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[on-hold music] Semaphore is serving and a lot of other startup brands are serving the voracious consumer that wants more and more info. Like, they want it- And that is totally where they are right now. Yeah.
But what do you think is next? Like, what's, like, the next step? Tell me, 'cause I'm trying to figure it out. I don't know.
I think, like, email's just coming back into being, and I think that, like, direct connection is- It's like a Paris Hilton thing. [laughs] It's, like, stuff from the- Yeah... nineties. Yeah.
[on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. Cannes is a lot like being on a boat for a long time. Once you get back on land, your legs are still wobbly for a while.
Here's a conversation I had last week at The New Attention Economy, a series of conversations we put on at the Kerv Café.
This discussion is with Semaphore Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder, Ben Smith, and Puck Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, Liz Goff.
Semaphore and Puck are, in my mind, part of a new cohort of publishers who are starting with far different models than the previous era of digital publishers. Both are venture backed.
I expect Puck to announce a new round of funding soon on top of the seven million it already raised. And Semaphore, for its part, has already raised forty-four million.
But I think they're both leaning into what I consider media's narrower future, and that's building direct connections through things like newsletters, podcasts, and live events.
At the end of the conversation, Ben asked an important question: "What's after email?"
And I think it speaks to an understanding that email newsletters are great direct connection, yet all of us who are sending them know a few things. One is that everyone gets too much email.
For another, email is yet another hack. It wasn't made to be a publishing mechanism. It was made to connect people to send notes to each other.
As much as the last year of digital media was about hacks, maybe the new one is about just a different set of hacks. And newsletters have so many constraints. Try embedding a video player in an email. Good luck.
And that makes them a poor replacement for the webpage, which has clearly lost its central role.
I'm not sure the three of us came up with any definitive answers, but we did our best, and I think that's all you can ask for. Hope you enjoy the conversation.
[on-hold music] [audience applauding] Gonna bring up Ben Smith.
Ben was my inspiration to do twelve panels over the last three days 'cause I saw him at a Korean car dealership do six straight conversations, and all in the space of, like, three hours, right? And so I was like...
I love car dealerships. And Ben is gonna be joined by Liz Goff. Liz is my sales and business whisperer.
She's also the COO and Co-founder at Puck, and we're gonna talk a little bit about, you know, journalists as the new influencers, whether AI is coming for our jobs. [laughs] Dirt from Cannes. What do you want?
Yeah, you get in the middle. I like to have egress. Wait, I saw in your newsletter this morning the, "Ugh, at influencer journalism." [laughs] Yeah. Oh, my God, you said ugh. All right. I missed that part.
[laughs] I don't know. When you... Whenever you say, like, influencer journalism, creator journalism- I know... we all, like, kind of throw up in our mouths. I know, but, like, y- I only have a few words for the...
for so many panels. Personal brand. And, like, you gotta- No, it's all real. It's just- It's, it's hard to describe.
Look, when you're coming out with Semaphore, I'm sure, like, you were describing it in many different ways. You originally started with the, like- Only in very private meetings...
the English-speaking, like, you know, people who went to college, right? And, like- Yeah. Still like them. Yeah.
But the thing was that something has changed, and there is a shift, like I always say, institutions to individuals. And, like, it might be a little cheesy or cliché, but it's real. Oh, it's totally real.
I think we just haven't quite found the language- Yeah, no, because, like, we're-... to describe it in a way... journalists. It's creepy. Yeah. Content is creepy.
And I think every other media industry, starting with Hollywood in, like, like, eighty years ago, sort of made this transition toward a connection with individuals. And I think we...
Journalism, because it's the worst of the media businesses- Yeah... is the last one to get there. But yeah, for sure. We just need a better word for it, 'cause, like, when you... I mean, yeah, it's, it's hard to...
When... 'Cause we've been...
I'm sure Liz, too, like, we're, like, recruiting people, and what you do not wanna tell a star reporter at The Wall Street Journal when you're recruiting her is that you want her to be an influencer. Yeah.
No, that's definitely not. But something real here.
I mean, like, talk about the Puck model and sort of what you, what you all saw, because, I mean, you're both sort of the new type of, like, publisher, and I think, like, more fi- figuring out where you are on that continuum between institutions and individuals.
Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, continuum between the individual brand and the institutional brand has existed forever in media.
And I think that it's just in the last couple of years it's changed so much, where any new brand that's coming into existence, like Puck or Semaphore or The Ankler, like, the balance towards the individual has to be more present.
