Speaker 1: Pushkin Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the
Speaker 1: show where we explore the stories behind the stories in
Speaker 1: the news. I'm Noah Feldman. As regular listeners know, this
Speaker 1: season's theme at Deep Background is power, and right now
Speaker 1: we're talking about power in the worlds of media and publishing.
Speaker 1: Today we're going to look at an aspect of publishing
Speaker 1: that is often opaque, the world of business journalism. But
Speaker 1: not business journalism as you would find it in the
Speaker 1: pages of the Wall Street Journal. Rather business journalism of
Speaker 1: the kind that you find in magazines like Entrepreneur, Fast Company,
Speaker 1: or Force. These kinds of journalism are distinctive in their
Speaker 1: relationship to the structures of capital themselves, namely the businesses
Speaker 1: that gather capital and expend it in trying to make
Speaker 1: more money. In that sense, today's conversation genuinely goes behind
Speaker 1: the stories that we might read in this genre of news.
Speaker 1: To discuss these issues, we're joined by Jason Feiffer, who's
Speaker 1: the editor in chief of the magazine Entrepreneur. He's agreed
Speaker 1: to talk to us about the state of his industry,
Speaker 1: how he conceives his job, and how it relates to
Speaker 1: other forms of journalism. That we're accustomed to thinking about. Jason,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: want to start by just diving into the industry that
Speaker 1: you're most focused on right now, the magazine industry. You're
Speaker 1: part of it, the business journalism part of it seems
Speaker 1: to be thriving at a time when most of the
Speaker 1: rest of the industry is. I guess it's somewhere in
Speaker 1: the middle of its freefall according to conventional wisdom. So
Speaker 1: am I right about what looks like a good moment
Speaker 1: in the history of a business journalism and business magazines?
Speaker 1: And if so, what's the secret that you guys have
Speaker 1: that the rest of the industry is struggling with? At
Speaker 1: least I can speak for us in that we are
Speaker 1: doing very well. The pandemic was scary, of course, as
Speaker 1: it was for everybody, but it came roaring back really fast,
Speaker 1: and we've been on an upward trajectory for years as
Speaker 1: you would define it by any reasonable standard, which is
Speaker 1: to say, traffic, readership, advertising, and so on. And that's
Speaker 1: been great. And look, I just want to make sure
Speaker 1: I'm like speaking most for my own corner of the world,
Speaker 1: because when we say business journalism, we can mean a
Speaker 1: lot of different things, and one thing I don't do
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur is run deep investigative pieces that are gonna
Speaker 1: uncover bad deeds from CEOs and so on, because that's
Speaker 1: just not our mission. Our mission is to support entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1: And so in my world, what I see is an
Speaker 1: unbelievable explosion in interest and desire to be an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: or to at least infuse your life with those kinds
Speaker 1: of mindsets of taking control of your life and building
Speaker 1: something for your own and so on, and so there's
Speaker 1: a lot of energy around that. I have often said,
Speaker 1: as I've explained the media to friends, that I don't
Speaker 1: know what on earth I would do if I was
Speaker 1: running Time magazine, because it tries to reach so many people,
Speaker 1: it has to be so many different things. But this
Speaker 1: particular audience, business, entrepreneurship, there's a lot of energy. And
Speaker 1: I don't think even though there's a million resources, enough
Speaker 1: trusted resources, because there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are out there trying to take advantage of your time
Speaker 1: and money, and so to have a did brand that
Speaker 1: people can turn to, I think still has a lot
Speaker 1: of value even in a fractured media environment. Let's dig
Speaker 1: deep a little bit on that, because it makes sense
Speaker 1: to me to say that to be in a space
Speaker 1: where the culture is bringing a lot of energy, right,
Speaker 1: we are in a better or worse in a business
Speaker 1: culture where many of our heroes are people who started companies,
Speaker 1: and in that sense, entrepreneurship is a kind of tremendous
Speaker 1: cultural ideal. Yet if you think of say, you know,
Speaker 1: fashion or glamour or luxury, that's also a space where
Speaker 1: there's a lot of excitement and attraction in the culture.
