Episode 130

Post-platform product development

At the Media Product Forum earlier this month, I spoke with Gannett head of product Renn Turiano, Hearst Newspapers chief commercial officer Bridget Williams and Millie Tran, chief digital content officer at the Council on Foreign Relations. The conversation revolved around the shifting product priorities at publishers at a time when the weight of most publishing businesses is shifting from catering to the whims of platforms to a more independent path. That requires a change in focus to satisfy user needs, as well as the need to identify and serve various audience segments. We spoke about how all three organizations are tackling this. Thanks to WordPress VIP, which partnered with The Rebooting on the Media Product Forum.


Transcript
Brian:

Welcome to The Rebooting Show.

Brian:

I'm Brian Morrissey.

Brian:

This week, I have another conversation I had at the Media Product Forum, which The Rebooting held earlier this month, with our partners at WordPress VIP.

Brian:

In this session, I speak with Hearst Newspaper's Chief Commercial Officer, Bridget Williams, Gannett, Head of Product, Ren Toriano, and Millie Tran.

Brian:

The chief digital content officer at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Brian:

We talk about a recurring theme in my recent conversations, which is how publishing models are shifting to focus on quality over quantity and to serve audiences first and foremost.

Brian:

Hope you enjoy this conversation and thank you again to WordPress VIP for partnering on the event.

Brian:

we're gonna end, on a cheery note, and talk about, what you do, quote, after platforms.

Brian:

I don't know if, there really is going to be a post platform era.

Brian:

They've got a pretty good track record with controlling things.

Brian:

I don't think they're going to go away anytime soon.

Brian:

But clearly, an era has kind of closed.

Brian:

And publishers are going to, hopefully, increasingly, as chart a bit more of an independent path.

Brian:

because, I think at this point, It's pretty clear you can't really trust the platforms.

Brian:

they got their own agendas.

Brian:

so to do so, I want to bring out Millie Tran.

Brian:

Mellon is

Brian:

Millie is the, the chief digital content officer.

Brian:

at, the Council on Foreign Relations.

Brian:

Former Condé Nast.

Brian:

I've known Millie for a long time.

Brian:

Ren, do you want to come on up?

Brian:

to come on

Millie:

up?

Millie:

Sure.

Brian:

Ren's the head of product at Gannett.

Brian:

And then we've got Bridget Williams.

Brian:

got Bridget?

Renn:

Williams.

Renn:

Where's Bridget?

Brian:

Bridget is chief commercial officer at Hearst

Brian:

Bridget,

Brian:

No, no, no, you're there.

Brian:

This is my seat, Bridget.

Brian:

Come on.

Brian:

alright, so let's talk about, what we're gonna do after Google.

Brian:

First of all, Google

Brian:

Zero.

Brian:

That's not a real thing, right?

Brian:

I mean, you guys are doing

Brian:

fine

Brian:

with

Brian:

it.

Bridget:

it.

Renn:

We

Renn:

We are, yeah.

Renn:

We, you know, we took a couple of hits in a couple of specific areas, but the traffic hasn't

Renn:

diminished

Renn:

in all the other areas.

Renn:

Just like earlier when you were talking about how nobody acknowledges the wins that you get from Google when you only complain about the things that are diminished when the algorithm changes.

Renn:

But yeah, we're still doing really well with Google.

Renn:

what's

Brian:

what's the secret?

Brian:

What's the, you got bot

Renn:

No, we have high quality content at, you know, we have great quantities of high quality content that appeals to a broad spectrum of people.

Renn:

And we also have a network that goes all across the, the nation in, you know, major cities and small cities and towns everywhere.

Brian:

Okay.

Renn:

So

Renn:

So lots of things people want to, want to read about.

Renn:

So, great ways to respond to search

Bridget:

That's right.

Bridget:

I mean, I'm very interested to what's going to happen when Google loses market share.

Bridget:

And I certainly hope that they do.

Bridget:

as new competitive entrants come,

Bridget:

with new Search could get more

Bridget:

interesting.

Bridget:

Correct.

