Journalists or Creators? How Media Entrepreneurs Are Reshaping News

Oliver, were you late?

I was two minutes tardy.

Yeah, right.

It was tardy.

The rest of us were here on time.

Late is a strong word.

Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

This is on with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.

I don't know how many of you saw the picture of me in the New York Times a couple months ago scaling a climbing wall.

It came out just after Scott Galloway and I re-upped our contract with Vox for our suite of podcasts.

But it was really, in my mind, the way I think about media and entrepreneurship.

I've been launching media ventures for over two decades.

I am kind of the OG of this kind of stuff.

But it started with All Things Digital Conference with Malt Mossberg that we started at Dow Jones, which then morphed into the site All Things D 2007.

I wanted to do my own thing because I was the world's worst employee and I decided to work for myself because I could only annoy myself.

And one of the biggest learnings I got out of those days is if you have a great idea, go ahead and do it.

I kept doing it and shifted many, many times.

In 2014, Walt and I broke off and started Recode.

And from there, we did the Recode conference.

We sold it to Vox Media.

Then I started a podcast at Vox.

And here we are.

The early internet days with the blogging culture was a moment in big upheavals in journalism.

And we're in another one of those moments right now, sparked by the balkanization of the media landscape and AI.

My guests today are three media makers who are among those stirring things up, both within legacy media and on their own.

Katie Drummond is the global editorial director of Wired, where she leads content strategy for the brand across all platforms.

Wired has been doing a lot of really great tech reporting lately, and I think what she's doing, working to revamp Wired by leaning into the creator culture, is really interesting.

Oliver Darcy is a former CNN media reporter who left the legacy outlet last year to found Status, a newsletter that the Wall Street Journal called a must-read for the power brokers of publishing and entertainment.

This month, he's added a weekly podcast to the mix called Power Lines.

Full disclosure, he and I talked a lot about it as he was doing it and continue to do so.

I'm a real admirer of his.

The same for David Jorgensen.

He's sort of the J.D.

Vance lookalike, who until recently was the face of TikTok in the YouTube accounts for the Washington Post.

He just left the Post.

Again, I talked to him about that before he did and after, with a very public video letter to Jeff Bezos to focus on his own media startup, Local News International.

I couldn't be more proud of him for doing this.

I'm looking forward to talking to him about the challenges facing legacy and independent media companies, how creator culture is changing journalism, and what risks and potentials they see in the impact of AI on our business.

Let me just say, I want to do this podcast because I am very bullish.

about where media is going and I'm tired of the gloom and doom scenarios.

There's a lot of exciting entrepreneurship and innovation going on, and these three people represent that.

My expert question this week comes from Mehdi Hassan, former MSNBC host and now media entrepreneur, who launched his own digital media company, Zatayo News last year.

It was a great launch, and he's a great person making really interesting stuff.

This will be a fun and lively session, so stick around.

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Oliver, Katie, Dave, thanks for coming on.

I really appreciate you being here to talk about the positive aspects of media entrepreneurship in the new age.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thank you.

Stoked to be here, Kara.

We're talking about how the media landscape is evolving, and you're all part of that evolution in different ways.

I've encouraged some of you.

There's a lot of people I've encouraged to get out of old media.

At the same time, I think there's still a lot of kick in what is called old media.

I don't tend to use those terms, but in media in general.

So my first question, are the reports of legacy media's death exaggerated or on its last legs?

Katie, as the rep for legacy media, I guess that's what will do.

You go first,

and then Oliver and then Dave.

I really think about it less as death and more as consolidation.

And I think that if you said to me, you know, legacy media is consolidating, there will be fewer publications for the journalists of the future to go work at, I would agree with that fundamentally and 100%.

I mean, I think that that is undeniable, right?

That these legacy institutions are consolidating, that the New York Times will continue to eat up, you know, more and more of sort of the

newsroom workforce that's available to them.

And that, you know, titles or companies that cannot find a viable path into the future in terms of audience and revenue will disappear.

I mean, I think that I would completely agree with that.

Oliver?

I don't know if any of these companies will die.

I think that just sounds like a lot.

And I think that there's a lot of brand equity still in these companies.

I do think that they are starting to slip into irrelevance.

And I think in the future, they're going to be a lot smaller.

They're going to be a lot leaner.

And they're not going to have the same...

footprint that did, you know, during the glory days.

And you think about like the Anna Wintor and Grading Carter back in the day and the golden age of magazines, or you think about cable news, MSNBC, and CNN, and even Fox News in particular, are all going to see their audiences continue to shrink.

And they're going to have to really get on these new platforms if they want to have that same footprint.

But I don't think they will.

I think that the economics are changing.

And I think that the new people, the people that are starting companies are actually at an advantage because they're not starting from like the bloat of 15, 20 years ago.

ago when these economic models could support these huge workforces.

They're starting off very lean, lean, like, you know, us at status.

I started off with just me.

I hired my old editor, and we're growing slowly but very intentionally.

And everyone wears multiple hats, and that's just not the same structure as these legacy news organizations.

So they're going to be smaller.

They're not going to go away.

Like Time Magazine is still there, even though Time Magazine is not the Time Magazine that everyone remembers 20 years ago.

Sure, but that's been slowly dying for a long time.

It just would, I wish it would lie down in some ways.

Although their publisher is lovely,

Dave?

Yeah, I agree a lot with what both of you said.

One thing I've realized lately, but I've been kind of slowly realizing over time, when I get to visit journalism classes a lot, a lot of those journalist professors understand that

social video, all these kinds of new, exciting, innovative things are important, but they don't know how to teach it yet.

And so we're not even at the point yet necessarily where there's a lot of professors, and there are some, but there's not as many teaching this in journalism schools.

So once we get to that point, and then the jobs start to look different, and then we're caught up.

I think a lot of this legacy media can survive, but it's kind of in this weird space of it doesn't,

they know they should have these jobs, but they don't even know how to fill them, and they don't even know exactly how they work because no one was really educated on them.

All right, so we're gonna talk about each of your journeys.

Um, Katie, you've you've had a very more traditional hearing, much like I did initially.

