Speaker 1: I'm off my game today. No, you're not. People are
Speaker 1: going to have to start making better content. I think
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about this for a long time.
Speaker 1: When you program for everyone, you program for no one.
Speaker 1: I think it's that we're purpose driven platform, like we're
Speaker 1: trying to get to substance. How was that? Are you
Speaker 1: happy with that? This is marketing therapy right now? It
Speaker 1: really is? What's up? Laura And I'm Alexa Kristin. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Atlantia. Laura's in New Jersey today calling in
Speaker 1: so close but so far away. I miss you. I
Speaker 1: miss you in the studio. So today we have Pam
Speaker 1: Wasserstein coming in UM from New York Media. They own
Speaker 1: brands like New York Magazine, Vulture, The Cut, the Strategists, Intelligence,
Speaker 1: are lots of other brands. Kind of an amazing story
Speaker 1: because what I don't think a lot of people know
Speaker 1: is that they're privately owned company, one of the few
Speaker 1: uh still around. You know. Pam has been on board
Speaker 1: for a few years now as CEO, and they have
Speaker 1: really pushed and she's really pushed the company to think
Speaker 1: about and get into very quickly, UH digital publishing. They
Speaker 1: didn't have what I think a lot of companies have,
Speaker 1: which is creating brands more organically and in the digital space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it stands for a perspective, and there's certainly a sort
Speaker 1: of level of premium associated with that. I think that's
Speaker 1: reflective in the fact that they just created a paywall
Speaker 1: in front of their content. Um, they're moving into merchandise
Speaker 1: with some of their brands. They're thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: how to take the business offline and really tap into
Speaker 1: the community and create a closer one to one engagement.
Speaker 1: And so even though the brands, the individual brands which
Speaker 1: you just mentioned earlier are leading UM with their unique
Speaker 1: sort of perspective and what they're covering, sort of the
Speaker 1: quality when you step back of what you expect from
Speaker 1: New York Media backed properties, I think is consistent and
Speaker 1: it'll be fun to hear um that perspective from Pam.
Speaker 1: So with that, Pam from New York Media, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. We are back in the studio with Pam Wasserstein,
Speaker 1: CEO of New York Media, Vulture, The Cut, New York Magazine.
Speaker 1: What other brands intelligence are the Strategist You guys have
Speaker 1: so many amazing brands. Welcome Pam, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: happy to be here. Guys, We're so happy to have you.
Speaker 1: Laura's calling in from Jersey. Hi. Everyone. So Pam, before
Speaker 1: we get into the business, we want to talk about
Speaker 1: how you came to be CEO of the business. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I definitely did not start my career in media at all.
Speaker 1: I was a corporate lawyer for several years, and then
Speaker 1: I worked in private equity on the investment side, totally
Speaker 1: different world, very very different. And then well, so for me,
Speaker 1: I wanted to do something more entrepreneurial, something more creative.
Speaker 1: I ended up working at Tribeca Film which was you know,
Speaker 1: Tribeca Film Festival, and UM a bunch of other things,
Speaker 1: and I ended up leading corporate development there. Stayed for
Speaker 1: about five years, and then I came over to New
Speaker 1: York Media, originally as a head of strategy and then
Speaker 1: UM moving into the CEO position. So what was the
Speaker 1: kind of for you, the thought process or the kind
Speaker 1: of passion that drove you into like, yep, this this
Speaker 1: feels right, this is right. I always loved media. I
Speaker 1: was passionate about media, but I was neither a journalist
Speaker 1: nor an advertising salesperson, and back in the day that
Speaker 1: was sort of where the opportunities were in the industry,
Speaker 1: one of those paths typically, right, So I think what
Speaker 1: changed for me was that the industry changed and then
Speaker 1: the business changed, and so suddenly there were a much
Speaker 1: bigger set and frankly for me, a more interesting set
Speaker 1: of problems and opportunities to start to dig into. So
Speaker 1: you know, you suddenly are thinking about and a lot
Speaker 1: of them tie to the future broadly, like what what
Speaker 1: is the future um of marketing, what is the future
Speaker 1: of content consumption and business models? Yeah, for sure, New
Speaker 1: York was such an incredible brand that was still fresh
Speaker 1: and vibrant and had a lot of I think opportunity
Speaker 1: in the digital world and a really loyal, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of core audience that we could build on. It's
Speaker 1: a mainstay. I mean, so I would say, like in
Speaker 1: New York the Post, in New York Magazine, and you
Speaker 1: can walk into a New Yorker's home and you'll see
Speaker 1: both of those publications. It's a mainstay and part of
Speaker 1: the opportunity for our business, right was moving from that
Speaker 1: kind and traditional in print. We're sort of four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand circulation and New York d m a right, Um,
Speaker 1: so it does tend to be more regional, and then
Speaker 1: digitally we're like million monthly uniques on our own and
Speaker 1: operated sites, and you know, quite national and even international.
