Re:filtered #1: A place for legacy media amid, and after, the news apocalypse

Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter.

If you only have a minute: 

• I try to make a case of how legacy media institutions could now play a vital role by becoming incubators for future media entrepreneurs, focusing on mentoring skills such as open-minded listening, fairness, empathy, and civic engagement. 
• How impact could be measured: In how many storytellers have we instilled a product mindset, helping them create offerings that meet functional and communitarian needs, and that offer delight in encouraging participation in civic debates?
• Below, this and more on how legacy media institutions can weather the news apocalypse and some recent must-reads in the intersection of civic media and tech. 

Now a bit longer: Again, thank you! Since you’re among its first subscribers, you’ll likely know that I am transitioning from an (amazing) management role at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to focus on the next chapter of my career, and of media. 

My last role made me a more public person than I had been, and that forced me to more frequently and openly share my thoughts in a clearer manner than I had except perhaps to the kind audiences of classrooms and at journalism conferences. That was great, it challenged me and sharpened my thought process, and I want to keep learning, hence this newsletter. 

I hope this is useful to you especially if you’re working in editorial strategy and news product or tracking media freedom implications of tech or geopolitical developments. That’s pretty broad but intentionally so since financial, technological and geopolitical change has been converging into one massive problem for journalism right now that needs to be looked at more broadly to be understood and responded to. 

I’ll also be using this newsletter as an excuse to talk to people doing interesting work in this space to learn how they make sense of this moment, and to share what I’ve seen that’s noteworthy but may not be otherwise top of mind. 

Much of my work at RFE/RL centered on countering the wrecking of public spaces by technologically advanced autocracies. While often uniquely grim, I have found that the challenges we face aren’t at the heart much different from other newsrooms confronting challenges in relatively open societies: trust and relevance are fading fast or are gone.

As habituation to media institutions is gradually vanishing globally, the performative aspects of “broadcasting” are gradually but irreversibly ineffective. Meanwhile it’s not that consumption of media has diminished, the digital pedestals of media organizations have just been pulled away under them.

When we talk of news avoidance, we’re effectively seeing audiences no longer choosing to consume that offering. People will always seek out information, inspiration, and a sense of belonging.

Hence, keeping legacy media alive the way they have been rather than creating new paths forward to advance civic mindset and social accountability won’t be enough. 

As my former colleague Elena Nechaeva, a savvy media entrepreneur from Kyrgyzstan (check out her work), pointed out, the economics also haven’t worked out: “Even censorship and severe pressure on the media from the state are not such a big problem. We can live with it and work with it. The issue of the financial model, it seems, is in the foreground.”

That’s so true, and it’s so infuriating sometimes to see great talent struggling everywhere while so many legacy operations get away pretending it’s business as usual. It's understandable that there are more voices saying that “it may finally be time to give up on old journalism” and that’s great but it will take time.

Especially to Elena’s point, the old models may play a supporting role in this transition period. There’s an additional opportunity to take on a new role: they could become incubators for future media entrepreneurs, preparing them to partake in a diverse public debate with the goal of eventually emancipating themselves from these institutions.

Viewing existing institutions through this lens, our expectations (and their operations) could dramatically shift. The success could be measured in the number of sleuths and storytellers these organizations have mentored in listening with an open mind, in challenging assumptions, in enforcing fairness and advancing empathy, in uncovering new information and telling stories collaboratively, and in understanding and steering a public conversation on an issue that otherwise would not be discussed. 

Another yardstick could be: In how many storytellers committed to civic engagement have we instilled a product mindset, helping them create offerings that meet functional and communitarian needs, and that offer delight in encouraging participation in civic debates. Imagine places that nurture and mentor such talent – safe havens from violence, threats and legal muzzling for independent inquiry. That may require some structural change, but it’s possible, and would go a long way in guaranteeing their future relevance and effectiveness. 

If you’re working in similar situations, here are a few lessons I wish someone had told me. I hope some of these points can help navigate this disruptive moment that many experience as deeply disorienting. This isn’t solely based on my experience, but informed by the experiences of peers at other organizations who kindly shared their thoughts (you know who you are). 

Lesson 1: You need audience ambassadors.

The hardest part of newsroom management is creating the conditions in which everyone can feel both safe and ambitious about pursuing shared goals. When nothing is certain, you need a culture that allows for shared exploration. It’s not me versus you, it’s our venture against the odds of success. That requires people in bridge roles who can continuously build an evolving consensus on what is happening and what needs to be done. Setting up a News Products team transformed our approach, helping our journalism increasingly align with audience needs, rather than individual (often legitimate) publishing agendas. This has been nothing short of a game changer because the challenge becomes a shared and an external one. 

Lesson 2: Strategy isn’t just a big word, it’s a tough job.

Journalism schools excel in teaching the more creative parts of media: content creation and distribution tactics. So many newsrooms are now led by former editors trained like me in content creation, and so many of us tend to look to content as the cure-all to greater relevance. But what’s missing is often strategy and strategy needs training, coaching, structure and experience; and then it requires tons of time and energy to listen and communicate. If you get it right, the teams are aligned in their understanding of the outside world, the organization’s aspirations and how they can contribute. If you don’t, they will muddle, set their own goals, and your best talent will move on. The vibrancy we now see at many of RFE/RL’s bureaus came from investing time in establishing a shared understanding of the why and how we work. Looking at you, Chișinău. 