Bridget:

I, we, we did speak with another

Renn:

major

Bridget:

platform that looks like they're coming right after search.

Bridget:

And it's going to be really interesting to watch.

Bridget:

But, you know, much like Brian, I feel like

Renn:

you know,

Bridget:

I often say this in media, don't hate the player, hate the game.

Bridget:

We're going to get very

Renn:

good,

Bridget:

and continue to improve on, serving Google and making sure that the users that come from Google get what they want, and, utility.

Bridget:

And then we're going to plan for Google

Renn:

0.

Renn:

That's right.

Brian:

I don't know if it's, I mean,

Bridget:

I don't know if it's, I mean, I don't think it's the worst if Google goes away as long as we, you know, have built in other mechanisms.

Renn:

What are they?

Brian:

This is like one of those things, it's like step one, what is it, the South

Bridget:

I mean, we're, we're all gonna say the, we're all gonna say the same things here.

Bridget:

you know, when you said walk away from the platforms.

Bridget:

I think of it more as walking away from the algorithm.

Bridget:

There are platforms that we would love to develop an audience because we can have a direct relationship with that.

Bridget:

Like WhatsApp.

Bridget:

We can develop a group and, and figure out who they are and what they want and serve them and, and bring them into our ecosystem through a platform.

Bridget:

But there's no algorithm sitting between us and them.

Bridget:

And so that's how

Renn:

I

Renn:

think of it.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Millie, you've been at a lot of different organizations, and, I mean, you, you saw the sort of chasing after traffic era, so what comes,

Bridget:

what

Renn:

comes

Renn:

next?

Millie:

so Brian's referring to that I basically kind of started my career at BuzzFeed, and then went to New York Times, and then the Texas Tribune, which is a non profit local news organization, and then Conde Nast, and now I'm at a foreign policy think tank running their news and product teams.

Millie:

it's funny, I actually wrote something like in 2018 about how there's no magic, there's no, and to what Bridget was saying, like we're all saying the same thing, which is, Build good products, build trust, build brand, understand your user needs, and I think those things just remain the same.

Millie:

and I, I think what I've also seen throughout kind of all those organizations, and I should note they all had very different business models and audiences, and Being able to adjust your strategies based on whether, you know, the social era or in the case of the Text Tribune, which was very much non profit and the impact metric was about distribution and just wide reach and impressions and republishing.

Millie:

That gave us a very different set of tactics versus the New York Times, which when I was there, we pulled out of Apple News because it was a direct competitor to the app.

Millie:

whereas Connie Nass was like such a diversified portfolio in terms of all the different brands, all the different audiences.

Millie:

and I, I really think it is about just really understanding your, your business and your brand and your audience and I'm actually so thankful to be kind of media adjacent right now.

Millie:

and at a very niche publication where I think, yeah, I, you know, Brian was making fun of me because I was like, well we're the number one search result for what is Hamas.

Brian:

Well,

Brian:

it's

Millie:

was like, why?

Bridget:

commercially

Brian:

I don't think.

Brian:

it's not good intent traffic at the end of the

Millie:

day.

Millie:

It is good intent though, if you're a student writing their paper.

Millie:

And I think, again, just matching, like, how to use algorithms for your business and audience is, is the secret if there is one.

Brian:

Okay, so what and what, what are the KPIs in this media adjacent business?

Brian:

I mean, is it still traffic at the end of the day or are you, or what are you trying to

Renn:

to do?

Bridget:

think

Brian:

do?

Millie:

I think I get to develop that right now, but I would say, yes, it's still very much is impact and relevant.

Millie:

So, got, it has bits of kind of the Texas Tribune, wide distribution, wide impact.

Millie:

It's really a public service model.

Millie:

but they also, I, I think there's a very clear user need around research.

Millie:

We're a think tank.

Millie:

If you want to come know everything about U.

Millie:

S.

Millie:

policy on China, You should be able to do that, and we don't really meet that user need 100 percent right now.

Millie:

So that's a clear need and just going back to kind of the product, innovation and development.

Millie:

That's a very clear reason to come directly to us versus

Millie:

searching in Google, like, tell me everything about China are searching an AI.

