[intro jingle] If anyone has read this article and believes that we are saying that the Murdochs were on the ground texting Donald about which window to jump through, then we're happy to clarify that is not the case.
[intro music] Welcome to the Rebooting Show. I'm Brian Morrissey.
This week, I'm speaking with Will Hayward, the CEO of Private Media, an independent publishing company in Australia that publishes several titles, including the politics-focused Crikey.
I've known Will for many years, dating back to when he was leading sales for BuzzFeed in London, and after that, when he was the chief commercial officer at style publication Dazed, and then as CEO of Joe Media, a social publisher in Ireland and the UK.
Beyond all that, Will has recently faced the intriguing and likely slightly terrifying experience of being the subject of a defamation lawsuit filed by Lachlan Murdoch over a Crikey opinion column that held that the Murdochs were, quote, "unindicted co-conspirators of the January sixth attack on the US Capitol".
Murdoch withdrew the lawsuit in the aftermath of Fox settling its case with Dominion, much, I would suppose, to Will's relief.
We discussed the case, the decision to stand firm against a powerful and angry individual, and how Crikey made lemonade out of lemons by using the case to rally support for the politics publication through subscriptions.
We also touch on the impact of Australia's News Bargaining Code that has wrung payments from platforms and is the model for similar laws worldwide, including one here in the US.
And we also touch on lessons learned from the social publishing era since Will was in the thick of it. I hope you enjoy the episode. But first, a word from the Rebooting Show's sponsor, Kurv Interactive.
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But thanks a lot to Kurv for sponsoring this, and Kurv is actually partnering with the Rebooting for a series of events at the Cannes Lions Festival next month.
I'll include a link for more information for that as well in the show notes. But they've been great partners, and I'm really looking forward to the conversations we're holding at their cafe in Cannes.
And if you're going to the Cannes Lions, I hope you'll register and come by. Over the next few weeks, I'll be getting into the details of the programming.
We have great speakers signed up already from places like NBC, Havas, Sirius, Uber, Spotify, Mars, and many more. So do check out the link to register for those events.
It's gonna be on Monday through Wednesday from one to three PM in Cannes. Again, if you're in the south of France, come by, say hello. Love to see you. Now on to the conversation with Will.
[instrumental music] Will, thank you for taking the time, your morning, my evening, but it's good to connect. It's great to be here, Brian. Great to see you again. Yes, it's great to see you.
I just saw you in New York, I guess, a few months ago. So when we were talking when you were here, Crikey just won an important lawsuit that Lachlan Murdoch-- well, won, but he dropped it, so it's winning really.
But I wanna get, because maybe some of my listeners do not know Crikey. Sure. Give us the background on Crikey. It's been around for, like, twenty-four years, right? Yeah. So it's been going for over twenty years.
I'm CEO of the parent company- Yeah. -which is called Private Media. We have a number of other brands. Crikey separately was set up by a guy called Stephen Mayne, who's a phenomenal journalist and shareholder activist.
So Stephen is one of these great guys who turns up at general company meetings and sticks his hand up and asks awkward questions. He often does it to Rupert as well, which is- Okay. -particularly amusing.
Rupert Murdoch or another Rupert? Yeah, yeah, Rupert Murdoch. Just making sure. So- I gotta do my job. Sorry? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. We should be clear which Murdoch it is, actually.
That has got us in trouble historically. [laughs] Which Rupert it is. Indeed. Are there any other Ruperts left? I feel like that's, it's... that's dying out. Not, not... Only, only my neighbor's kid.
So it's been going for over twenty years. We consider ourselves a thorn in the side of the bigger media players in Australia. We don't seek to cover all news.
Uh, we specialize predominantly in media and politics, culture, and a little bit of business. We actually have beenAhead of the curve on a lot of things, mostly by accident.
So we've been newsletter first since we were founded. So for over twenty years we've been sending out a newsletter. Our total email list now is well over a hundred thousand.
We have a number of email products, but the one that we're most well-known for is our paid product, which is a lunchtime email called The Daily, the Crikey Daily. We publish about nine to eleven stories a day.
We have a number of in-house staff and opinion writers as well, and contributors. And yeah, we're probably perceived as being somewhat left of center, though I think that's probably a, a misperception.
Stephen, the original founder, is certainly not left of center. He's run for Liberal office before, which is the equivalent of Republican for you guys. So yeah, we're very proud of the title.
