Who Do You Trust?

We’re living through a crisis of trust.

Trust in institutions. Trust in business. Trust in media. Trust in government. Even trust in one another. According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, only 54% of Americans trust business to do what is right. Just 44% trust the media. And only 39% trust government.

But perhaps the more troubling number is that 70% of people say they are hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who is different from them. 

So what happens when we stop trusting our institutions and increasingly, one another?

How do you build trust in an environment where skepticism has become the default?

That’s what we explore in this episode with Amy Weisenbach, Chief Marketing Officer of The New York Times, and VEST Member Michelle Brobston, Chief Operations Officer at Hunger Free Oklahoma.

Amy has spent nearly a decade thinking about this question from inside one of the most scrutinized institutions in the world. And what she’s learned about trust applies far beyond media.

Whether you’re building a brand, leading a team, stepping into a new role, or simply trying to figure out who and what deserves your trust, this conversation will make you think differently about how trust is earned.

For our guests full bio and show notes click here.

Transcript

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Welcome And The Trust Crisis

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey everyone, I'm Erica Lucas. Welcome back to the Vester Podcast, where we bring you conversations with experts and leaders who challenge how we think about work, money, and the decisions that shape our careers and lives. Today we're talking about trust. We're living under a crisis of trust. Trust in institutions, trust in businesses, trust in media, trust in government, and even trust in one another. According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, only 54% of Americans trust business to do what's right. Just 44% trust the media, and only 39% trust the government. But here's the number that really caught my attention. 70% of people say they're hesitant or unwilling to trust somebody who's different from them. Think about that. We're not just losing trust in institutions, we're having a harder time trusting each other. So how do we build trust in an environment where skepticism has become the default? That's what we explore in today's episode with Amy Weisenbach, Chief Marketing Officer of the New York Times, and Vest member Michelle Bropston, Chief Operations Officer at Hunger Free Oklahoma. Amy has spent nearly a decade thinking about trust from inside one of the most scrutinized institutions in the world. And what she has learned applies far beyond media. Whether you're leading a team, starting a new role, building a brand, or just trying to figure out who and what to trust, I think you'll get a lot out of this conversation. So let's get into it. Special thanks to Vest member Michelle Brovston for leading this conversation. For guestful bios and show notes, go to www.vesther.co forward slash podcast. If you enjoy the episode, share with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of women eager to help you get there and stay there. Go to www.vesther.co

When Certainty Makes You Distrust

SPEAKER_00 2:20

to learn more.

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Okay, so what something brands or leaders do to appear trustworthy that actually makes you trust them less? And on the flip side, are there signals and behaviors that almost immediately make you think I can trust this person or organization?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Yeah, I think the thing that leaders often do that actually backfires is when someone projects too much certainty. So picture the person who has, you know, the polished answer for everything, who you never hear say, I don't know, or I don't know yet, who talks about values more than they demonstrate them. And I guess when I think about what I trust, uh do trust is almost the opposite. It's people who are specific, consistent, demonstrate that they're clearly paying attention to someone other than themselves. Um, you know, in the first second of sort of getting to know someone, probably all of you with Michelle and I right now, you're deciding, you're judging warmth and judging whether whether you can trust the things that we're gonna say. Um, and then you check later, sort of can can they actually do the job? And you need both. Um, it's an interesting question, and and I was so excited to join to talk about trust today, because you know, in a role leading marketing at an organization like the New York Times, we think a lot about the topic of trust because it's so important to our relationship with our readers and subscribers. And I've gotten to learn a lot about the kind of academic body of research around trust in this role. Um, and what one of the things that I have found um most interesting about what the kind of the research says on trust is that trust is actually not one thing. So even like with the example I gave, it's it's multi-dimensional. Um, and so I went and looked up because I I sort of know the research, but I didn't really, I