Millie:

You have, like, a known Brand and a trusted brand where we're over 100 years old.

Millie:

We are nonpartisan, independent and have Members and fellows across the political spectrum were also membership organization, which you can apply to, so they're to me.

Millie:

They're very clear user needs and being able to identify that for your business.

Millie:

You can then develop products within that and for audience segments within that.

Brian:

Yeah, that's something that we have discussed, right, is building

Bridget:

And it's

Bridget:

very different for publishers who've been around to say, what is the job to be done and for whom are you doing it?

Bridget:

And then what you alluded to earlier with Adam is, what is the format of that content that serves?

Bridget:

And it may, may, may not be an article.

Bridget:

going forward as much.

Bridget:

And so it's a very new muscle, I think for publishers to actually understand their segmentation, building product development around it.

Bridget:

but this idea of this monolithic general news product is gone.

Bridget:

You know, we really have to hyper serve if we are going to live in a, in a world without Google and, and Facebook.

Brian:

So give, give, a specific

Renn:

example of

Bridget:

Um, we have a LinkedIn newsletter about commercial real estate for Houston.

Bridget:

We have a product called, Capital Confidential, which is, state news in our Times Union product and it's an entirely different, it's a different set of content, it's a different set of features, and then when we think about developing those features, into the future, we may be getting, nerding out on all of the state laws and analyzing them and that's not a bunch of articles.

Brian:

Okay, so, How do you end up having a cohesive product if you're like slicing it up like this and does the, does the newspaper even then exist?

Brian:

Really?

Brian:

I mean, because it's been so

Bridget:

so atomized,

Bridget:

we know the audience for the general news product.

Bridget:

We've been at it for a long time.

Bridget:

We feel really clear about, you know, who, what is the ceiling of people who want to read a bunch of articles about news in their, in their locality.

Bridget:

We're going to continue to optimize, get really good at that, but that's a really small portion of any local market.

Bridget:

There's lots of really interesting people with needs that are not interested in reading just like a bunch of stories every

Brian:

month.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Ryan, you have

Renn:

Just a few

Renn:

newspapers.

Renn:

Just a few.

Renn:

you know, when you say monolith, I, that resonates with me.

Renn:

But I don't think of it as a monolith, I think of it as a center, you know.

Renn:

And rather than being atomized, I think of it as a pollination.

Renn:

You know, the idea that you still, you still have a center, and whether it's a website or a presence or a destination, it still represents a center, and I don't think it becomes diffuse just because it takes different shapes as it materializes around different channels to meet the different needs of different, you know, different people at different points in the day and different points in their life.

Renn:

I absolutely think that that's true.

Renn:

I think the thing that looks most scary is the thing that we could potentially really lean into.

Renn:

The

Renn:

whole time I was reading, I read your, your survey today and it was really interesting because in most cases I was like, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Renn:

And also just listening today to all the folks you spoke to, the thing that kept coming back to my mind was, do both.

Renn:

You know, we always have to just do both.

Renn:

We have to do both.

Renn:

So we have to win at search, and we also have to get direct traffic.

Renn:

We have to be clearly defined as a news product, but we also have to be diverse and become a service product.

Renn:

You know, we have to be a center.

Brian:

And

Bridget:

but

Renn:

we also have to be everywhere, we have to be liquid, you know, flowing to, to, to all of the places where the people

Brian:

would be like, you know, blowing into all the places where people are.

Brian:

But, sure.

Brian:

Or they can be in, in conflict

Bridget:

be in

Renn:

Or they can be in, in conflict in terms of their context or their occasion.

Renn:

I think that cohesive to me means to have a through line of brand identity, to be able to maintain trust, you know, wherever you go, and also to have a set of, expected attributes or features, like usability or clarity or setting context the way that was discussed earlier.

Renn:

Those are all the things I think make it cohere.

Renn:

It doesn't have to cohere in a format, just to your point.

Renn:

You know, whether it's a newsletter, or it's a blog post somewhere, or even if it's something on social.

Renn:

It, it, it all coheres by theme, and by voice, and by brand, and by expectation.