And I think you see some of the legacy brands, like, really struggling with trying to figure that out.
And for us, I think we have the benefit of being able to start from the beginning and say, like, we're gonna build our brand, Puck, and we're gonna build the brands of our individual writers at the same time.
And I think that's okay. Like, we love doing that. Yeah. So how is that more than just packaging? I don't know. Same... What do you mean about packaging?
Well, like, you can, like, package it by, like, you know, making the, you know, making the byline, like, bigger, making, like... putting a photoAnd stuff like this. But then there's like- That's tactics... making it.
[laughs] Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. That's tactics. Like how do you- Oh, I think it's like starting from how you think about building a person, right?
Like we were just talking about Dylan Byers 'cause Ben texted a photo of him in 10 years at the French Riviera. [laughs] One in three men here look exactly like Dylan Byers. [laughs] That is actually accurate.
And, um, you know, it's like thinking about, okay, like Dylan's a media expert, an influencer journalist, if you will.
[laughs] What is he doing besides writing that we're investing in as a brand to help him continue to build his profile? And that's like hosting Puck private dinners.
That's, you know, getting him out in the world and like finding more opportunities for him to continue to be seen as this like topic area expert. Yeah.
Ben, do you lead with that after you say, "I want you to be an influencer, and I want you to like host private influencer dinners"? Yeah, I think for us it's kinda two different things.
One is it's a kind of transparency like the audience actually does know that a journalist is writing this article and also knows they have an opinion about the thing they wrote but that they're keeping it secret.
And I think that's actually kind of an uncomfortable place for the reader now of The New York Times, The Washington Post. Like, okay, what does, what does this person think?
And you can kinda deduce it from like adjectives and quotes and sources. Yeah. But you're guessing, and there's an uncanny valley that I think is out of sync with how people consume news.
So I think just in like the interest of... And I-- We're kind of...
We think a lot about just the audience, the consumer, and I think from that perspective, it's very straightforward, and that's a very straightforward thing to say to journalists, too, 'cause they feel that, too, that they're being asked to hide their views.
And again, if you're a beat reporter who really knows their beat, like you're smarter than a lot of- Yeah... the people you're quoting as experts, and that's weird.
Well, they ask you during the interview, "Well, what do you think about this like topic?" Right. Right. And- Or, "So what would you like me to say for the quote that actually reflects your opinion?" Yeah.
Which is a weird kind of form of laundering. A-and then the other thing is that I think for a certain kind of journalist, and we have...
I think we're not in exactly the same space with Puck of this but have a lot of overlap. You know, they, th-they don't see thems- You know, they don't...
are not primarily motivated by the, a passion for commercial entrepreneurship. They wanna do great work, and they need e-great editing. They need legal support. They need a n- they need a team.
Like they wanna be working with other journalists, and you don't get that at Substack, which in some ways is also our competitor, right? Like that you can just go out on your own.
I think for people who specialize in analysis, like you, actually, you, you s- Like it's, that's an incredible platform, and you need a little bit less infrastructure. I think reporters out there breaking new...
who are wanna break news- Yeah... pick fights, get into fights with powerful people, there's a little more infrastructure.
But they also see people on Substack, and they sort of like, "Wow, I like love Brian's newsletter. I wish I could do something like that." Oh, tell them to stay away from this space. I don't like competition.
[laughs] I, I, I like, I need a bit more infrastructure, and I think if you can... and I think for a media company, if you can to some degree see yourself as a service to them, and i-like that's where you can recruit.
Because ultimately it is a talent business in which you are trying to recruit the very... from this very tiny pool of stars at the top of any beat. Yeah.
If you- I th- Wait, I think that I agree with that on Substack, but I think one of the big distinctions for Puck is that we are actively recruiting entrepreneurial journalists.
Like they want to be commercial partners to my team, and we spend a lot of time like sitting down with each of our writers talking about like commercial strategy and how we grow their subscriber base and how we do events and how we do more advertising and who we're gonna talk to, and I feel like that maybe is like part of what does set- Yeah...
our brands apart. But like our journalists are business partners to us. Right. Which is like- And it's really fun. It's kind of funny.
Can you imagine them doing that 20 years ago, like trying to recruit- I did that with you.
[laughs] No, but try, like 20 years ago, trying to recruit, quote, unquote, "entrepreneur journalists," like it would be like pretty much impossible.