Speaker 1: What we're able to do when the Internet arrived just
Speaker 1: kind of take that voice and authority which was always
Speaker 1: through the fifty year history of New York Magazine sort
Speaker 1: of ambitious and not really tied or limited to the geography.
Speaker 1: It was always sort of trying to lead a cultural conversation.
Speaker 1: But now there's so many new opportunities to achieve that.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you all are obviously known
Speaker 1: for very well is covering things that are central to
Speaker 1: New York, right but understandably to scale and you know,
Speaker 1: reach forty five million people with information that obviously goes
Speaker 1: beyond what's happening within New York City. What was sort
Speaker 1: of the reason to move into things like the strategists
Speaker 1: or intelligence or like, what were the insights that said, hey,
Speaker 1: we need to expand beyond covering or talking about things
Speaker 1: just happening specific to New York. So that kind of
Speaker 1: strategic push toward truly national coverage has been a long
Speaker 1: time coming. I would spend probably twelve years now since
Speaker 1: we first started UM one of what we call our
Speaker 1: our verticals, our our digital brands, which was for scrub Street,
Speaker 1: which covers restaurants and food, and Vulture came pretty quickly
Speaker 1: after that, which covers culture and entertainment. Several legacy print publishers,
Speaker 1: I think we're more hesitant to publish digitally because you know,
Speaker 1: concerned about cannibalization of the print model and so forth.
Speaker 1: We didn't really have that. Yeah. Yeah, for us, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, we you know, our audience loves our
Speaker 1: cultural coverage. We can do so much more of it,
Speaker 1: you know, in this arment and like serve our audience
Speaker 1: better and more with our sensibility, take that lens and
Speaker 1: kind of mix it with Internet voice and optimized for
Speaker 1: you know, digital audiences. So it was relatively early, certainly,
Speaker 1: I think for legacy print publishers that that we were
Speaker 1: very gung ho about that, and I think on the
Speaker 1: one the end, there was opportunity to serve our audience
Speaker 1: even more. And then on the other hand, the business
Speaker 1: model encouraged national coverage, so um digitally in an advertising
Speaker 1: based model, typically local is a tough, tough business, a
Speaker 1: tough business, right, So, and even when we started grab Street,
Speaker 1: which was more local and its coverage because it was
Speaker 1: more service and news around New York restaurant scene. And
Speaker 1: then Vulture. What we quickly found was that you know,
Speaker 1: for sort of the same resources, that you could talk
Speaker 1: about something with more local interest, you could talk about
Speaker 1: at the time, gossip Girl or Madman something like that
Speaker 1: and reach an enormous, really engaged audience and find new audiences.
Speaker 1: So that was a pretty exciting discovery for us, and
Speaker 1: we just kept kind of growing, growing and building on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: has that impacted the voice of New York magazine? The
Speaker 1: need to go national? Do you find yourselves appealing to
Speaker 1: an audience beyond New York? Do you find that that's
Speaker 1: changed the way you cover news or politics or style
Speaker 1: or do you still feel that you have a specific
Speaker 1: lens at what you're covering things. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think our voice is everything, Like differentiation in the
Speaker 1: digital world, I think is everything, and so we we
Speaker 1: try really hard to stay specific and true to that voice. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you know that that's how we build real loyalty
Speaker 1: and connection with our audience. I think just going scale
Speaker 1: for the sake of scale is not ultimately a winning game.
Speaker 1: You really need um you do need to achieve scale,
Speaker 1: but you also need a loyal, engaged audience, and to
Speaker 1: do that, your brand has to mean something and continue
Speaker 1: to mean something over time. There does need to be
Speaker 1: I think of voice and a sensibility, and at least
Speaker 1: in our case, we're very, very focused on that and
Speaker 1: kind of think of that as our core asset from
Speaker 1: which the business follows. People that are in the kind
Speaker 1: of cultural no like Saturday Night Live bring you guys
Speaker 1: up in their skits, and it's this hilarious thing to me,
Speaker 1: that culture when he's on Saturday Left. But and it's
Speaker 1: I think happened a couple of times where they like,
Speaker 1: if you didn't read it in Vulture, then you don't know,
Speaker 1: like if it's not in Vulture, then it doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: or something like that. You know, something to that effect.