Um, you've recently announced revamping Wired, which has been doing some great reporting.

Like, thank you.

I always point to it, I'm like, all you got to do is do great reporting and look what happens.

And you cited the two main reasons for the current media crisis, the so-called traffic apocalypse, which Google Zero, I think some people call it, and the AI slopification of the internet.

Explain what you mean by that and define it for people and what you're doing to combat traffic apocalypse.

Yeah.

And, you know, a bit of a defensive disclaimer here.

Wirett's traffic is totally fine, which I did not make clear in that editor's note.

We have not been as susceptible to this traffic apocalypse as other publishers because we do original reporting, right?

Which is something that I believe in just fundamentally in my heart.

I wouldn't be doing this if I was just, you know, optimizing all of my content for SEO.

But the traffic apocalypse and sort of what we're talking about is Google essentially replacing links, right?

Like the traditional blue links that you would see when you search for something, you would click on a link from a publisher, right?

Now, if you search for that same thing on Google, you will be met with an AI overview and sort sort of an aggregation that pulls from a lot of different publishers and a lot of different sources online that means that you don't need to click through at all.

So what that ultimately means for publishers, right, is some publishers are losing just massive amounts of traffic, massive amounts of audience.

And I think that sort of just generally speaking,

what we have seen over the last decade plus is relying on Facebook for traffic.

Facebook turns off that spigot.

Then you pivot over to relying on Google for traffic and you're sort of optimizing everything for SEO.

Google makes a single algorithm change, and all of a sudden, you are rushing around trying to desperately play catch up because your traffic just bottomed out, right?

So it's sort of, we are reaching, I think, like the end of that game.

At the same time as that game is ending, we are seeing more and more sort of AI generated content dilute and pollute these online platforms where audiences get their news and information.

So I wouldn't necessarily describe every AI overview as AI slop, but we are seeing just sort of like junky generated, garbagey stuff all over your Facebook feed, when you swipe through TikTok, right?

When you are on Instagram, like whatever platform you're on, AI generated content is starting to sort of like eat the internet alive.

And for us,

obviously one of the big solutions to that is just doing original journalism.

I think the other piece of it, though, is making it very clear to our audience that this is human-led, human-generated journalism.

And these are the faces of the people doing it.

These are their voices.

And you can connect directly with them,

right?

In a way to sort of emphasize the importance of people

in the process and practice of news gathering, information, and entertainment.

And this has caused a growth in global revenue and readership.

Is that still continuing or does it hit a wall?

Well, I mean, I certainly plan on it continuing.

I think that we will just have to wait and see.

I mean, we we have seen incredible triple-digit subscriber growth in the last six months, not in revenue, but in actual subscribers, right?

That translates to millions of dollars to our bottom line.

And so this new effort to raise the subscription price to add more benefits for our subscribers, obviously we are trying to build on the very strong momentum that we already have.

Right.

We're going to get to AI more in a sec, but newsletters on Substack and other places like Beehive, Ghost, everywhere else are going to be one of the main vehicles for journalists going independent.

Podcasts are obviously another.

Oliver, you launched your newsletter status about a year ago with a subscription model.

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that you already had 70,000 subscribers are on track to top a million dollars in annual revenue.

So where are you now, if you'd like to disclose?

And are $150 a year subscriptions enough to grow both revenue and audience like a larger news organization when you have a relatively niche topic like media?

What does the traffic apocalypse impact you?

How does that impact you?

Well, we're over, I'm happy to say we're over 90,000 subscribers.

So we're closing in on that 100,000 number, which we're very excited about.

Hopefully we can hit that soon.

And we're 11 months old.

So I don't know if we'll hit it at the year mark, but we're very close.

In terms of traffic, like, I mean, I would love traffic.

I found that Google just doesn't really care about us as a very small independent publisher.

It's actually really maddening at times because we'll break a story and then like The Hill will aggregate it, Daily Mail will aggregate it, New York Post will aggregate it, and then you Google it and they'll get the traffic from our reporting.

We flagged it to Google Google, and Google has done nothing about it and doesn't seem to care about us.

So, Google, you should really prioritize independent publishers a little more.

And they should be able to tell that it's a highly cited article, but whatever.

So, the traffic, we don't really, we're not really used to getting a large volume of traffic because that's not really the game we've ever been playing.

I think, again, this is what gives us a little advantage over

bigger news organizations.

So, our stories aren't tailored for SEO.

They're not, they're, they're written for human beings who actually care about the thing they're reading.

And

are those paid subscribers, the 90,000?

Some are.

No, no, no, no.

If there were paid subscribers, Kara, we would be.

Yeah, I know.

That's why I was thinking about that.

I don't even know.

One day we hope to get there.

No, we have several thousand paid subscribers, 90,000 total.

You don't need that many.

You don't need to be that many.

You really don't need that many.

I mean,

you need a core audience that's going to pay you.

I mean, we hope to one day get to 90,000 paid subscribers.

I'm certain that they exist out there, people who would pay for our content.

It's actually a matter of finding them.

Google could help.

Facebook could help.

They've decided not to help news publishers.

So we'll have to find another way.

In terms of is it enough?

Yeah, I mean, several thousand paid subscribers at $150 a year adds up to quite a bit of revenue.

And we haven't taken any outside investment money, but

I think that I'm confident we can continue growing based on subscription revenue.

And I'm also hoping to increase our ad sales revenue because that's another revenue engine that we, that's not quite firing at the same rate that I'd like it to fire.

So if we can get that online, and this is the way I think about it,

then we can hire more writers, which means we can have more ad inventory, more reason for people to subscribe, which hopefully will allow us to continue growing.

But I mean,

I don't want to make it sound easy either because it's very tough and you are every single day, you're swimming hard.

And some days it feels like you're maybe not going anywhere.

Other days it feels like you make more progress.

As a small independent publisher, you're battling a lot of forces, whether it's big tech or just battling Katie over at Wired, who has a lot more resources than us to report on people like Elon Musk.

I mean, there's a lot of competition and

it's not an easy thing.

That would be normal.

So peak TV may be over, but video is on the rise, obviously.

