← On with Kara Swisher
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- [00:02]
Ben Smith
It's on.
- [00:13]
Kara Swisher
Hi everyone from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. Happy Thanksgiving. We've got a special holiday episode for you today. My guest is independent journalist Jessica Yellen for the founder of News Not Noise. It's a multi platform news outlet that publishes all across the Internet, mostly on substack, Instagram and YouTube. Jessica is a former television reporter. She was CNN's chief White House correspondent during the Obama administration and she is one of the first journalists to ditch mainstream media for social media. She started News not noise in 2018 and she's got deep insights into the challenges and opportunities facing independent journalists, newsfluencers and content creators during this time of waning trust in legacy news institutions. I spoke with Yellen earlier this year in front of a live audience at an event hosted by the center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We need institutions that actually defend the principles and practices of good journalism with real accountability, transparency and ethics. And the center for Journalism Ethics has been doing exactly that for 17 years. But they also need help to tackle some of the next set of challenges. So support journalism that does the that work. Donate at Go Wisc. Edu Ethics that's go Wisc edu Ethics. All right, let's get to my conversation with Jessica Yellen. Our expert question comes from Ben Smith, the co founder and editor in chief of Semaphore. Try not to eat too much turducken and stick around. Support for this show comes from March of Dimes. The US Is among the most dangerous developed nation for childbirth. Two women die from pregnancy related causes every day and two babies die every hour.
- [02:08]
It doesn't have to be that way.
- [02:10]
March of Dimes is a top national nonprofit leading the fight for the health of all moms and babies. With supporters like you, they fund research, provide education and advocacy and offer programs and services so every family can get the best possible start. Donate today at marchofdimes.org Vox that's marchofdimes.org Vox. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo, the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, and more. And the best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of Businesses have made the switch, so why not you try Odoo for free@odoo.com that's o d o o.com.
- [03:15]
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- [03:56]
Jessica Yellen
It is over.
- [03:58]
Kara Swisher
Jessica, thank you for coming on on. And thank you to the center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin Madison for hosting this conversation. I was here a couple years ago for my book, which was really wonderful. It's a wonderful school. So, Jessica, you recently said we're in, quote, in information war right now. I mean, we've been in it for a while actually, as far as I can tell. So talk about what it is, who's on which side, who's winning, and how do you expect the war to play out over the next few years?
- [04:29]
Jessica Yellen
First, it's a pleasure to be in conversation with you. Thank you for everything you do to defend the truth. I think it's a very big landscape in my world. I do my work on social media. The people who are winning the war on social media are people who understand that it's an environment built for virality, not veracity, meaning they know how to get your attention by doing the things that work. And that is truth agnostic. Right. So it's people who know how to perform on social are winning people who are backed by huge amounts of invisible money are winning people who are, well, not people, but bots. Right. Machines. That's in the digital landscape of social media, in the larger media landscape. I mean, we're at a moment where there's so much change. It seems increasingly billionaires who care about getting a message out are the ones who are increasingly controlling traditional mass media. And we're gonna have to see how that plays out and how those two things interact. I mean, for the first time this year, more people will get their news in America from social media than from any other source. That's a tectonic shift.
- [05:39]
Kara Swisher
Right.
- [05:40]
Jessica Yellen
And some of the traditionals have not been, you know, adept at capturing that audience and Figuring out how to do that transition.
- [05:47]
Kara Swisher
So when you say the billionaires are buying them up, that's a different kind of war. It's a sort of war of wealth over everything else. What do you think their goals are? And in this case, you're talking about Jeff Bezos buying the Washington Post and basically driving it into a wall on a daily basis. He does. I'm sorry.
- [06:06]
Jessica Yellen
It's terrible.
- [06:08]
Kara Swisher
He's ruined the product. But that's, you know, it's his business, it's his money. He wants to have a ridiculous, gaudy wedding in Venice. That's his right. Fine. He looks like an idiot. That's okay by me. And then the Ellisons are certainly trying to do the same at Paramount and presumably cnn, which is. It's not the rumor. That's what they're aiming for. So talk about what the goal here. If it's a war, what is the actual goal?
- [06:37]
Jessica Yellen
Listen, you have to go back to the founding of America. And our founders protected the free press as the only private business in the Constitution. That's protected because it was seen as so vital to ensuring we have a durable democracy and informing our citizens. So if the goal of the press is to ensure we have an informed citizenry, then buying up the press is to push one's view of our country onto people. In my view, it's to push a particular perspective on information. And that doesn't mean everything that we're gonna see from Pick your person, the Ellisons, or necessarily from the Murdochs, is going to be any flavor in every iteration. But I do think that we see that they're deeply skewing coverage at Fox News there, doing the same at the New York Post. And it's helping drive polarization, it's helping drive divisiveness. It's turning Americans on each other. It's not just those people. But we can't not acknowledge what they're doing.
- [07:47]
Kara Swisher
One of the things that I had an observation about is a lot of what's being bought are dying institutions. So what's the difference?