Speaker 1: And I think it's funny because at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, as a New Yorker, as New Yorkers, we
Speaker 1: know the SNL is like kind of this, it is
Speaker 1: the New York Lens, but everyone in the world is watching.
Speaker 1: It's very very SIMI learned to that, right. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a great analogy actually, And it's funny because I also
Speaker 1: think there's this halo of that brand, but then there's
Speaker 1: a core that voice in that perspective that no matter
Speaker 1: where you are, it's not about geography, it's about mindset
Speaker 1: and mentality our audience. We try to understand our audience
Speaker 1: really well and they it's sort of a psychographic right
Speaker 1: it is. And the voice is also is not New
Speaker 1: York the place. It's New York the idea of sort
Speaker 1: of sophisticated, smart, witty, empathetic and and that's what we're
Speaker 1: going for and there are a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are really hungry for that right now in particular, but
Speaker 1: over years as well. Yeah, So with a further push
Speaker 1: into digital, you know, obviously you've launched podcast now you
Speaker 1: are kind of two days. You've also implemented a paywall
Speaker 1: in front of your content, So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: change and use of technology to obviously both build community
Speaker 1: but now also recognize the premium nature I'm assuming, which
Speaker 1: is why you have the paywall of the content that
Speaker 1: you're producing. Can you talk about some of those changes
Speaker 1: that you're making as we move into twenty nineteen that
Speaker 1: the marketplace needs to be aware of and sort of
Speaker 1: new platforms and why the paywall. So our digital subscription
Speaker 1: which we launched actually this week, which is exciting and
Speaker 1: thank you. And on the tech side, we largely built
Speaker 1: it ourselves. We have a custom content management system that
Speaker 1: we developed ourselves that we actually license and partner with
Speaker 1: other publishers on as well, and then so we've built
Speaker 1: our subscription capabilities into that and it's an exciting next
Speaker 1: step for our business. Been a year now that we've
Speaker 1: been seriously working on implementing the paywall, not not even
Speaker 1: from the tech perspective, but the messaging and marketing is
Speaker 1: really goes hand in hand, especially because the subscription goes
Speaker 1: across all our brands, which is a great value. And
Speaker 1: part of the theory is that because there is really
Speaker 1: a tight DNA around all our brands, and the subject
Speaker 1: matter and focus is different, you know, that's between Vulture,
Speaker 1: the Cut, Intelligencer, etcetera, but the sensibility is quite tightly similar.
Speaker 1: And so if you are a Vulture reader a Vulture user,
Speaker 1: you're likely reading about politics somewhere, or you're likely reading
Speaker 1: about a technology and new ideas somewhere, and you're probably
Speaker 1: going to love Intelligencer, and if you're not, then kind
Speaker 1: of tightening to our consumers. The connection among all our
Speaker 1: brands I think helps bring value to them and introduce
Speaker 1: them to more opportunities to engage with us and engage
Speaker 1: with these brands that they will likely really enjoy. New
Speaker 1: York Media is a pretty unknown brand. You say New
Speaker 1: York Meg and people are like, oh, yeah, okay, right
Speaker 1: of course, right are you thinking about New York Media
Speaker 1: kind of that brand coming out more or is it
Speaker 1: stay in the background. Is it just a kind of
Speaker 1: more of a business brand and you let the kind
Speaker 1: of individual publications shine through. So that is our corporate name.
Speaker 1: It was frankly somewhat of an accidental corporate name which
Speaker 1: didn't really matter for a while. It doesn't really It
Speaker 1: almost still it almost still doesn't matter unless it needs to.
Speaker 1: I think from a like a business perspective, and it
Speaker 1: depends on where you're taking it, and it depends on
Speaker 1: how you're thinking about it. Well, we did have some
Speaker 1: conversation around our digital subscription. What do you call the
Speaker 1: thing if Vulture, which now has a pretty loyal and
Speaker 1: independent of New York mag audience, to introduce them to
Speaker 1: this subscription, what do you call it? And what we
Speaker 1: decided is to call it the New York subscription. I
Speaker 1: love that, but I think it's right. I think it's
Speaker 1: simple and it has again it's that lens, right. So
Speaker 1: I think for now New York Media will stay a
Speaker 1: kind of corporate and not really consumer facing brand. But
Speaker 1: New York Work is very much a consumer facing brand.