Bridget:

Is this where

Bridget:

we're going to talk about AI Brian?

Millie:

AI, Brian?

Brian:

I know it's 19, so we can, we can do that in

Millie:

do

Renn:

minutes.

Bridget:

in five minutes.

Bridget:

We have to do our core work and the production of our product more efficiently because we are going to have to serve multiple

Bridget:

audiences in a different way.

Bridget:

I mean, I think, the act of journalism and the act of writing a story, publishing a story, all the stuff in the middle is arduous.

Bridget:

Wouldn't you agree?

Bridget:

Yeah, and so I, I think things like that, making it better, you know,

Brian:

be, um, Well that's why I never it, with the ai it's like, why are you coming for like the writing, I mean, I'm biased, but like, why are you coming for the writing first when there's all this other junk in between that would be better to c

Bridget:

my colleague Patty Mikulski's here.

Bridget:

She runs a group called the Dev Hub.

Bridget:

They have a great little Slack bot that is AI, generated and our writers go in there and say, Give me all the SEO words, give me the DAC, give me the H2, right?

Bridget:

And so

Bridget:

The goal is to, make it better and quicker and let everyone use it.

Bridget:

And then how much time can we save to be doing the new and trying to figure out, you know, some of these new audiences?

Renn:

What

Brian:

what are some other ways that you're, we've gone a day, but, what are some other ways you're actually using it for

Renn:

efficiency?

Bridget:

we

Renn:

I think,

Bridget:

do a lot of data visualization and data reporting.

Bridget:

It's still quite manual, and we think that there's ways to automate and scale, using AI.

Bridget:

and obviously that's, we feel pretty significantly bringing, utility instead of an article to users through data visualization and engagement, you know, ability to kind of personalize is the future, so we, we want to be able to do it quickly and efficiently.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Millie, do you see the potential for, AI to change, like, consumer facing products that you make?

Brian:

I mean, I can imagine, you know, being able to, I

Renn:

I mean,

Renn:

the

Bridget:

You know,

Brian:

the council like has so much content and it's archives and, I don't know.

Brian:

I can imagine in someone trying to understand the world like I mean, I've done it with with perplexity.

Brian:

I mean, for my Hamas, you know, information needs, I guess.

Millie:

may I give two, actually, I, I wasn't planning to share, like, two, these two anecdotes, not really anecdotes, but stories around, that helped me think about, kind of, AI in the context of history, which is the first one being, You know, when, the camera came into being, painters, got up in a fuss, because they were like, they're taking our jobs, the people are just taking photographs of the thing that we, would arduously paint, right?

Millie:

And, obviously, the camera exists today, and continues to exist, and so do paintings, and, but something interesting that came out of that period was impressionism.

Millie:

Which was a whole new form of painting that was not replicable through cameras.

Millie:

And I share that to think about like, what is kind of the equivalent

Brian:

impressionist

Millie:

format that is so unique to, and not replicable by AI?

Millie:

The, the second one is less about the format itself, but about kind of, the context in which, embroidery change.

Millie:

So embroidery used to be very manual and, crafted, and then embroidery machines came into being, and people made them mass, and it was actually really cool, because you, made them so fast, and you could do more complicated designs, because it was machine and, more actually, precise in many ways.

Millie:

But then there was so much embroidery because it was so much easier to make so this like the quantity grew So then handcrafted embroidery became more in demand.

Millie:

So that was very much a market shift and like Consumer shift in the product itself.

Millie:

So I I'm I use this two examples to think about what new formats might we get in new ways of doing a big report, which is something I think Tink would do, like, how might we do that differently?

Millie:

Would we do it more, and we kind of talked about this, which is,

Renn:

How do

Millie:

you productize expertise?

Millie:

Because that's really the product.

Millie:

It's the intellectual capital of our China fellow or expert.

Millie:

It's not the report.

Millie:

and then the other thing is, what is the value that people will place on different things as supply of them increase or decrease?

Millie:

And how does that change?

Millie:

So those are two questions.

Millie:

I don't know the answer to them.