- [07:54]
Jessica Yellen
So can I step back and give you, like, a structural look at how I think this is happening? So people increasingly are getting their news on social media, and especially young people. And going forward, future generations are there. Right. A lot of what they're getting is coming from people who are picking news from legacy. So while legacy media might be less dominant and relevant to young people, they don't know that those stories are fundamentally being shaped by the choices that traditional media is making, because it's not Just in story framing, but story choice, what are they even choosing to investigate? And then social creators like me will go to the New York Times or go to CNN and take parts of what they've made and put it out on social. So folks who are buying these dying institutions understand, I think at a certain level that they're the. They rule the sea, right? They might not be in all quarters of the ocean, but they're creating the fundamental food that feeds everything in this ocean. And so I think it's kind of they're buying the source material to keep putting out their worldview.
- [09:03]
Kara Swisher
And what do you imagine the worldview being? I mean, and what's the goal? When I say what's the goal of the war? What is the goal? What is their goal?
- [09:14]
Jessica Yellen
Listen, I can't know for sure, but it sure seems like they have a big interest in ensuring that the current leadership stays in power. This current leadership is put aside any ideological issues, waving away regulations, making it a wonderful environment to do a lot of business that couldn't get done before, paving the way for this is your space. You know, just changes in tech without any, you know, government interference at all. So I think it's making the rich richer.
- [09:43]
Kara Swisher
So one of the centerpieces of this, of course, is President Trump, who has been at war with fact based journalism for a long time. It's sort of part of his brand from the beginning, fake news and everything else. He's relentlessly attacked news organizations and extracted financial gains from them. And not just rhetorically, also in the courts and via threats, via the fcc. Talk about what effect it has on journalists and how does attacks affect the way reporting is perceived by regular citizens? Because it does sink in after a while.
- [10:12]
Jessica Yellen
I think the people are divided. And I think that there's. Now, first of all, what I get more than anything else from my own audience is skepticism. So the number one question I get is, is this true? And they'll forward me something, and it can be something that I think is extremely obviously true or obviously untrue. And people, even news consumers, have lost faith in their own ability to discern what's real. Part of that's AI and they'll say, is this real or AI? But it's not only that, and I think that's partly a Trump effect, piled on with the fact that the left is constantly telling people there's disinformation, beware of propaganda. And so audiences fundamentally think they're being savvy if they disbelieve. So that's on one side and then I find in sort of like the MAGA world of the online space, just constant, relentless discrimin of whatever an official story is. So audiences are in this like never ending. They're just so black pilled, you know, that saying that they just disbelieve across the board. And certainly when it's the left questioning what's coming out from this administration as well. You asked what does that do to reporters? You know, it sort of depends where they sit and what they're covering. But you gotta have your ducks in a row, you gotta be able to defend what you've said. And I think that I will say I do see a lot of bravery. I think people who are taking, you know, uncomfortable risks, but they also have to, you know, be careful about what they're doing. There's some fear. There's real fear these days among journalists. Yeah.
- [11:51]
Kara Swisher
Here in this country. It's usually the case in other countries. Conflict.
- [11:55]
Jessica Yellen
No. I know journalism nonprofits that have worked across the globe to defend journalism and now they're working here. They do outreach and trainings on how to stay safe and how to protect your cyber footprint and all that. And journalists talk among themselves about, you know, they fear violence, you know, could they be targeted by the public? And there's, you know, fear of worse. Now that, you know, Comey has been indicted. There's fear that journalists will come next.
- [12:22]
Kara Swisher
They will come next. When you think about the effect of it, is it just the repetition of fake news? Ultimately one of the prime ability of propaganda is repetitiveness. Constant repetition of something true or not ultimately sinks into people.
- [12:39]
Jessica Yellen
You're asking why do people disbelieve? I do think it's the repetition and it's also the White House's extremely effective use of social media. And actually I think the right has been great about social media. So it's saying things are fake and then it's showing you visually a different narrative and then presenting narratives that appear real but aren't and pulling back the curtain. Trump is great at that, right. He'll put out a fake meme or video that you know is untrue, but it's showing you if the White House is creating AI content, that's bs what, what is real? You know, it just seeps into your consciousness that nothing can be trusted.
- [13:22]
Kara Swisher
So as you noted, more Americans are getting their news from social and video platforms than TV news news sites and apps. The social media video platforms are governed by algorithms. Obviously that can be tweaked to favor certain perspectives or shadow ban topics. But we have no visibility into how algorithms operate. Talk about your experience with algorithms because you spent more time dealing with them. And what are the implications of having these tech CEOs effectively control the news we get?
- [13:52]
Jessica Yellen
It is extremely difficult to do news on these platforms. I started in 2018, I was one of the only people talking about news. And it was so easy to grow then. And things have changed at different. You can literally sense in a day when an algorithm shift has happened because you come to internalize what works, you know what works, your style, this is what clicks. All of a sudden that's just tanking, right? And you have to make changes and adapt. We don't have any visibility into. And it's not one algorithm, right? There are many algorithms and they interact in ways that catch people, catch certain accounts, and can end up having the effect of suppressing the account. And that has happened to me at various times over what?