It had been bubbling along for a number of years. Over the last three years we've worked extremely hard and had a lot of subscription growth.
So three years ago, we were at about nine thousand, and it had been about nine thousand subs plus or minus sort of five hundred or a thousand for about five years.
Fast-forward to today, and we're now approaching thirty thousand subscribers, uh, which is not insignificant in Australia. All that money has obviously allowed us to invest a lot more in journalism
and to get out there and do what we can to cover the things other people aren't covering- Yeah... and pick some fights with people that we think should have fights picked.
So for those who are not in, like, the Australian media scene, like, 'cause I think it's funny 'cause for Americans, like, like our press is, like, so tame, I feel like, compared to the UK, and I, I suspect Australia too.
Uh, some-somewhat. So the issue with Australia is, and I'm fairly certain we're gonna touch on this, is the defamation law is extraordinarily pro-litigant in Australia.
So if you google defamation capital of the world, the first few pages of Google will tell you about Sydney, the Federal Court, New South Wales. We do not have the defense of the public figure in Australia.
So in the States, if you are Donald Trump, law treats you differently to Rupert, my neighbor's son. Yeah.
It recognizes there is a difference between someone who's ho-high profile, who's out there, and it realizes that it's important that a free press can criticize those who are in the public eye. Yeah.
We don't have that defense in Australia. The law makes no difference between, for example, Lachlan Murdoch and a private individual who's just getting on with their lives. As a result of that- Your neighbor, Rupert...
as a result of that, it is a very tough place to be a media operator. It's, well- Yeah... it's as hard as any other market to publish trade content or lifestyle content or whatever it might be. Right.
But for smaller independent titles, as well as the bigger commercial titles and indeed the state broadcaster, defamation is a very thorny issue. Yeah.
And if I'm to be totally honest, most people who do my job, when you receive a concerns notice, which is the first step of suing someone in Australia, I would assume that nine times out of ten, the next thing that happens is the article comes down and an apology is published pretty quickly.
Yeah. Irrespective of whether you stand by the reporting. So how is that different from the UK? I mean, 'cause UK has very, I... For those who do not know, W-Will's not Australian, he's, he's British. Yeah. Indeed.
But, [chuckles] but how is it different there? Because, I mean, like the laws in the UK are way more stringent than here. Is it pretty much the same? It's not the same.
So I, I couldn't quote with confidence the specifics of the law in the UK. It's not something I had to interact with, particularly when I was over there.
But the outcome of it is that in Australia, on a like for like basis, we have about four times as many defamation writs issued in Australia as we do in the UK.
So if it is a sliding spectrum, you would see the US at one end, where even though we, and by we I say the kind of thinking, sane population of the world, were fairly confident that Dominion would win its case.
The modifier was fairly. Like, people thought Dominion would probably win, but there was no degree of certainty there, and that was a case where the documentary evidence was extraordinary. Yeah.
So if you slide that scale all the way down and sort of, well, halfway you have the UK, and then right at the bottom you have Australia. Yeah.
Yeah, and I mean, we have, like, actual malice too, as, like, it's not in the law- Mm-hmm... but it's been decided by courts that, you know, that bar proving that a publication meant to cause actual- Mm-hmm...
like malice against a, an individual is very difficult to reach because, you know, in nine times out of ten cases, I mean, there's, obviously there's exceptions to that, but, like, it's good to, to have actually, I think, for the US.
And some figures like Donald Trump actually has hinted at it, like that he would like to see that changed, or he said- Yeah... "We should look into it. Open it up."
I mean, when our case first broke, I suspect I probably gave some quotes saying this is all about defense of free speech. And it was, and within the Australian context, it absolutely was.
I should be clear that speaking on a personal level, I'm not a free speech absolutist. Like, I do think- I mean, you gotta go all the way. You got the SH on. Sure. Don't worry, this is safe. Sure.
Elon's not gonna come... He t- he, he responded to my tweet the other day. We're buddies. Did he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did he actually? Yeah, yeah. He responded to my tweet. It's been viewed two million times.
Congratulations. I have the, I have the most insane- Sure... responses. Sure. I'm sure. So I'm, I'm not a free speech absolutist. I suspect that the bar should be a little bit lower in the States.
What I am certain of is that in Australia the bar is way too low. Pe-people just win defamation cases all the time. Yeah.
We had the man who is the current leader of the Liberal Party, so again, the equivalent of the Republican Party.