Millie:

I hope you do.

Brian:

that.

Brian:

I hope

Renn:

the answer.

Brian:

Brian, do you have the answer?

Brian:

About embroidery.

Brian:

give you a different question then.

Brian:

or you can field either one.

Brian:

we, we heard more talk about, the homepage.

Brian:

I can't believe in 2024.

Brian:

but it's back, I don't know, maybe a little bit.

Brian:

But it really depends.

Brian:

is it, is it realistic for a, a general news site, a local news site to, to have for the homepage to be

Renn:

be that important?

Renn:

So, I think you're very tired of the homepage, right?

Renn:

And also the article page as well as just websites in general.

Renn:

I don't see them as going away as such, I see their form changing.

Renn:

I think that having a central location that represents the destination, the home, of an entity, is what will persist.

Renn:

And otherwise, to the point of the person who spoke earlier, the brands will simply disappear.

Renn:

And then the raw materials that go to fuel these AI tools will also disappear and will have burned down all the trees in the rainforest, you know?

Brian:

rainforest.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

But I, I

Brian:

wonder if, like I always thought that, and Bridget, I'd like your, you're always perceptive about this, but I always thought like, you know,

Millie:

Google's,

Brian:

roughly,

Brian:

it's, it's incentives were to keep the open web going because it, it made tons of money off the open web.

Brian:

And now all of these changes are happening in which I feel like the, the,

Renn:

those,

Bridget:

it's it's

Brian:

not as aligned as it used to be.

Brian:

And,

Bridget:

I mean, we're doing a pretty deep analysis now of saying, like, let's triple down on, on the app, right?

Bridget:

and we, our app users are so happy, and all we've really done in the app is made a really lovely little reading experience, but if you think of it as a tool, or, or, you know, if you want everything about San Francisco in your pocket, it would be in an app, and it would be useful.

Bridget:

Cool.

Bridget:

so, you know, in this new ecosystem where, you know, we were so dependent on the Google Revenue Machine and if you start to look at the kind of engagement and,

Brian:

uh,

Bridget:

to be made with a really good utility app so that the user doesn't need to go to the home page, but they have, you know, your apps are the things that are useful, and so you use them all the time, and, and so we're, we're very interested in that as a, as a place to go, but it, it has to be more than just reading articles.

Renn:

I think it's a mistake that we make to think that Google's actions are rationally strategic and that they're not having a war inside their own organization between, you know, their, their different, you know, their different organizations within, within their,

Renn:

you

Brian:

a lot of times over the years people have assumed within Google that there's some grand plan when there's a lot of factions within

Renn:

I think, you know, with these algorithm changes to me, they're like, They're like your friend that taught you to drink and then became a sober evangelist suddenly.

Millie:

mean,

Renn:

they just,

Bridget:

we, we, I mean.

Bridget:

The bloom is off the rose on, on Google as the geniuses in the room.

Renn:

Yeah, and the, the, you know, and the, the, their traffic business, they are a portal for others, the open web, and now suddenly they're talking about these, you know, the AI overviews and the generative AI, and by the way, people at Google hate that thing, and it's obviously a war between one initiative and another initiative, very,

Bridget:

very, clear.

Bridget:

We, we sometimes, give them information about their products that they were not

Brian:

products that

Millie:

fun.

Millie:

May I just go to bat for the

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

I

Millie:

is, I, I think if you think of homepages as a product for your most engaged segment, they're so effective and you can tell homepages that are actually, treated as a product, and are staffed as such, and are curated as such,

Bridget:

that

Millie:

versus ones that are like, this was, you just put stuff up.

Brian:

Do you have a favorite

Renn:

Homepages.

Millie:

mean, I'll say CFR.

Millie:

org, but, but New York Times, because I know how much care they put into it, and I know that they would never put like, But they would never have an algorithm curate the top story because that's very much a showcase of their editorial judgment.

Millie:

And that is the core product in the same way that I think CFR's core product is intellectual capital.

Millie:

So I, I think treated that way, it becomes a really effective product that allows your most engaged users.

Millie:

And they are the most engaged.