- [14:38]
Kara Swisher
Give me an example.
- [14:39]
Jessica Yellen
I mean, I've been on the platform since 2018 and so, you know, prior to Covid, I would grow 100,000 in, you know, no time at all, in months. And then I've been stuck basically at the same level for a year. I've had one video that was viewed 5 million times and 90% of it was non followers. In that scenario, you end up growing. That's what causes growth. Non followers see your content, they start following. Not happening. Shrinkage now. Why? Nobody can explain it to me. I'm lucky enough to have people inside who will talk to me and try to give me guidance and try to help. They don't know why either. They think it's weird. So it's like, you know, I have audience members telling me, I search your name and I literally cannot find you. So some people, it should be that they'll write K A R and you're famous. So Kara Swisher comes up instantly. But Shadowban, which is the term we use, means I'll type your name, and I might have to type out your full name for it to come up, or maybe it won't come up at all. And people are telling me that they can't find me or that they'll forward my account. They wanna forward a post, and the button to forward it doesn't exist anym. So what is this? Well, the organization says they don't shadow ban, that they don't target accounts. And yet I'm living this experience. Sometimes I go through this for a period of months and then all of a sudden something goes away. It's like a cold clears up. I have no idea what it is.
- [16:03]
Kara Swisher
Should there be algorithmic transparency laws in place?
- [16:07]
Jessica Yellen
100%. I mean, these are utilities. This is how we communicate. These are media platforms. The idea that they're not treated like media platforms is. It's a weird quirk of how the Internet emerged. But we need to have the political courage to, you know, regulate that.
- [16:25]
Kara Swisher
So why isn't that there? I mean, ultimately we know it's in a Twinkie now, but not for a long time. Didn't, didn't. And it was protected.
- [16:32]
Jessica Yellen
I mean, look at the campaign donations. Just. It's not how our politics works. I was hopeful that at a certain point when we realized how dangerous some of the algorithms were for young kids and for self esteem and blah, blah, blah, there'd be enough of a public outcry to pressure for change. But not with this administration and not anytime soon.
- [16:57]
Kara Swisher
So we're seeing more AI generated content. And one company recently boasted it has 5,000 AI generated podcasts and only cost them about a dollar to produce an episode. The AI generated video slop is all over social media. In fact, I think Meta is going to do a service that's just gonna be AI slop essentially. And it's easy to see how it can fuel mis and disinformation. Talk about AI generated news content when so many news consumers feel overwhelmed.
- [17:27]
Jessica Yellen
So AI generated content is difficult because very soon we're going to be at a place where it's going to be impossible to tell. Maybe we're there. Now, when I am dealing with visuals from foreign war zones where we don't have trusted sources on the ground, I sometimes just can't post it because I don't know. You know, I err on the side of caution, but if we have no visual verifiers that we trust there, it's impossible to tell what these video, if these videos are real. So that's already impacted my coverage. And then I get forwarded things all the time that I'm not comfortable posting if I can't tell the source, because who knows, right? So it's, it really, it crimps my style. Like there's a lot of stuff that's like, oh, this would go so viral. I would love to post it and it's so interesting, but I just can't confirm it.
- [18:17]
Kara Swisher
So you recently wrote a piece for the Atlantic describes the current information ecosystem wherein as an awkward adolescence of a media revolution. And you promised some innovations to help usher in a more mature system, especially for independent journalists and their audience. Let's discuss that. Talk about why you think we're in an awkward adolescence and what age, like.
- [18:35]
Jessica Yellen
12, 13, maybe 15. I think that, you know, we all people who care about the future of news spend a lot of time han wringing and bemoaning the state of journalism, the collapse of revenue models for traditional media, the lack of public engagement with the news, the fact that algorithms are destroying truth, and all this without actually sitting down and saying, okay, let's try to be creative and innovate some solutions anytime. I've tried to sit until recently. This has changed in the last six months, but until the last six months, and I've been doing this for like eight years now, whenever I try to pitch solutions, I'm silenced by people telling me how bad the situation is. So I decided, you know what, I'm just going to come up with some ideas now. I think that the media revolution is we are in this transition to a new form where it's on social and everything's gone. Where we shifted from trust being in the institutions to trust lying with the individuals, creators, right? So we've seen that shift in trust. But no systems have been stood up to help a resource, those creators and independent journalists, or help audiences discover ones that connect to their values. So the way I a good parallel, it's imperfect, but it fits is the studio system. Back in the day, long time ago in Hollywood, if you were a celebrity or star, you worked for a studio. If your studio didn't want to make your film, you're not in a film, then the studio system breaks up and everybody's their own entity. But they needed agents and lawyers and reps and people to sort of pull things together and create a new ecosystem. That's where we are.