Speaker 1: And yet the big magazines that were the dominant players
Speaker 1: in shaping our conception of that cultural movement are struggling
Speaker 1: relative to where they once were. So does there feel
Speaker 1: like there's something different to you about entrepreneurship at that
Speaker 1: end of the business that makes us distinctive. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a really interesting question. I think that we need to
Speaker 1: put what I'm experiencing into a broader context, which is
Speaker 1: to say, maybe thirty forty years ago, because that's how
Speaker 1: long this brand has been around. The brand was a
Speaker 1: singular voice in the world of entrepreneurship in a way
Speaker 1: that it is not now. It simply can't be. There
Speaker 1: are too many people, as you say, who are offering
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that we offer, which is to say,
Speaker 1: guidance on entrepreneurship and insider access to how people think
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. And so what's our value proposition
Speaker 1: now in a crowded world of those folks. Well, for one,
Speaker 1: I think there's a I think that it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that we live in an abundance world, which is
Speaker 1: to say that just because somebody comes along and occupies
Speaker 1: a space that you might be in doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you necessarily have to lose something. Instead, I think that
Speaker 1: we have to think of a brand and an individual
Speaker 1: as both being valuable and in a space that has
Speaker 1: infinite expansion. I'm really unthreatened by and I know that
Speaker 1: we'll get into this a little bit later, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'm unthreatened by the fracturing of a media environment. I'm
Speaker 1: unthreatened by not being the sole authoritative voice in a space.
Speaker 1: I think that as long as you have an understanding
Speaker 1: of what kind of value you can bring that maybe
Speaker 1: others don't, that you still have a place in their lives.
Speaker 1: Let me ask what I hope it's a foundational question
Speaker 1: and if it has a tinge of kind of curious skepticism.
Speaker 1: That's okay. Sure, you use the word brand a few
Speaker 1: times describe entrepreneur, and that makes perfect sense, both in
Speaker 1: the concrete it's a business and it's a business that's
Speaker 1: setting out to make profit, and also in the sense
Speaker 1: that any entity can be thought of as a brand
Speaker 1: in some sense. That said, when you were describing the brand,
Speaker 1: you were also saying, look, there's certain kinds of journalism
Speaker 1: we don't do. We're not trying to do the investigative
Speaker 1: journim to find distortions or frauds. And you also said
Speaker 1: that you have a kind of mission driven vision that
Speaker 1: you're supportive of people who are entrepreneurs. Is it possible
Speaker 1: that that's the model that's capable of existing in the
Speaker 1: media world today, And is there something worrisommer or devastating
Speaker 1: about that that, namely that a media business that says, look,
Speaker 1: this is our mission. We're helping these folks. We stand
Speaker 1: behind this set of beliefs and values. We're not trying to,
Speaker 1: in some neutral or objective way, describe the ends and
Speaker 1: the outs and the goods and the bads to the world.
Speaker 1: And if if that's right, shouldn't we be worried about
Speaker 1: that with respect to media power, because won't let mean
Speaker 1: that more and more media will gravitate towards that kind
Speaker 1: of brand oriented, mission oriented work rather than trying to
Speaker 1: explain the world to us. So this is a really
Speaker 1: wonderful question and really insightful. And again, I can only
Speaker 1: speak for myself and my own views and experiences here,
Speaker 1: but I think that we do ourselves a disservice. And
Speaker 1: I'm speaking we generally, the people who think about things
Speaker 1: when we try to create simple narratives out of chaos.
Speaker 1: And I don't worry that just because a brand like
Speaker 1: Entrepreneur is doing well. And again, I just very very
Speaker 1: open about what we do and what we don't do.
Speaker 1: We're not the New York Times Business Section, we're not
Speaker 1: Bloomberg BusinessWeek. We serve entrepreneurs and we champion entrepreneurs. It's
Speaker 1: a totally different thing. But just because this does well
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that the opposite can't do well too. And
Speaker 1: we also should be mindful that the way that we
Speaker 1: think of the media today is not some timeless thing,
Speaker 1: but it's actually a fairly new thing. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're rewind to what media looked like in America and
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. It doesn't look anything like what we
Speaker 1: are worried we're losing now with a handful of authoritative
Speaker 1: and objective enterprises that try to separate truth from fiction
Speaker 1: and call the shots that that that's a that's a
Speaker 1: new thing. So let's not think that just because something
Speaker 1: exists now, it needs to exist in the way that
Speaker 1: we're familiar with it forever and ever, because it didn't
Speaker 1: exist forever and ever. So that's not to discount the
Speaker 1: real importance, of course, of that kind of journalism. It's
Speaker 1: exceptionally valuable. I just don't worry about its existence in
Speaker 1: a changing media environment because we are we are the
Speaker 1: products of change. We're constantly seeing change. And I think
Speaker 1: that we often make this mistake of thinking that just
Speaker 1: because something exists in the form that we're familiar with it,
Speaker 1: that that's the best form that it could ever take,
Speaker 1: and that any shift in that form is somehow unprecedented,
Speaker 1: because that's not the case. So yes, I think that
Speaker 1: it's a good thing that entrepreneur thrives. I think that
Speaker 1: it's a good thing that brands and media organizations that
Speaker 1: do quite the opposite of us also thrive. And I
Speaker 1: think that both are and will be disrupted. And I
Speaker 1: think that's also fine because new forms of serving what
Speaker 1: those brands do, which could be either supporting industries or
Speaker 1: supporting people on individual levels, or holding power to account,
Speaker 1: which is an exceptionally important thing, is something that people
Speaker 1: will know how, they'll find ways to do it, even
Speaker 1: if the economies of media as we know it shift
Speaker 1: and maybe even die. It's just it's happened enough times
Speaker 1: before that I just don't think that we can say
Speaker 1: our time will be different. Our time is never different.