A human rights activist put on Twitter that following some controversies about statements that this politician had made about asylum seekers using sexual assault as a means to gain entry to Australia, a human rights activist tweeted this politician's name, and I don't want to say it because I'm scared of defamation law in Australia.This politician, Dane, is a rape apologist.
And because of that, the MP thought it was suitable to sue this human rights activist, take him to court. Now, ultimately, they settled outside, of course. Yeah. But people thought that he would probably win that case.
We believe it's extremely important that politicians- Yeah. -should be criticized, and powerful media owners, indeed, should be criticized- Yeah. -in public.
So let's talk about the, the case that you were ensnared in until [chuckles] recently. Indeed. It was an opinion column, right? It was. Like after the January 6th.
And it was funny because, like I, you know, I did-- I read it actually, and it didn't really talk about, like- No. -I don't know, Murdoch that much. [chuckles] It was in the head-- I think the headline was what got...
It's always the headline. But- Or the tweet. Or the tweet. Yeah. [chuckles] It's often the tweet.
[upbeat music] Yeah, look, so Bernard Keane, our political editor, wrote a piece of analysis following some of the Senate hearings in which he ended his piece that was largely about Trump, saying that if Trump was ever indicted for his crime, the people who would not be alongside him in the dock were the Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators.
Yeah. For this paragraph, we, within twenty-four hours, received a concerns notice. So as I said, in Australia, in order to sue for defamation, the first thing you have to do is send a concerns notice.
The concerns notice says, "What you wrote meant this, and as a result, you have defamed me, and I'm thinking about suing you."
So within twenty-four hours, we received a concerns notice from Lachlan Murdoch's personal attorney saying that sentence alleged that his client was guilty of a variety of crimes, such as legally conspiring with Donald Trump to overturn the election, illegally conspiring with Donald Trump with murderous intent to storm the Capitol, and a whole bunch of other extraordinary imputations.
I was actually in the UK at the time. By the time the concerns notice came through, the article had already come down, as I said. This is the usual pattern of behavior for publishers.
I was always of the opinion that it shouldn't have come down, but I totally understand why our team just decided, like it's pretty intense receiving a concerns notice from Lachlan Murdoch.
I mean, w-we felt this was pretty ridiculous, but the article was down, so we wrote back and said, "Look, we pulled it down. Surely this is the end of the matter." They insisted on an apology.
We declined to write an apology, but we offered to write a clarification saying, "If anyone has read this article that no longer exists, but if anyone has read this article and believes that we are saying that the Murdochs were on the ground texting Donald about which window to jump through, then we're happy to clarify that is not the case."
And the legal correspondence went back and forth. There is a line, if you forgive me, what's the American sitcom about the presidency? West Wing. West Wing. Thank you. Okay.
There is a great scene in The West Wing where Bartlet asks his staff what is the benefit of a proportional response. I think it was like, what's the ethical value of a proportional response?
And his point is, this back and forth, this dance that we do with people sometimes is absurd and ridiculous, and we should have a disproportionate response. Now, there is a defamation dance in Australia.
Someone sends you a concerns notice, you pull down the article, you clarify or apologize, you back and forth, and then a small amount of money exchanges hands.
The insistence from the other side that we should publish a full apology was enough to warrant from us what some might perceive as being a disproportionate response. So we felt it was ridiculous.
The editorial team thought this was a huge piece of news that Murdoch was seeking to use defamation law in Australia at the same time as he was defending a defamation case in the States- Yeah. -on the same issue.
But it's also bad. I mean, like, I'm not gonna like- Sure. Actually, I'm not scared of being sued. Oh. 'Cause we're in the, I'm in the United States. It'd be good if we put the Rebooting on the map.
I mean, a- particularly after the Elon Musk tweet and then the lawsuit, it would be great. Absolutely.
No, I mean, if you're running a media company, your bar is even higher to go around and sue media companies for what they publish. Like, it's just higher in my view. Oh. And it's...
You can't, because you've got a bunch of journalists who work for you, and I don't care how big the company is. Like, you just can't, you just don't do it. Like that's, I don't know. Strongly agree. Rupert doesn't do it.
But one, one of the things that, like, so you said, like, I would think the issue would have been the unindicted co-conspirator- Sure.
-part because, you know, like, in journalism, like, you always like sort of avoid, like everyone tiptoes around using the word fraud and stuff [chuckles] like this because it's like literally, like, so you'll try to do anything other than say fraud, like, because it, it's a sort of legal thing.