- [20:16]
Kara Swisher
So you talk for an independent off platform certification system to help identify fact based creators, explain the mechanics of a certification system. And second, you said fact checking doesn't work because it's become politicized. Why would this be different? I mean, Trump would immediately call it fake news if he didn't like it.
- [20:33]
Jessica Yellen
So, okay, so the first part is the idea is sort of like a nonprofit entity. Think a Wikipedia type environment where there are a set of standards that define what evidence based information is. It's about a process, right? How do you check your sources? What kind of sources do you use? Transparency, disclosures? Do you change the information when the information changes? Basic journalistic principles and creators could apply to present their process and get certified, get a training. A majority of creators say they don't know how to check A fact that they don't know how journalists source information. They would like the training. So it provides a training. And then if you pass, you get some sort of Better Business Bureau seal of approval. It wouldn't necessarily live on the platforms, but if you care, you can go to this place and see which creators have the seal of approval and follow those people. Or if you have a post you're looking at and you don't know if this person's full of it or not, you could go check. Now, it'll be imperfect, but we need some options. And this is basically what magazines did, right? Magazines decided back in the day. These are my universe of freelancers that I trust who live by our standards. And as long as they do, they can be in print with us. And when they violate our standards, they aren't. Right now Trump would dismiss it. Sure. And Trump would not read the Atlantic. Trump would not obviously read the Nation. That doesn't mean it can't exist. You might need multiple certifications. Maybe MAGA has their own certification. Maybe people who care about, you know, the New York Times, I don't know.
- [22:19]
Kara Swisher
They could have their own, like extra means, Trans people, please. Sure, subscribe.
- [22:24]
Jessica Yellen
I mean, whatever your worldview is, you could have your own. But my approach is this is not for a particular ideological bent. It's for people who subscribe to the, who use a process that we agree on is evidence based.
- [22:39]
Kara Swisher
Evidence based. So your second idea is for creators to team up so they can share resources, cross promote, maybe offer bundled subscriptions. But talk about this idea of a version of this, because people, the idea of bundling and unbundling, it goes on and on, the idea back and forth. How do you survive when there's too many choices?
- [22:57]
Jessica Yellen
Well, it is a fear that I make most of my revenue from substack and there is a fear that at some point the whole audience will be like, enough, I'm subscribed to too many places. Or that you hit a ceiling. And the idea is a, I think bringing people together, creators who are like, valued. In my case it would be evidence based. Creators, right, who have sort of a similar process, could team up and be an avengers. In other words, if somebody follows me and they want to know who to trust on nutrition, it would be the person in my network, right? Like we're like valued. We operate in similar ways. So you can trust this group. So it's a signal to the public in teaming up, we would improve everyone's discovery through cross promotion. Maybe bundling also. You know, you get so Much advantage from the conversations and the cross pollination of ideas. We could share an editorial center. For example, every. I cover everything because I'm news. Anytime RFK says something, I have to go research the thing. If I didn't know about it already. There are creators out there.
- [24:01]
Kara Swisher
It's not very hard.
- [24:02]
Jessica Yellen
I know.
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Kara Swisher
Mix it up.
- [24:03]
Jessica Yellen
I know. I just want to know the science part, you know, that part which he doesn't talk about. So if there are people who are already expert in that area and they're in my network, I could ping them easily and say, right, so you create.
- [24:14]
Kara Swisher
Sort of a team is.
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Jessica Yellen
And then for the creators, the benefit would be not just a. We're so isolated, it's very hard. So having some community would be nice, but also like amortize. It's not just legal, it's healthcare. You know, healthcare is about to go up. Right. What are we all gonna do? And then, you know, growth hacking. Not everybody. A lot of these creators are just a smart person who lives in the middle of the country and doesn't know a media attorney or a growth hacker or how to find those folks. I shouldn't say I know people in the middle of the country do know all these things. But the point is we could help with discovery and resources.
- [24:57]
Kara Swisher
Sure, sure. So this idea that you also had as a plea for legacy news organization to collaborate instead of compete with creators. Talk about that. Because in theory, part of the appeal of creators is they're not beholden to these companies. And it's something I have pushed Vox very hard on. And one of the things that Scott and I did is we went around and they all wanted to own and we were like, well, we don't want to be owned, so goodbye kind of things and shut down the discussions. But it was really interesting to sort of get Vox in the frame of mind of collaborating rather than owning. And now they sign a deal a day essentially on the same map that we originally proposed to them.
- [25:34]
Jessica Yellen
Well, you are the exemplar of this. Like you were the trailblazer.
- [25:37]
Kara Swisher
I don't think they want to do that. What, collaborate. I know why, but actually I don't. I don't understand why they need to own things.
- [25:44]
Jessica Yellen
There's two different things there. I think one is in terms of owning it. I think it's what they've always done.
- [25:48]
Kara Swisher
Yes, correct.