We're doing this on video.

We've been doing it for a while, both short and long form, by the way.

Dave, you were known as the TikTok guy at the Washington Post.

That's how I knew you.

The YouTube feed, you started there, Washington Post Universe just topped a billion views.

You recently left the Post to focus on your own media venture, Local News International, which you started before you left the Post.

You now have just over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is obviously more dependent on algorithms than search.

Talk a little bit about, and then I'm full disclosure, you and I talked quite a bit during this.

I talk to everyone at the Post.

I do their exit interviews.

I discuss whether they should stay or go.

I discuss their current offerings.

You must be very busy.

I am.

You must be very busy.

It was my only exit.

I know.

One of, one of, when Ben Colin was doing a very nice piece on me, he said, I've heard you get fees for these consulting.

I was like, no, I should charge these fuckers.

But I do talk to pretty much everyone who leaves the Washington Post at this point.

So talk about your decision.

Not that you're not special, Dave, but

including your letter to Jeff Bezos, which was very funny.

Thank you.

Talk a little bit about what made you do that.

Because one is I was shocked that they let you have those subscribers.

I think I expressed that to you.

And I said, run, run as fast as you can.

But go ahead.

Talk about it.

Yeah, I ran all the way to Kansas City.

I've been based here a year.

But actually, I think that distance, that physical distance did help me in the end.

They couldn't find me anywhere.

But jokes aside, for a long time.

And even a couple of years ago, I said to my editor, Lauren Sachs, you know, I just feel like there's a ceiling here and I'm just hitting up against it like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I got the bubble and I'm just hitting it.

What was the ceiling?

The ceiling was just that I kind of accomplished everything I set out to do.

I was hired all the way back in 2017 to reach younger audiences.

And I felt like, you know, starting in 2019, I started to accomplish that by pitching TikTok.

And obviously it went quite well.

But I just felt like, okay, I'm just growing this audience just to grow this audience.

When I have other ambitions, like I want to do my own version of the daily show one day, I want to be that person.

And it's just within the post, they really tried to structure it, you know, starting late last year of how maybe we could do this.

But then I just felt like things were not consistent there on a number of levels.

To the post credit, they really tried to engage with me on this.

And it just, but as they were doing that on the side, they're, you know, they're kind of firing people that I really wanted to work with.

They were reorganizing people.

Like, why can't work within this

organization when I don't even know who's going to be here on Monday?

That was another driving force.

And then, you know, I mentioned Lauren.

She, she mentioned one day, hey, like, if you're going out on your own, I'll go with you.

And so did Micah, the head of video.

And so that also gave me the further.

You took the whole team, you basically.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of great people that work there and still work there but i mean lauren was basically my voice of reason whenever i wanted to make a really ridiculous tick tock and kind of bring it back a little bit but also she knows my voice and micah was the person who green lit it in the first place back in 2019 when it's hard to remember now but no one in the newsroom knew what i was talking about um like they really didn't they i said you know the first pitch i said it's like oh you know musically it's now tick tock now i don't know what musically is so i had to really just start to make it and show them uh once videos went viral hey this could be something that works within our news yeah one of the explanations when someone asked me why why I left all these places so early was I don't like mama telling me what to do ever.

So that's really, but Katie, talk about like when you run a legacy organization like that, when you have to inspire people.

One of the things I did notice you did, because I had run newsrooms, so I understood what exactly what you were doing is you got excitement around reporting and Doge in particular.

And you rode that fucking story till like to the end, essentially, and it was an end.

But talk about that, like making people excited to stay at a place like that.

How do you create an organization where entrepreneur increasingly people are becoming entrepreneurial and they leave and they they're the ones that have the most energy?

Yeah, I mean, obviously I want them to be excited about the reporting.

And I think at this point, if you work at Wired and you're not excited about the reporting, I would be very surprised because those people left a long time ago.

So I think that just my own energy and enthusiasm for what we do and like wanting to like fucking win.

Like I wake up every day just desperate to win.

I feel it, Katie.

And they and they can feel it.

And so there's that piece of it.

But I think the other piece of it for us is that I want them to be stars.

Like this is my talent.

And I mean that not just as like reporterial talent.

Obviously, they're incredible reporters, editors, producers who work here.

I want them to be known.

I want them to be known as vertical video stars, as podcast hosts, as YouTube hosts, as newsletter writers.

I mean, one of the first things we did when I started is we took Wired's YouTube channel, which had been built on like celebrity content, autocomplete, just stuff that had like nothing to do with the brand and that involved literally zero people from the newsroom.

And we said, okay, we're going to pilot some shows where Wired journalists actually host them because like, wouldn't it be amazing and very rational to have our journalists on this platform that we operate as the brand Wired?

So I want them to become stars.

And in my view, if they become stars and ultimately that star spins itself into some sort of entrepreneurial situation where they go and launch their own thing, that's amazing to me.

That's amazing for them.

It's amazing for Wired.

And then I go get to hire another young up and coming star and hopefully like build them up to a place where they want to go be an entrepreneur.

I see that as almost like a role for legacy media to play in this.

Instead of trying to fight it, it's like, that's what audiences want.

Right.

Lean into that.

Give people an opportunity to build that here.

And then if they go build it themselves somewhere else afterwards, like the 404 team at Vice, I mean,

they worked for me.

They reported to me and

I let them do their thing.

They didn't need much interference.

But the idea that they would have built what they built at Vice and then go and spin it off into this amazing publication that they run themselves, that's such a victory.

Like that's amazing.

We'll be back in a minute.

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Oliver, you launched a video podcast, Power Lines, and you said that entrepreneurs can't rely on one medium alone to build a business.

I agree.

Talk about sort of the ability to make things quickly and your strategy for expanding.

Because if you had done this, I'm sorry, it's in, you'd have had 53 meetings.

You know this, right?

Or, or, or get buy-in or get cost or whatever.

Talk a little bit about that.

You would have had 53 meetings and then nothing would have happened.

Exactly.

I would have had the 50.

I probably did have 53 meetings on what I wanted to do, maybe more.

