MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Join hosts Joseph Itaya and Anika Jackson as they dive into conversations with leaders and changemakers shaping the future of digital media. Each episode explores the frontier of multimedia, artificial intelligence, marketing, branding, and communication, spotlighting how emerging digital trends and technologies are transforming industries across the globe.
MEDIASCAPE is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. This online master’s program is designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers
Jennifer Reitman's Media Odyssey: From Dame Magazine's Roots to Independent Media's Horizon
When Jennifer Reitman reminisces about her father's legacy at Brides Magazine and Publisher's Clearinghouse, it's like opening a time capsule of media history that echoes through her own career trajectory. From the inception of Dame Magazine, which faced the onslaught of the 2008 financial crash, to its metamorphosis into a digital powerhouse, Jennifer's tale is one of resilience and ingenuity. Our conversation peels back the layers of her professional evolution, offering you a rare glimpse into the perseverance that fuels today's media mavens.
Dame Magazine's dance with monetization is a ballet of ethics and creativity, where traditional advertising takes a backseat to alternative revenue streams supporting in-depth journalism. Jennifer shares the strategic pivot towards podcasting, like "The 51" and "Gaslit Nation," which not only broaden the narrative palate but also reinforce the organ's commitment to quality storytelling. As we unpack these decisions, you'll gain insight into the complexities of aligning brand partnerships with sensitive topics and the ever-present quest to balance profitability with editorial integrity.
Peering into the crystal ball of independent media's future, Jennifer sketches a landscape where diversity of voice and commitment to fact are the north stars guiding outlets like Dame. We discuss the potential for new ventures in video content and the thirst for niche journalism that feeds a democratic society. Wrapping up, we draw from Sandra Day O'Connor's wisdom on the collaborative nature of success, leaving listeners with a resonant takeaway on the indispensability of teamwork and leadership in carving a path through the digital frontier.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
Welcome to Media Escape insights from digital change makers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's Digital Media Management Program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2:Thank you everybody for joining us for another edition of Media Escape. This is a series where we talk to different digital innovators and change makers about the crazy, ever-changing literally everyday changing world of digital and get the insights I have the pleasure of having worked with Jennifer off and on since the mid-90s. We worked together at a firm called Kevin Bergen Associates in Chicago and then both ended up out in Los Angeles and she was my mentor and boss at Raygun Media, where we worked on Raygun Magazine and Bikini, and that stemmed out of a partnership that KBA had had producing a magazine. So with that, jennifer, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3:So happy to be here, so thrilled.
Speaker 2:So I'd love for you to talk about your background. How did you get into media?
Speaker 3:You know, my origin story goes way back before my own professional career. My father, before he got into the advertising industry, actually was a publisher and he worked when he was younger at Brides Magazine. He was the publisher of Brides Magazine and he worked at Zip Davis for many years and then he worked at Publisher's Clearinghouse, which most people obviously connect with the sweepstake, but he worked in publisher relations. So Publisher's Clearinghouse was basically a circulation marketing company and he would help new publishers come on board. So a little bit this has always been in my blood, even though most of my life my father worked in the ad business. So I was really influenced by him so much. And then, as you mentioned, it was the work that we did at KBA and the relationship that we had with Ray Gunn that brought us both out to California, of course, and it worked there for many years in print publishing and went on to start consulting for smaller print independent companies.
Speaker 3:And throughout all of those years I had stars in my eyes a little bit about having my own outlet, because it just is the best work you can do, and I always imagined that I would launch something.
Speaker 3:And the idea for Dame really started percolating when I was at Ray Gunn because we published Annika's Golden Member Bikini, a men's magazine, and I happened to be an avid reader of Espyre and thought, god, you know, espyre is so fun, but they have this really fantastic journalism and wall form reporting.
Speaker 3:And then I looked at the women's media landscape and there were so few magazines that were doing really, really fantastic reporting but it was all fashion, all beauty and for everyone on the call. You have to remember this is the 90s, right, so it's a very different time, and I thought that there could be an alternative to that, that there could be an outlet for women that was weightier and meatier, that could do the kind of investigative and long form reporting that I saw men's lifestyle doing, and that was the germ for Dame, and so it was really positioned in the early days as Espyre for women. It was sort of this what I imagined. There was a magazine at the time called Mirabella and it was what I imagined Mirabella evolving into in those days. So that's where it came from.