- [25:49]
Jessica Yellen
So that would be a change. So how could they do that? It's sort of just baked into the bureaucracy. And then in terms of why won't they partner my idea of partnership is many days. I'm explaining a story that the New York Times broke. So why not actually partner with the New York Times and have them team up with creators who do that on the regular and drive people back to their publications so that they have an alliance with people who have already built a social following, know how to make content that connects on social and push out their content that way. Why did they don't do this? I think that there's probably a measure of snobbery, that there's a desire not to partner with silly creators is my guess. I don't know. What do you think?
- [26:38]
Kara Swisher
I think the penny is dropping. I always try to argue, why do you need to own this? What is it of value to you when it's more value to me? And why don't we just collaborate and then we each get what we need, Right?
- [26:49]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah.
- [26:49]
Kara Swisher
They don't need to own it. I don't know why they think they need to own it.
- [26:52]
Jessica Yellen
I think there's also a perception that they have to build their own channel and that if they feed another entity, it's taking from their own channel, which is very different in social world. You know, one plus one is four. You know, teaming up with others builds your channel. But I don't think they fully speak social.
- [27:11]
Kara Swisher
Right. It's a competitive thing. Cause it was interesting because for Scott Free August, I did a lot of people who had big podcasts and then we traded feeds.
- [27:18]
Jessica Yellen
Right.
- [27:19]
Kara Swisher
And everyone's like, oh, they're competitors. I'm like, no, they're not.
- [27:21]
Jessica Yellen
And you grow from that? Did you grow? Correct.
- [27:23]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. Scott was very upset by that. Too bad. I was just trying to prove to him I could live without him just on a daily basis. I need to do that. But the idea of collaboration, it's interesting of who owns what. Right. The idea of IP and ownership and. And everything else has to change. In other words.
- [27:41]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah, they have to loosen the hold on their reins. Right. Because they're putting their stories out there anyway. They may as well get some benefit from having their story all over social. It should drive back to their website or to their journalist or something.
- [27:53]
Kara Swisher
So on a more basic level, you've talked about the need to teach news consumers how to tell something's true or not. In some cases, it means learning how to use Google or how to tell if AI Chatbot is hallucinating or not. What do you wish everyone knew about how to do it, how to do that in terms of the consumers? Because it's a big lift for consumers to have it's like having to examine your meat to see if it's rotten, right?
- [28:15]
Jessica Yellen
To some extent, yeah. So I have a friend from college who constantly sends me TikToks with a screaming all caps note. Why aren't you reporting this? 17 exclamation points. And it's always from something like Firedog789. And I look at the profile and I'm like, who is firedog789? And there's no way. Information, no links, no information. And I write him back, I'm like, why do you trust this poster? And he won't engage on that. He's like, no, no. Why aren't you reporting this information? So the first thing is getting people to learn to check who's telling them the thing. And it's not that, you know, click on their link, see what their profile says, pick a few words in their profile and drop that into Google and see if you can find their LinkedIn. See if you can find where they've worked, see if you can find what they follow or who they are affiliated with. Something that gives you a sense of who this is as an individual or an institution. So that is like 101. And I'm stunned by the number of people who don't do that or commenters who just trust a comment without even looking at what this thing is. So that's the foundation of it. I think the certification system would help if people had a place they could go to see if this person's full of it or not. And then the Google problem is a really serious one. Because often when I'm asked, is this true? I'll give an answer and then I'll say, hey, just so you know how to do this, if I were to Google this, here are the search terms I would have used, assuming that that was the issue. And nine times out of 10, someone will write back and say, oh, no, I know how to search it, but Google gives me 20 million results and how do I know which to believe? And so. And I trust you. And so part of the challenge is right now, because creators have so much trust, we're bearing a lot of the brunt of this. And so it's a weird dilemma. Like, I get asked now if someone will tell me my son needs an operation and two different doctors are giving two different pieces of advice, what should I do? And I'm like, I'm not an expert in this. And they say, well, I trust you and you're smart at getting information. Can you help? And to me, that speaks profoundly to how unsure the public is about the information they're getting, about voices of authority and where to go for trust. And it's why I think these ecosystems are needed.
- [30:40]
Kara Swisher
We'll be back in a minute.
- [30:56]
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Kara Swisher
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- [32:49]
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- [33:21]
Kara Swisher
Let's talk about the business side of things you said when you talk to potential investors, you often get sort of a sneering cynicism from elites who think regular people don't care about truth or facts. Talk about that attitude, what you've heard and explain what bothers you about it besides.