The Three Dimensions Of Trust

SPEAKER_02 4:35

didn't work for the time. So I bet it's like I didn't fact-check that this let me go go find. And uh, and what I found is that in 1995, there was a group of researchers named um Mayor Davis and Shoreman. They were both at Indiana Schools, which Michelle and I went to school together in Indiana at DePaw. These guys went to Purdue and Notre Dame, or didn't go there, but they were professors there. And they created this framework about the dimensions of trust. They called it ABI, which stands for ability, benevolence, and integrity. But I tend to think of it, and the way it was introduced to me was this idea of competence, honesty, and benevolence, like benevolent, um, you know, competence meaning like, do you believe the person or the brand or the company that you're dealing with can do the job? Benevolence, meaning kind of who do they have in mind and who are they serving? Do they have your best interests at heart and do they care about you as a person or a customer? And then honesty or integrity is like the sense that the person will keep their promise. And, you know, certainly in my own experience moving through the world as a leader, as a human, um, we experience this all the time. But in my work as a marketer and thinking a lot about brands and companies, I think what often happens, back to your question, is people really overrely on competence. So you hear this all the time with brands. They tell you all about how great they are. You know, it's like we make the best vacuum cleaner. Our product cleans 50% better than our competitors. We've been making vacuums for 100 years. And so much what of what we hear from whether it's vacuum cleaner brands, um, I have my Dyson in mind, um, or what we hear from just brands or companies, or even the people we work with, is people kind of selling us something that sounds like that. But if you ignore those other dimensions, um, you can really fail to establish real trust or you can lose it over time.

SPEAKER_04 6:37

Well, I appreciate those three. There's um a book called The Thin Book of Trust that actually has a force, and I'm like trying to rack my brain. So if anybody knows that, you should drop it in the chat. But it it talks about those those three areas and how it you can have trust if you just have two of them, but uh it's probably not as strong. It's probably like there's something lacking there, and so eventually that'll that'll boil up. Okay, so at a time when people are questioning government, businesses, media, institutions, and increasingly

Why Trust In Institutions Fell

SPEAKER_04 7:10

even what they see in here with their very own eyes, from where you sit, what has changed about how people decide who and what deserves their trust?

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Yeah, well, I think, you know, I would start by just saying that I think consumers increasingly care about whether they can trust the brands and companies that they buy from. Um, you know, if you think about the last couple of decades, how much more access consumers have to information about the companies and brands that we choose, you know, whether that's just via the internet more broadly or by following brands on social media. Um, and with that has come like a set of expectations that didn't really exist before, like who owns the company, how they take care of their employees, how they treat customers when you have a problem with the product. All of those things have become just as important as whether the company makes a good product and really are the things that build not just a one-time purchase, but loyalty. Um, one of the other pieces of research that we look at every year is this global trust survey that Edelman, which is a big PR and comms giant, um, they've been doing this trust survey every year. They call the trust barometer for like 25 years. And one of the things that's shown is that there has been a very steady and very steep decline of trust in institutions. Um, and in 2020, media became the least trusted institution. Um, and within media, social media is also the least trusted within that. And it's uh fascinating because it comes at a moment when more and more people are turning to social platforms and YouTube as their primary news source. Um, and so it's just a really interesting moment to be thinking about building trust in a media brand when consumer behavior has really shifted to engaging with media in a place where they are sort of like least trusting what they're seeing, um, which poses a real challenge for us. But it also gives me a lot something to get up for in the morning and um a real challenge to work on.

SPEAKER_04 9:43

Okay, so you talked a little bit about it being different, um, even from 2020, that the decline of trust in media has um well, has declined. So my question for you is when you got to the Times, which was before 2020, did you like what surprised you there? You were coming from more consumer brand,

What Readers Misunderstand About Journalism

SPEAKER_04 10:05

selling in a different way, and you got into a journalistic brand. Like, what were the differences in how Trust was built?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