And so, one of the great benefits of leaving is, look, like we are able to launch a podcast and get things going, which we've done.

And people should check out Power Lines.

We're able to do events.

We've done two events already.

We did one in New York.

We did one in D.C.

for White House Correspondence Dinner.

We'll do more.

And we can just do that on the fly.

Like the White House Correspondence Dinner party we threw, which I think was pretty successful.

We only planned that, I think, a couple weeks in advance.

That's when it came together and I said, let's do it.

Is there a strategy for deciding to expand are you worried about sacrificing depth for breadth because it's only you sure well i do have john who i hired from cnn as well he was the cnn media editor and brought him along here and so um and he's been enormously helpful and he write to call him on saturdays so it is moving slowly beyond me but i do want to expand and i think that there are verticals that we can expand into that are adjacent to media and power.

And I also want to expand our media coverage and maybe hire some more people to get more scoops on what's going on in some of these big these big companies maybe hiring someone who can cover hollywood specifically maybe tech media is another vertical maybe wall street's another vertical down the line there are a lot of uh intersections between media and power that i think we can cover and i mean it has to work in terms of revenue though that's the thing so you know i would be thinking can this person bring in at least probably double the subscription revenue uh that uh their salary is going to cost because it's not only salary but you have to pay for a lot of infrastructure around them.

And like, what is it going to look like in terms of our bottom line?

So, I will think about those things as we move forward.

Right now, though, is key is getting advertising on our current inventory, because if we can do that, I think we can lock a lot more revenue.

More choices.

I'm gonna, Katie, I'm gonna ask you about that, linking people's revenue and salary.

But first, Dave, in the past year and a half, your Washington Post Universe YouTube had 75x more engagement per video than the Washington Post flagship account and 6.6x more overall views.

It's just you.

How do you translate that to the, especially in dollars and cents for the post?

What did you do for the bottom line?

Because it's a question everyone's asking.

Will social media keep us relevant?

Is it just marketing?

But you clearly tapped into something because no one wanted to watch their stuff and everyone wanted to watch yours.

Yeah.

I mean, I got to give credit to Carmella Boykin and Joy Ferguson, who are also co-hosts of the account.

But yeah, there was intention behind what we were doing.

The YouTube, and we talked about, there's, you know, internal discussions about the main YouTube channel needs some help and some like someone to be chaperoning it.

There was no coherence happening there.

Whereas our channel was very intentional.

There was a lot of branding.

Every day there was a discussion over not just like

what the overall brand looks like, but how do we approach every video and make it feel like they're all part of the same quote-unquote universe?

And it doesn't mean that videos had to be the exact same.

They just mean tonally, you know, let's really dial into that.

And that's something that I care about and get really excited about.

And, you know, it's like Oliver's point, a lot of times there's these meetings and nothing, they don't go anywhere.

But I'm the type of person where,

you know, when I pitched TikTok three months later, they said, okay, I guess let's try it another radar.

And I was like, I'm just going to do it.

And I'm just, I'll ask for forgiveness later kind of situation.

And there was a lot of that happening up until the very end of like, people want merch.

Let's open a merch store.

And, you know, I think that

luckily, again, the post was like, all right, I guess they're doing this.

And so they appreciated when they saw the results, I think.

Right.

And I always felt confident that we were going to have results.

But

I don't know what the bottom, how it much helped the bottom line.

I mean, certainly there's like the ad sense revenue, even with shorts, there's something there.

Um, but what I always said and would continue to say for the post, but especially going forward with Logan News International, is we're building trust long-term.

It's not a short-term thing.

Like, they might be short videos, and of course, I'm going to get into long-form videos as well.

But this is like a relationship that's been built over time.

And part of what really helped with that is that it was built for a big part of it during the pandemic.

And I was really committed to posting what I felt good about it almost every single day.

And I have found from a lot of people that that helped kind of create,

you know, a parasocial relationship, but in the most positive way.

And I think also that built trust when I started to dive deeper into topics that, you know, actually newsy topics when before it was just like, oh my God, is Dave going to go crazy in his apartment?

It became like, oh, that guy I watched every day is telling me about what's happening in the war in Ukraine.

I'm going to listen to him.

And obviously there's a big responsibility there.

But anyway, to get back to the question,

it was kind of unclear how much money it was making, but I was just like, I'm going to keep making stuff that works and guys try to figure out what to do with it.

So Katie, talk about that idea of like taking advantage, like when you have those entrepreneurs, which you and I think both celebrate, of these media companies paying attention to that and attributing people's.

salaries to revenue.

I have done that for years.

I was, when we were at Wall Street Journal, I'm like, we made you 5 million.

I'm taking half.

So there you go.

or more, right?

You know what I mean?

Like if you can attribute, is that something you think about a lot?

I do.

I do think about it.

I mean, look, nobody at Wired.

I love them all.

They're not making me $5 million.

If someone did, I would be happy to work out what that rev share looks like.

I do think that sort of the incentive model in journalism has to account for.

that entrepreneurial ship, right?

Like that desire to take a big leap, to try something.

If that thing is successful, that person has earned a stake in that, right?

Like they have earned a seat at the table.

And I think it's important to recognize that, especially if you want to retain that person.

This has to tell you, it's been a very difficult road to get people to acknowledge it.

One of the biggest risk factors, and I'd like you each to talk about for news at the moment, is the threat of litigation, including from the administration.

CBS and ABC coughed up $16 million and $15 million, respectively, settled lawsuits with President Trump.

Meta paid $25 million to settle.

Now Trump is suing the Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch to the tune of $10 billion.

That's with a B.

After a reporter on a birthday card, he allegedly wrote for Jeffrey Epstein.

These companies with huge legal teams and insurance.

Talk about the implications for smaller media entrepreneurs.

Let's start with you, Oliver, and then you, Dave.

And Katie, from a perspective, you're more, you're part of a bigger organization.

But one of the reasons I never did Substack is like, I'm not going out on the savanna with those, with Peter Thiel out there.

He's a hyena, and I'm like...

Water's fine.

Not for Kara Swisher.

It's not.

Let me just say, I think about it.