- [33:37]
Jessica Yellen
So this was until the last six months. Something has changed this year, but endlessly. And I still get it a little bit. Where I meet with, I'm constantly called by academics or policy people or people, startup gurus. And then potential people are looking to invest in media. And that's what they say all the time. They'll have the conversation of what's needed and what can be built and then we get to a point in the conversation they'll go, can I just bottom line it, People don't care about facts, do they? And, and I always find it sort of confounding, like we've just spent 30 minutes talking about how to build a thing for facts. So why. And it's stuck with them. They can't get past it. And you know, yes, yes, people do. It might not. It's not everyone. You're not gonna ever save everyone. But we can't afford to let this go. It is actually foundational to the survival of our democracy. And there's an audience. So if at least a third of Americans care about checking a thing that's a good audience, like that would be a business, right? Just because it's not everyone doesn't mean it's not no one. But I've been getting this for so long, I'm kind of used to it now. And in the last few months I'm seeing a turnaround where people are starting to say we have to presume there is an audience and do something.
- [34:57]
Kara Swisher
So you have almost 800,000 followers on Instagram. But you pointed out before, social media views don't translate into revenue. This is what I talk to a lot of people about. But newsletters on platforms like Subsect, Beehive and Goes can be lucrative. Talk about running a profitable independent news business. Look for you. How many people on your team, what do you spend most time on? What platforms get the most engagement, profitability.
- [35:21]
Jessica Yellen
So most of my revenue comes from substack and where I do a newsletter and I release interviews and thank God for them because prior to that it was really hard. I can get crazy views on Instagram and it's still hard to figure out how to monetize that because Instagram barely pays, even though they say they do. Every so often I get a check for $22 after like 67 million views. And so what I've done is I use Instagram as a top of funnel mechanism to push people to the substack. Right. And it's worked. That's been really effective. And in fact, Substack said, gosh, you were so good at that. We're trying to find more Instagram people to start doing that. And I found their willingness to, you know, some of them say, we're paying you because you do all this work on Instagram too. And it's like we support what you're doing and recognize it's a cross platform thing. It means, though, that I have to spend a lot of time on my newsletter when my whole ethos and what I come from is video. Right. Like I was a TV reporter. So I'm very torn in that way. Like, I have to focus on the thing that's driving the revenue, keeping the business going. But what I'm sort of known for and my sweet spot is doing the stuff that I would do on Instagram. So that's really tricky. And you know, YouTube. So YouTube's where things are at now. And I have to really, really. I have a YouTube channel and we started there and it's growing and that's where I have to double down and.
- [36:47]
Kara Swisher
Where presumably revenue will start to. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:50]
Jessica Yellen
And you also. They're news friendly. They're not throttling news. They want news. Right, right. So it's a much more. It's more aligned.
- [36:59]
Kara Swisher
There's.
- [37:00]
Jessica Yellen
Let's hope.
- [37:01]
Kara Swisher
And then where else do you get engagement from? LinkedIn from what?
- [37:05]
Jessica Yellen
I mean, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Threads. It's not. I'm on Facebook, but it's Twitter. I lurk on Twitter. I don't post. Yeah. The one place that I never really committed to was TikTok, because when I was a White House correspondent, I had all these national security sources who told me not to go on there. And so I never wanted to drive audience there. But it obviously is the place where you get the biggest growth and return. And now who knows what it'll be.
- [37:34]
Kara Swisher
So every episode we get an expert to send us a question to our guests. Let's hear yours, Jessica.
- [37:41]
Ben Smith
It's Ben Smith from Semaphore, who knew you back when you were part of the lamestream media. And I'm now in a taxi in New York City. I guess my question for you, you were on doing journalism on Instagram long before anybody was calling themselves a newsfluencer and taking money from. From complicated places and, you know, emulating Joe Rogan. And I guess I'm curious what you feel like you've learned that those newcomers to the space that you've kind of pioneered, or at least that other journalists who are leaving many years after you legacy places to do their own thing. What do you feel like you've learned in these years that they should know?
- [38:20]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. So everybody's entering the picture. I get a call a day from a different person at a major news organization who wants to go out on their own. I've helped a whole bunch of them so much so I could do a business of helping people. And I have lots of different advice, some of which is great idea, some of which is stay where you are and just hold out until the end of your career. What would you say? Because there's a lot of people now doing this. Some are incredibly successful. Mehdi Hasan strikes me as someone who's done really well. And many others. There's lots of people. Right, left, center. What is your biggest piece of advice since you were a pioneer?
- [38:56]
Jessica Yellen
Og thank you. I also have to say Ben Smith was a pioneer too. He also went out and innovated. And credit to him. First, for traditional journalists, you gotta show a little bit of yourself. It's very hard for a lot of people come from newspapers or traditional media. My audience knows my dog. My audience sometimes knows what's going on in my life. You gotta show a little skin. I don't mean that literally, but you.
- [39:24]
Kara Swisher
Can do that if you want.
- [39:25]
Jessica Yellen
Could you do very well with that?
- [39:27]
Kara Swisher
Yes, you could. Some people.
- [39:28]
Jessica Yellen
Well, sure. Depends on the situation. Transparency helps. In other words, I get more love and engagement when I get something wrong and correct it and explain what I did than anything else. People love showing the process being real. And so talk to your audience about your work. Ask them what they want from you. They will tell you. So if you find all of a sudden something's not working, ask them why. There will be an answer in the mix. And figure out your revenue early. Like you need an owned platform. Don't. Scott Galloway told me this years ago. He was like, do not build your business on meta. Find another place to build your business. And that is still true.