Speaker 1: So that's the way we treat it. Have you acquired
Speaker 1: any brands, they've really been you've built, it's been organic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We did acquire Splitsider, which is a comedy focused site
Speaker 1: and really had a passionate fan base in the comedy community,
Speaker 1: and we incorporated that into Vulture and kind of made
Speaker 1: it the heart of the comedy vertical within Vulture. So
Speaker 1: many of these individual brands have followings, right, They have
Speaker 1: these communities. And one of the things that I've enjoyed
Speaker 1: watching the brand do, particularly New York Mag and The Cut,
Speaker 1: is the ability to reach the community offline around things
Speaker 1: like Fashion Week and some of the events that you curry.
Speaker 1: I think there's this expectation that sort of you get
Speaker 1: this insider perspective when you're hanging out with New York
Speaker 1: Mag and The Cut. Can you talk about that sort
Speaker 1: of online offline aspect of your business. Look, we are
Speaker 1: trying to engage our audience and sort of be that trusted,
Speaker 1: authoritative um friend for our audiences as much as we
Speaker 1: can be and deep in connections. One way to deepen
Speaker 1: connection and have a tangible relationship with a publishing brand
Speaker 1: is through print. It's not the only way, but you know,
Speaker 1: in an ephemeral world, to have like a thing that
Speaker 1: you kind of snuggle up with and enjoy is actually
Speaker 1: pretty powerful. But another form of tangible connection is around events.
Speaker 1: We just did a Vulture Festival in l A a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, which you know, something like over
Speaker 1: ten thousand people come to and the programming of Vulture
Speaker 1: Festival is designed towards the Vulture voice, and it's a
Speaker 1: little bit like witty and quirky and interesting, and we
Speaker 1: got stars of the Vulture universe to come and interact
Speaker 1: with the audience in bringing The Cut to We have
Speaker 1: a co production with let Media now for the Cuts
Speaker 1: podcasts The Cut on Tuesdays, which there too, It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: how can we deepen our relationship with our audience and
Speaker 1: be more of a habit for you and be your
Speaker 1: partner for your life for a lot of aspects of
Speaker 1: your life, um, help you be informed and help you
Speaker 1: understand the world, be entertained all of that. Who are
Speaker 1: some people that you're following in things that you're thinking
Speaker 1: about to expand not just the brands, but expand their footprint,
Speaker 1: expand the kind of offline online relationship where you guys
Speaker 1: show up our brand. The Strategist is a little bit
Speaker 1: different from the restaurant brands in the sense it's a
Speaker 1: product recommendation site. The tagline is shop Smartly, or we
Speaker 1: have another tagline that's an obsessively curated internet emporium and
Speaker 1: it's doing really well and has all these like passionate
Speaker 1: fans who basically come the Strategists to help navigate internet shopping.
Speaker 1: So there too, we took authority that we had historically
Speaker 1: in the case of shopping. New York Magazine from day
Speaker 1: one in nineteen sixty was publishing something like best Bets
Speaker 1: and telling you cool new things to buy, what's a deal,
Speaker 1: what's what's beautiful, what's different? I'm always looking for the
Speaker 1: what's different, and that's kind of the strategist sweet spot.
Speaker 1: UM is there's a sense of discovery and it should
Speaker 1: be something typically that you wouldn't necessarily find on your own.
Speaker 1: One of the trends that Alex and I have been
Speaker 1: monitoring for quite some time has been the idea of
Speaker 1: personality as platform and the idea that communities galvanized around
Speaker 1: people's perspectives and opinions. How are you thinking about elevating
Speaker 1: journalists as talent? I think yes absolutely that. You know,
Speaker 1: the individual brand in journalism and elsewhere is very much
Speaker 1: a trend and a trend that's continuing. Ideally there mutually
Speaker 1: reinforcing kind of synergistic relationship between the editorial brand and
Speaker 1: then the individuals where everyone is made better and offers
Speaker 1: a better product at the end of the day to
Speaker 1: your audience. Intelligence Or which recently Uh kind of launched
Speaker 1: in a more ambitious way, has this really cool homepage
Speaker 1: experience you like slack integration with the editors, right, and
Speaker 1: so you can actually talk to them and find out
Speaker 1: what they're thinking about certain things that are happening. I'm
Speaker 1: personally just such a fan of that because in my
Speaker 1: own life, lurking in our editorial slack channels is like,
Speaker 1: it's just the phenomenal. Yeah, it's so phenomenal, And we
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of bring a piece of that experience
Speaker 1: to our audience, and people seem to really love it.
Speaker 1: Also in a time where there's some distrust of media,
Speaker 1: right a thing showing your work a little bit, and
Speaker 1: I think helping our audiences understand what goes into what
Speaker 1: we do, proving out kind of why we do have
Speaker 1: the authority that we have with our audiences is powerful.