Was, was that- Sure. -the biggest thing? 'Cause it seems like a very strange fight to pick for- I- -Lachlan Murdoch. I agree. My working assumption through the initial exchanges was that he was unaware of the matter.
It just seemed so preposterous, so preposterous that he would issue a concerns notice because of a sentence and a headline in an article behind a paywall that has a few thousand subscribers. Yeah.
So I mean, look, I don't know if he did know. Yeah. Uh, I don't know if it was the sentence that annoyed him.
What I have heard from people who are closer to him is that he's extremely protective of his reputation in Australia, which is fair. Yeah. He's entitled to be protective.
What he's not entitled to do is send spurious concerns notices- Yeah. -and think that we're gonna respect some sort of implied confidentiality. There's no confidentiality.
It was a huge piece of news, a huge piece of news that he was sending us these concerns notice, trying to shut down people talking about January the 6th.So I talked about the response.
Uh, what we did, for your listeners who are unaware, is we published all of the correspondence between his lawyers and our lawyers, and we ran an ad in the New York Times saying, "Stop threatening to sue us.
If you're gonna sue us, sue us." Now, this was after a number of back and forths with the lawyers. It dragged on for a while.
Our legal fees were probably, I'm guessing, twenty thousand dollars at this point, so it was starting to become something that really did require some attention. Yeah.
And look, my personal conviction was the worst outcome would be he decides to sue us, he takes us to court, he wins. We're saddled with all the costs, and no one cares.
And so we decided as an organization we wanted to fight this. We decided that the reporting was something worth standing by, and I still strongly feel that.
And so if we were gonna engage in a fight, it needed to be a public one. We needed to rally people to our support.
And there was also to a certain degree, a strategic decision, which is we felt strongly that he was unlikely to get in the dock. And so, uh, it was a game of chicken. He'd issued the writ. He was suing us.
All the pressure was on us. But as long as we didn't blink, uh, as long as we stood by our reporting, we felt there was a fairly strong chance that at some point he would back out. Yeah.
And as you know, just over a week ago, I was looking forward to having had a fairly intense eight months.
I was looking forward to two days off in Sydney to see a friend of mine who happened to be in town for a couple days.
And my flight landed, and my phone sort of slowly went into nuclear meltdown as Signal and WhatsApp and Twitter all exploded with the news that Murdoch had backed out of his case. Right. Yeah.
Well, I mean, you guys went public, and you decided to... I mean, it makes a ton of sense because you gotta use the leverage you have. I mean, you're going up against- Sure.
You know, Lachlan Murdoch, and it's- Totally... probably a little scary. [chuckles] I don't know. It's intense. I can assure you, a preferable life scenario is not being sued by a billionaire. Yeah. Yeah.
It's, it's, it's somewhat better for your nerves. And look, a lot of publishers are faced with these things. I mean, in the US, it's often just, like, a nastygram from a lawyer.
I always call them nastygrams because it, you know, costs what? Five hundred dollars. I guess with ChatGPT- True... you can just send them for free at this point, which is just like, "We demand!"
You know, and it's just like, okay, great. Yeah. Like, in the US like you basically are like, "Okay, whatever." But it's different when it's in...
Like, I remember this agency holding company CEO threatened us with a libel lawsuit over something that was ridiculous, and that was stressful for a while, but he lost interest, thank God. Not to be named. Yeah.
I mean, I think a positive outcome of our case is that there should be a social cost to threatening people to sue. Most threats occur behind closed doors. No one's exposed to them. No one sees it. Yeah.
Well, that's the thing. You have to bring them out, and you have to fight. Totally. You know, you have to fight on grounds that you have a shot at.
And behind closed doors and, like, who's got the better lawyers and who's g- like- Totally... you know, I, like, who knows at that point? And, like, when people have near limitless resources, like- Yep...
why not just bring it out in the open and stuff? Hundred percent. On the other side, right, like, I think Lachlan Murdoch's like, uh, you know, then was accusing you of using this in order to help your business. Sure.
Which fair enough. Sure. Sure. Like look, hey, you started it. Like, if we're g- [chuckles] If we're gonna be in this, let's get in it. Yeah. So tell me about that because it, it actually was a little beneficial.
Ah, look, as I said in the beginning, the, the kind of three major thoughts at any given point in time we were trying to kind of balance and focus on was firstly, that there was a huge ethical issue.
People should be able to write about the Murdochs and Fox News. It's insane that any journalist should be scared about saying January the sixth was in part driven by Fox News. Like, that, that...