I think, you know, one of the things I found most surprising is just how little our readers understand what we do. Um, you know, our subscribers who visit us directly and who have maybe a daily habit with us and read across a broad range of content from the New York Times, they really understand a lot about what we do. But when we talk to readers who maybe only visit every once in a while, um, it was really striking to me just how little they understood. And coming from other kind of consumer brand categories where, you know, it's pretty simple to understand, you know, the role of a deodorant or a tequila or, you know, some of the other things that, you know, a baseball bat. Um, but when we would, so you know, as a marketer, you do a lot of focus groups, you go out and you talk to consumers um across the country and around the world. And one of the things we asked people to do was to describe what they picture at the times to do. And more often than not, they would describe someone sitting in a tall office building in New York City. And I'll admit, I am sitting in a tall office building in New York City, but I'm also not a journalist. And many of my colleagues are not here. They're out reporting from the 150 plus countries that we report from each year. And I specifically remember this one incident where we this thing we would repeat repeatedly do in focus groups, where we would show a picture of a journalist in a war zone. You know, he's got his helmet on and there's sort of dust behind him, and you can see Humvees in the background. And um, we asked people who they thought this was a picture of. Like, who do you think this guy works for? And this, I remember this one consumer said, Vice, Vice does things like that. And, you know, Vice at the time was this sort of like media, internet kind of media startup. And when we asked people, well, what about the New York Times? Like, could this could this guy work for the New York Times? And they said, no, no, I don't think the Times would send people into a war zone like that. They keep their people in the safe zone. Um, and of course, this was a picture of one of our photojournalists, Tyler Hicks, um, reporting from a war zone, which he's done throughout his career and is one of many New York Times reporters doing that kind of dangerous on-the-ground reporting. And there were just so many examples like that where readers just didn't understand. You know, we took for granted that like this little line underneath the story with the name of a location, it's called the date line, that's where the reporter was when they filed the story. Um, but people just thought it was like the location that the story was about. They didn't understand that it meant the reporter was there bearing witness to whatever they were seeing. Um, or that like the reporters who cover a given beat don't just like move from covering health care to covering war, that that actually our reporters have really deep experience. We have doctors covering healthcare and lawyers covering the Supreme Court or political reporters who've covered, you know, five administrations over 30 years. Um, and I just realized like how much work we had to do to show, um, show people. And that has been really, I would say, the big theme across my work at the Times over the last decade, which is just showing the rigor behind our journalism and working to build trust that that we're, you know, that we're doing it with competence, with benevolence and um with integrity, but not just to say that, but to really show it um

Showing Rigor Through Bios And Video

SPEAKER_02 14:05

in the work that we do in marketing. I also realized that I had to build trust because coming in as a marketer from the outside, um, and and also having worked on things like X Body Spray, um, I didn't have a lot of credibility. Um, there was a lot of distrust between our newsroom and our marketing. And we really had to prove ourselves as a marketing team to get our newsroom to trust that we they could, they could trust us with their stories and that we could um do justice to telling the story of their of their work.

SPEAKER_04 14:41

And so you've been there about 10 years. And how how far on the list of to where you want it to be are you? Are you pretty close? Are you still got a ways to go?

SPEAKER_02 14:53

I I think we still have a ways to go. I I definitely think it's improved. We've also changed a lot. You know, we stopped taking for granted that people understood what a dateline was. And we actually now it's not just a word with a location with a dash, an M-dash before it. It's like a location with a description that says this story was reported from Bahrain or where, you know, wherever the story was reported from. Um, we also now the newsroom has very extended bios at the top of a story. So it's not just a list of reporters' names, but we often will share, you know, this person has been covering this beat for 25 years, or this person spent a hundred days embedded with this team learning about this topic, or this person talked to 170 people in the course of reporting this story. We used to really just kind of take for granted that people understood how journalism got made and um didn't think, thought that would distract from delivering the news, but we've learned that that's a really important part of building trust and also helping people understand, you know, our mission is to help people understand the world. Um, and that that's part of doing it. So what's been great is it's it's not, it's not, you know, we certainly play a role in it in marketing, um, and we take very seriously that role, but the newsroom has really stepped up and um found more and more ways for for them to just write in the reporting signal things that help build um belief that we're trustworthy. I I don't know if if if um if you spend and Michelle, I know you you are an avid Times reader and subscriber. Thank you. Um, but you know, you may have noticed that like more and more we're doing a lot more video and and putting reporters on camera from the location where they're doing reporting. Um, and that has also really been a way to build trust. It's probably because you get that piece of warmth, right? You you get a sense of that this person cares about what they're reporting, that they have you as a reader or subscriber in mind, as the person they're trying to inform. Um, and that's hard to do when

Storytelling Versus Spin In Marketing

SPEAKER_02 17:20

it's just sort of the written page.