Speaker 1: What are some of the partnerships that you've executed or
Speaker 1: are working towards executing that demonstrate where the business is headed. Well, So,
Speaker 1: one partner that we work with in a lot of
Speaker 1: front ways is Amazon right this Strategist, which is a
Speaker 1: truly editorial product, but you know, it's largely an affiliate
Speaker 1: revenue business, which is of fascinating because we're we're suddenly
Speaker 1: in the commerce business. We've done a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: internal technology work to produce really interesting and useful insights
Speaker 1: around purchase behavior people are saying, and then actually we're
Speaker 1: able to take those insights to our grand clients and
Speaker 1: help you know them build better eCOM experiences or content
Speaker 1: experiences a around their objectives. What are your thoughts on
Speaker 1: the status of print as a media channel. How does
Speaker 1: that affect the decisions that you're making on the business side,
Speaker 1: and what would your advice be two buyers in the market,
Speaker 1: who are you know, deciding whether or not that's a
Speaker 1: channel they want to think about in their media plans.
Speaker 1: In I do think it should continue to be an
Speaker 1: important piece of a media plan. It's a great brand play,
Speaker 1: and I think sometimes in the marketing mix, some advertisers
Speaker 1: have moved too far, too far down the funnel, and
Speaker 1: you're not going to see the impact of that right away, right.
Speaker 1: But if you're if you're really like being strategic about
Speaker 1: your marketing mix, you need the lower funnel and you
Speaker 1: also need the upper funnel. We agree with that. To agree, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not digital all the time. It's
Speaker 1: definitely not print all the time. But it's where those
Speaker 1: things and how you use those things and the content
Speaker 1: right obviously matters. And people, you know, print subscribers, they
Speaker 1: really love those publications, right, and they are an engaged audience.
Speaker 1: It's a pleasure, it's a treat to I haven't to
Speaker 1: cuddle up with your favorite magazine. There are a ton
Speaker 1: of digital brands that you know not to mention away
Speaker 1: suitcases like DTC brands who are coming out with their
Speaker 1: own publication. Yes, I think there's a reason why so
Speaker 1: many of businesses still go to the New York Times,
Speaker 1: still go to New York mag to create an impact, right,
Speaker 1: to make a statement, and to really create sort of
Speaker 1: a clear, concise communication that's going to get attention in
Speaker 1: a way that digital I just don't think has the
Speaker 1: ability to do. So. I am all in on print.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It's a high impact medium. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally agree, Pam. What would you kill? What would you buy?
Speaker 1: And then what would you do yourself? What would you
Speaker 1: what would you kill some of the self reporting fake stuff?
Speaker 1: What would you buy for both buy and build. I've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about products these days, bringing new
Speaker 1: exciting experiences to our audiences. How can we developed products
Speaker 1: like physical physical products? Yeah, The Cut has done these
Speaker 1: T shirts and collaboration with Amazon. There's a new T
Speaker 1: shirt every week. We've thought about it as content you
Speaker 1: can live in. Basically an Amazon had originally encouraged us
Speaker 1: to offer a lot of variety and a lot of
Speaker 1: different skews and you know, different options, colors, etcetera. Like
Speaker 1: that's typically how the playbook for doing well on Amazon.
Speaker 1: And we're really just offering this one thing, and it's
Speaker 1: gone really well to the point where apparently they've been
Speaker 1: using it as kind of a case study internally, and like,
Speaker 1: by the way, that's brand right, that's a brand. That's
Speaker 1: brand pulling through the funnel right, by the way. Yeah, great,
Speaker 1: it's a great example. Okay, what would you what would
Speaker 1: you do yourself? TV? We're interested in TV. Where. Um,
Speaker 1: that's great explaining I p for TV, Pam. If people
Speaker 1: want to get ahold of you, how do they find you?
Speaker 1: I think you can email me. Wow, everybody, get out
Speaker 1: your pen the pen you bought from the article on
Speaker 1: the strategies exactly. First go buy a pen from the
Speaker 1: strategist and then use that pen to write down my
Speaker 1: email address. It's Pam dot Wasserstein at and my meg
Speaker 1: dot com. Pam. This is awesome. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming by. Big thanks to Pam. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming by. I think we've been talking about
Speaker 1: having you on the show at least for a year,
Speaker 1: so it's been long time coming. Thank you big. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Dana, our producer. Everyone at Panoply Atlantia will be
Speaker 1: talking to you in a couple of weeks. Full disclosure
Speaker 1: Our opinions are our own.