Speaker 1: So let me push back a little bit on that. Sure,
Speaker 1: the background music of what you're saying is the language
Speaker 1: of I would call it creative destruction. Within capitalism, things
Speaker 1: are changing, they're evolving their new opportunities, and that makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense, especially given that entrepreneur has a
Speaker 1: history of being associated with small businesses, scrappy startups, the
Speaker 1: little guy who are after all, almost always interested in
Speaker 1: trying to change things and disrupt and bring about new results.
Speaker 1: But there is a powerful argument out there that says
Speaker 1: what's distinctive about our moment is just how enormously powerful
Speaker 1: the near monopolists out there are. The Amazons, the alphabets,
Speaker 1: the facebooks, and that argument sometimes comes with a title
Speaker 1: the Curse of bigness. It's actually an idea that comes
Speaker 1: from Louis Brandeis and from progressive antitrust legislation more than
Speaker 1: a century ago. But it was used recently by Tim
Speaker 1: wu who's a professor at Columbia who's become Joe Biden's
Speaker 1: special advisor on antitrust. And you know, broadly speaking, the
Speaker 1: view is that all that good stuff change, evolution is
Speaker 1: being blocked in the current moment. When you think about
Speaker 1: the mission for entrepreneur, how do you think about the
Speaker 1: big mega companies, which on one view, are actually a
Speaker 1: bad thing for your smaller mission driven people. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you rewind only a couple decades ago,
Speaker 1: you find all these stories about how Yahoo will never
Speaker 1: be defeated and Nokia will own smartphones forever, and because
Speaker 1: Amazon has put such a dent in Walmart, and you
Speaker 1: can rewind all the way back to A and P Supermarkets,
Speaker 1: the very first supermarket chain, and who how could that
Speaker 1: ever be defeated? And you know, like we were constantly
Speaker 1: I think having this narrative in American culture that that
Speaker 1: bigness is permanent. Whatever new thing we're seeing couldn't possibly
Speaker 1: be displaced, and then over and over again it is.
Speaker 1: And you're right, of course that people small businesses must
Speaker 1: use Facebook. They must use it. It's impossible not to.
Speaker 1: They also find it pretty useful, and I think are
Speaker 1: also finding lots of other ways to reach people that
Speaker 1: aren't on Facebook. I think you work with what you've got.
Speaker 1: I think that when I look at entrepreneurs, I find,
Speaker 1: first of all, quite a lot of fascination. Interestingly among
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs of big players. People want to know about Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1: They want to know about Elon Musk. I mean at
Speaker 1: entrepreneur dot com right now. I mean if Elon Musk
Speaker 1: farts in the woods and we ran a headline Elon
Speaker 1: Musk farts in the Woods, it would get like three
Speaker 1: million views. And people are fascinated by these people because
Speaker 1: they built something extraordinary, and they are savvy, and they
Speaker 1: are sometimes is quite ruthless. And it's not to say
Speaker 1: that their business practices are always to be celebrated, because
Speaker 1: they certainly are not. I ultimately come down on the
Speaker 1: side of it's worth figuring out where the opportunities are
Speaker 1: and where the opportunities aren't, both in coverage and being
Speaker 1: an entrepreneur who's trying to live and build in a
Speaker 1: world that has large competitors. And what you will find
Speaker 1: if you talk to entrepreneurs is that they do not
Speaker 1: sit there wringing their hands over that there is a
Speaker 1: giant competitor in a space. Instead, what they tend to
Speaker 1: do is think, well, what is this competitor missing and
Speaker 1: what kind of white space is available? Because this competitor
Speaker 1: fast in some ways, though they may be are slow
Speaker 1: in other ways. And this is why people aren't afraid
Speaker 1: of trying to establish new social networks and new search engines.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say any of these are necessarily
Speaker 1: going to topple Facebook or Google, but I don't know
Speaker 1: that that has to be the goal. The goal is
Speaker 1: can you build something new and innovative that's going to
Speaker 1: solve a problem that in existing incumbent does not And
Speaker 1: I think the opportunity is there to do that. You're
Speaker 1: saying something that's really fascinating me, So go back for
Speaker 1: a moment to this policy debate that's being fought out
Speaker 1: between the Biden administration and others, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be thought over the next few years in the courts
Speaker 1: about bigness at about competition. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that the innovative thinkers like Timu, like Lena Khan,
Speaker 1: who's now become the chairperson of the FDC, have been
Speaker 1: arguing is that although it's not so obvious how individual
Speaker 1: consumers are harmed by bigness, nevertheless there is somebody who's
Speaker 1: really affected by it, and it's the smaller firms that
Speaker 1: would want to rise up and compete, and we should
Speaker 1: be really worried about that because without those in the
Speaker 1: long run, things really will be worse off for consumers.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of one of their back to the
Speaker 1: future kinds of arguments that they're trying to make. If
Speaker 1: I hear you correctly, it sounds like, at least speaking
Speaker 1: in a general way, for this constituency of small business owners,
Speaker 1: that they're not so worried about in your account, they're
Speaker 1: not so worried at least at a collective level about it.