SPEAKER_04 17:23

Talk to me about the line between powerful storytelling, which is what your newsroom does, in my unvarnished opinion. They do really well. Um, and spin because we see a lot of information. How can we actually help us?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Yeah. It's it's funny because this question comes up a lot in our work in marketing. And I can't tell you the number of times where um it's come up in a brainstorm or someone has come to me with a suggestion of like, well, why don't we just tell people that we're not biased? Let's tell people about how much we value our independent, the independence of our newsroom and how they're not influenced, we we protect them from the influence of outside forces. And, you know, it's tempting to want to just tell people that. But every time we've explored an idea or a piece of creative that just tells, um, it really falls flat. And in many ways, backfires. It's kind of a like, thou dost protest too much. You know, like if you're telling me you're not biased, like I'm not. Now I'm now I wanna, now I want to look a little closer. Um, and so what that's looked like in practice is really about showing our work. Um, so in marketing, that has looked like telling the backstory of how our reporting happens. Um, a few years ago, we did a campaign that we called The Truth is worth it, and we showed the journey that we used a headline, the the kind of building of a headline, um, and showed the journey that a reporter goes on to get a story. Um like uh one of the one of the executions was about how um one of our reporters proved that children and parents were being separated at the border. And even though the government was denying that it was happening or painstakingly investigating claims that had been rumors for years, but claims of sexual harassment against powerful men like Harvey Weinstein Weinstein, um, that was able to turn those years of rumors into tangible proof by like following the money, following the payments and the payoffs to women. And that, you know, ultimately led to the to the Me Too movement. So we have really tried to tell those stories by showing them, like show the process that a reporter went through to get someone to finally on the record admit something was happening or to reveal a secret that someone was trying to hide. Um so that's that I think is like been it's been both true in our journalism itself, showing being able to actually and not just tell people what's happening, but actually show people, and that builds trust in the journalism and then in our marketing, doing the exact same thing, which is showing

Clicks Versus Credibility In Attention Economy

SPEAKER_02 20:25

um the rigor in the process of the reporting.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

Okay, so we live in a world that rewards clicks and outrage and immediacy and constant visibility. So, what's more dangerous for a brand today? Being ignored or being disliked?

SPEAKER_02 20:45

That's an impossible choice. Or something in between. No, no. I mean, for sure, being ignored is not helpful if you want to be top of mind when a consumer is making a buying decision. I mean, it's table stakes, right? You have to you have to be relevant, you have to be in the you have to be there when when someone has a need, and and if your brand is not there, um you're you're nowhere. But it's really not sufficient, right? It's just being known or being paid attention to um is is not enough. And certainly being disliked or um or you know, being disliked can be just as dangerous, if not more so. And certainly we've seen brands that um where they lose consumers' trust and sort of overnight um become a pariah or become rejected by consumers. And so you're you're very much not ignored in those moments. Um, but it doesn't do you any favors in terms of um getting people to want to align with you or to choose. So um I don't know. I certainly think a lot about both of them as someone who has built my career on marketing and building brands is, you know, first you need to be known, but then you need to be worth being known, right? You need to prove your value to the people you're trying to win over.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

Well, we used to say all news is good news, right? Or all news is good. Yeah, all trust is good press. I don't, I'm not sure that's right anymore.

SPEAKER_02 22:30

I don't think that pariah problem is is pre-cans all of culture, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

Okay. So how do you resist optimizing for what gets the most attention when that may not be what builds the most credibility?