Millie:

Because We saw this at the Text Tribune, like, our audiences that came straight to the homepage clicked around more, and stayed longer, and,

Renn:

shopping.

Millie:

and they're, they weren't shopping on the Text Tribune, but yeah, they're shopping if it's a shopping site, and, you know, Vogue actually has done a really amazing job under Lisa Aiken to Build out these like shopping experience pages and I love when pages become products in and of themselves and you can see the care and curation because, you know, Vogue's core is the curation of buy this Zara thing next to this, very expensive Thoreau thing, you know,

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Do you know who has a

Renn:

great

Renn:

homepage?

Renn:

Who?

Renn:

Daily

Renn:

Mail.

Millie:

Yeah,

Millie:

it's so effective.

Millie:

You

Brian:

reason is they're super user focused.

Brian:

They're giving people exactly what they want, and they've always been, they've always grinded out that homepage.

Brian:

Martin Clark was like, he was obsessed with what was, he was the long time editor of Daily Mail.

Brian:

He was just absolutely obsessed with the homepage.

Brian:

Everyone was talking about side doors and getting traffic.

Brian:

He was like, no, it's the homepage.

Millie:

that's the care and like obsession I'm talking about.

Millie:

And you can see that in the product.

Renn:

Yeah.

Bridget:

Agreed for all the reasons.

Bridget:

It serves our subscribers and our loyalists.

Bridget:

I, I think a lot about, content experiences that you have right on the page.

Bridget:

It's not just a bunch of links.

Bridget:

Even if they're smart and algorithmically driven.

Bridget:

Is there a reason to go to the homepage?

Bridget:

And there's something that you can only find on the homepage.

Renn:

on the homepage

Brian:

homepage?

Bridget:

that is

Brian:

you can only page, um, that is special.

Brian:

It's very important for us and

Renn:

It's very important for us.

Renn:

And it dovetails with the, you know, the, the wanting to be less hooked on Google Traffic.

Renn:

we really want to build commerce experiences.

Renn:

students.

Renn:

So in terms of AI, we are working on these kinds of, you know, journalist assistive tools, to be able to help them to create stories and things like that.

Renn:

And there are a lot of internal tools and things that we're working on to enhance our homegrown CMS.

Renn:

Which, by the way, we, we have a really good WordPress VIP component in our CMS.

Renn:

So it works well that

Brian:

so

Renn:

still have a

Millie:

name?

Millie:

Yeah,

Renn:

Yeah, it's called Presto.

Renn:

I, I, I didn't, I didn't name it.

Renn:

But it's not, I don't, you know Yeah, they all have names.

Renn:

but in terms of the consumer facing experiences, you know, we want to improve their ability to consume content in different formats, of course, quite fluidly, and that ties up with, you know, with, with AI as well.

Renn:

we're doing summarization and that kind of thing so that they can have, the level of fidelity that they'd like and go deeper if they want to.

Renn:

But we're also working on building commerce experiences and other utility experiences for our consumers because we really want to become a service rather than just a new service.

Renn:

And we really want, you know, consumers to see us as an information place and entertainment and utility destination.

Renn:

And honestly this is so that we can continue to preserve the news and the As a core offering without so much burden placed on it to be profit making, even though it should make all the profit that it can.

Millie:

can.

Brian:

When you look at, the development of AI, not now, but, like, where it will be, do you think it will end up being an important tool in the content creation, aspect of it?

Brian:

I mean, people treat it like sacrosanct, and there's no reason necessarily that it can't be a major part of it.

Brian:

There's, you know, there was always this story about local news.

Brian:

It was like, who's gonna go to the school board meetings?

Brian:

Well, I think AI's gonna go to the school board

Renn:

Yeah.

Renn:

And AI's gonna read the transcript and AI's gonna read the press release.

Renn:

And they're going to, you know, they're gonna read the, they're gonna take a look at the the party flyer and turn it into a quick story and things like that.

Renn:

We don't have any immediate plans for that sort of thing, but Sure.

Renn:

Those things are going to happen.

Renn:

All the things that you read out there that you think are.