Like, that's one of the reasons I never did one, even though I probably would have made quite a tidy sum at any of these places.

Oliver, talk about that.

How do you think about that?

Because a lot of whether I know Substack has legal stuff, but it's not very good.

Like, it's just not protective in the way that a Vox Media is or a Condé Nast or whoever it happens to be.

No, I think about this quite a bit.

You know, Beehive, they give up to a million dollars in defamation insurance.

They'll pay for that.

So that's helpful.

But it's, you know, a million dollars can go like that when Elon Musk's lawyers come calling.

So, you know, we pay a lot of money for extra defamation insurance, tens of thousands of dollars.

I'll just leave it at that, to make sure that we're covered if, you know, we're reporting on people with big egos and thin skin.

And

knock on wood right now, nothing's happened, but I've reported on these people for a while.

And I've been sued many times when I was at CNN, and I know how this works.

And so it is something we think about.

We pay a lot of money for it.

And that's one of these different things, these hidden costs that people don't see.

Even Even just getting defamation insurance right now is extremely challenging for a small independent publisher because there's a chill in the air.

These insurance companies know that there are people like Elon Musk or Bill Ackman or Donald Trump out there.

And they don't really necessarily want to often take the risk on insuring a

band of two in status' case at the moment, right?

They don't know, like, I'm going to go on a podcast and they're going to insure it.

And who knows what those two are going to say?

Why would we take their money?

When you think of independent journalism and the actions that these billionaires are taking these days this is one of the things i worry about that just them filing these lawsuits is problematic and you saw what happened with media matters and uh elon musk yeah according to the new york times they had a story this this weekend they're even considering shutting down and that's a huge organization backed by a lot of wealthy donors with a lot of defamation insurance so it can get very costly very quickly even if the person filing the lawsuits actually has no case right that's correct that's usually they don't dave do you think about, do you think about that?

You're sort of doing humor, right?

Right.

It's funny because I, funny, literally, but I sometimes I wonder how much can the humor part kind of

soften the blow.

I don't know if it does.

I mean, with South Park, I think the opposite happened.

But

I think, you know, a lot of the times what I have found with our content is that it appeals to consortiums in a very weird way that I didn't anticipate.

However, we're also in the same boat as Oliver in many ways where we're working on extra insurance, but also we're part of Beehive, not Substack.

And we're both part of the media collective, which includes that, what he was talking about, where some coverage there.

So it's not, you know, it's not like going to, we're not going to be totally safe in any scenario, but I do feel like, you know, it's as safe as you can feel.

And I guess I'm feeling a little bit like I've always felt, which is I would just, I just want to keep doing what I'm doing and I'm not going to be afraid of it.

I have people around me like Lauren and Micah from the post who are good at kind of hitting the brakes when we need to on things.

So that's why they're there so that I can kind of do what you want to do.

Feeling the freedom to try things, they may, oh, let's dial this back like just a touch.

I should also note, Kara, too, we have attorneys which we can consult on sensitive stories to make sure we're buttoned up legally as well.

So hopefully we can avoid.

It still doesn't prevent them from doing a nuisance.

It doesn't prevent, but it helps.

It helps a little bit.

Katie, how do you think of it as a, you know, you guys went full bore at Elon, really, and the whole Doge team.

I mean, I think that we go full bore a lot and we are threatened with lawsuits a lot.

We have great lawyers and I feel very, very lucky to be able to say that.

This may be naive or self-righteous or

whatever you want to call it.

If it's true and it's newsworthy, we have an obligation to publish it.

We will publish it, come what may.

And that's how we thought about that, that Musk reporting.

And that's how I think about all of our journalism.

You know, I worked at Gawker Media when Peter Thiel sued us out of existence and I worked through that bankruptcy.

Via Hulk Hogan.

Via Hulk Hogan.

Do not rest in peace.

Do not.

I'm ambivalent about his prospects in the afterlife.

Like, I've seen the very, very worst of what this can do.

It was horrible.

But I think if anything, it has just made me dig my heels in even more.

Of course, journalists, like we need to be incredibly buttoned up.

We approach those stories as we approach any story incredibly carefully.

Like I am a maniac about that.

If I say something's going to legal, it's fucking going to legal.

I don't care if it delays the publication of the story.

Like it is going to the lawyers.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm always like, you better be right.

Like, you better be right.

I'll kill you if you're not right.

Yeah.

And yes, like being right doesn't always protect you from

ridiculous, terrifying existential lawsuits, but but you have to publish the stories anyway.

So I want to go a bit deeper on this new focus on personality, authenticity.

The Reuters Institute survey on journalism trends earlier this year called it the creatorfication of journalism, which I don't like any more than reporterpreneurs.

What does that mean to each of you very briefly?

And where do you see the possible benefits and risks of leaning into that creator economy?

I myself am that, I think.

I have become that.

I love it.

Talk each of you.

Why don't you start Oliver and then Dave and then Katie?

I think all journalists are creators.

I mean, we're all creating content, and I think everyone should embrace that term.

I think for a long time, legacy news organizations and big-time anchors might have looked down on that term.

I'm a journalist.

I'm not a creator.

Those are the TikTokers, and we're above that.

I don't think that's the case at all.

In terms of authenticity, I think that is a major selling point for us as status is that people know that they're getting me, they're getting John, and we're calling things out, and we're not beating around the bush.

We're not watering down the reporting, and we're going to say the things that people are certainly thinking, but really too few are saying out loud.

And that's for a variety of reasons, but it's very difficult sometimes at a major news organization to have color in your reporting and have some flair and have a little snark when it, when it and it, and that's what makes it kind of fun, too.

I think the readers like it because it's a little bit fun.

People love Kara Swisher because Kara Swisher is not, no one tells her what to say.

You say what's on your mind and you hold people's feet to the fire.

And that's like

what we're trying to do.

That all things D, the personality aspect of it.

And people people were very push up against it.

Dave, what about you?

You know, I think on the authentic part too, we talked about like, or Katie, you were talking about how do we approach things and how do we think about it.

We're just going for the truth, right?

As sort of Pollyanna cheesy as that may sound.