Speaker 2:And at that point it wasn't just digital. You were looking at a print publication, Right that's right.
Speaker 3:So I sat down and wrote the original business plan for Day Magazine in 2008.
Speaker 3:And the idea was and remember that you know, online media was quite nascent in 2008. We didn't have social media, we didn't have SEO, there wasn't really a lot of open source CMS work, right, wordpress wasn't being used. So the idea was to create a magazine that was regionalized so Dame New York, dame LA Dame, chicago where the first three-fourths of the magazine would be National and Scope, and then the back of the book would be regionalized to each market and the revenue model for that, the intended revenue model for that, was a ton of local advertising and we tried to take the best of sort of what was happening in local media like Chicago Reader or LA Weekly and put that into a glossier format. And then, you know, I don't know who was around in those days, but the Dame launched and we launched online in 2009. And in 2009, I had to shut it down for a while because, hopefully everyone recalls we had major financial crash. So I had to take a bit of a break and regroup and eventually we came back in 2014.
Speaker 2:What was that like, seeing that your dream come true and then having to close it? You know that after I left working with you, I moved up to San Francisco to launch magazines and the whole thing happened yeah, that was when in the dot bomb 2001. So we both had that experience.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I went from the implosion of digital in the late 90s, right when people were getting, you know, $100 million valuations on air and that all imploded, to, you know, just eight or nine years later, watching print implode and still with digital being quite nascent, right it was, or digital media not being what it is today. It felt terrible I mean, there's no pretty way to say it. It was terrifying, it was disheartening, it was.
Speaker 3:You know, I spend a lot of time questioning my own skills, right, why am I not? Why didn't this work? Why can't this work when, really, you know, sure, did I make mistakes? Absolutely. But there were market forces that certainly Obama wasn't even fixing those market forces, right, I mean, it was a mess, it was bad, but I think I knew that I would always bring it back. I never closed the company, I never surrendered the trademark. It just I put it to sleep is the best way I can phrase it and went back to consulting and started to build the agency of the company that I have now, you know, for a means to underwrite its eventual relaunch.
Speaker 2:I want to hear about the media side, but before we get into the agency, when you relaunched, did you still have the same vision of having the national footprint with localized yeah?
Speaker 3:So I started to rethink about bringing us back in 2012 and knew that I wanted to take my time and really get a sense of what the market was going to tolerate. And just as the industry itself had evolved, so had our readership and so had the prospective audiences for us. And so, while there were parts of the old vision for it that I think came along and that we still, to this day, have the influence on cultural reporting and books and things like that, the day minutes, early days was much more light. It was much more irreverent, it had a much different tone and a different sort of lens on things and or not a different lens, but a different tone. I would say we were much more similar to the early days of Jezebel than we are today.
Speaker 3:And I think any smart media entrepreneur or media creator, whether you're a solo entrepreneur, whether you have a company, you have to evolve. You have to move with audiences. You have to, just in the same way that you move with platforms and where those tunnels are to get to your viewer or listener or reader, you have to do the same with your content. But I think you can keep the values in the mission. That can remain, but the idea of not looking at a prospective audience and understanding they have a different set of values as they age or they're a different today. Far different political issues, far deeper divisions in this kind of so many things are so different than they were in those days. The heady days of those late 90s 2000s are sadly, at the least for the moment, behind us.
Speaker 2:What does Dame look like today In terms of the kind of content that you published? You talked about how it was originally more a reverend and lighthearted, and now it's shifting quite a bit. You often joke internally.
Speaker 3:Come to Dame if you want to be depressed. I mean, the mix of our coverage today is, I would say, we're pretty heavy on political and policy coverage. We do quite a bit around climate. We do quite a bit around women's health. We still don't have fashion or beauty or lifestyle or any of that Not that there's anything wrong with it. It's just not a space that we need to be in. There are so many places that people can go to read that we cover tech fairly often still a lot of books, still a lot of culture. But it is serious. I think we have a very serious sober approach to not only what we publish but the narrative and the positioning of the pieces that we publish it's far more sober than it used to be is the best way that I could.