Renn:

perfunctory and tedious and really not impressive as writing, you know, those things, yeah, they are going to be replaced, probably.

Renn:

But I really, I honestly believe that what AI is going to do is to continue to give tools to shorten the, you know, the, the, to reduce the effort to create efficiencies.

Renn:

Efficiency is a word we use a lot.

Renn:

But what it really means is, serve up to me all the things.

Renn:

If you had an army of, you know, of, of assistants, what would you have them doing?

Renn:

You would have them bringing you all the things for you to consider, to use your own judgment, to decide to use them as inputs to your actual own creative product.

Renn:

And then you might have that creative product then parsed out into multiple other formats and used many different ways.

Renn:

also by those assistants.

Renn:

So why not have those things done through automation?

Renn:

But at the core, you know, until it becomes, until we see differently, original thought isn't something that these tools are able to produce, at least right now.

Renn:

And they're able to produce synthesis and duplicative material.

Renn:

And unless you keep feeding them with original thought, they're not going to get any smarter.

Renn:

It's going to eat itself rather than feed itself.

Renn:

And we're already seeing evidence of, of how it's, you know, how it's being disabled by the consumption of its own output.

Renn:

So, I don't wish for this tool to be, these tools to be broken or bad or go away.

Renn:

I don't at all.

Renn:

I'm not a Luddite in any way.

Renn:

I really am into the progress.

Renn:

But I am very conscious of the fact that there are elements in what human beings do that are the whole reason that these things have any impressive capabilities at all.

Renn:

And those things aren't going to be replicable anytime soon.

Renn:

I think

Renn:

language is very easy to replicate.

Renn:

But

Renn:

thought and idea is really not that easy to replicate.

Renn:

You know, the way that

Brian:

human

Brian:

beings

Brian:

they're often conflated

Renn:

They really

Brian:

about it because I think like the way it's been positioned by a lot of the tech people is, is that they're the same and that like thought is as expressed in, in language is it's, it's like the same

Renn:

Well,

Bridget:

it's, journalism is the creation of new facts, and the thoughts along with that, and that is, there will, there is no one that can do that at, at the moment, unless you are calling and, and asking a question and getting an answer.

Bridget:

And so, I tried to really hate the future, and get out of, but I think that feels exciting to me, that, that actually isolates the output from the actual value that,

Bridget:

that, creators and

Bridget:

journalists

Bridget:

bring.

Millie:

Just on a very practical note, too, because we just finished our AI policy.

Millie:

We definitely made that delineation between language versus thought, especially in a think tank.

Millie:

so it, I, I totally agree.

Millie:

Yeah.

Brian:

before I want to, I want to get to everyone's like favorite product experience, but, we didn't talk about high school sports.

Brian:

I think we're going to talk about high school sports cause we talk about, you know, finding high value segments and, you know, within everyone's audience, there are segments that are higher value than others.

Brian:

And high school sports is one of those.

Brian:

And if you can isolate that and build products around that, People who have children, particularly who are in high school sports, are

Bridget:

are Right, so, jobs to be done for high school sports parents.

Bridget:

they want coverage, like they're a pro sports team.

Bridget:

They want data.

Bridget:

they need talent.

Bridget:

They need people who are, running high school sports that really are deeply embedded and know the players.

Bridget:

you know, we have a Game Time product in Connecticut.

Bridget:

It's easily our number one, influence to conversion, right?

Bridget:

It's just, it brings in, because it's just really good at serving parents of high school sports.

Bridget:

So, what else can we give them to make it stickier?

Bridget:

And are there partnerships we can do?

Bridget:

And,

Bridget:

You know, it may, it may not be the same in every market, which is the challenge of, what do you do and not do, but,

Bridget:

There, that is a perfect example of, like, hyper serving this really important, actual, if you look at the psychographics of that person, it's someone who should be in our universe.

Brian:

Okay, so I wanna do a version of good product.

Brian:

give me a good product, good product

Renn:

experience,

Millie:

I love the app FitBot.

Millie:

It is a workout app.

Millie:

I was on Peloton with the human instructors, but had to get off.