I think part of my authenticity has always been my moral compass.

And like early last year, I was doing a lot of TikToks where I was kind of poking fun at Biden and a lot of people were very precious about it.

And I was like, why are you being precious about it?

And of course, like five or six months later, everyone was in agreement that, wait a second, this is kind of strange.

And so I think that that takes me anywhere, whether it's what you perceive as left or right and the authenticity part.

And that is always, for me, comes out as humor.

So I think that's really easy to kind of capture people there.

As far as the title of, you know, I'm pretty ambivalent to the word creator.

I think it's totally fine and we should embrace it as much as you want.

But like for me personally, I'm a video editor first.

That's what I enjoy the most in a video is the hour or two where I'm really editing something and making it, punching it up and making it funnier.

What about you, Katie?

How do you think about that idea of creatorification?

I mean, I am thrilled for journalists to embrace the tools and the platforms and the tactics of creators.

I think that that makes perfect sense.

I think it's all about connecting the journalist to the audience and creating that direct connection, that conversation.

What I worry about, I think, is the creator

adopting the persona of the journalist.

And that to me is a different thing.

Yeah.

That does not involve Dave or Oliver or any of us on this call.

And that, and that is where I start to worry about audiences not understanding the difference between someone who plays a journalist on TV,

the schmuck,

someone playing a journalist on TikTok as opposed to like, oh, the actual journalist on TikTok.

Like that is where I start to worry about the dilution sort of between those two professions, I guess I would say.

Yeah, I just had a back and forth with some Maha creators that I've got all their information from Google and I'm like, if I could reach to the video and hit you, I would.

That would

yeah, exactly.

So when you think about that from the modeling point of view, for example, Dave,

YouTube creator Samir Chowdhury told you that he thought that creators could take ad money.

Subscriptions are a better model for journalists because they're only beholden to their audience.

I am not of that school.

You said you were a video editor.

You wrote in your introductory email, you'd be working with brands and partners as well.

I was always in that camp.

At the time we did it, it was very controversial.

We did both subscriptions and advertising.

What'll be different here?

Obviously, you're not going to do like, you know, your videos.

Oh, isn't, isn't Meta a great product?

Like that kind of thing.

But how do you, how do you plan to make money at that?

Yeah, I, I, um, I, you know, I think with anything, and I'm sure the way you've approached it, it's always a case-by-case basis.

So there are certain brands where I'm like, I'd be totally comfortable talking about that on camera as a brand that's either apolitical or, or I, you know, support something that I'm totally behind.

And then partnerships, we're talking with all kinds of people about what a long form series could look like with anyone.

And that also plays into like, does it look good if we're working with these people?

What does it look like?

Again, you just kind of look at all the factors and decide if it's worth it.

So right now, subscriptions are more important or advertising.

And same thing for Oliver and Katie.

Right now, what do you think is most important, each of you?

Very quickly, Dave.

I'd say subscriptions, just in the sense of audience building.

I just care about the audience the most.

Katie?

Same answer.

Subscriptions to me are our direct connection to our audience, and they are our escape velocity from a very turbulent advertising industry, right?

It will always be that way.

A very turbulent commerce business, right?

It will inevitably be that way.

Sure, subscriptions can rise and fall, but for me, if we can build that business to a place where it takes on the majority of the kind of financial burden for Wired,

that is a very good place for us to be.

So Oliver?

Easily subscriptions.

We do everything for our subscribers.

And so

that's where our effort is.

And

those are our customers.

We want to make them happy at the end of the day.

And we want them to value our product.

Yeah.

I have to say for pivoting on, so advertising, we can't, we run out.

Like, it's funny.

We would go to subscriptions if we needed it, but it's a really interesting, we thought about it and we're like, we don't need to.

You know, I will say, can I make one point?

It would be great if we can get the advertising, though, at status to allow our journalism or some of our journalism to be more accessible to people who can't afford to purchase a subscription, and so that's something that's on my mind as well, particularly in this moment where like there's so much toxic misinformation out there.

How do we get good information to people?

If we can have advertisers

basically pay for that and subsidize that, that would be very helpful and something that we're obviously cognizant of and trying to figure out.

We'll be back in a minute.

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And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pureleaf.

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Every week we get a question from an outside expert.

Here's yours from a fellow media entrepreneur.

My name is Mehdi Hassan.

I'm the founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Zetayo, a news media company that I founded on the Substack platform last year.

My question is, how do we in the independent media, independent journalism space, especially online, where people are in an increasingly polarized and partisan America, in their bubbles, in their echo chambers, how do we avoid the problem of audience capture?

of simply giving our listeners, our viewers, our subscribers, what they want to hear, not what they need to hear, because we're afraid of losing subs, losing revenue in a very competitive online space.

How big a challenge do you think that is for independent media, especially subscription-driven outlets like my own?

All right, Katie, why don't you start, then Oliver and then Dave?

I mean, look, I think that we have a point of view and we will always have a point of view, but that point of view is underwritten always by the truth and the facts.

So to me, it's like, I'm kind of tired of having this debate about how we reach everyone, how we like reach across the aisle with our facts fair point i'm like i'm going to collect facts i'm going to collate that information into a story i'm going to put that story everywhere i possibly can in my magazine on my website on youtube on tick tock on instagram on reddit in a newsletter i'm going to i'm going to put it everywhere you can find it

and if you choose to engage with it or not that is up to you But like, that is the best I can do.

So I think lead with facts, lead with the truth, be transparent about your point of view and where you're coming from and what your worldview is.

Don't try to pretend to be playing both sides.

Don't try to pretend to be objective.

That's not a real thing.

Just be honest.

Put your journalism in as many places as you possibly can.

And I think that at that point for me, I'm like, I have done everything I possibly can.

And if you don't like it, don't read it.

Right.

Right.

Oliver?

I just don't see this.

I mean, for our publication as a problem,

we try printing scoops every night, reporting every night, and people subscribe for new information.

And so you do have a tone.

You do have a tone.

We have a tone.

But other than the tone, I'm like, it's an excellent tone as far as I'm concerned.