- [40:12]
Kara Swisher
Yeah. So when they come to you, what do you think their key thing is doing? Finding the right platform. Right. Or figuring it out. Owning their own thing.
- [40:24]
Jessica Yellen
Owning their audience somewhere where they can monetize it.
- [40:26]
Kara Swisher
Keeping costs in line.
- [40:28]
Jessica Yellen
Yeah. Figuring out who your team is and what your structure is. I mean, that's. You know, think about back office, healthcare, insurance, all these things you have to do in order to be in business. It's a lot of moving pieces. And so define what Your lane is in content narrowly enough. I mean, find a space that's going to get engagement, but don't try to take on everything at once because you're gonna have to be doing a lot of work, heavy lifting behind the scenes to get your business working.
- [41:00]
Kara Swisher
What do you think the mistake people make? I think they do too many things. They're like, I'm gonna start a podcast, I'm gonna do this. I'm like, ha ha, good luck with that kind of stuff.
- [41:07]
Jessica Yellen
Well, I'm constantly asked, why don't you stand this up? And I'm like, I don't have the timer band. So it is, it's picking a space and doubling down on what's working. So if I were starting today, I'd start on YouTube. It monetizes, it's friendly to facts and it's a place where you can reach audience and grow. And then I would also create a newsletter or a community where you have direct engagement with the audience people are dying for in real life engagement. I show up in cities and say, hey, news, not noisers, I'm gonna be in town, wanna meet at a diner. People love that. Like building that kind of thing helps. But you really need to focus on where you're gonna make that revenue so you can stay in business.
- [41:46]
Kara Swisher
Absolutely. That's the critical. You have to make money. Cause then you can tell people the problem.
- [41:49]
Jessica Yellen
As it turns out.
- [41:50]
Kara Swisher
As it turns out. I always say that to people you need to make money. And I think what's hard for a lot of people is they live in environments where they never have had to think about that, which is interesting. It's always interesting too. Like a lot of TV people, for example. And one came to me as like, what am I going to do? And I said, well, you make what, I don't know, $5 million a year. Like, can you attribute. Well, in any case, it's not going to, that's not going to keep up those kind of prices. And I was like, can you attribute your contribution to $10 million? Because it's got to be your state plus you have staff, plus those town cars don't pay for themselves and everything else. And I was like, there's no way you make $10 million for this company. So you need to go, you're going to be gone. And it was really interesting because they don. And that's the higher paid people. But even people on the lower scale, when they overspend, their only option, and I can think of a couple of organizations, is to have a rich benefactor who just wants to use you for influence.
- [42:52]
Jessica Yellen
Right.
- [42:52]
Kara Swisher
Which there's many of those being stood up right now.
- [42:55]
Jessica Yellen
Yes.
- [42:55]
Kara Swisher
And that's a different story. That means you're just again, a fluffer for wealthy people.
- [43:02]
We'll be back in a minute.
- [43:15]
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- [43:54]
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- [44:21]
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- [44:50]
Kara Swisher
So before I wrap up, we had a couple quick questions about AI and the problem of sloping. You know, it can be a real problem. Like speaking of the LA Times, the experiment that showed AI will do things like explain why the KKK wasn't so bad after all. When you think of the good things it could do because AI agents, they can do editing, they can do a little reporting. When I was at the Wall Street Journal, I'm like, why am I writing earnings? A machine could do this basic stuff. It's just math. It's just you write it down in a format. Do you see AI doing actual journalism or being used by journalists for data or et cetera?
- [45:27]
Jessica Yellen
I think it could do the stenography part of journalism, like the White House briefing happened today. Here's what was said right where it just distills. I also think for social media, I would love it if I could say I wanna do a reel that has this information. Will you design and make the video as if. I am a chef and I give it the basic pieces and it could put it together. I would love that. It feels like it should be able to happen. It's not good when you try it. Not yet. I think it can edit soon, hopefully without hallucinating. And one of the things I miss most is the conversation I used to have with my colleagues in the newsroom about. I'm hearing this story and I'm thinking this, but I don't know where to go. And you have that dialogue and in the dialogue you're like, ah, that's the kernel of the story. If I could do that with an AI, then that would be amazing.
- [46:15]
Kara Swisher
Do you think you can?
- [46:16]
Jessica Yellen
I probably could. It's not consistently good at that. No. It's sycophantic or it's silly or basic or unsophisticated or too political or too polemical or it doesn't quite get my vibe yet. And I would like that.
- [46:36]
Kara Swisher
So let's end by circling back on the idea of an information war. It's playing out on a battlefield owned by noted tech CEOs. Their incentives are engagement, profit, getting what they want from this admin. Fact based news faces an uphill battle. They're being attacked from a legal point of view. They maybe won a small victory with Jimmy Gimmel, but it's quite small I would say. Cuz the economics are still the economics of what's happening to late night television.