People should s- wear that on T-shirts. Like, no one should feel stressed about saying that out loud. So there is the ethical issue. Secondly is the sustainability.
So if we were gonna enter into this fight, it was really important that it was one that we could see all the way through.
So as I said, the worst way we could try and run the case is do it quietly, be super respectful, not let anyone know that we're being threatened, not let anyone know that we're going to court, because that would give him all the power and give us none of the power.
So we decided to, to run the case in public within the constraints of Australian law, so we obviously didn't want to annoy the judge.
But announce the fact that we had been threatened, and then once we were sued, campaign off the back of it and say, "Someone is trying to shut us down from talking about January the sixth.
If you think that is something that we should talk about, then there are two ways that you can support us. First and foremost, you can subscribe. Secondly, you can contribute to our GoFundMe."
Now, I think that was an act of bravery, without wanting to sound too self-congratulatory. It wasn't my decision. It was a decision of a group of people. We didn't know what was gonna happen.
Like, I was pretty sure Twitter might be excited about the fact that the Murdochs were threatening to sue whilst running a defamation defense in which their only defense was free speech.
And look, it turned out to be true, and we added many thousands of subscribers to Crikey, and it's never been stronger.
It had already had a number of years of very strong subscription growth, which Brian, you've documented well in your newsletter, that- Mm-hmm... a lot of subscription-driven businesses did well during COVID and Trump.
We had done very well during that period, so we were already in a strong position.
I think one miscalculation by the other side is they assumed that we were a tiny little publisher, and we'd be intimidated and scared and run away, and actually, I'm somewhat of a fiscal conservative executive in that we had accumulated a fair amount of cash reserves because we didn't know what was gonna happen.
We didn't know what the future looked like. So we were capable of running the fight. But yeah, we campaigned well off it.
Uh, those campaigns were very successful, and I am delighted to say that Crikey's never been bigger and never been stronger.
[outro music]So what is the revenue mix then between like subscriptions and ads and any other business lines you have?
So I'll talk about Crikey first, and then I'll talk about the group. Crikey is, according to the Tao of Morrissey, which famously once said, and I actually have this in slides that I present internally- Oh, nice...
that the best source of revenue is many, uh, and that you want strong revenue diversification. So as a group, we think a lot about revenue diversification. However, Crikey is,
uh, o-only really has one strong revenue stream, which is subscriptions. Okay. So about ninety-seven, ninety-eight percent of the revenue comes from subscribers. We have, as I said, we, we have grown very aggressively.
It's cash flow positive and sort of oscillates on a P&L basis between being profitable.
We make a small amount of revenue from advertising, but the scale of Crikey is not yet sufficient in order for us to really lean into that side. We're hiring on the sales side right now.
We have recently appointed someone who will spend some of their time on- Mm-hmm... monetizing Crikey through advertising. But at the moment, the vast majority of this revenue comes from subscriptions. Yeah.
As a group, Private Media, again, like we think about a lot of the things that you talk about on your show. So we have two other titles that we own, one that we own, uh, one that we operate.
So we have something called The Mandarin, which is for public sector workers, that does about seventy percent of its revenue from advertising and thirty percent from subscriptions.
Uh, and then we have something called Smart Company, which does about seventy percent of its revenue from advertising, about twenty percent of its revenue from events, and the rest from subscriptions.
We also operate Ink in Australia, which currently is very nascent. We've only been doing that for about six months. So yeah. So we have fairly strong diversification. There's more that we wanna do in affiliate fees.
There's more we wanna do in events, attendance fees- Mm-hmm... or entry fees. So I think there's a strong, clear, obvious model there that we should be doing more with, so we're working on that. Yeah.
How are you seeing subscription growth sort of post-COVID bump? Because I think the question always ends up being, you know, when do subscriptions like hit a wall? Like there- Sure...
there has to be a ceiling for the number of subscriptions, and each market is different. Mm-hmm. Like, I can always remember- Sure... like my last job, like Australia actually converted really well for us.
Like we did nicely, like in Australia, but different markets have different dynamics. Subscriptions is tough. We have had, as I said, three years of very strong subscription growth across the organization.
We predominantly experienced that in Crikey, which as I said, has almost trebled in size over the last three years. The Mandarin is a great, awesome niche trade product. It's very high yields.
We charge four hundred and forty dollars for a subscription. Subscription growth has been less impressive than Crikey, but it is very consistent month on month. Mm.