Millie:

but FitBot is algorithmic.

Millie:

It, like, I can choose my, I can choose, what type of muscle group and like what type of strength training and it knows what like muscle groups I've worked out and generates a workout plan for me.

Millie:

and it also has a really, really good share output to Strava, which is actually the real social network and it's just like a really great experience, both in and of itself and also as like a shareable thing to other places, which I think is always the hook.

Renn:

Okay, that's a good one.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

That's a good one.

Bridget:

It's so funny because I was going to say down dog, which is a very similar thing for yoga.

Bridget:

But the, the thing that's been bringing me the most joy lately is car play.

Bridget:

I drive five and a half hours

Renn:

hour.

Bridget:

It's so good.

Bridget:

it reads me things.

Bridget:

I voice operate.

Bridget:

It reads me my text.

Bridget:

I really want it to read me my, what used to be Twitter, but I want it to read me my social

Brian:

Speed.

Brian:

I don't

Brian:

think you would want

Bridget:

that on your job.

Bridget:

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Bridget:

Keep

Brian:

unless

Brian:

your Twitter feed is

Brian:

very

Brian:

different than mine.

Bridget:

Yeah.

Bridget:

But I, like, it's a, and the, you know, if we think about jobs to be done, it's really good at audio and understanding,

Bridget:

so.

Millie:

it's kind

Millie:

of like Apples sleeper killer app, I think.

Millie:

Yeah,

Millie:

totally.

Renn:

I think

Renn:

that their health app, this is not my choice, but their health app is, the sleeper for me, you know, on the, in the Apple ecosystem, especially when you get to be old and all of your medical records and all of your stuff and your blood pressure and your sleep patterns and your weight and all that stuff is all in there if you let it be in there.

Renn:

And that's really, really super useful.

Renn:

But, the one, weirdly, an app that I hated before I subscribed and now I love, which is Duolingo, because as a non subscriber, the promotion within it is so obnoxious that it's almost impossible for me to use.

Renn:

But then when I paid for it, and most of that stuff disappeared, so the kind of the kawaii cutesy sort of, you know, gamification is a little annoying.

Renn:

But the ability to really pick up languages rudimentarily, you know, I refreshed my French before we went to Cannes, you know, and it's really, I use it all the time.

Renn:

It's such

Bridget:

a

Bridget:

pleasure.

Bridget:

He dropped

Millie:

pleasure.

Millie:

What's your streak?

Renn:

Oh, I, you know, I don't know.

Millie:

You don't know your

Renn:

No, because I'm not really so much into the gamification thing.

Renn:

I do feel the dopamine when I get.

Bridget:

rewarded,

Bridget:

I

Brian:

I do.

Bridget:

Are you actually learning?

Renn:

I am, well, I'm relearning, I guess.

Renn:

I guess that's better.

Renn:

But I think you could learn an original language quite, with much greater facility than you can with a lot of other tools I've tried to use.

Bridget:

definitely.

Bridget:

Have you tried Babel?

Renn:

I have, and I find it to be a little bit professorial.

Renn:

I really like Duolingo, because it's also silly.

Renn:

Yeah.

Renn:

And I even like their annoying notifications because they're really funny.

Renn:

I'm so sad, you know.

Renn:

I really do enjoy that.

Brian:

Oh, I have a question, a final question on this.

Brian:

Not to add on too much of a good note.

Brian:

Does anyone voluntarily, do you think, in your data, actually choose to get desktop

Bridget:

notifications?

Millie:

Absolutely not.

Brian:

Does anyone?

Brian:

Because, like, I

Bridget:

I know

Bridget:

I'm I'm gonna play the fifth 'cause I'm, reviewing my roadmap for Q4

Renn:

Desktop notifications for news products?

Bridget:

Yeah,

Bridget:

no.

Millie:

I

Brian:

thought so.

Brian:

Cool.

Brian:

Thank

Millie:

you

Bridget:

so

Bridget:

much.

Bridget:

Thanks Brian.

Millie:

for

Millie:

having me.

Millie:

Alright, all for coming.

Millie:

This is

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