It is a positive.

It's a good tone.

It's a good tone.

Thank you, Kara.

We like it.

It's like a tone.

But you'd be surprised, Kara, because I hear from Republicans and people on that side of the aisle who read still because they know that we have information that's accurate and that they want to know.

And so I think when you weave maybe a tone with some reporting, it can appeal to pretty much everyone because everyone wants that information at the end of the day.

So reporting.

And so that's what we do.

Reporting wins.

Reporting wins, delivering a new information wins.

And if you just have a tone and you have no new reporting, I think that's when you're in trouble because people will say, well, I don't really like the tone.

So I can just tune out.

And that's a problem.

Dave?

Every day I make a video and I approach it entirely differently.

And that's by design.

And that's kind of my own like...

creative desire to just approach something differently.

Like Katie said, my point of view is really not changing.

I mean, if it does, it's probably like a little bit one direction at any given time but it's it's not really changing and it hasn't for years but i look at sometimes i'll look at all the thumbnails on the main tick tock or youtube page and go and is everything starting to look too similar and so i go let me approach this next story which might still be about trump or something we've been covering but in a totally different way not with a different point of view just a different way of covering it, whether it's like, you know, people call them news sketches or it's like straight to camera.

I just think about it differently and I try to cover it that way.

And I think that helps the audience too, start to think about the story in a different way.

You didn't think about putting an eye on a penis, I guess.

I guess someone else did that.

No, I just put on spam cameras and believe it there.

I want to go back to the AI spotification of the internet.

AI is clearly this looming challenge for the media industry, according to Pew study from April.

Americans don't really think that AI is going to have a negative impact on news and journalism, but one in five Americans, roughly the same for Republicans and Democrats, said they thought AI would do a better job at writing a news story than journalists.

How are you using AI in your work?

Katie, you start then, Oliver, then Dave.

You've said humans a lot.

So each of you, briefly, how do you think of AI as a benefit and a negative?

Well, I mean, I think it is, as of now, a net negative for the internet and for the way people access and consume information.

I will be totally honest with you as the editor-in-chief of Wired.

I think a lot of people wish I would say, like, we are all in on AI.

We are using it all day long.

We're not using it to write our stories.

We're not using it to generate images.

We're not using it to generate video.

We fundamentally do not believe in that, and we do not do that.

There might be like fun experiments that we'll do in the future using it where we would be very transparent, but as of now, it's not something that we feel comfortable with, it's not something we think is necessary.

You know, we use it in our reporting in sort of a background way.

If it's like a data investigation, if we're parsing thousands of pages of documents,

we use it in functions like copy editing or other sort of like more administrative roles.

But that's really the limit.

I mean, we are genuinely very focused on doing what AI can't do.

I think our actual

new tagline for our features program is something like, AI could never.

Like, that's actually like a theme for us.

That's good.

So you're going to do it.

AI actually can't do what we do.

Right.

Right.

And it can't.

I don't.

I do not believe that it can.

Oliver.

And also, are you worried about getting like AI news botted, for example?

I mean, I think building on what Katie was saying, I don't really think AI can do what we're doing on a nightly basis, at least not yet, unless sources are going to start talking to robots and divulging secrets to robots, which I have a hard time believing will happen.

Maybe that's in our future at some point.

But right now, that's not the case.

And so I think I would be worried if status were printing, you know, if we could just be aggregated and we weren't doing any original news or any original reporting.

That's what would worry me.

And I think a lot of news organizations that do a lot of that stuff, they're probably very worried right now because AI can write those stories.

I've used it or experimented with it as a business consultant of sorts, replacing maybe a McKinsey, you know, FedEx subscriber information.

Like, you know, this is how many we have now.

Like, how many do you estimate we'll have in the future?

And it will, it will like make you like a 30-page research document

with a whole bunch of projections.

I, I, I mean, look, I don't.

I think it's useful and it seems fairly accurate.

I wouldn't bet my life on it at the moment.

I bet a McKinsey report.

The same thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, well, I wouldn't pay for one of those either.

But so I think it's good to experiment with the technology and not be like standoffish to it.

But in terms of like, is AI going to start writing status tomorrow?

I mean, it's not capable of doing that right now.

So it's not something that like we're thinking of because we're just not engaged in the kind of journalism that I think it's like most likely to replace the next five years.

What about you, Dave?

Yeah, our unofficial official slogan is news for humans by humans, except for my dog, Lola, who's on LinkedIn, Lola Jorgensen.

She actively posts mostly just barking.

But

I feel like with AI, I similarly feel like I haven't had a use for it yet.

I did do this video with MediaWise.

I'm an ambassador for them, and they're part of Pointer.

And I'm really proud of this video we did together because it was about for reporters who are using AI, here's how you properly disclose it.

And

again, not doing that myself yet, but I think at least we should be promoting how to safely attribute it if you are are using it.

Because right now it's pretty much the Wild West, so just do whatever you want with it.

So two more questions.

How do you predict we'll be getting our news five years from now?

And what role will each of you play?

Let's start with you, Oliver, then Dave, and then Katie.

That's a really tough question, Kara.

I think, I mean, I do think that

newsletters will still be a thing.

I'm banking on that.

It's a direct way into people's inboxes.

There's no, at the moment, there's no algorithm.

There's no SEO game to play.

People sign up for something, it gets delivered straight into their inbox.

And so that's certainly a trend that I see.

I don't really see reversing.

I hope it doesn't reverse.

And then, you know, video.

I think everyone's going to be leaning hard into video because everyone's scrolling on their phones non-stop.

And I don't really see that changing either.

So I think that's why we just launched a video podcast.

That's why I think that major news organizations are going to be launching on video and trying to make their reporters

on-air talent, if you will.

And I think as these cable networks actually and linear and broadcast television declines, I think that the next version of television is going to be these shows.

You're seeing with comedians already.

You're starting to see with news creators.

And I think it's going to continue.

Dave?

Yeah, I'm certainly betting on video.

And I mean, I guess I have been for a while.

And I think part of that is just, you know, adapting to whatever the newest form is.