But I think, you know, at this point, so many journalists have seen what this profession has done to them, to their colleagues, and stuff like this.
I mean, everyone pretty much in jour- If you've been in journalism for enough time, you've had your job taken away from you through pretty much no fault of your own necessarily because of the sort of vicissitudes of this business.
Right. Yeah, and I think you've also... you sort of have seen this kind of like level of drift between these big institutions and your audience. And like as a reporter, you...
and good reporters really know who they're talking to, and I think that's... Yeah. I mean, and that's something where my... I guess I-I'm glad...
I mean, maybe this is a little bit we represent different sides of the house 'cause it is important to me that our, my jour- you know, that our team is shaping the brand and the commercial angle, but it's incredibly important to me that they're obsessed with building their own audience and with a connection, like with a organic connection to an audience that they have some kind of responsibility for and ownership of, that i- that in the...
that if you work for like as an institution, you can kind of faintly feel it, but it's processed through kind of a series of tubes. Yeah. But it's not like... When you're saying entrepreneur journalists, like they're...
I mean, 'cause it's like Puck's always talking about partners and stuff like this. It's not...
I don't think everyone is like a partner, but they're partners in the business, whereas you have a very traditio- more traditional business structure, right?
We don't pay by subscription incentives, but, you know, our journalists have equity, so it's actually in some... It's- Okay. So it is- That's a pretty... Yeah, so they're literally our partners, yeah.
[outro music]Explain why that is important as far as building...
'Cause I mean, this even like honestly, the journalists outside of like maybe at the very top getting like equity, I mean, yes, at like, you know, startups like BuzzFeed- Yeah...
and stuff like this, but it was very strange like for a long time.
Explain architecting the business in such a way that it plays into this thing that they are then partners in the business and not, quote unquote, "just like reporters." Yeah.
Well, I think if like my whole career on the business side of media, any downturn, like you said, you see journalists getting laid off, right? They're the product, and their work is what at...
the commercial team is selling, and yet they're always treated as this sort, sort of sad cost center that's the first to go. [laughs] And so everything- That's not Ben sad cost center.
[laughs] Like- That's how I've always thought about myself, Liz. Thank you. [laughs] No, I'm not saying that's how I think of you, but I think that a lot of- Other people. [laughs]...
media companies, that's what's happened. Sure. That's just totally right. And so we're just trying to turn that on its head and have everything we do put the journalists at the center of the revenue model.
And so that starts with the subscription model and having people pay for our content, and then having our journalists share in the upside on that, both as equity holders in the business, and then also as bonus on their paid subscribers.
And if they're working on a commercial event and hosting it, like sharing in the upside on that.
We wanna continue to innovate there, and hopefully this is like step one of how journalists are compensated and incentivized in a new media company. So like Puck is, uh- And I'm sorry, I don't think journalists are sad.
[laughs] No, we're kidding. We know. [laughs] Read it. Journalists love that kind of stuff. We, we like love [laughs] No, it's just like-... love pain... we've all experienced it.
Um, but yeah, we definitely experienced it.
But anyway, ex-explain a little bit like how like, Ben, when you're thinking about building a newsroom now versus when you were building a newsroom at BuzzFeed News, what specifically are you doing differently?
I mean, it's a huge difference just in it, I mean, that we're building around, you know, stars who, you know, come with their own followings to a large degree, whether that's Steve Clemons in Washington and who's the leading convener in DC and can bring...
He can gather this very central high-level conversation about the central policy issues there. You know, or Liz Hoffman on Wall Street, or I guess me in media.
Like, people who are talking directly to the people at the very top of this, of those industries who, you know, and would, would...
for reporters is very satisfying 'cause ultimately you want the subjects of your coverage to be reading you. Like, that's how the story hits.
But it's also ma- has this very clear commercial logic around you're read, you know, you're reaching this very... it's all sort of a vertic- a how, a horizontal niche of like, you know, the, you're, you...
of this very hard to reach segment of any industry, the people who run the place. Okay. So it's the people who run like media, finance, technology, politics. Yeah. That sounds similar to Puck.
I mean, how do you guys like differentiate what, what... I know you have to differentiate- You know, it's funny that you say that. We were talking about this before. I was ta- I'm gonna talk my own point of view on this.
Liz may totally disagree and wanna throw a punch at me. Oh, come on. But I think that like my experience- Whoa. [laughs]...
in the last round of this was that people would always say like, like Vox, like, "How do you differentiate yourself from Vox?" And like BuzzFeed and Vox would like pick stupid fights with each other. Yeah.