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yeah. Um, I mean, I think we have to distinguish between short-term attention and long-term influence. I mean, clicks are helpful. They tell you what people are interested in in a given moment. Um, but credibility really gets built by consistently, in our case, helping people understand what matters. Um, and that means telling stories that are difficult, that are expensive to report on, or that are easy to overlook. And that, and honestly, like are easy for newsrooms that have to are very have very constrained resources, often don't have the luxury of being able to cover. Um, our newsroom really asks the question of it, you know, doesn't just ask the question of, is it gonna get a big audience? But we also think a lot about, you know, is it important? Do we have something original to add to the story? Um, can we report it with the depth and rigor it deserves? And I, you know, this conversation about trust this week is coming at a really interesting time for us here at The Times because this week, tomorrow specifically, um, the New York Times is celebrating its 175th anniversary. And we maybe all lived to be 175. And, you know, standing the test of time for that long is really helpful to taking the long view. It's also notable, you know, a lot of people don't know this about the times, but you know, we are a public company, which I you could argue being a public company does not really create the long-term good long-term incentives and and rather really rewards short-term performance. But we're family controlled. And the Solzberger, the Ox Solzberger family that has um, you know, built the New York Times and really dedicated themselves to the independence and preservation of the Times over decades, over centuries, um, really provides both like a steady hand and the ability to take the long view. So, you know, I feel really lucky to work at an institution that um that doesn't have to only worry about the short term and worry about, you know, getting clicks. That is so far from what motivates our newsroom. Um, they care. They care that people come and read their their stuff and that that the the journalism they're producing is valuable and widely read. We certainly want to grow, you know, more and more people to be able to have access to our journalism, but not through the through the lens of clicks. Okay. That's somehow sometimes how it gets measured because it's the most measurable.

SPEAKER_04 25:53

Right. Easy to see, easy to run analytics on that.

unknown 25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:57

Okay, so I uh looked up

Expanding A Trusted Brand Without Dilution

SPEAKER_04 26:00

was the Times ever just a local newspaper? And when? And turns out in the 19th century it was, but by the 20th century it wasn't anymore. So that was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_02 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:13

So you've evolved, you at the times have evolved from a newspaper, local newspaper even, uh, to news, games, cooking, the athletic, wire cutter, audio. I'm sure that's only a fraction of things. So how do you expand what a trusted brand means without diluting what made them trust it in the first place?

SPEAKER_02 26:33

I mean, first and foremost, it's about keeping the most important thing sacred. And so at the times, that means like keeping the journalism at the core of everything we do. It's the most important thing we do by far. And everyone at the company, even the people who work on Wirecutter or on games, understand that the news is at the heart of our business. Um, but we also recognize that like our readers have other interests and passions. And so we want to serve those well too. And it's why we've built this portfolio of we call them lifestyle products, you know, whether that's games or recipes or shopping advice, um, sports uh stats and reporting. Um, and we've it's been an interesting time to be a marketer at the Times over this last decade because that's really when we built or bought or acquired most of these lifestyle things. And so a big part of my job has been to expand the brand to be an umbrella that can hold all of these things at once, right? So the Times both needs to be synonymous with our news report and quality, independent, originally reported journalism. And it needs to be this umbrella that can hold Wordle. And the spelling be the spelling bee. That's my and the spelling bee. Sorry. Yeah, name your insert name of your favorite, your favorite game. Um, we that's a whole other podcast. We could just spend the whole day talking about New York Times games. Um it's tricky tonally in marketing because the voice and tone of spelling bee or um shopping advice is pretty far. I mean, could probably couldn't be further away from the gravity of what we do in the news report every day. And so um that is certainly has its challenges. But I would also argue that they strangely have a lot in common. Um, I think because rigor is such an important part of how we approach everything we do as a company and we take so seriously the craft of what we do, you know, it's not just that we make puzzles, but we have like human editors who painstakingly, you know, Winnaloo, who like painstakingly writes the connections puzzle every day. Um, love it or hate it. You know, she she it's it's not an algorithm making the puzzles. It's not, you know, we don't take lightly the act of doing it. Um so that craft and rigor has been like the through line, I would say, um, not just of everything we do, but also how we how we tell the story of what we do and how we show what we do. Um, the other thing I'd say is like if you think back to what newspapers provided before the internet, it's not that dissimilar to where we are today. You know, they told you what was on TV, they gave you the weather forecast, they told you who won last night's game, you might have clipped the coupons or or seen the Sunday Flyer for what was on sale at your favorite store. And so, in many ways, expanding beyond news is a version of kind of going back to our roots to the personal value that readers got from reading a newspaper. So, even though that habit of reading a