Speaker 1: It's not the thing that that preoccupies them. And indeed,
Speaker 1: if you put up coverage that's interested in the big
Speaker 1: successful people who started companies, you're saying, you get a
Speaker 1: lot of reaction and probably most of it adulatory, you know,
Speaker 1: positive in some general sense. So if that's so, that
Speaker 1: means that the case the Timu that Lena Khan that
Speaker 1: the Biden administration are trying to make, it's actually an
Speaker 1: even harder case to make than they present it as being.
Speaker 1: If the constituency that they say is being harmed small
Speaker 1: business is actually not so upset or doesn't really imagine
Speaker 1: itself as thinking of itself is harmed. And just to
Speaker 1: follow onto that is, if they did. If your readers
Speaker 1: and your constituents thought that they were being badly harmed
Speaker 1: by this, I take it that would become an important
Speaker 1: part of your coverage. Right If they thought an everyday
Speaker 1: basis that something was making their lives difficult or miserable,
Speaker 1: I assume they would want to want to read about it,
Speaker 1: and they'd want you to cover it. I really appreciate
Speaker 1: that observation. So a couple of things here. Number One,
Speaker 1: Entrepreneurs are kinds of people who like to look at
Speaker 1: what's available and what other people aren't thinking about, and
Speaker 1: then move forward. What they don't do is sit on
Speaker 1: the sidelines and grumble about the things that are in
Speaker 1: their way. It's not the thing that's on the top
Speaker 1: of their mind. They are thinking about how they can
Speaker 1: spot opportunity that other people haven't, and they see these
Speaker 1: giant companies as at once instructive. They're very interested in
Speaker 1: what exceptionally successful founders have done and how they operate,
Speaker 1: because there are things to learn from them. But then
Speaker 1: they also are looking around for ways that they could
Speaker 1: build something utilizing opportunities that are created by these incumbents.
Speaker 1: I mean, how many businesses have been built on Instagram.
Speaker 1: I mean it's countless. I mean, look, this is like
Speaker 1: a This is just going to zoom far off, but
Speaker 1: I promise I'm going to bring it back. I just
Speaker 1: want to tell you this little story that I'm obsessed with,
Speaker 1: and it's about the dawn of the phonograph. So the
Speaker 1: phonograph comes along and it is the very first time
Speaker 1: that anybody ever can hear recorded music. I mean, just
Speaker 1: think about the massive change that that represents. So before that,
Speaker 1: through all of human history, the only time that you
Speaker 1: could ever hear music is if somebody is literally playing
Speaker 1: an instrument in front of you, the only way. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly this machine comes along, and this new industry
Speaker 1: comes along, and it proposes a completely different way of
Speaker 1: experiencing this music, and all of the musicians of the time,
Speaker 1: high profile musicians at the time, are absolutely furious about this.
Speaker 1: John Philip Souza, who of course we know now is
Speaker 1: the composer of all our fam marchesa, that's John Phillips,
Speaker 1: John Philip Susa, is writing screeds against recorded music. He
Speaker 1: makes one of his arguments, which I love the most
Speaker 1: because it's just so insane, was he would say, recorded
Speaker 1: music will enter the home. When it enters the home,
Speaker 1: it will replace all forms of live music, because of course,
Speaker 1: why would you perform live music when instead you could
Speaker 1: just hit a button and hear it out of a machine.
Speaker 1: And now, because of that, mothers will no longer sink
Speaker 1: to their children. And because children grow up imitating their mothers,
Speaker 1: that children will grow up imitating the machines. And thus
Speaker 1: we will create a generation of machine babies. And so
Speaker 1: he and his musicians and the musicians unions of the
Speaker 1: time were very, very concerned and upset about this new industry.