- [47:02]
Jessica Yellen
Even though he got all those views for now. Do you think the fact that Iger, I know did the wrong thing at first but eventually did stand up to Trump could become contagious?
- [47:12]
Kara Swisher
Did he stand up?
- [47:13]
Jessica Yellen
Well, Trump has said we're going to look into this and do something about it.
- [47:17]
Kara Swisher
I'm waiting for him to stand up. He sort of got up, up on his knees. Sure.
- [47:23]
Jessica Yellen
He put him back on the air.
- [47:26]
Kara Swisher
I don't think that was a particularly hard decision.
- [47:28]
You don't?
- [47:28]
No, no. I think it was ridiculous to have done so totally. This is someone I like.
- [47:33]
Jessica Yellen
But it's still in defiance of Trump.
- [47:35]
Kara Swisher
Is it in defiance or just. This is fucking ridiculous. This is. Why are we letting this happen? I mean, you know, or. It's not that hard to stand up. It really isn't. Yeah, it really isn't.
- [47:47]
Jessica Yellen
And yet not for someone who's doing it.
- [47:49]
Kara Swisher
I understand, but I Don't see why it would be hard for a person at the end of their career with billions of dollars to stand up, can always get on a plane, Bob. In any case, I have been doing a series of shows showing people like you, showing Oliver Darcy or Dave Takes Pictures or Katie Drummond from Wired. That's a legacy news organization. She's reinvigorated with all kinds of innovations. I really get tired of this idea of media's d. It's not dead. So I want you to end on that. Talk about what you think the greatest benefit from all these independent creators are now and also what you're most worried about.
- [48:26]
Jessica Yellen
I think there's never been more opportunity to hear from different voices, different perspectives. People who want to do journalism, reach an audience, have the means to do it now. And you get different kinds of information out that way. And I really do think we're at the adolescence of a media revolution at this exact moment. The snapshot gives you, gives a lot of anxiety to people in our business because it's changing and so we have to adapt to new things. And that's scary, but the opportunity's there. And I think what scares me most is also the opportunity, which is that the responsible voices get drowned out by algorithms that are in search of drama and profit and that money is all that matters. But what we need to do is find the people who have the values we have and care and find ways to team up and find those billionaires who wanna start a new platform or back that kind of new ecosystem. Because the voices are there, the audience is there, and so we now just need the infrastructure.
- [49:28]
Kara Swisher
What's the thing you're most worried?
- [49:30]
Jessica Yellen
I'm most worried that the algorithms and these titans of tech will drown out the voices that are responsible.
- [49:37]
Kara Swisher
I would agree. And then the legal issues, of course, are another thing I would just end on. Just think about the system that is in fact dying. It wasn't necessarily perfect either, by the way. Someone's like, oh, it's so sad. All these networks are dying. This is dying. I'm like, you know, let me caveat by saying I have four children, three of them are young white men. Okay. Like, I love a white, young white man. I think they're great. But not. That sounded weird. Okay. But let me just say it used to be run by a small group of non diverse people on the Upper east side of New York.
- [50:11]
Jessica Yellen
Totally.
- [50:11]
Kara Swisher
And so I'm not so sure what's coming is some of it's scary, some of it's disturbing. What could come could be really interesting. And if there's more voices, there's always diversity. And diversity breeds all kinds of interesting things. And so what it's replacing wasn't by any means perfect and in fact, wasn't as good as we remember it. And so the issue is not to lie down and act like you're dead when you don't have to be. And that's really the most important thing I always say to people. If you don't like being made to lie down, get the fuck up. You know what I mean? That's the kind of thing.
- [50:50]
Jessica Yellen
And you talk to your kids this way?
- [50:51]
Kara Swisher
No, my kids are so nice. It's really weird. I don't know how that happened, but they're actually very discerning readers, I have to say. My older kids are very discerning. I think that's the last thing I don't know. And I have a lot of faith in young people. I do think the crazy people are 30 to 45, but the young people really, a lot of them really are much more discerning than you think.
- [51:15]
And they do understand.
- [51:16]
They grew up. If you recall, when we were growing up, I think we're similar ages. TV was stupid, it was the boob tube, the idiot box. And now it's so smart, it's so good. And I think that young people do have a discernment because they've grown up in this environment that is a lot stronger than you think. And maybe they're the ones that really will make things better going forward, and the rest of us just need to die. So ultimately. But I do have great hopes for a lot of stuff in the end. So anyway, Jessica, thank you so much. And thank you for the university. Thank you.
- [51:59]
Thank you to the University of Wisconsin, Madison center for Journalism Ethics, for hosting this event. Today's show was produced by Christian Castor Roselle, Kateri Yocum, Michelle Aloy, Megan Burney and Kalyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcast. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester. Our engineers are Fernando Arrud and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you're a media pioneer. If not, you're losing the information war. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for on with Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back on Monday with more.