Speaker 1: Already and this is this is the daily, This is.
Speaker 2: The daily oss Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning,
Speaker 2: and welcome to a very special episode of the TDA podcast.
Speaker 2: It's Wednesday, the twelfth of March. I'm Sam, I'm Zara,
Speaker 2: and today's a huge milestone for us. TDA is turning
Speaker 2: eight years old.
Speaker 1: Yay, Happy birthday to us.
Speaker 2: Happy birthday to us.
Speaker 1: I'm exciting.
Speaker 2: So by school metrics, I think we're in about year two,
Speaker 2: year three.
Speaker 1: Clearly it's been a long time since either of us
Speaker 1: were in school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're starting to grow up, we're getting out, we're
Speaker 2: finding our feet a bit more, we're discovering who we are.
Speaker 2: Haven't hit puberty yet, so we're still we're still okay,
Speaker 2: but stay with us for that. It's been a long time.
Speaker 1: It has been a long time. And you know, eight
Speaker 1: years today since we sat in a cafe said hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we give you this thing a shot? Little
Speaker 1: did we know where we would go.
Speaker 2: And that was twenty nine and twenty two days ago.
Speaker 2: But we did actually quit our jobs until February of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, and that was when we started the
Speaker 2: podcast and newsletters. So that was one four hundred and
Speaker 2: ninety nine days ago. But that's a lot of time,
Speaker 2: and so today we thought we'd do something a little
Speaker 2: bit different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we wanted to take this opportunity. You know, we've
Speaker 1: both been told we potentially don't take enough time to
Speaker 1: reflect on the journey that we've beat on, and so
Speaker 1: we wanted to take this opportunity to do just that
Speaker 1: and to reflect on the eight lessons that we've learned
Speaker 1: over the last eight years.
Speaker 2: I was thinking when writing this script with you about
Speaker 2: those early days of recording the podcast. The first couple
Speaker 2: of episodes, listenership of about four of which our mums
Speaker 2: were two of the four. We were under a washing
Speaker 2: line in my little sharehouse, covered in a doner to
Speaker 2: make it sound proof. Today we're in an awesome studio.
Speaker 2: We've got a team around us building a really epic
Speaker 2: media company telling the stories of young Australians for millions
Speaker 2: of people every month. So what's the first lesson?
Speaker 1: Okay, so lesson number one, and I don't think we
Speaker 1: could have started this anywhere else, is that trust needs
Speaker 1: to be earned, not expected.
Speaker 2: Amen.
Speaker 1: This is such a big one. I mean it's important
Speaker 1: at any point, but especially in today's media landscape already.
Speaker 1: When we started TDA back in twenty seventeen, we suspected
Speaker 1: there was a big trust deficit, and since that time
Speaker 1: it's just gotten worse. People are becoming increasingly skeptical, especially
Speaker 1: as we see the rise in social media and influencers
Speaker 1: and everything that comes with that about new sources and
Speaker 1: about where they're getting their information from. And so we
Speaker 1: realized pretty early on that we couldn't just expect people
Speaker 1: to trust us just because we said they should, or
Speaker 1: just because we positioned ourselves as a media company, didn't
Speaker 1: mean that they immediately had to trust us. We had
Speaker 1: to earn their trust day by day, podcast by podcast,
Speaker 1: newsletter by newsletter, Instagram by instagram post.
Speaker 2: And I think one thing we can really make sure
Speaker 2: that we do to earn that trust in the place,
Speaker 2: but also keep it is own up to our mistakes
Speaker 2: and be transparent when we make them. I mean, the
Speaker 2: two big ones that come to mind would be Taylor Swift,
Speaker 2: just Taylor Swift or giving away tickets to a Tailor
Speaker 2: Swift concert without being allowed to give away tickets to
Speaker 2: a Tailor Swift concert.
Speaker 1: Good lesson in always reading the fine.
Speaker 2: Print, awesome lesson font gate yeap ya say more. We
Speaker 2: are very famous for choosing a fonch. I found a
Speaker 2: graphic design blog a couple of months ago that says
Speaker 2: what the Daily Ods can teach you about how to
Speaker 2: stuff up a rebrand.