Speaker 1: They felt like it was displacing them. Now what did
Speaker 1: we learn, you know, one hundred years later, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what we learned. What we learned was that actually
Speaker 1: this gigantic shift, though it seemed to dominate, did not
Speaker 1: actually dominate. What it did was it created a million
Speaker 1: new opportunities. Find a studio engineer and they can thank
Speaker 1: the phonograph for their job. There was a job that
Speaker 1: didn't exist before that. And this, I think is how
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs think. They see a long game. They think about
Speaker 1: how new things don't just gobble everything up, They in
Speaker 1: fact shift the environment, they fracture, they create new opportunities
Speaker 1: where there weren't before. And so I'm honestly not very
Speaker 1: compelled or concerned by the antitrust conversations, which I would
Speaker 1: not propose to be an expert about at all. But
Speaker 1: I can tell you that on the ground level, as
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs are talking about building their businesses, the thing that
Speaker 1: they're not obsessed about is how a handful of giant
Speaker 1: companies are stopping them from coming up with great ideas
Speaker 1: and building something new. It's it's just not what I hear.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. You've alluded to a distinction between
Speaker 1: what's sometimes called a hard journalism, you know, exemplified by
Speaker 1: the big newspapers, maybe at one time by the network
Speaker 1: news shows and by implication, software journalism, journalism that in
Speaker 1: some way is allied with an industry and is self
Speaker 1: consciously supportive of it. I think for those of us
Speaker 1: who are not connected to the journalism industry, and I
Speaker 1: am perfectly connected to it, so I do follow this
Speaker 1: a little bit. But for most people who aren't, we
Speaker 1: don't know much about the thought world, the power structures,
Speaker 1: or the operation of the so called software journalism. There
Speaker 1: are no movies about it, you know, all The President's
Speaker 1: Men is not about a software journalism entity. Would you
Speaker 1: say a little bit for the interested and open minded
Speaker 1: listener of what is the business structure of software journalism?
Speaker 1: Do you think of yourselves as in a different relationship
Speaker 1: to your subject, to your advertisers? How would you conceptualize that?
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't have introduced the distinction at all if
Speaker 1: you hadn't introduced it. No, it's fine. I'm totally comfortable
Speaker 1: with it because it's been a shift for me and
Speaker 1: I enjoy it. Though it should be noted I come
Speaker 1: from a harder journalism background. I started in daily newspapers
Speaker 1: and this is ultimately where I landed, and I love it,
Speaker 1: but I also want to be really wide eyed and
Speaker 1: open that I'm I'm not the guy doing deep investigations.
Speaker 1: I'm glad somebody else is doing it, but it's not me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, sure, let me tell you about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us about it, and tell us how power works
Speaker 1: in it relative to how we at least imagine it
Speaker 1: works in harder journalism, right right, Okay, let me tell
Speaker 1: you a little quick story. When I became editor in
Speaker 1: chief of Entrepreneur magazine, I started getting interview requests and
Speaker 1: I said yes, and then people would introduce me in
Speaker 1: this really interesting way. They would have me on their show.
Speaker 1: And you know, generally speaking, I'm talking about there's like
Speaker 1: a billion podcasts about entrepreneurship and these kinds of things,
Speaker 1: and I'd be saying yes to this stuff first, and
Speaker 1: so somebody would have me on and they would say,
Speaker 1: we're so excited to have Jason five, a thought leader
Speaker 1: an entrepreneurship here we're gonna be talking about. And I
Speaker 1: would say, WHOA hold on a second. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't consider myself a thought leader. I consider myself a journalist.
Speaker 1: I'm a storyteller and my job is to find information.
Speaker 1: And I found that they had no idea what I
Speaker 1: was talking about and it was killing the vibe. It
Speaker 1: was like falling downstairs, right, and leader in that and anyway,
Speaker 1: in the world of self promotion, there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as anyone who's not a thought leader. If you're breathing,
Speaker 1: you're a thought leader. Well that's right. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I was telling my wife about this problem. How do
Speaker 1: I what do I do here? Because I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: destroying the reason that these people are having me on
Speaker 1: their show. And she said, if they want you to
Speaker 1: be a thought leader, just be a thought leader. And
Speaker 1: I realized that the difference between a thought leader and
Speaker 1: not a thought leaders that the thought leader is willing
Speaker 1: to call themselves a thought leader. That's literally the only distinction.
Speaker 1: And so I started to try to understand what people
Speaker 1: understood of me. And that was a really interesting experience
Speaker 1: because look, prior to that, when I was a journey
Speaker 1: when I was a pure journalist, when I was covering
Speaker 1: city council meetings for local newspapers. You know, I'd walk
Speaker 1: in and everyone would sit up because now they know
Speaker 1: they're on the record and whatever they say could end
Speaker 1: up in the paper. And my job is and people
Speaker 1: were understanding me different at entrepreneur, and I started to
Speaker 1: listen to the questions that they were asking me. What
Speaker 1: they primarily were asking me was some version of what
Speaker 1: are the qualities of a successful entrepreneur? And I came
Speaker 1: to this interesting philosophy, which is that when you listen
Speaker 1: to the questions that people ask you, what you're actually
Speaker 1: hearing is them telling you what they think your value
Speaker 1: is to them. And so I was like, well, first
Speaker 1: of all, I need an answer to this question, because
Speaker 1: they keep asking me the question. But then also this
Speaker 1: gives me insights into what they think I am. They
Speaker 1: don't think of me as a journalist. What they think
Speaker 1: of me is as like a like the super entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: the entrepreneur who talks to all the entrepreneurs, who sits
Speaker 1: in the middle and likes sees the patterns, and then
Speaker 1: his job is to bring you the patterns. And I
Speaker 1: realized that they they don't even understand me as a journalist.