The issue we have with Crikey now, as is the case with most subscription businesses, is that when growth is linear and churn is a percentage, your growth line is just a curve.
So at a certain point, you're just churning the same amount of people as you're adding. And we're not quite there yet, and it oscillates month to month because you have different renewal pools any given month.
We still expect Crikey to grow quarter on quarter. It is tougher than it was a year ago.
It's tougher than it was eight months ago when Lachlan chose to sue us, so we are hard at work to improve the product, improve retention, figure out new ways to bring in new people.
But, yeah, it is a much tougher business than it was. Yeah. So one other thing that I wanted to get your perspective on was about the media bargaining code. Sure. Because this might be coming to the US.
There's a law being proposed right now that's modeled off of this code, and Australia led the way with this.
And for those who don't know, it's an effort in order to force platform companies basically to bargain with publishers in order to pay them at the end of the day. [chuckles] You know, I read different things about it.
Some people say it's a disaster. Some people say it's like incredible success. What's your evaluation of it?
On a personal level, I was always of the opinion that this was probably primarily driven by the bigger media companies, who, as you know, have great access to politicians, particularly in Australia.
We have heard that they lobbied the former Australian government, the Liberal government, very intensely to introduce some sort of mandatory bargaining code which would force the big tech platforms to directly give revenue to publishers.
Now, I am of the opinion that public interest journalism is a very hard business model. Now, lots of businesses are really hard business models.
The difference is public interest journalism is in the public interest, and therefore I can see a reason why governments should attempt to fund it or ensure that it is well-funded in order to encourage a, a very healthy journalism industry in any given country.
Yeah. We felt, as I said, on an individual level and, and a corporate level, you don't want these tech companies negotiating deals behind closed doors.
And I know that a lot of those deals were done in very bad faith, where you can imagine very powerful media organizations saying, "Look, you have to give us more, or..."
And there's kind of a dot, and there's the dot, dot, dot, we'll go harder on you in our coverage, or we'll talk to the politicians more about it.
Like, it's not the way that a well-functioning liberal democracy should operate, that these deals go on behind closed doors, as I said. So we, we weren't for it. I think there, there are much better ways you could do it.
You could increase the taxes on technology businesses, have that money go to government, and then have government offer grants. Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, I think it's like an imperfect solution that...
You know, obviously it's being pushed by News Corp- Yeah...
and other major publishers in different markets, and I don't think anyone really wants the government picking winners and losers in, in many industries, and particularly when it comes to, uh, news and information.
Would you prefer that Google and Facebook-[chuckles] Well, I mean, at, at least they choose everyone to be a loser. Yeah. That's equal. No, I mean, look, there's no good choices, right?
Because I think there is a risk that it becomes a political insider game because y-you can say that we're gonna extract a pot of cash from technology companies in order to fund public interest journalism or whatever.
Okay. Who's doing public interest journalism? Who qualifies?
The problem is, in Australia, it's a very easy question to answer because there aren't many places doing public interest journalism because of the fact that ownership of media companies is very heavily concentrated- Yeah...
in the hands of a few. So I agree, that might be a tougher question to answer in other countries.
Now, what we saw in Australia is that Google and Facebook were forced to make somewhat arbitrary decisions about who that money would go to.
I think saying that, look, I respect the American tradition of extreme cynicism about government, and I get that. Like- Am I representing that? [chuckles] Right now you are, apparently. Awesome. I love this.
I think saying that because government tends to be pretty crap, we shouldn't have government do anything.
A, a better argument is let's figure out ways for government to do things properly and appropriately, or let's figure out ways for independent organizations to be set up that aren't susceptible to the whims of any given government at any point in time.
So I, I don't think it's easy. Yeah, no, it's not.
But I can tell you firsthand, I mean, I actually dug out a quote that I gave the other day, uh, when the bargaining code first came through, that Google and Facebook, in my opinion, were the ones who acted with the greatest degree of integrity through this whole thing.
So whilst we were negotiating, and I should be careful 'cause those negotiations were confidential, Google and Facebook were working very hard to construct some sort of mechanism that could justify the funneling of this money to independent publishers.
So they were building new products, and you'd speak to the tech team and the news team at both organizations, and they would say, "Look, we wanna give you this money. This is a way that we can justify doing it.
What do you think?" And you had these long, protracted discussions, and everyone worked very hard at it. And as I said, I think they worked with a fair degree of integrity and were well-intentioned.