But like, you know, we have obvious differences, and they're certainly much more in the subscription business, and their compensation model is slightly different.
But ultimately, like we have the same wind at our back of this huge change to the way the news business is organized. And our comp- Like, we're not trying to steal Puck subscribers.
We're trying to steal New York Times subscribers- Right... CNN subscribers.
These businesses are, you know, are hundreds of thousands of times bigger, and that's where the audience is, and there's immense room for these, this new generation of companies that, you know, that are responding ultimately where consumers are in this moment.
Like, who cares what we think? To, to, you know, to serve their needs, they feel totally overwhelmed by the amount of incoming.
They don't know who to trust, and if you can deliver news that like solves those problems for the people we're writing for, you know, that, you know, I, I think both of our orientation, anybody who's, who has the ability to start something now is gonna be oriented toward that, not toward the sort of, what's the saying?
The narcissism of small differences- Yeah... among the members of your own generation of media. Right. Yeah. I'm wondering what... You guys launched with y- without a subscription model.
I mean, I assume eventually you'll move towards it, but not a hybrid model. There's a lot of advantages to having it from the start. But explain how you see that.
It's a big decision, I think, like to make about how you're gonna do it, and like I know y-you guys thought a lot of it. I wanna start with you. Why no subscriptions at Pay? Yeah.
I mean, I, I think, I guess I am generally wary of doing too many things at once. Like when you're starting a new thing, you've gotta do relatively few things and do them really well.
You know, we launched with, you know, a bunch of great advertising partners, you know, just some of the biggest companies in the world, and that's been great for, you know, then that's been...
And with a very big investment in the events business and in convening, which felt, I think we've definitely that is sort of more than been vindicated.
It seemed like it was a moment when people were really eager to have, you know, really high quality convening and show up in person to have these discussions.
So that's been, and that's a sponsorship business of a different sort. But so I don't know, that's been really good for us. But it wasn't...
But I think, you know, if, if we thought let's launch with 11 different, the, the... If we thought it made sense for a news, for a startup to launch with 11 different revenue lines at the same time- Yeah...
we would've done that. It wasn't necessarily a- Yeah... like a sort of a point of view on other things. Wouldn't the business school people talk about boiling an ocean or something like that? Yeah.
Just like you, how many things can you do at once when you're starting a small company? All right. Liz, you're a business school person. I am.
Uh, talk about like starting with a subscription model 'cause like, you know, coming out of the gate, I remember talking with John when he was like the entrepreneur in residence about like- Yeah...
you know, it was a time we were all talking all about subscriptions, subscriptions. This may also just be that they launched like a year earlier than us. Yeah, I know. CW has changed a little.
But we gotta, [laughs] we gotta make it neater than it really is. We, we think subscription's really important.
But subscriptions are very important, but you guys have done amazing on ads, and I think at least from the outside, like you probably did better on a-ads than you thought.
Maybe not you, but you've done a great job selling ads. I'm the only journalist who sends her say, "Oh my God, great ad on this one." Yeah, total... No. [laughs] Thanks, Brian.
But talk about that, about those two businesses working together. Well, so I think those two... Yeah. We don't completely agree.
Like, we don't, we didn't wanna la-launch with 11 revenue streams, just two, and I think that the subscription business is so additive to the ad business because we know exactly who our subscribers are, and they've shown a willingness to pay.
And for us, we have a couple of very natural endemic ad categories, one in like the Washington key opinion elite, like public policy, corporate affairs, advocacy, and then the other in Hollywood.
And both of those businesses care about reaching like very specific groups of people that-Through a subscription model, we're able to understand, if we have them, what they're opening, what they're reading.
And I think for a lot of our partners on the ad side, like they have found...
Even if they were skeptical initially of a paywall, I think some of the Washington clients initially are, I think they've been like really pleasantly surprised understanding what we can share from a data perspective because we have all of that first party subscriber info.
Yeah. It's funny, as someone who has done a trillion events in my life, that like events are now like a thing that like- Mm... a lot of people are ta- I mean, they're always big in like B2B.
Obviously, you look at this event. Great event last night. Yes. Thank you. Convening is very important. Yeah. It is. Like it's, I think it's a big part of the future of this industry. Yeah. But w-before... Wait.