Speaker 1: And that was weird at first, and then ultimately fine.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is because I found that
Speaker 1: I liked it. I liked relating to the audience, and
Speaker 1: I liked supporting them. There's a deep skepticism that traditional
Speaker 1: journalists bring to the sources that they cover and in
Speaker 1: the industries that they cover. And what I ultimately discovered
Speaker 1: about myself is that although I can summon that skepticism,
Speaker 1: I'm a little happier without it. And so I started
Speaker 1: to really lean into calling myself an entrepreneur and relating
Speaker 1: to them and writing these motivates. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: pick up my if you pick up the magazine, the
Speaker 1: first thing that you'll read is this column that I write,
Speaker 1: which you know, every other editor in chief uses their
Speaker 1: editor's letter as like a table of contents and essay form.
Speaker 1: But what I've done is turned it into this thing
Speaker 1: where I share my own lessons and failures and the
Speaker 1: lessons to draw from it. And I get it just
Speaker 1: a tremendous response from So anyway, you ask about the
Speaker 1: power structure of this thing and how this actually works,
Speaker 1: and look, I mean, structurally, it's not all that different
Speaker 1: from any other traditional journalism. There is a hard wall
Speaker 1: between advertising and edit. You cannot buy edit in the magazine.
Speaker 1: You cannot influence edit in the magazine and edit it
Speaker 1: for the listeners. Edited short for editorial there which is
Speaker 1: itself a shorthand for the idea of articles that you
Speaker 1: write as opposed to advertisements. That's right, thanks, yes, correct.
Speaker 1: So we I assign short and long stories to professional
Speaker 1: journalists and they go out and they report those stories.
Speaker 1: But the instruction that I give them is the people
Speaker 1: who are reading this are going to be entrepreneurs, and
Speaker 1: their number one question when they sit down to read
Speaker 1: this story is what is in it for me? What
Speaker 1: can I learn that I can apply directly to my life?
Speaker 1: For this, So, if you're going to report a story
Speaker 1: about how somebody built this company or whatever's going on
Speaker 1: in this world, that the number one question to be
Speaker 1: answering all the time is how did this problem get solved?
Speaker 1: How does this thing work? How can entrepreneurs learn from this?
Speaker 1: That's the mission. And again, yes, an advertiser cannot buy
Speaker 1: a story. They cannot influence a story. We function like
Speaker 1: traditional journalism, but I probably do more than a I'm
Speaker 1: not probably, I'm sure a hundred thousand times do more
Speaker 1: than like somebody at the New York Times would do
Speaker 1: to engage with an advertiser. So let's say, for example, LinkedIn. Recently,
Speaker 1: we partnered with LinkedIn, as you know, their sponsor, and
Speaker 1: part of that was that I moderated a clubhouse and
Speaker 1: then I did a LinkedIn live talking about how to
Speaker 1: build your brand on LinkedIn. Now that doesn't feel dirty
Speaker 1: to me, and the reason for that is because I
Speaker 1: know my audience is actually really interested in how to
Speaker 1: build their brand on LinkedIn. It's a subject that they
Speaker 1: care about, So it doesn't feel like I'm sacrificing anything
Speaker 1: or that people will feel differently about me or the
Speaker 1: brand in any way. If I'm the voice and face
Speaker 1: of that conversation, I'm happy to do it. We sell ads,
Speaker 1: we create products. You can literally book my time through
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and I will give you advice on your business.
Speaker 1: It's a service that we offer. I've come to realize
Speaker 1: that the best that I can do for my job
Speaker 1: and my audience is to be a blend for them
Speaker 1: in which I take the skills and the methodology of journalism,
Speaker 1: which is to say, go out, gather information, create a
Speaker 1: coherent narrative that people can follow, and to have standards
Speaker 1: that I think that somebody outside of journalism may not
Speaker 1: know how to apply to this world. So for example,
Speaker 1: why are we covering certain things? We don't want a
Speaker 1: log roll for people, etc. But then also be mindful
Speaker 1: that what the audience ultimately wants is not journalism, but
Speaker 1: they want is help. And by delivering those two things,
Speaker 1: we can call it soft journalism, sure, but what I
Speaker 1: just think of it as value. I have an audience
Speaker 1: and I'm providing value to them. Jason, I want to
Speaker 1: come around to one of the places where your power
Speaker 1: actually enables you to potentially do good. And I know
Speaker 1: it's something that you focus on, and that is getting
Speaker 1: diverse faces and voices into your magazine so as to
Speaker 1: promote the greater diversification by sex, by race, by class,
Speaker 1: across the full space of really of capitalism, of entrepreneurial capitalism.