What I also know- Yeah... is, well, just as you said, like, the bigger news organizations behind closed doors were saying, "If you don't give us this money," and dot, dot, dot. Yeah. [chuckles] Exactly.
[upbeat music] How do you end up, like, measuring the... I don't know, what are the KPIs? Like, the number of people hired into newsrooms or? There aren't any.
The only KPI is that you don't write to the government and say, "Google and Facebook are not acting in good faith." So when you scratch the surface, you realize that's all there is.
Again, I don't want to dwell on this for too long, at risk of getting myself in trouble, but the news media bargaining code in Australia is not a good model for other countries to follow.
Everyone should want a model that is transparent, is logical, and supports public interest journalism. And the good news is we have more funding for public interest journalism.
But I think the way we got there, clearly, I really hope that other countries are trying to figure out a better way to get there. Yeah. TBD.
The other thing is, like, I think we first got to know each other when you were at BuzzFeed in the UK. So, you know, tough news with BuzzFeed News. Big.
Not, like, unexpected, and obviously, BuzzFeed itself is a publicly traded company, [chuckles] and they're probably regretting that. I don't know.
What are your, what are your thoughts about, first of all, I mean that era. You'd been at BuzzFeed and, and then you had worked at, like, Joe, too. Like, so, I don't know, talk to me about, like- Yes...
what are your takeaways from that period of time in digital publishing?
When I was at BuzzFeed, the extraordinary thing is that everyone thought that we had some sort of extraordinary algorithm working behind the scenes, and we had really cracked the code, all of these things.
And there were many things that we had that other publishers didn't. But I think the most important thing was we were very lucky with timing. So at the same time as internet culture going mainstream, BuzzFeed was there.
So when my grandmother found out about emojis, like, that was just as BuzzFeed was kind of breaking through.
So it was the publisher of the moment, and as everyone was getting their heads around Facebook and Twitter and whatever else, like, BuzzFeed was just incredibly culturally relevant at that time.
I think that the internet has really sped up the life cycle of all brands, but particularly publishing brands. So MTV, I would argue, is no longer hugely culturally relevant. Like, my kids have got no idea what MTV is.
No. I don't meet any twenty-one-year-olds talking about MTV. Like, it's not a thing anymore. I think, I remember Myspace was being talked about- Sure... as, like, replacing MTV. Like... [chuckles] Sure.
Well, do you think the life cycle, how long do you think MTV was hot? I would say it had its, like, classic period when I was, like, growing up with Headbangers Ball. So, like, 1960s or? [chuckles] Yeah, 1960s. Like, no.
With the Headbangers Ball and, and all that stuff, and then it went, and then, like, it happened, like, total recall, and then it went into that weird phase of reality TV with The Hills.
So I don't really count that- Mm-hmm... uh, really because it was coasting on the fumes. Sure. But I think it, like, ended basically in the early '90s- Sure... you know, or mid-'90s.
But I do think that that's a good point in that I wonder a lot how that's going to, like, impact brands now, particularly as they move more towards, like, individuals and stuff. I think that shelf life is even shorter.
There would be a way to find some sort of data to make this conversation less of a subjective. However- Here we are. It's a podcast. What are we gonna do? Sure. [chuckles] Two white guys talking on a podcast.
Let's not be tethered to facts. So, I mean, I think mid-'90s, I suspect if you check the viewing figures, that's probably a little bit harsh.
But the life cycle of MTV, even the most conservative analysis would probably say, like, fifteen years. This thing was big and culturally relevant and talked about a lot for fifteen years.
I think the life cycle of BuzzFeed in terms of really being there was probably sort of four or five years.And I think Vice had a good shot.
They went on for a little bit longer, but I think the internet has really sped things up.
So irrespective of any other issues with the business model or, or anything else, I think BuzzFeed was a victim of the speed with which culture changes.
And like I remember John Steinberg, who was my boss at BuzzFeed, showing me text, and I think he even turned this into a slide that he used to show to advertisers, which was a text from the CMO of a very big American business to his kid saying, "Someone's pitching me BuzzFeed.
What is it?" And the kid writes back, "Oh, like OMG!!! BuzzFeed's the coolest thing I've ever seen. Give them all your money."
And John used to love showing people this thing because BuzzFeed was just like, it was there, it was this thing that everyone was talking about.
When I was working there, everyone invited us to panels and like, it just like very much that. That's not the case anymore.