Earning Trust Without All Answers

SPEAKER_02 30:15

physical newspaper doesn't exist today, there's sort of a version of it that lives on in the holistic product experience we've built for the New York Times.

SPEAKER_04 30:24

Um, so how do you earn trust when you don't have all the answers? And maybe more importantly, how do you build credibility when you're new to the room?

SPEAKER_02 30:34

It's hard. I think I go back to that framework that I shared at the beginning and I think about those three dimensions of like credibility, honesty, and benevolence. And I think when you're building trust, you have to prove all three of these dimensions. Um, you know, I definitely don't think earning trust means having to have every answer. Um, I often think admitting that you don't have every answer is a really quick win to establish trust. Um, it certainly uh convinces people that you're being honest because no one has all the answers. I also, the research also says that like the thing that people um assess first, the thing that they're able to make the fastest judgment call on is warmth, um, which is a combination of kind of honesty and benevolence. It's like whether you seem well-intentioned, whether you seem safe, are you interested in them? And so warmth is I would, I would say, you know, it's certainly something I value highly and have really tried to make a key part of how I show up as a leader or how I show up in a new room. Um, but it's also, you know, as we talked about on another topic before, it's not sufficient, you know, it's not it's not enough to get you all the way there. And credibility is also really important. So people do need to believe you have the competence to do whatever the job is at hand and that you'll follow through on the commitments you make. So it's I I often, you know, it one way to think about it is like if you're walking into a room, maybe even not a new room, but a room that you're in all the time and you're trying to strengthen trust is like if you're really good on one of those dimensions, thinking about how you might practice or prove the other dimension as a way to strengthen trust. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

Okay. Questions from the chat?

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Michelle, I'm happy to help you out here. We've had a lot of wonderful questions in the chat. Um, there were a couple that uh really stood out. I think that would be a great uh conversation for Amy to jump in on. Um something that I a question I really love from Sierra

Proving Leadership Through Follow Through

SPEAKER_03 33:05

is how to prove that I am a trustworthy leader if I've never been in a leadership position before.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

I mean, I think this is where comp, you know, competence is probably the thing that you need to lead with in that moment, right? Because particularly if the people around you know that it's your first time leading, they're gonna be looking for signals of your kind of confidence that you belong, that you um have something to offer. Um, and there's lots of ways to demonstrate competence, right? Sometimes it can just be like asking a really smart question or asking a question you think like is brave to ask because you you're worried it betrays that you don't know something, but actually, probably everyone else in the room has the same question. Um, so I think asking a brave question can often be a really great sign of confidence. Um and then I think not just, you know, saying what you're gonna do, but like actually following through on it, right? Like proving that the things that you said you're gonna do are the follow-through. This, you know, I think as a as a leader, particularly as a new leader, I remember, you know, in some of my first bigger leadership roles, re realizing, oh wow, this is a lot more um like fronts I have to cover than I've ever had to cover before, and the amount of kind of inbound things coming at you and context switching. And it becomes a lot harder to manage your to-do list because it's not a single to-do list. It sort of becomes many, many to-do lists. Um, and so being really clear about when I say I'm gonna do something, actually doing it. Um, and also being honest when I don't think I'm gonna be able to do something. Um, because then people, again, like trust that that that I'll be honest and that I'm not gonna let them down.