Speaker 3:Nowadays we used to get compared to Jezebel, and nowadays we often get the you know, you're the Atlantic for women. I wish I had their budget, sure, but we do sort of fall into this category of general interest, so the swath is pretty broad A lot of reproductive rights coverage, a lot of elections coverage, and we still do. I think we were always most known for really deep think pieces and really deep trend pieces, and we still do quite a bit of that work.
Speaker 2:Now, since you don't have huff pieces, you don't do beauty fashion, do you find?
Speaker 1:it Absolutely. Do you think that it?
Speaker 2:makes it more difficult to get advertisers.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, we don't sell advertising, right, we've never sold advertising and there's a couple of reasons why. One early on, I decided that traditional programmatic advertising was never going to be a fit for us from a CPM standpoint, right, we just were never going to make any money on it. And so, getting 12 cents a thousand or 20 cents a thousand and then trading off to our readers the clutter, the slow list of the site, I decided that programmatic was not going to be of use. The challenge for us, from a broader advertising standpoint and a sponsor standpoint is one there's a pretty finite world of brand partners who want to run their stuff against abortion coverage these days, right, or trans rights or the judiciary or things that are considered political thought buttons, and pursuing those brands.
Speaker 3:I had to make a choice, as you know better than anyone because you know me so well. I had to make a choice of how do you fund this business, right, and do I go and chase brands, which is a lot of work and dedicated people, or do I find alternate ways to underwrite the journalism of the company? And I decided to go an alternate route and not bang my head against a wall begging the nine brands out there that would advertise on a side, like Dame to come in. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to sponsor partnerships and we're starting to look at that. For you know, we've always sold advertising on our podcast. That has been easy. I'm just now starting to think about partners for our newsletters and brand sponsors for our newsletters and because we do a lot of special series and a lot of editorial packages, I'm not opposed to selling sponsorships if it's the right brand.
Speaker 2:That makes a lot of sense and I'm glad that you teed that up. Let's talk about the brand extensions, because you have your online publication, you have podcasts that you really stream a special series.
Speaker 3:So we don't have an ongoing Dame news podcast. We typically will come up with a specific editorial concept that we believe not only should be written but also audio reported, because it adds the richness of the story. I happen to love podcasting. I love it. We've got a couple planned for this year, if I can figure out how to get them done. One is around the 2024 election and one is actually a good news thing. I won't go into too many details, but it has to do with progress and things that are good in the world, which I think we all need. So we have the brand extensions. We do a lot of newsletters. We did a test in the pet space, a newsletter called the companion chronicles, where we leveraged our network and interviewed well-known people about their pets and it was wildly successful. But I need to bring it back. We put it on again Because media is all about testing and seeing what works and what doesn't work, so we're going to try to bring that back as well. It was so fun.
Speaker 2:Can you share a little bit about the past podcasts that you've done and what that looked like, because I have interview style podcasts where I'm interviewing somebody over Zoom or whatever. Yours were very different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very different. So the first podcast I think it was the first one we did the first podcast we did was called the 51. And we wanted to report on the state of food insecurity in this country. And so what we did was we went to nine different states to look at what's the state of food insecurity and that was fully reported. So we had put reporters in. We didn't do parachute right, we had a reporter in each of those states, each of them.
Speaker 3:So Birmingham, alabama and gosh now I can't remember South LA, navajo Nation and we reported out as if we were reporting on 60 minutes and that was an intense series. I mean, that is a lot, not just the reporting. It's a little bit easier when it's just written journalism, right, so the reporters out there they turn in their copy, we fact check what have you? But the combination of doing a reported series and an audio series. And we had a fantastic producer, probably one of the best in the country. She's truly an amazing producer and journalist and writer. We would not have been able to do that without her. It was a lot to go out with.
Speaker 3:This really ambitious first time podcast was a lot. The next one we did was a partnership and it was called Gaslit Nation and that was about Russian interference in the election democracy a very intense podcast. The next one we did was with Ashley Nicole Black, the comedian, and that was so fun. It was an interview style pod, so Ashley was advice, it came from a column. So we had a column that Ashley wrote for us, called Sip on this, and it was advice, and our readers would write a thing in you know, and we decided that a podcast with her talking to you know, her famous friends and her mom and giving advice, and it turned out fantastic. They got a lot of press, naturally, but it also won some awards. And then our most recent one is called the gatekeepers, which we need to do a second season on. It's about access to spaces. So, but none of them are only Ashley's was the sit down, was an interview style.