Speaker 1: That's obviously hard because we live in a world where
Speaker 1: you're not in charge of capitalism and you're not in
Speaker 1: charge of the allocation of capital. And for systemic and
Speaker 1: structural reasons, it's harder to get access to capital and
Speaker 1: start a business if you're a woman. It's harder to
Speaker 1: get access to capital and start a business if you're
Speaker 1: a person of color in the United States. And you're
Speaker 1: not responsible for the fact that those things came into existence,
Speaker 1: but it is part of your mission to try to
Speaker 1: help make them better by coverage Yeah, how do you
Speaker 1: think about that? How do you push forward and enable
Speaker 1: there to be different faces and different voices given the
Speaker 1: background conditions that already exist and make it much harder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an important question. I used to work a fast
Speaker 1: company and the editor in chief at the time, a
Speaker 1: guy named Bob Saffian, said this thing that I really
Speaker 1: liked and that I've I've thought about a lot since,
Speaker 1: which was our job is not to show business as
Speaker 1: it is right now, necessarily, but to show where business
Speaker 1: is going, what business looks like in the future. We
Speaker 1: are to imagine a more diverse cast of players in business.
Speaker 1: What does that look like? And let's make sure that
Speaker 1: we're reflecting that. So on a practical level, what does
Speaker 1: that look like? Well, I mean it literally looks like
Speaker 1: us as a staff saying do we have enough diversity
Speaker 1: in every issue? I mean, I don't know that I
Speaker 1: should even be saying this aloud, but I don't know
Speaker 1: how else to do it. So I'll just tell you
Speaker 1: when we put together a package. So, a package, in
Speaker 1: magazine parlance is a number of pages that are all
Speaker 1: around the same theme. So let's say we have a
Speaker 1: package called one hundred Powerful Women that's a package. When
Speaker 1: we are producing a lineup for that, we are mindful
Speaker 1: of and in fact literally writing down on a spreadsheet
Speaker 1: who and what everybody is. Making sure that because the
Speaker 1: thing is that I don't want to I don't want
Speaker 1: to have come up with a list and then look
Speaker 1: at it and say, a crap, eighty percent of these
Speaker 1: people are white. We want to make sure that we're
Speaker 1: we have a good mix, and literally the only way
Speaker 1: to do that is to put it on a spreadsheet
Speaker 1: and make sure that you've got the right numbers. And
Speaker 1: that's what we do because there's no better, there's no
Speaker 1: other way to do it. And that means doing a
Speaker 1: lot of extra work, and it means being proactive and
Speaker 1: contacting communities and constantly asking them for their own insights.
Speaker 1: I met with a female investor a couple days ago.
Speaker 1: We got coffee and I told her, I was like, look,
Speaker 1: we're casting this hundred women thing. We're looking for a
Speaker 1: really diverse range of founders. I would love you to
Speaker 1: tap your network as well and tell me who you
Speaker 1: think we should be considering. That's the only way to
Speaker 1: do it. Take down the walls, let people contact you.
Speaker 1: Be proactive in contacting them too, because to me, the
Speaker 1: best way to serve our community is to try to
Speaker 1: knock as many of those barriers down as possible. Last
Speaker 1: question for you, Jason, Yeah, when you think about your
Speaker 1: industry and your job, what worries you the most? You
Speaker 1: sound like an upbeat, positive guy with good messages to
Speaker 1: learn in good goals, and I don't want to in
Speaker 1: any way undermind that you must have some worries sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering what they are. It's a funny, weird,
Speaker 1: hard question. Actually, you're right. I am generally a very optimistic,
Speaker 1: upbeat person, and I will tell you that serving an
Speaker 1: optimistic and upbeat audience really helps do that. What keeps
Speaker 1: me up at night, I mean, I guess the thing
Speaker 1: that worries me the most is that there are always
Speaker 1: bad actors who are looking to take advantage of people.
Speaker 1: And in the world of entrepreneurship, I can tell you
Speaker 1: that there are so many people who are looking to
Speaker 1: get you to show up at their ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: three day course, and the whole point of that course
Speaker 1: is to sell you on the fifty thousand dollars three
Speaker 1: day course. And I hate those guys. They're bad. They're
Speaker 1: bad for the people who they're trying to who they're
Speaker 1: proposed to serve. And I think that it's good to
Speaker 1: have strong leadership and strong I mean, I'll use the
Speaker 1: word brand again because to me, entrepreneurs a brand more
Speaker 1: than it is anything else. A strong brand that isn't
Speaker 1: trying to actively take advantage of people. And I think
Speaker 1: that it's possible that as the economics of these brands shift,
Speaker 1: some will survive and some will not, and some will disappear.