SPEAKER_04 35:14

Yeah, I think one other thing I would add to that is not think that you have to know all the answers or speak first. So that piece about a new leader or a new manager often thinks that to prove that they deserve the role they're put in, that they've got to jump in and lead every discussion. And so figuring out if you're doing that, maybe try stepping back and letting someone else speak in the room first to see if like you can empower other folks to do that, as opposed to you having to have all the answers. Cause frankly, that's exhausting. You don't want to do that. You want to figure out how to empower those in the room. So I think showing that also shows some confidence and confidence and competence to allow others to speak.

SPEAKER_03 36:02

Thank you both. Those are wonderful answers and um a

Balancing Journalists With Creators

SPEAKER_03 36:05

lot of help, even for me as a kind of a young, young professional like Sierra. Um we had a lot a few questions about how to trust and who to trust and when to trust when it comes to media, social media, influencers. So um Erica had a a good question that kind of captured a few different questions, I felt. Um she said, in the era of content creators versus traditional media, how do you find balance? Newsroom and journalists need to exist, they go to school for it. These are real jobs that are already um underfunded, funded. At the same time, people are following and trusting creators. Is there a balance?

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Yeah, we think about this a lot. Um well, I think one of the things that is helpful is I think more and more traditional media, newsrooms that are doing originally reported journalism are starting to show up in ways that feel more satisfying the way it feels to follow a creator, right? Like journalists are humans, right? The time the people I know in our newsroom who have really hard jobs, at the end of the day, they're moms and dads, and you know, they've got hometowns and you know, alma maters, and like they have they're just people doing their job. And, you know, we're really trying to increasingly make those people more visible in how we do our reporting. And so, you know, where it used to be really hard to see the people behind the reporting when it was just a written article. Increasingly, all of our reporting has a dimension of it that is a reporter telling you directly on camera what they do. And so it looks a lot more like what I think people find so satisfying about creators. I also think creators have a have a part and play a role. I mean, there is the reason people spend so much time on social media is because it's really enjoyable. It's it's it's it brings the information quickly to you via the algorithm of like the things you want to see. Um, and it can entertain and inform and do, you know, solve a lot of things in a short amount of time that you're trying to do in your life, whether, you know, what you know, whether that's like passions you have or just information you're looking for, or being informed about what's happening in the world. So I I would argue having a balanced diet of both. And um, you know, again, I think you'll increasingly be able to find that um whether it's the New York Times or or, you know, there are lots and lots of great um independent quality journalism sources um in the US and around the world that um are doing the same, right? Where you can really see um the reporting and like experience it much more up close through video.

SPEAKER_03 39:14

Yeah, thank you, Amy. Um and then I will send over one more question that we just got from Jess. She asked, How do you manage proving yourself from a place of I need to build trust without falling into the self-doubt abyss of I have to prove myself?

SPEAKER_02 39:32

I mean, we all struggle with this, right?

Escaping The Self Doubt Abyss

SPEAKER_02 39:35

You know, I mean, I I would be lying if if I said that, oh, well, don't worry, when you get to when you get a C in your title, when you get to this level, you'll stop worrying about those things. I still deal with those same kind of self-doubt questions and a sense of of needing to prove myself in lots of rooms all the time. So I think part of it is just acknowledging the feeling and doing it anyway, right? I often I have a teenager who just started um college this year. And one of the big themes of like things we talked about getting ready for college was, you know, it's okay to feel afraid. It's okay to feel the anxiety, but like, how do you push through that? How do you how do you not let that hold you back from doing the thing at all? And instead use, you know, what's I forget what that phrase is, is like feel the fear and then like do it anyway. Um, and I think just even acknowledging that like how you're feeling is how it's supposed to feel. Like it's not, there's not something wrong with you because you feel anxious or you feel nervous or you feel um less than, or you know, we often joke at the New York Times that like there is no place that has um more of uh more people than people who are like, How did I get here? How do I deserve to be here? And everyone here feels this way, and we're all here. So, you know, I that I guess that is my best advice, which is just know that it's okay to feel that way and you know, do whatever you can to push through it. Michelle, what would you add?