Oh, Ben's gonna have a contrarian point, I can tell. Okay. You can be contrarian. Events are terrible. Please all leave. [laughs] Oh, no. I was just gonna say on the, like before we leave- Please do...
subscription, I think one of the things you said earlier about like that you guys are trying to take subscribers from The New York Times or CNN, like we actually see them as really additive to what we're doing.
And I think that for us, we look at the ecosystem and see the big institutional brands in a different category than where all of these upstart affinity-based niche brands live, and that the bigger brands have to cover the waterfront as part of their remit- Yeah...
and have a big newsroom and write a little bit about everything, and we're in the less is more game, and the publish one to three pieces a day, and live in conjunction with The Times or Axios or CNN. Yeah.
And so I think maybe that's also like- Yeah... a distinction in our businesses. I would say that's ac- That is genuinely something that we see differently.
I think there's a big opportunity to be a first read, 'cause I think that when you talk to the kind of consumers we're both looking at, one of the things they say is they're so overwhelmed by the amount of incoming.
But like, I don't want, you know, I don't want like my, the intern to sort through which are the important articles I should read this week. I want Dylan to, right? And so like- Right... so I, or I want me to.
And so we're definitely doing a lot more of the, like we ra- We have this morning flagship product that people... that's been really successful.
That basically like it's, we, you know, we've read all, you know, every publication in the world while you slept, and here are the 10 important stories. Or the...
We, we know not really so much focused on the news, but focused on the insight from the news. And I think that is the other side of the coin of great original, transparent, voicey reporting. And then that is a slight...
I mean, I think, again, I think if you... One thing that I guess maybe I'm just old, but I've just been in these conversations enough, that whenever somebody... Uh, we're all talking our books.
There's, this is like you, you know, you, the, it's journalism. You gotta do great work, break news, connect with an audience one way or the other. Yeah. And if you're doing that, there are a number of revenue options.
And people, I mean, the subscription thing a few years ago drove me nuts when everyone was like, "We have solved media. The answer is subscription." [laughs] Like, 'cause it was such a Silicon Valley approach.
It's like there's a silver bullet in every industry. You just have to find it. And I think if you actually look at successful media companies, like what business is Disney in? Well, they're in 13 different businesses.
They have incredibly, you know, [laughs] aggressive accountants managing e-each of them very carefully, but they're not... It's not...
I think it's a sort of dil- Silicon Valley delusion that you should approach the media business looking for the silver bullet as opposed to looking for the connection with the audience. Yeah.
I mean, we always, uh, end up... All businesses imitate Silicon Valley, I think, to a degree. Never had snacks until Silicon Valley like made us all have snacks. I am trying to get rid of the snacks, but- All right.
You're going totally anti Buzzfeed.
[upbeat music] All right.
So Ben, y-you just wrote a book, Traffic, about the last era, and it was like well-timed, un-unfortunately I guess for you, but in that like it came out right when Buzzfeed News shut down.
You've done every podcast possible about this book, so I'm not gonna- Except yours, Brian. I know. What the hell? 'Cause I was like, "No way. I'm not gonna be the 90th podcast."
[laughs] You could've been like the fourth. But what is your... I wanna spin it forward.
Like I think we focus a lot on the past, and I think it's like it's instructive in stuff like this, but I think it's instructive with what comes next, right?
And so what is your theory of the case as far as like you called that book Traffic. What's... You're gonna write a book in 2020. What's it gonna be called? Events? In 2020? You mean in 2030? 2030? 2030, sorry.
[laughs] It's Wednesday. No, that's a really... That, you know... I hope it will be like a book where the reaction is less like m- you know, mockery of my business judgment. The... I mean, I guess I, I definitely...
I mean, I, again, this is just so banal, but like just the huge change with the decline of social media is like the intensity of the connection with the actual human beings you are talking to, in knowing your audience just in the literal sense, like knowing who they are, which is incredibly important to marketers, incredibly important to journalists- Yeah...
knowing what they want, hearing from them all the time. I mean, email is like, it's such a backward technology. Like you can't even control the font. Yeah. I mean, it's limited in space.
It's really the print of digital, and I think it's hard to imagine... And this is probably a challenge for both of our businesses, that in 10 years email will be the central delivery system for journalism. Right.
Like it feels like a way station, but it's an incredibly powerful, interesting one right now, and a great way to reach people as social media falls apart and unravels.
And I think in this moment, that kind of first party connection through email and then through whatever comes next is gonna be so important. So the book's called Email? Email. [laughs] No, it's called AI, actually.