Lesson 3: Safety first, quality journalism follows.

Psychological and physical safety are non-negotiable prerequisites to good journalism – internally in terms of newsroom and corporate culture, and externally in terms of how the organization responds to outside threats. To tackle safety, it’s so important to acknowledge that one is never really safe. Once there’s a shared understanding that one can only reduce risks and that there is a shared commitment to doing so, a lot can be done. J-schools: obligatory digital security training (for journalists’, sources’ and audiences’ sake) should really be part of your syllabi. Tech stack vendors: what can you do better to keep sources, journalists and audiences safe? There may be a competitive advantage beyond going open source. 

Lesson 4: Community and belonging often transcend geography.

Relevant locally-rooted media is important and in dire need. But… there are also so many non-functional needs- , identity- and values-based media opportunities that can transcend geographical identities to build on as foundations for new media ventures. RFE/RL’s great migrant team's persistent efforts in community building have been instrumental in exploring these new avenues, but it’s really, really hard! Also, community building and co-creation is a lot of work that goes far beyond engagement-baiting (The “Like! Comment! Share!” frames really need to go away.).

Lesson 5: There’s untapped potential in remote reporting.

The scope for OSINT and other forms of remote reporting is vast, particularly for exile media. There’s an opportunity to leverage these skills at far greater scale not just in covering the vitally important stories of war and crime but across various beats, including healthcare and education. Can we provide comparative information on hospital quality (incl. corruptions) across China? Can we track fertilizer price inflation or harvests remotely for farming communities in Afghanistan? There is a ton of opportunity if the focus of journalistic work is more firmly centered on news utility. 

Lesson 6: Audience research should go lean.

The shift from traditional broadcasting to digital media and now to whatever comes next requires a new approach to understanding opportunities and a reset in expectations on measuring success. Design research needs to go mainstream, but left on its own has stumbled. It can only make a difference if meaningfully paired with strategy first and then product-level execution. Greater data literacy, data skepticism and lean data approaches to goal setting can do a ton of good (esp. for funders – you incentivize behavior). It may just require some more courage to seek insights and not holistic certainty in increasingly patchy data. 

Lesson 7: So much to learn from marketing, but it needs navigating with integrity.

Especially when shared on ad-funded platforms, I’ve seen how often digital marketing can become a double-edged sword for media, creating relatively cheap and low-effort illusions of reach and impact that can prove fatal over the long term. It's so essential to align content with value proposition, as my colleague Luka – who is now building RFE/RL’s marketing department – always emphasizes. I am really excited about the strides we've made in marketing strategy, implementing a smart market segmentation by market access that could become a model for other public media. I would also love to learn from others on this. Are there any public media marketing groups? 

Lesson 8: Shared learning -> shared aspirations.

The RFE/RL Academy project has taught me how organically a community can be built around shared aspirations. It also taught me how shared learning practices can go a long way in signaling institutional investment in people, making them more eager to stay, adapt, and to attract new talent. There will be success, accolades and social impact if reporters feel that their work is better because other colleagues contribute to their success in a sophisticated distribution of labor. Again, this is what legacy media can still and should be: incubators of diverse talent, socializers of a division of labor in media. (I wish I had a copy editor for this newsletter!) 

Lesson 9: Rituals are a resilience tool.

Community is an antidote to adversity. If you manage change that is really hard and not immediately tangible, establish rituals that document and celebrate the incremental collective progress made (and the mistakes averted). In this way, shared memories are gradually created, and a community can form. While this may happen organically, this really needs to be intentional, genuine and must never feel “corporate” to succeed. I’d love to see more inspiration-sharing on this from other newsrooms. If you have a good example, please share! Hyper Island has a great toolbox.)

Lesson 10: Prepare for your departure from day one.

Newsroom management is often about tough choices, often with no ideal outcomes. It always is controversial and it should be because it has consequences to who gets to speak and who doesn’t, what is discussed and what not; Naturally, not all plans will work out and not everyone will be on board. I’m so lucky I weathered my storms. What these have taught me though is that it pays to always, from day one in the job, think about what will happen when you’re no longer there, and coach the likely next generation to lead effectively. They will be stewards of cultural transformation when you’re still there, and will outgrow you, which is the best outcome imaginable. 

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Future editions will be much shorter!

I would also love to hear from you on your thoughts and include them in the next email. Anything I got wrong? Anything that’s missing? What should I be looking into to help better understand the current disruption of media. What gives you hope? What worries you? Let me know. 

What If…

Going forward, I’ll structure these newsletters around a short thought experiment (“what if…”). These won’t be perfect, and definitely not always original, but meant as thought experiments on what could be possible. 