Speaker 1: And it's possible that that creates more oxygen for the
Speaker 1: Charlottean's of the world. But I don't think that that
Speaker 1: means that the Charlottean's of the world win. I think
Speaker 1: that if Entrepreneur disappeared tomorrow. I think that if you
Speaker 1: and I wrapped up this conversation and then I look
Speaker 1: at my email and I've got an email from the
Speaker 1: president of Entrepreneur that says, you know, crap, it's all
Speaker 1: over and the company has disappeared. I don't think that
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs suffer forever, right. I think that they lose a
Speaker 1: trusted source of information and then another one rises, and
Speaker 1: that's how it should be. Jason, thank you for your candor,
Speaker 1: your enthusiasm. I learned a huge amount about your industry
Speaker 1: and how it works, and also about what it takes
Speaker 1: to succeed in it. And I'm really really grateful to
Speaker 1: you for your time. Oh well, thanks, I appreciate you
Speaker 1: and this is a lot of fun. Thanks. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back listening to Jason. I was extraordinarily struck by
Speaker 1: his candor. In no way did Jason attempt to mislead, misrepresent,
Speaker 1: or sugarcoat the basic structure of how he understands his
Speaker 1: branch of business journalism. In Jason's account, the point of
Speaker 1: what he does is to support and embrace the mission
Speaker 1: of small businesses, to help them be inspired to do better,
Speaker 1: to give them advice about how to do their jobs,
Speaker 1: and not to focus on negative stories that might inevitably
Speaker 1: have the effect of alienating his readers. Jason sees his
Speaker 1: readers as constituents or stakeholders in an overarching project, which is,
Speaker 1: after all, part of the central project of capitalism in America,
Speaker 1: namely getting small business to do big things in the world.
Speaker 1: This perspective on a whole genre of journalism is almost
Speaker 1: entirely missing from our general discussion in the culture of
Speaker 1: what media is for and what it does. We tend
Speaker 1: to think of newspapers and magazines in the classic mold
Speaker 1: of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: being objective, aiming to tell the truth and uncovering instances
Speaker 1: of wrongdoing by the subjects that they cover. Yet, in
Speaker 1: today's complex economic reality for media journalism, it may be
Speaker 1: that the business model of traditional objective journalism is limited
Speaker 1: to only a handful of significant players. However, the market
Speaker 1: for journalism of the kind that Jason described seems in
Speaker 1: fact to be doing pretty well and even growing, reflecting
Speaker 1: the underlying economic interest that many people seem to have
Speaker 1: in reading stories that do give them feelings of uplift
Speaker 1: and that do guide them towards their business objectives. In
Speaker 1: that context, so relently positive is Jason's vision that even
Speaker 1: topics like the potential monopolistic effects of big tech topics
Speaker 1: that are in constant discussion on Capitol Hill, for example,
Speaker 1: are not particularly in Jason's expert view of interest to
Speaker 1: his readers. Why because they represent limitations, and his job,
Speaker 1: as he sees it, is to tell stories that emphasize
Speaker 1: possibilities by bringing us inside the actual world of how
Speaker 1: journalism works at his magazine, Jason gave me and I
Speaker 1: hope you too, a remarkable gift, the gift of the
Speaker 1: unvarnished truth about how power actually is deployed in certain
Speaker 1: journalistic spaces today, very much outside of the headlines. Until
Speaker 1: the next time I speak to you here on Deep Background,
Speaker 1: Breathe deep, think deep thoughts, and try to have a
Speaker 1: little fun. If you're a regular listener, you know I
Speaker 1: love communicating with you here on Deep Background. I also
Speaker 1: really want that communication to run both ways. I want
Speaker 1: to know what you think are the most important stories
Speaker 1: of the moment and what kinds of guests you think
Speaker 1: you would be useful to hear from. More So, I'm
Speaker 1: opening a new channel of communication. To access it, just
Speaker 1: go to my website Noah Dashfelman dot com. You can
Speaker 1: sign up from my newsletter and you can tell me
Speaker 1: exactly what's on your mind, something that would be really
Speaker 1: valuable to me and I hope to you too. Deep
Speaker 1: Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer
Speaker 1: is mo La Board, our engineer is Ben Taliday, and
Speaker 1: our showrunner is Sophie Crane mccibbon. Editorial support from NOAHM
Speaker 1: Osband theme music by Luis Gera at Pushkin. Thanks to
Speaker 1: Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia Jeancott, Heather Faine, Carlie mcgliori,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write
Speaker 1: a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at
Speaker 1: bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate
Speaker 1: of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts, and
Speaker 1: if you liked what you heard today, please write a
Speaker 1: review or tell a friend. This is deep background