No, but doesn't it s- d- doesn't it feel like a little embar- I mean, you know, we would, I think that neither of us would call ourselves an e-... None of us would be like, "We're an email company."
But it, I think every journalism company right now is reaching people very, very heavily through email.
Well, I mean, it's, it's very backward, like you said, because like I feel like in newsrooms it was always like the person who was lowest on the totem pole had to do the email.It's like- You got a typo today, and you just can't fix it.
I mean, it makes me crazy. [laughs] Can't resend. But I don't know, I think that email is just a format, right?
And, like, for these elite audiences that Puck is serving, and I think Semafor is serving, and a lot of other startup brands are serving, the voracious consumer that wants- Yeah, that's- -more and more info.
Like- -total. And that is- They want it- -totally where they are right now. Yeah. But what do you think is next? Like, what's, like, the next step? Tell me, 'cause I'm trying to figure it out. I don't know.
I think, like, email's just coming back into being, and I think that, like, direct connection is- It's, like, a Paris Hilton thing. [laughs] It's, like, stuff from the- Yeah... '90s. Yeah. I don't know.
I think, like, that's one format that's really popular for us.
Like, we're experimenting with audio, and off-the-record phone calls, and those kinds of things, but I think there's a much bigger barrier to things like that to get people to tune in. Yeah.
When email you can read when you want it. I think it's like- No, it's the be- it's the best. It's incredibly successful, I think for all of us, actually. Yeah. But I... But it does...
Don't you sort of look into, like, 10 years out and think- No, it's not gonna be email. But I think, like, if you look at it, like, just to go back to what you said of, like, what it's gonna be called. Like...
And who knows? Like, I think there's gonna be, like, a giant bifurcation.
But, like, when you're having direct connections with an audience, and why email works, why podcasts work, why convening and events work, is that there's a human connection that happens.
And with AI coming, like, I would think with 98% of content being synthetic, trying to out robot a robot is generally a losing proposition.
And so what are the ways to use the new technologies that AI is enabling to have a kind of connection to a specific audience? So maybe it is a chat, maybe it's a Ben bot. Yeah, I'm not...
I mean, I guess I'm not- You're not ready for the Ben bot? I'm not sure. Like, I haven't... I... You know, it's funny. Like, I...
We've all been wand- walking around talking to marketers who say, "A, AI is gonna take everybody's job. Cannes will cease to exist. Advertising will cease- Yeah... to exist."
B, "Oh, no, I'm not actually using it for anything interesting right now." Or if they claim they are, you push on it a little and they're not. So I'm not that sure that it's gonna replace- Yeah... everything.
I do think that, like... W- to me, what's so interesting is the two big themes here are AI and the robots are gonna come kill us all, and influencers- Right... who are everywhere. Creators. Cre- creators.
Individ- you know, human connections. And I do think that, like, these new digi- these new tools, which... Al- some of which have existed for a while, like Grammarly is great. Yeah.
Like, not gonna put robots patrolling the street corners, Grammarly. But that's an AI tool that I'm sure lots of influencers w- use to avoid typos- Yeah... in their stu- in their Instagram posts.
And it's replacing copy editors, who are- Yeah... always the first to go. Yes. And I think for... So I do think f- I actually think, I think pe- you know,
that this sort of desire from audiences to hear from a really sophisticated person... In our businesses also, to get information that you can't already find in the training data.
Like, even scoops are still the coin of the realm. Yeah. You, you know, that's not gonna change. But the Ben bot would be- But-... trained on your data, Ben. But it's not gonna be...
But to me, like, the most interesting version of this I've heard is, it's not gonna be the central thing. It's gonna be, I think, the ancillary stuff that would not be worth your time and energy to do at scale.
But, like, Paris Hilton, for instance, has, like, apparently a pretty decent following, whose first language is Hindi. Paris Hilton's not, Hilton's not gonna learn Hindi to record her podcast in Hindi.
But actually, you can do it in her voice in Hindi, and that's maybe not the most valuable business in the world. Probably not worth a lot of time and energy, but worth, you know, zero time and energy, sure.
And so I do think there are gonna be interesting ways to essentially do stuff that would not otherwise be worth your time, and then to automate tons of the lower, of the, of what...
Yeah, sort of ent- You know, one of the things that interests me, and I'm curious how you think about this, 'cause you're also a very top-heavy business.