Speaker 1: It didn't go down too well, but we were transparent
Speaker 1: with our audience. We came back, we explained our thinking,
Speaker 1: we went on and obviously, you know there have been
Speaker 1: serious things that have happened too. You know, we are
Speaker 1: doing this for the very first time. We've learned a
Speaker 1: lot from our audience about language, about context, about storytelling,
Speaker 1: and we're learning every single day. And I think it's
Speaker 1: about taking the audience on that journey and building that
Speaker 1: trust along the way and not expecting it to happen overnight.
Speaker 1: And just while we're on the topic of mistakes, I
Speaker 1: would just add that one day a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: on a weekend, I uploaded a photo of my foot
Speaker 1: by accident to our Instagram, left it up there for
Speaker 1: approximately half an hour, and came back to my phone
Speaker 1: to hundreds of comments about my foot. And that's on
Speaker 1: making mistakes and owning them. I've told everyone about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I would love to know how much you're
Speaker 2: making from those at the moment, it's a really amazing
Speaker 2: line of revenue. Okay, lesson number two. You have to
Speaker 2: meet people where they're at. And I remember when we
Speaker 2: were starting out, a lot of traditional media had this
Speaker 2: attitude of if we build something, people will come to it,
Speaker 2: and if they told people on Instagram to go the
Speaker 2: link and bio click and read something else somewhere else,
Speaker 2: that that would just happen automatically. But that's not how
Speaker 2: we saw young people behave. It's not how we behaved
Speaker 2: and our friends behaved. And we realized that if we
Speaker 2: wanted to reach young Aussies with news, we had to
Speaker 2: go to the platforms that they were already using and
Speaker 2: use them authentically.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean that's why we started on Instagram.
Speaker 1: We knew that's where everyone, or at least our cohort
Speaker 1: was at the time. We were certainly one of the
Speaker 1: first news pages in the country. I'd say probably.
Speaker 2: The first, the first in the country and the first
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: We'll go with the fact. Definitely the first in the
Speaker 1: country to introduce the carousel format of providing news on
Speaker 1: carousels in Instagram. Obviously, now that's everywhere, that's a given
Speaker 1: that's no longer novel, but at the time, this idea
Speaker 1: of using social media, which at that point was about
Speaker 1: you know, avocado toast and a sunset and all of
Speaker 1: those like really typical things, and saying, no, we're going
Speaker 1: to put news here when news doesn't belong. That was
Speaker 1: a really novel idea, and it was this attempt to
Speaker 1: bring news to our audience and meet them where they're
Speaker 1: at and not call them complacent if they didn't come
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 2: And then we quickly learned though that we couldn't just
Speaker 2: build a whole business on that idea. I mean, these
Speaker 2: are still companies that are privately owned. You know you
Speaker 2: are at We had the meta scale last year, the
Speaker 2: med scale last year. We've talked about that in the pod.
Speaker 2: But also the algorithm changes one day to the next,
Speaker 2: and that's where we started developing out some of the
Speaker 2: other channels, like the one that you're listening to right now,
Speaker 2: a podcast. We've got our newsletters now. Newsletters now a
Speaker 2: really huge part of our business. And so then the
Speaker 2: question becomes, how do we meet people where they're at,
Speaker 2: but also build a solid business that isn't at the
Speaker 2: mercy of the tech gods, and for us, that's really
Speaker 2: about making everything kind of fit together, so you shouldn't
Speaker 2: feel like you're being gay ecosystem exactly. You can kind
Speaker 2: of listen to something in the morning, read something in
Speaker 2: the afternoon, have a vote on an Instagram story, all
Speaker 2: of that, and that feels really kind of cohesive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And I think that that's a really good
Speaker 1: segue into lesson number three and one of my favorites
Speaker 1: and something that you will hear me talking about at
Speaker 1: every opportunity, which is young people really care about the news.
Speaker 1: And I think the way that we realize this was
Speaker 1: by talking across from them, not down to them.