Like, I don't think any CMO is texting their kid and saying, "What's this thing called BuzzFeed?" And the kid's writing back going, "OMG, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen."
Like, it's just, it's lost that cultural relevance. So I think there's a tough level there.
On the inside, I'd also say BuzzFeed was a excellent place to work when I was there, which was twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen, I think. It was ambitious, it was driven.
A-again, to give John, and at that time Jonah his credit, they built a company that had a very high density of curious, driven people.
And at a certain point, I think BuzzFeed, rather than deciding to become a Google and to continue following that path of extreme density of impressive, extraordinary, weird, curious people, it got really focused on the money and decided to become more of a Yahoo or AOL, and it brought in a bunch of people.
And those two- Yeah... brands were great in their heyday, but certainly in their latter years, they were just very focused on monetization. And the consequence of that is a whole bunch of people left.
I mean, within about two years of those changes, or I mean, in, in my head when that change happened, the entire executive team turned over, and they were-- they did actually happen to largely be replaced by people from Yahoo.
And I think it just sort of fundamentally shifted- Yeah... the DNA of the organization. I mean, it, it is interesting, though.
It was, it was of a time, and I think, like, brands are of a time, um, but like, just like you said, like it's all sped up so much. And so I don't know how you create- Yeah...
durable brands now, and I don't know [chuckles] if it's even like a good, um... I, I don't know. It's been around.
Like, Craigie's has, has been around for twenty-something years, uh, but it's hard to build a brand and keep altitude for that long, I feel like these days. Sure.
I mean, I, I think what Jonah tried to do made a great deal of sense.
Doing BuzzFeed News was the very smart thing to do, invest significant capital in trying to deepen your connection with audiences and create something of significant cultural value.
So I think BuzzFeed News was absolutely the smart decision. I don't have a clear view on, other than those sort of cultural issues I mentioned, why it never really made sense from there.
I mean, I think they probably didn't figure out a strong enough commercial model. It's interesting, Semafor seems to be doing extremely well. Ben is a scoop machine.
I think the brand they are building feels to me more durable. It feels less like an American Apparel. But we'll see. Yeah. Maybe we'll be here in seven years. Who knows? I think they would say the same.
Um, because, you know, news business, I mean, that's like, you're saying it's ninety-seven percent Craigie's. Uh, it's not, I mean, fine- Super consistent... the U.S. is, is a massive market.
But, you know, news and politics, like, it's just not stuff that advertisers wanna be around. A-and, you know, people can panels and talk about it, and sometimes even CMOs get on panels and talk about it.
But the reality is, you know, it, it particularly, at least in the U.S., um, they don't wanna be... So it just, it really puts
a business model that's under a tremendous amount of pressure, um, under, you know, an honorable amount. And so that's why, I mean, like one of the previous NYU journalism professor and- For sure...
we were talking about, um- What was it, AJ? About how news needs... It's a subsidy business, subsidized by some other lucrative business, because, like, as a standalone business, general news is tough. It's very tough.
It is tough. Look, I mean, if you are a small...
So the dynamics of what makes it tough are on the subscription side, it's like a software business in that The New York Times has probably a thousand X the resources that we do, and each new subscriber allows them to bring in more resources, and the more resources they have, the more attractive they are to a greater segment of the population and the fewer reasons there are to move on when it comes to renewal.
So you want to be big. You really want to be big in order to survive. If you are smaller, you need to have a very differentiated product. You can't compete- Yeah... with the big guys on normal news.
Like, we don't go out there and try and cover everything that happens in the news every day. We try and cover things that we think are underreported or cover them in ways that are genuinely differentiated.
We try and do things that other publishers won't. So as I said already, like most publishers in Australia are pretty terrified of litigious billionaires. And so our business model...
I mean, it's not our business model to be sued by billionaires. I should be very clear with that, p-particularly with the insurance company obviously.
But, uh, our business model is to boldly cover things that we think are undercover in Australia. Awesome. All right. Well, I'm gonna leave it there. Thanks so much. It was great catching up. Great talking. Thanks, Brian.
Thank you so much for listening. Again, please do send me your feedback. My email is bmorrissey@therebooting.com. Thanks a lot to Jay Sparks, who is producing this podcast.
If you're thinking about doing your own podcast, and again, they're hard to grow, but the depth of engagement is amazing, so don't let that scare you off. Get in touch. Jay can help you out. He is at podhelpus.
That is podhelp.us. [outro music]