You know, even five or six years ago, I asked, when we asked about TikTok, which we were already on, what do you think the next version of TikTok is?

I felt like people were thinking about it wrong.

It's not necessarily the next app.

It's what's the next version of an iPhone or what's the next iteration of the iPhone?

And how are people like, is it going to be just a hologram?

I don't know.

But I mean, I think that's what you should be thinking about is when that happens, that's what we have to adapt to.

Katie?

Well, probably from chatbots to some extent.

But I hope that it is, you know, People are obtaining news and information in five years in a very direct way.

Get rid of the Facebooks, get rid of the Googles, get rid of the intermediaries, direct connection to journalists like Oliver and Dave on all of these different platforms in your inbox, on your TikTok, whatever it is.

More direct, the better.

And I will either be still running Wired, and hopefully we'll have spawned some Olivers and Dave's of our own,

or I will be the CEO of a company that supports journalists like them in a more effective and strategic way than the substacks and the beehives of the world.

Yep, that's a great answer.

There's a lot of needs.

All right, last question before we go, I'd like each of you to give a piece of advice to your fellow panelists.

Round Robin, where should others lean in and where should they each shift gears?

Katie, why don't you start and give advice to each of them?

Wait, what?

You want me to give advice to each of them?

I do.

I just said that really.

That's what I just said.

Oh my God.

Okay.

Oliver, I would like you to continue to lean in to your strong point of view, your voice, and your scoopiness.

I subscribed to your newsletter almost immediately after it launched because you had so many annoyingly good scoops that I had no choice but to pay to read them.

So keep going there.

And then I would like you to lean out of...

of suggesting links to tech publications or sort of future-facing publications that are not wired.

I do find that very irritating when I read the newsletter and I'm like, it's just verge link, verge link, verge link.

Like, come on, man.

We need more wired links.

Okay.

He needs a few more.

Okay.

So there.

Sorry.

I don't know if this is good.

That's a good idea.

It's not useful.

It's a good piece of advice.

Dave, you know, there was a moment earlier in the conversation where Oliver was talking about his defamation insurance and sort of the legal scaffolding that he had built for his publication.

Yes.

And then I heard you talk about that and I got a little bit stressed out.

So Dave, get a lawyer.

Make sure you have really good lawyers.

Yes.

I told them.

Yes.

I told them.

Because even if conservatives love you, you're going to piss someone off and you're going to need really good lawyers.

So just please.

Yeah.

Lawyers, please.

Write it down.

Lawyers.

I appreciate it.

We do have it.

Okay, good.

Yeah.

Don't worry.

It was, I guess I got a little bit too into the, but I'm going to have fun.

No, we have great lawyers.

Okay, good.

Okay, Oliver.

Dave has the best lawyers.

Don't even mess with him.

The best.

Okay.

Dave has great lawyers.

Okay, it's my turn.

Well, I guess to Katie, let people be entrepreneurial inside Wired as much as you can.

We don't know each other that well, but I don't get the vibe that you are someone who subjects your reporters who want to grow and do cool things to endless meetings.

But

I would just, I mean, I just think that there are so many people who end up going on their own because of frustration with the red tape inside their companies.

And I feel like newsroom leaders can definitely retain a lot of talent and build businesses within their businesses if they just cut through that and made it easy for reporters to not only build things, but also just even report.

I know, I remember when I was at CNN, like, you know, people would, people ask me now, I guess, why do you get so many more scoops at status than at CNN?

And I would say, well, it's because like

I'm more incentivized now.

And I feel like, just to be totally honest, at CNN, there's so much bureaucracy.

It de-incentivizes landing that scoop or like chasing it down because it's such a pain to clear the reporting.

So that's, that's what I would, my advice to you.

And it sounds like you're on it.

So no, I mean, I will say CNN does have have a bit of a scoop problem, but that's for another conversation.

Okay.

All right.

Okay.

And I'll, Dave?

My advice to Dave, and I've already given this advice to him, but I'll give it to him here: is get a bookkeeper, get a bookkeeper soon because you don't want to get behind on books.

And I am

dealing with taxes now and having a good bookkeeper makes that so much easier.

So fun that you're talking about.

Bookkeepers.

I love you.

Oh, you're all nice.

Don't think about these things, though.

Well, don't think about these things.

You have to.

It's weird, though.

The next podcast I'm doing is Bookkeepers and Lord.

Okay, so this is really preparing me.

So,

your advice, Dave.

I feel, well, I've been saying this a lot in the last week or so, but I feel like 10 toddlers in a trench coat.

So, giving you advice feels very silly to me because I both look up to, I look up to both of you.

But I guess in that vein, I would say to you, Katie, like, if have anyone that works for you listen to this podcast, I think they'll have a lot of confidence hearing you talk about it if they haven't already heard you talk this way.

Thank you.

Yeah.

If I were in their position and heard you talking about it, I would feel very emboldened.

Well, the post should have been able to keep you, Dave.

At this time, I cannot confirm or deny that statement.

But yeah, Oliver, I mean,

this is so silly, but the thing that keeps occurring to me this whole podcast, and I'm just a visual learner, is I want more people to see your setup right here.

And you're so meticulous in how you do everything.

And the people at Beehive told me that as a compliment, that everything you do is so thought out.

I mean, they're seeing it through your newsletter.

And obviously, you have clips of this, you in the studio, but I just want to see more and more of

the inside of your brain, I guess.

I'm just, I'm more and more fascinated by it.

Yeah, I have one piece of advice for all of you.

As I always say, don't let mama tell you what to do.

You'll love this new era.

It drives me crazy when people are very negative about the media.

There's so much exciting stuff going on, both at old legacy media companies with great leaders and in these independent things.

And so I think it's really important for people to think about it that way instead of giving up because it's very easy to feel disheartened, but you don't have to be.

Anyway, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you're all wonderful journalists.

And one of the things is you're all creating high quality

stuff for people that they really enjoy and either pay for or advertisers pay for.

And that's a really great sign.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Kara.

Thanks for another exit interview.

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Rousselle, Kateri Yoka, Megan Burney, Allison Rogers, and Kaylin Lynch.

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