Speaker 2: Explain that for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what I'm talking about there is what I
Speaker 1: think TDA secret sources, which is that we are young
Speaker 1: people talking to our peers. We know how to speak
Speaker 1: their language, we know what they care about, we know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about in their group WhatsApps, because our
Speaker 1: whole office is made up of these people. And that's
Speaker 1: not to say that you have to have a certain
Speaker 1: lived experience to be a storyteller, but I do think
Speaker 1: that if we look around, so often we have people
Speaker 1: talking down to young people and telling them that they're complacent,
Speaker 1: telling them that they don't care about the world, or
Speaker 1: that they're apathetic, when in reality, they just haven't been
Speaker 1: spoken to in their language or on their platforms, you know,
Speaker 1: the platforms that we have been conditioned to be present on.
Speaker 2: And I think one thing that's really interesting for me
Speaker 2: on this lesson is I'm constantly surprised. But also our
Speaker 2: approach to all of this is affirmed by what podcast
Speaker 2: topics do well with our audience. I mean, a podcast
Speaker 2: topic on housing prices or interest rates will actually do really,
Speaker 2: really well.
Speaker 1: And you go to of course because it matters to
Speaker 1: young people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you go to anybody in kind of older
Speaker 2: generations of news businesses and they'll tell you young people don't
Speaker 2: care about economics.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean I think this is at the
Speaker 1: heart of it, right, which is that when you look
Speaker 1: across the landscape, traditionally we've seen pop culture dressed up
Speaker 1: as news for young people that young people can only consume,
Speaker 1: you know, lighter, fluffier topics. And I think we've said
Speaker 1: this on the podcast before, and let the record reflect
Speaker 1: I love reality television as much as the next person,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that I don't love the news
Speaker 1: and that I can't have both, and so I think
Speaker 1: that for us, it's so important to continue to deliver
Speaker 1: that really important hard news so that young people go
Speaker 1: into things like elections being informed. And I mean this
Speaker 1: election coming up, I mean we don't know when it is,
Speaker 1: but when it does come, it's going to be the
Speaker 1: very first time that Gen Z and Millennials outnumber Baby
Speaker 1: boomers at the ballot box. And you know, an engage
Speaker 1: youth here has significant outcomes for democracy. And I think
Speaker 1: anyone that underestimates young people does so at their own peril.
Speaker 2: The kids are all right, the kids are all right, Sara,
Speaker 2: Let's go to what I think might be your favorite lesson. Yeah,
Speaker 2: good news. News is compulsory. And this is actually something
Speaker 2: that did start eight years ago. We made these bulletins
Speaker 2: that went on Instagram stories.
Speaker 1: That stories was this really new thing at the time,
Speaker 1: and we were like, wow, I's so ahead of the curve.
Speaker 2: I reckon, it's changed dimensions like three hundred times in
Speaker 2: that years. But we had five Instagram stories that went
Speaker 2: up at eight o'clock every morning, four stories in the
Speaker 2: way to Know, and one good news at the end
Speaker 2: of that bulletin, and we have done a good news
Speaker 2: story every single day since, every single newsletter and every
Speaker 2: single Headlines podcast of TDA. And it's a really hard
Speaker 2: job to find good news every day, but it's absolutely
Speaker 2: worth it.
Speaker 1: It is. I mean, there's so much both empirical evidence
Speaker 1: and then at least anecdotal evidence that people turn away
Speaker 1: from the news because it's too negative, because it's too dark,
Speaker 1: and so we need to keep people engaged with your news.
Speaker 1: We're not asking people to turn away, but what can
Speaker 1: we do to lighten that load a bit? And so
Speaker 1: good news is the answer here, because if you're reading
Speaker 1: about all the doom and gloom in the world, but
Speaker 1: then you've put on a Saturday good news podcast or
Speaker 1: you read our good newsletter, you are reminded that there
Speaker 1: is more to the world than what meets the eye.
Speaker 1: And then what makes headlines. You know, I always say,
Speaker 1: if it bleeds, it leads. That's how traditional media has
Speaker 1: always gone because they know those stories do well. But
Speaker 1: that's not how we can continue because we just know
Speaker 1: people are turning away on mass and that's not good
Speaker 1: for anyone.