Here is a “what if” I hope to read up more on to explore further next month:

What if public media offered their own LLM service? Imagine a BBC or NPR model that, wherever applied, can carry the trustworthiness of the brand and informs accordingly purely based on questions asked and needs articulated – publicly funded and regulated, widely accessible and interoperable.

Let me know if you have thoughts on this or if you or know someone I should talk to. I would also love to host your what ifs in the future. 

Great Reads

I’ll also share a few links to posts, stories, podcasts that offer insights on the future of media and digital information spaces more broadly, and end with a shout out to someone or something inspiring in media that crossed my feeds.  

Internet Stories

The New Yorker: Global and national efforts to regulate the internet have intensified, reflecting a shift from early laissez-faire attitudes towards more government intervention amidst debates on digital sovereignty. 

AccessNow: Billions of people in at least 23 countries are at risk of internet shutdowns in 2024 during election periods. Senegal experienced internet blackouts as the president delayed an upcoming election. Pakistan blocked an investigative news site Fact Focus.

Ars Technica: The end of Google's cached webpage service ends a useful way to access blocked websites in many countries with targeted censorship.

MIT Technology Review: Despite attempts to build a self-contained tech ecosystem, Russia faces significant challenges to creating viable contenders to YouTube and Instagram (but also to surveillance?) due to the loss of international collaboration, funding, and a skilled tech workforce. 

404 Media: OnlyFake not only generates high-quality fake IDs but also offers metadata alteration features, allowing fraudsters to fabricate the device, date, time, and GPS coordinates of the photo, making the IDs appear even more authentic.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Watermarking schemes for distinguishing AI-generated content from human-generated content are unlikely to be effective due to ease of removal and the ability for adversaries to manipulate or eliminate watermarks.  

Machines on Paper: There’s a need for community-driven web spaces for preserving the open web’s diversity. But how that can happen is still unclear. 

Platform Stories

Columbia Journalism Review: “The concentration of control over AI by a small handful of major technology companies must — and will — remain a key area of scrutiny.”

Platformer: on Arc’s new generative search: "It is clear that there is no platform coming to save journalism. And there are an increasingly large number of platforms who seem intent on killing it." 

Anil Dash: “‘Wherever you get your podcasts’ is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.” 

The Verge: Smart categorization of social media users: lurkers, influencers, commenters, reply guys, and posters (including trolls). Each playing a unique role in the ecosystem of text-based social platforms, the balance between these user types is crucial for the success of a platform.

Wired: We need small-room networks—they introduce strangers to one another, building social capital and connection between people who might never interact in the physical world. But they make discussions more polarized and insulated from opposing viewpoints. 

Business Insider: “One of the things that's happened with Twitter in the past year that caused some of the initial influx [of new users on Bluesky] is a good example of why overbuilding needs to exist.” – Jay Graber, Bluesky's CEO

Pravda: YouTube reportedly shut down channels run by the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK). This can happen for a variety of reasons, but watch this space ahead of elections in March/April.  

Rest of the World: The Taliban's distribution of free SIM cards to Afghan refugees returning from Pakistan is part of a broader strategy to utilize telecommunications for surveillance, data collection, and control. 

Media Stories

New York Magazine: “Most techies now dabbling in the media are arrogant amateurs who think that because they excel in one area, they are masters of all domains.” – Excerpt from Kara Swisher’s new book

Politico: All censorship is global: A judge in India issued a court order that led Reuters to remove an investigative report on cybersecurity from its website globally, affecting free speech and access to information everywhere.

The Atlantic: The ranks of sports reporters are thinning—making it easier for athletes, owners, and leagues to conceal hard truths from the public.

Joan Westenberg: Despite the popularity of the "1,000 true fans" theory, the actual average conversion rate from follower to paying fan is about 5%, meaning a creator needs a fanbase of 20,000 followers to achieve 1,000 paying supporters, a far more daunting task.

Jeff Jarvis: A forceful plea to move away from the “mass media” model and towards a more human-scale, community-focused approach to journalism. “I’ve been trying to convince news organizations that they are not, or should not be, in content business, but that journalism is instead a service built on conversation, community, and collaboration.”

DFLR Lab: How Ukraine fights Russian disinformation: Humor “helps to impose costs on the disinformers by mocking and ridiculing them, and damaging their credibility.”

Inspiring in Media

"We are the firewall." – Jeannette Gusko, Co-CEO & MD of Correctiv. The media organization uncovered a secret plan for the forced deportations of millions of people living in Germany, triggering mass demonstrations across the country against racism and bigotry.

Her speech at one such rally is an inspiration for more values-led journalism everywhere.

“The best way to see objectivity in journalism is as a process for verifying information,” writes Carrie Brown, “not as a characteristic of an individual person.”

Expect that next email in your inbox in early March. For the next week, I'm now looking forward to a break, focusing on family time and our two senior pugs. Responses may be delayed.

If you’re in NYC toward the end of the month and have time for coffee, let me know. Given that you’ve read this far, the coffee will be on me.  

Thank you for reading.

I'll see you again next month.

P.S.: Shoutout to Rishad for his kind mention of this project in Splice Frames, his fantastic, must-read newsletter on media product and design. If you haven’t subscribed yet: you really should.