Speaker 2:Well, and then we do have a couple questions, but I want to please, oh, before we get to the questions, I do want to ask you about that because all of our students in the digital media management program created capstone project. Some of them are creating podcasts, some of them are in websites, some of them are creating web series, and so I think it's really interesting for them to hear your perspectives on all the different things that you've done, whether it's the magazine, it's the various podcasts, and why you chose to do limited series versus a continuous.
Speaker 3:Right. So why do we choose to do limited versus continuous? Some of it is chasing market Right. Some of it, frankly, we don't think it warrants more than 10 episodes. You know a series reporting on food insecurity. That is a fairly timeless topic, at least right now. It's fairly evergreen and it doesn't need 37 episodes to report deeply the Ashley Nicole Black one. Actually, we would have kept going with that, but a little show called Ted Lasso came up and so we lost our talent. But that you know, listen for those who are thinking about launching media properties, that happens. You lose your best writers, you lose your talent, they get poached. You know, really good people find other work and you wish that for them, right, I wish that for them. If Dame can be a platform for people to grow their careers, then I'm doing something right.
Speaker 2:Wonderful A question from Riley. Are there archives for access to view the evolution of Dame?
Speaker 3:So you mean our old stuff, right? Oh god, new, no, that is so old. I feel like your computer would start smoking. The sparks would maybe start flying out of it if you tried to load anything. No, I mean you can go to the Dame site and get back to, you know, 2014, but the early, early version of Dame. You'd have to send me an email and I can send you some PDFs. I mean, that's how long ago it is.
Speaker 2:I will put Jennifer's LinkedIn in the chat so that any of you who want to can contact her after this. And then Dwayne had a question what kind of questions were asked with the pets? That sounds interesting, oh really fantastic deep questions.
Speaker 3:They were questions like what's your dog's favorite toy Half of the Q&A we ended in a prowst interview actually, so half of it was the post, the post part and really deep questions. The questions were more about the relationship with animals and how the animal, the pet, helps that person navigate their life. So a lot of the people we interviewed were actors or authors, comedians, and so a lot of the questions sort of centered around their career and how their pet sort of helps them in that. Obviously there were some cute questions like silly questions, like whatever.
Speaker 3:A lot of origin story questions where did your pet come from but not goofy questions, and I'm happy to send anybody the archives for that that. I have the archives for Fantastic.
Speaker 2:That definitely sounds like one that should be be currying, though. Yeah, yeah, we're going to bring it back.
Speaker 3:So just the issue of the 2024 election sort of supplants a lot. When you're in the space that we're in from a publishing perspective and when you're a small organization like we are, resources are limited and you have to pick and choose where those resources go, both financially and from a person resource standpoint.
Speaker 2:You were mentioning earlier that you started your agency, dame Media, to help fund the magazine Yep. I also know that you do take donations that people can send to be currying Sure, just like you see our revenue. So will you talk a little bit about Dame Media now? What does Dame Media do? I know there's different iterations of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Dame Media really evolved. One time it's called 931 Media, maybe you remember Tracy Foreman was Mike Martin are right and we started that company to servecom's in late 1990s. All you could do to promote really was buy a Super Bowl ad. That was it. There was no way to grow your new internet company and we got hired to do custom publications for them and we would go and rent a list of 300,000 people and we would print 300,000 magazines and we would mail those to people to direct them to go to a website. And so the agency really kind of evolved out of then the services and we did a lot of independent publishing, consulting as well, as I mentioned.
Speaker 3:You know, again, in the same way that Dame magazine has evolved, so did the agency right More and more companies. They would come to us for content that I would look at their website and say, well, yeah, but this is held together by a paper clip and a bandaid. You need a new website and after you turn away four or five of those, you start to go well, I'm going to do that as a service, we're going to offer that as part of our business. So it really was more. It as much as the evolution was really an expansion, because we still really heavily provide content, services, development and strategy and production, but we also offer all of the things that any other digital marketing agency would offer in terms of web design and development and social strategy and what have you.
Speaker 2:And what kind of clients do you work with?