SPEAKER_04 41:23

Well, interestingly enough, last month we had a call that really nailed exactly what you just said. So, like that, I agree with you. You've got to say, this is real, this is happening to me, I feel this way, and then put it into perspective, however, you do that. So often that can't be done by yourself. Like there's several people on our team that will be like, when I need perspective, I'm coming to you or I'm going there. And and so when you can't do it for yourself and offer that brain shift, I think asking someone else, you know, what are the things I'm doing well? What are the how do I get myself out of this funk that I apparently put myself in? Because no one else seems to be reacting that way to me.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

But well, and having having good friends and having other women who support you who can remind you what a rock star you are and what a badass you are. Michelle, you're a badass. I'm so enamored with what you've built in your career, right? And like we need we need people in our lives who can do that for us because we can't, to your point, Michelle, we can't always do it for ourselves in the moment.

SPEAKER_04 42:30

Yeah, and I think we can't see it. It just isn't it's not that yeah,

Personal Rules For Trust And Mistrust

SPEAKER_04 42:35

I just we we can't admit it or see it, or it's just foreign. Yeah, you've got to find your cheerleaders. And I think that's important. Okay. Maybe I got two short questions for you. I want you to fill in the sentence.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

I trust someone when I trust someone when they are consistent with their values and transparent in how they meet them. I stop trusting someone when they have apparently changed their values without explaining why, but it's obvious. But it's obvious. Okay. Maybe they have a good reason, but they did not tell me, and now I don't trust them anymore.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

Does anyone else have a question for Amy? I had a question that's really the gossip part of this. I'm really curious, based upon an earlier answer you gave, about um telling the backstory of the reporters and building trust with them about how involved marketing was in that she said movie, because that is the kind of thing I think that really highlights the

The Weinstein Reporting Story In Ads

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Importance of reporters and shows that they are people.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Yeah, we had absolutely nothing to do with me, but I was delighted that it exists. And um, you know, I think had we tried to make that movie ourselves, or there have been some other documentaries about the times, um, people probably wouldn't trust it as much. But the fact that it was done by a third party, that we didn't have creative control, um, that it had its own level of independence, I think is part of what makes it so good. Um, but I will to the the gossip piece, I will say there was this tell you the story about the marketing we did do around um around that body of reporting. And I remember we were sitting in like an all-company meeting and Jody Cantor and Megan Twee were on stage talking about how they got um the women they had interviewed as part of that Harvey Weinstein story to finally go on the record. And they were telling the story about how, you know, they were they they were really struggling to get anyone, you know, it was like they needed one woman to go on the record, and everyone was afraid to do it alone. And they finally, she got a call from Ashley. I think this is in the movie, like Ashley Judd called her and and she picked up the phone and and they were like, let's go, we're gonna publish the story. And I looked at the person who was sitting next to on my team, and we were both a little bit in tears, and um and said, We have to tell this story. Like this is our readers need to know about the links that these two women and their colleagues and our investigative reporting team went to to really bring these facts to light when people had worked so, so hard to keep them hidden. And we went on to um make a campaign, a marketing campaign. Um, it was not as big budget as the film, but it was just as rewarding to make. And we um we aired, I think we we aired, we aired that spot um in um the Golden Globes, and it was the first time that Hollywood had gathered since the Me Too movement had kind of kicked off and that reporting had happened. And so it aired in this like really interesting moment where culture and when people were kind of like watching what was gonna happen when Hollywood gathered for the first time after um this moment had happened. So it has definitely been, it's one of just many stories of things that have happened where I've had to pinch myself working at a place like the New York Times where you just sort of feel like you're in the center of culture and

Closing Thanks And Community Invite

SPEAKER_02 47:00

what's happening and get to have a front row seat to it. And it's a big privilege.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

If you enjoy the episode, share with a friend and don't forget to leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your career to the next level, apply to join our community of women eager to help you get there and stay there. Go to www.vesther.co to learn more.