Like, we both mostly employ these, like, stars who are very seasoned. And there's, because of these technical tools, I mean, just the technical publishing tools, CMSs and stuff, and AI will eat further into that.
R- the sort of, the roles for a large number of young entry-level journalists in a newsroom- Oh, yeah... are shrinking, and I don't quite know- Yeah... how that's gonna play out, but it kind of interests me. Yeah.
I mean, I think that we're not trying to create a newsroom at Puck. Like, we have a really small editorial team, and it's just really the influencer journalists, if you will- Yeah... and then Jon, two editors under him.
So we haven't had any entry-level people that are doing that kind of copywriting work or, like, copy checking. Jon and his team [laughs] are still doing every single piece. But I think that's, like, the, the big risk.
Like, there almost needs to be an apprenticeship approach that... Because if it's just, like- For the robots? No.
I think, like, if you're gonna have, like, a very, like, you know, high, like, level, like, very human business, and you're very dependent on the people who have already, like, had, done the, like, you know, 10,000 hours or something like this, where are you gonna get the 10,000 hours?
Like, I mean, like, if there are no- What are the, what are the paths then? Right. I mean, there will be some... But that, to me, is a real change in the way newsrooms are gonna be structured.
And f- I think, I'm sure The New York Times is looking at your business and our business and say...
And thinking about how can they reorient themselves more around Maggie Haberman, and Andrew Sorkin, and people like that. You know, but they're this huge industrial organization with tons of people and, like...
And, and there's a real tension in that. Yeah. I don't think they'll ever... I mean, those are the brands that, like, it doesn't really make sense to mess with the institutional heft of it, right?
Like, I mean- No, but they feel the same pull. Yeah, no, they definitely feel it. I just wonder if they'll be able to change at all because of how the internal dynamics work at a place like that.
As someone who's been recruiting a lot, and I bet you feel this too, you really see who is responding well to this moment and who... And where [laughs] people are really- Who is?... easier to...
The Times, I would say, as somebody who's tried to hire lots of people, I think the-Journal and The Washington Post are really struggling to f- just figure out how to take their best people and, like, maximize their potential, and The Times is more nimble, actually.
Yeah. So just to wrap it up, Ben, this is your first time. I think that you're both first time. No, you- I've been... came to Cannes one time with Conde. Like- Times. A few times. With Conde.
She's like, she's like a Riviera veteran. Oh, okay. Oh. Can't you tell? [laughs] Look at this tan. Uh, but Ben, you are new to Cannes, and you've been doing this newsletter with Max. It's great. It is good.
And no, this... What is your takeaway from this bacchanal? You know, it's a little hard to cover 'cause, like, at other events like this- 'Cause there's no news. [laughs]... like, like Davos, like, Trump is there.
Everybody's trying to get the same story about Donald Trump. A hundred reporters chasing it. You kinda know where the center of the action is. Here, it's just much every...
You know, there's no central thread to chase in the same way.
But conversely, there's not a hundred reporters chasing it, and so Max and I have been having an enormous amount of fun just writing this daily newsletter here trying to make trouble.
I was cheerfully drinking a beer and editing it, editing it in our Airbnb at one thirty at night, and this brilliant French journalist who's joined us and had a great story about people looking for cocaine on Reddit, actually, today.
Oh, really? Here? Yeah, here. Apparently Reddit is big on... They're advertising their peer-to-peer marketing strength and- [laughs]... it's in full effect. Oh my God. The...
But he was, he was going to bed at one thirty in our shared Airbnb, and I was like, "What are you doing?" And I was like, "You know, like, I would do this if you didn't pay me.
It's so fun to, like, write, like, the local blog of this- Yeah... this French beach town for a week." Yeah. It's a definitely a weird place. What is your, like, Cannes tip for, like, newcomers? Oh, God. I don't know.
I mean, I think I'm here alone this week with Puck, so representing Puck, and for us it's really just been about trying to meet as many people as possible and introduce new marketers to the brand.
And as we continue to expand our advertising business and our, as our audience has grown, we've grown more into the consumer categories.
So I've just been really focused on meeting new people and new business development. But I don't know, pro tip, like, just have fun, be outgoing, meet lots of people, and that's it. Yeah. Try to get some sleep.
Try not to lose your voice by Wednesday. All right. Thanks a lot, Ben. Thank you, Liz. Really appreciate you coming by. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for all the tips on how to navigate this madness. Yeah, no problems.
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