Speaker 3:Oh goodness, all of them, any of them. So we've done a lot of work in the e-commerce space At one time. I think, if I count, we've done six or seven big enterprise level shoe stores, and when I say enterprise level I mean like they have 200 stores nationally and we're figuring out how to integrate the POS system. We've done e-commerce for a few I'm not going to mention their names for a few famous personalities who have their own clothing lines. We've done some work in the pet space. We've done oh God, I mean, I feel like everything, anything, everything.
Speaker 2:So there's no specific customer persona.
Speaker 3:No, no, I mean I would say that we stay away from anything that rubs up against professional services to like law firms and dentists and doctors and real estate. That's not really what we do and they don't need us. It's overkill. There's plenty of smaller firms that can handle that kind of work. You know other than that, I think you know we're consumer brand focused. Right, we don't do a. We've done one or two B2B projects, but we're really consumer brand focused.
Speaker 2:And one of the questions I wanted to ask was it's so difficult to think about how to make money and monetize. You know, I've been running my podcast for almost four years and I'm finally monetizing it. Yeah, and one of the things that's really important of the Capstone project is monetization strategy. All of the students have to come prepared with. What's the financial modeling? How do you keep on going?
Speaker 2:Because that's how you keep on doing all this other you keep on because you have your media agency and you have to do other things to support. I have to do other things to support it Magazine.
Speaker 3:Unfortunately, look, we just had a major implosion of two huge media properties, buzzfeed and Vice, along with Sports Illustrated, along with Wall Street Journal, laying people off along with you know, the list is so long and all of them have tried to figure out the same thing, right? The one thing that I will tell you is that and I'm sure plenty of people will argue with me, although a lot of people will also probably agree venture capital is not the answer for media, because the metrics and the expectation of scale is in large part why it's so terrible right now in media. This expectation, this sort of landscape of ad-driven clicks at any cost gamed system of publishing so diminishes the very purpose of journalism in many ways, at least in my space. Right, I mean, journalism is a broad thing, you know, monetizing media. Nobody has that answer, right? If any of us have that answer, it would be a different world. We're all figuring it out because it changes so quickly.
Speaker 3:So today, the model is really a mix of, you know, reader or listener or viewer-supported media, together with brand partnerships which, even though I sort of eschewed that, I think it's really vital to a revenue mix, you know, coupled with, I think, commerce still can.
Speaker 3:If you're the right kind of media, brand commerce revenue as part of your mix can still be a valuable you know, if you're looking at your mutual funds of revenue for your company, commerce can still play a role in that. And traditional advertising is not going to go away. I mean, certainly in podcasts. In large mainstream corporate media advertising is the gas and the engine, I think, for smaller independent brands. We need to find a new way forward, and whether that's in part philanthropic funding, right, more meaningful philanthropic funding, whether that is government intervention in the form of tax breaks and some kind of rant program through the federal government, but those of us that live sort of in the middle, that aren't the solo operator and not the New York Times, it's an everyday problem. Keeping going is an everyday problem. It never goes away and that's why you see so many places closing and so many layoffs in podcasting, in digital, everywhere.
Speaker 2:One of the things we were talking about before everybody else joined was also sub-stack. I see a lot of journalists Sure, they've now paid sub-stacks that you can subscribe to to maybe they'll have a freemium version that will share some of their stories and a few links of things that they're looking for. But then if you really want to know what to pitch them on, you have to pay a fee to help support them. And you likened that to when we were shifting to digital in 2009, 2010 and making that shift, yeah, it feels.
Speaker 3:I mean, there's almost like a repeating history, right? So in 2008, 2009, there was real implosion and print. The same numbers of layoffs that we're seeing today in digital media happened, and now we see an implosion in digital media, tons of layoffs. So what you're seeing as a result are a few things. Certainly, sub-stack has given rise to the solo journalist as outlet owner, the challenges and I do.
Speaker 3:I have some concerns about sub-stack as a platform One. It's a closed environment so technically, sub-stack owns you, right? Even though you can migrate your readers, you can migrate your strike connection. If sub-stack goes down, you go down Sub-stack. Also, not everyone is making money on the sub-stack, right? You have really an 80-20 problem there. You have, or maybe it's 90-10 for all, I don't know the data. So, yes, sub-stack is viable, but it's not gonna be for most people. Not everyone is gonna be Judd Legum, right. Most people are not going to be able to earn a living, an annual living, that way.
