, whether it's give us feedback on the coverage, or let's lift up a topic that is n- relevant and p- important here, and have reporters
and business people and ad folks in conversations that aren't directly designed to be transactional or about a specific article or business deal, but more relationship driven, and that's gone a long way for us.
You can imagine that if you're the Metro newspaper trying to change your name to the Minnesota Star Tribune, you get a lot of skeptics out there like, "Really? Are you gonna actually show up out here?" Mm-hmm.
And I'll tell you, one of our stops was at an Indian reservation in Northern Minnesota called the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. And they were kind to invite us, you know, we asked if we could come. We sat down.
They served us lunch, very thoughtful.
But around 10 minutes into the conversation, one of the tribal leaders said to us, just point-blank, and un- unprompted, "You know, 20 years ago, you wrote a story about a murder on this reservation.
It was 10,000 words long, and everybody here absolutely hated that story, and since then, none of us subscribe to you or care what the Star Tribune says." And it was a bit of a jaw-dropper moment for all of us.
I hadn't read the story, obviously. It was like 20 years- [laughs]... before I was here. It was a very tense thing to say, but a very real thing to say. And, you know, I went back and I read the story la- later.
It was a deep investigative story, but it was one of those swoop in, swoop out moments where your Metro paper shows up and then leaves, and was the story accurate? I would assume the story was accurate.
Was it the only thing that's ever happened on that reservation? No. But if you're looking in through the lens of our organization, that's what you saw.
And so I lift that up only to say that I think part of being in the community isn't just a community tour, like I mentioned, or swooping in to tell the big stories, but also having reporters living in those communities, and that's, that's what we're trying to land on is one day you're writing the story about the flood and the chaos, the next s- s- day you're writing the story about the small business that's growing.
And we're not trying to replace the hyperlocal papers, but we are trying to lift up stories of statewide interest that, you know, communities across Minnesota have, and I hope that's gonna work for us.
I, I think so far it has. It, uh, certainly these second and third versions of the tours have had fewer comments like that and a bit more of a- Mm-hmm... authentic connection. But people are looking for a connection.
I mean, I think news organizations can provide it through our stories. I don't buy that people somehow don't want community, or we all wanna cave into our own little echo chambers. I think people do wanna know the truth.
That hasn't changed. I think people do wanna feel like their communities are places that they can work with people of difference.
I think there's a lot of ways to tackle that, but I think news is one of them, and, you know, part of it is building a, a model and a place for people to come around these stories and actually hear each other.
You know, I think that's part of what we're trying to get right. Yeah. So you, last thing is you, you've the, the... Glen Taylor is the, the owner.
He is a billionaire, but you're, you, you are to, to make this a profitable enterprise? Oh, yeah. I don't know. What is your [laughs] Yeah, we are. I mean, Glen, you don't get to be a billionaire by just, uh- I know...
doing things that aren't profitable They don't generally like losing money. Yeah. I think [laughs] that's the thing people miss when they talk about the billionaires- Me too [laughs]... in news.
[laughs] It's hard, though.
I mean, it's hard for our, even for our employees, 'cause, you know, you're like, "Well, thank God we're owned by Glen," and there's a lot of love for that, but we are, we do have to run a profit.
I think I would say this, that the Strip has been profitable since Glen owned it, and he's been a very effective manager, as was my predecessor.
But largely in a mode of managed decline, you know, and managed decline is not a pathway towards long-term profitability and growth, so that's the need for a pretty big shift.
The influx of capital at this point has been to reshape the business. It's for a period of time to write, to, to put it in the right position for a digital, being a modern digital media company.
But ultimately, you know, asking for donations from the public is part of trying to build a model that, that actually nets out, and that, you know, we can fund the largest newsroom in the Midwest with-A combination of new revenue streams, and we're finding our ways to make those cases.
We're finding our ways to both innovate on the growth side and then on the cost side.
We're going through a, as I talked to you today, a, a buyout window of time that we think can help us on that front, and that is, you know, all entirely volunteer and, and generous, thanks to our ownership.
But part of that change of you have to kind of navigate both pieces of that, and, and we have to be profitable to make it, to make it work and to run the kind of business that the state deserves.
Yeah, and I wonder, I, you know, I think that the models that will emerge in, in local and regional like i- are gonna be a patchwork. I compare it to, like, our healthcare ar- system.
Like, we're never gonna have single payer. We're just always gonna have a patchwork- Yeah... of different things. Yeah. And, and it seems like that's, that's gonna be the direction things, things go.
I mean, there's- I think that's right... you know, the inquirers, they've got Lenfest, that...
And there's, there's different models, and I think a lot of times people say, "Oh, there's only gonna be one model," but there's gonna be different ones. I think there are.
And, a- a- to fund it, I would argue, which is a slightly different point than the one you're making though- Mm... that every state and region needs at least one large news organization to kind of center itself around.
So having one organization that has over 200 journalists, as we do today, itself is a really powerful component of any media ecosystem.
And if all we were to have is a bunch of smaller nonprofit newsrooms that kind of come together, it's not, it's not bad to say that there isn't... Diversity in the marketplace isn't good. We celebrate it. We not...
We want all of the news organizations in Minnesota to succeed. But I do think that having a large newsroom that's cohesive in a market brings a sense of commonality and a trust to a community that's important.
So I, I hope that in that conversation around the fut- media's future and the, and the, the innovation that's happening everywhere, we do look out for having places that are regional centers of journalism- Mm...
remain large because I think they have ecosystem effects that helps, you know, the rest of the market too. At least that's, that's our take on it. Yeah. Okay, one last thing.
Give me the, give me the optimistic take that AI will benefit journalism. Well, the efficiencies are real. I mean, our reporters use all the same tools everyone else does to better take notes and deliver insights.
We hope it, you know, takes the kind of some of the grunt work out of the art of journalism itself. I guess the optimistic take is that
if you can build a trusted generative AI guide that is based on a, a bespoke set of facts and content, that you have something that feels more akin to sort of a, a news guide in your pocket versus simply a, a generative AI life guide.
That's the optimistic take. I also just think that's where people's attention is going, so if news organizations can be a part of it, we're gonna find audience.
I guess I'll let somebody else give the pessimistic take, but I think we all know [laughs] Yeah, we've got enough of that. We'll model solve over [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Awesome. Steve, thank you so much.
I really appreciate the conversation. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you. [outro music]