Speaker 3:Then you also see something else, another trend emerging, which are worker cooperative outlets, where a group of you know defector is a good example of that, right, where a group of laid-off journalists from a big outlet get together and say let's build something together. We're all gonna own this equally. We're gonna pay ourselves, the state, no differences in salary. We're all gonna make 50 grand a year and contribute to growing, to this worker co-op. And I think you'll increasingly see more of that, particularly because there's been so much talk about unions and labor and I think people are increasingly seeing the value of co-ops, media co-ops.
Speaker 3:But again, you know, if everyone agrees to a $60,000 salary, I don't know how a single person in New York City can effectively live. Okay, there they can live, but I'm not so sure. Yeah, so it's a mix. Look, let me underscore by saying if you wanna be in the media industry and I speak very narrowly from a journalism perspective you either have to have a partner who has a real job or you have to diversify your revenue streams, right, so you're doing a lot of things. I want everybody to become a journalist, but I also know how hard it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and besides substack, there's medium. There are so many different. Yeah, there's so many People can be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure ghost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lean on them, there's another question from Riley Do you think the overwhelming presence and easy access of YouTube has diminished the structure of digital media brands?
Speaker 3:So I'm quite bullish on YouTube. I didn't used to be and I really am now. I think it's not just YouTube. There are a few things that I think have disrupted the sanctity of digital media. First and foremost, I blame Metta. I'm just gonna come right out and say I blame Metta. Right, metta has done some real damage. They've carried it and sticked media for a long time and today you see both Metta and Google Metta threads, instagram, facebook, de-prioritizing news. I mean, look, google just the other day was testing taking the news tab off of their homepage in a time when we need good news more than ever. So you know, the disruptors to today are the channels there, the bridges and tunnels. It's social, it's video, it's newsletters.
Speaker 3:I think my issue with youtube or tick tock or instagram is not. I think they're relatively useful and incredibly powerful and I love the idea of reporting that he, one person or a small team can really report out on youtube and do video series and documentaries there. My issue is always going to be with the lack of responsibility from any of those platforms, youtube included, but largely social media Not regulating algorithm, not pushing back, not figuring out ways to deal with the terrible disinformation and misinformation that permeates our world right now and the great impact it has to society. So I don't blame you to for anything. I think it's a fantastic tool, but I blame all of those large tech companies for hurting Reporting and journalism and not taking for responsibility for being a tube of stuff.
Speaker 3:I take, you know, as a publisher, I take responsibility To publish the facts. You know, even if it's got an opinion in there, we're gonna fact check it because I am not going to be responsible for misleading people. And the social company, the tech company, will be like well, we're just the railroad tracks, we're just the train tracks, not, really not anymore. You're not. You know, if the, if the trains do rail because your tracks aren't set up right, then take you know, take responsibility. So that's my you know, I like you to. In fact, we want to launch a series on youtube, so I like it.
Speaker 2:I was just speaking to somebody today about how tiktok is such a big search engine right, yeah, we're to after google, but now it's also place for people are getting their news Show. Interesting, that is, and that seems to be a space where there is more room for disinformation.
Speaker 3:So there's to save. If I have you have time, I'll say two things about tiktok. Peruse, I think that it has been really effective. Or younger people to get information that they wouldn't normally, whereas I've, you know, I've got white noise, msnbc in the background all day, right, and I'm still reading newspapers. Meeting people where they are is critical and where younger gen z is is there.
Speaker 3:On tiktok, two things worry me. One, there's absolutely no mitigation to the just for rations appetite for disinformation there. And two and this goes back to the idea of how important journalism and good reporting is A lot of the news that we see on tiktok is just summaries of actual report. Right, these are not original reporters and some are, of course, but a lot of them are like recaps and taking a new story and giving their opinion on top of it or distilling it. Well, what happens when those real sources, the beginning part of that news, is no longer supported by a ball functional? Right, then we're in a little raths of sort. Of there is no actual news industry anymore and we need it. We need news, I need news.
Speaker 2:That would be a scary world.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I told you, come today if you want to get a brass.
Speaker 2:Riley, you are just on fire with this question on riley. Yeah, when it comes to news, I've noticed articles are almost exactly the same across various platforms and sources. It's difficult to find factual a substance from our news outlets. The extent of the world events in the emergence of an entrepreneurial spirit you think there will be a resurgence of true journalism that is such a good question.
Speaker 3:Such a good question, and I do I think that anytime you see things tilting really far in one direction, you're going to see a correction to that, and I think what's been interesting back to the sub stack thing is that there are a bunch of sub stacks out there that are doing just that, that are really trying to be a counterbalance to sort of.
Speaker 3:I think Riley, if I hear you right, you're talking about sort of like this you know you get saturated in these kind of narratives over and over again, and I think you're seeing a lot of independent journalists push back about that. I mean that's kind of also Dame's raison d'etre. I mean that is, our whole mission centers around ensuring that voices that are not normally amplified get amplified, that writers who normally wouldn't have a platform at, say, the New York Times or Washington Post can do reporting or stories that are under the radar and haven't really hit corporate media yet that we're covering those stories because we're small and agile and we can. So, riley, I think, yes, I think there is a hunger for it. I can see it even just amongst my friends who don't even touch the profession, but they are sort of desperate for something they can turn to that feels factual and has some gravitas to it. Good question when?
Speaker 2:you call At this point, jennifer. Is there anything else that you want to share with us about where you see Dame going next? You talked a little bit about a couple of podcast series that you're going to be starting, maybe some other series you're going to be bringing back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean for Dame. We're really from an entrepreneur too, just like everyone on this call, and part of my job for the company is always trying to figure out what is next and where do we need to reimagine what we do. It can be a little hard for me because I'm old and a little stuck in my ways and afford to be in my mid 50s to be on the cutting edge, but so much of my day to day spent thinking are we evolving? Are we meeting the newer business models? Do I need to strip that site down and put us in a completely different format? What does the next generation of our audience look like? Right now, we have a very heavy Gen X audience, but I want to have the 25-year-olds and the 30 reading us as well, and so I don't have an answer, because that's actually what I think I'm thinking through right now is what does our media mix look like from a company standpoint?
Speaker 3:I think that, if I can future cast anything, I think that we're going to see, which is not necessarily the best thing in the world, but I think it's inevitable. I think we're going to see things niche. I think increasingly you're going to find smaller outlets with smaller audiences that are highly evangelized about the kind of content that they're creating from an affinity standpoint less of the Atlantic's and the Dames in terms of general interest and more of the I love video games. And again, this feels very late 90s, 2000s, mid 2000s, because that sort of enthusiast media was at its height then as well, and then we went into this era of big general interest stuff and I think we're going to get back to these niches and the challenge is, with that and as much as I think that that's a fantastic business model when it comes to democracy and when it comes to reporting and facts and a shared sense of responsibility for humanity, we need papers of record. We need media of record that can really report on the biggest issues of our time, as opposed to these very niche that hover on the edge of op-ed or just context and analysis. So I think I'm looking at what niches can we serve effectively as offshoots from Dame?
Speaker 3:And I'm looking at what I keep saying to where do we need to be? Where have we not gone outside of podcasts and newsletters? And for me that's going to lean heavily into video I think we're looking at. Can we bring our reporting, as I said earlier, into YouTube. Yeah, that's what's next for us. I think that's what's next for the industry. I don't know. Someone much smarter knows.
Speaker 2:Do you have a favorite quote or some words that really resonate, that help you keep on going with Dame, even when you're feeling most discouraged? When you're feeling most discouraged yeah.
Speaker 3:One of my favorite quotes, interestingly enough, is Sandra Day O'Connor, and her quote is no one gets anything done alone.
Speaker 3:On the days we're all sort of work from home, dame has always been virtual and it can be really easy to think that you have to fix everything yourself, or that it's weak to ask for help, or that there's some shame around not knowing the answer to a question or how to do something. And the reality is the best ideas and the best work and the best product all come out of working with other people in collaboration and asking for help. So that quote has definitely stuck with me. There is a non-famous person quote two of them actually that my father used to always tell me when I was younger and was starting the business, and one is always hire people smarter than you, with common goals but complementary skills. And the other one is your first product is the people who go up and down the elevator, meaning that when you have a business, when you're building a business, you think about the people who work at that business first, before anything else. So not famous people quotes, but dad quotes that have always stuck with me.
Speaker 1:To learn more about the master of science and digital media management program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu.
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