Speaker 2: And I think that the balance part of why we
Speaker 2: do good news is really important, and equally also highlighting
Speaker 2: stories that might not make it into a news bulletin.
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope that we've inspired people to pursue
Speaker 2: degrees in science or engineering because we have highlighted developments
Speaker 2: over the last eight years that wouldn't have made the
Speaker 2: cut if we've just done the kind of if it bleeds,
Speaker 2: it leads methodology. I remember somebody said to me, they
Speaker 2: love our good news stuff. They love your newsletter on
Speaker 2: a Sunday because it makes them feel hopeful without feeling naive.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's all we can hope for. Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Number five consistency is king.
Speaker 1: This is your favorite.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I don't know that there's a day you haven't told
Speaker 1: me this.
Speaker 2: It's so important just to show up every single day,
Speaker 2: and we make sure that we do the news regardless
Speaker 2: if it's a weekend, if it's a public holiday, if
Speaker 2: we're overseas. You know, in the early days, if you
Speaker 2: and I were hungover, we'd get up and do the
Speaker 2: I mean, there were some.
Speaker 1: Tough times past ten, so we do that.
Speaker 2: I'm just doing my lower backstretches now, but this has
Speaker 2: gotten obviously so much easier. As the team has grown,
Speaker 2: it's easier to do it every single day. But it's
Speaker 2: a really important part because one of our favorite sayings
Speaker 2: here is that things might not work in the first
Speaker 2: twelve weeks.
Speaker 1: I mean, i've it's going to work for the first
Speaker 1: five years of this business exactly. Arguably, if you look back,
Speaker 1: we did the same thing every single day we built habit,
Speaker 1: but no one was watching. And those early days are
Speaker 1: the only reason that we have the success we have
Speaker 1: now that we have the trust, now that we know
Speaker 1: how to do what we're doing because we did it consistently,
Speaker 1: day in day out, regardless of being in other jobs,
Speaker 1: regardless of having notions to turn it into a business.
Speaker 1: We knew what we had to do and that would
Speaker 1: show up.
Speaker 2: I think the podcast has been probably the one that's
Speaker 2: tested us the most.
Speaker 1: In this regards shout out to you guys.
Speaker 2: I think we've had I mean, let's be honest, we've
Speaker 2: had discussions about not doing the pod because growth in
Speaker 2: those first days, months, and even years was so slow,
Speaker 2: and it's really been only the kind of last i'd
Speaker 2: say eighteen months that the podcast has really grown. But
Speaker 2: we've been doing it.
Speaker 1: For four years and overnight success.
Speaker 2: Overnight success favorite thing, but it's really important. And now
Speaker 2: if people have new ideas in the office and they
Speaker 2: bring it to us, we love experimenting. We love testing.
Speaker 2: You have to commit to it for twelve weeks because
Speaker 2: then you get data and you get to know whether
Speaker 2: it actually does work or not. And it's good for
Speaker 2: our character.
Speaker 1: Touche character bility. Now let's move on to lessons six.
Speaker 1: This is a biggie for us. And that's while opinion sells,
Speaker 1: news is more important than ever Sam in the age
Speaker 1: of hot takes and social media influencers sharing political opinions left,
Speaker 1: right and center, it is more important than ever. I
Speaker 1: believe that we provide balance and nuance in those same spaces.
Speaker 1: And I want to be clear, there's absolutely nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with opinion writing. I love consuming opinions, I love reading
Speaker 1: smart takes, and it can be really helpful to signpost
Speaker 1: ideas for people who are developing their own understanding and
Speaker 1: to read other opinions and then form their own. The
Speaker 1: problem that arises, though, is when people are reading opinion
Speaker 1: or activism whatever it is on Instagram, for example, and
Speaker 1: they aren't getting the objective facts that underpin those opinions.
Speaker 2: It's kind of all of us working off the same
Speaker 2: base in another way. And if we take the upcoming
Speaker 2: election as an example, you're going to see a lot
Speaker 2: of influencers telling you how to vote, to vote one
Speaker 2: way or the other, how good or bad a policy is,
Speaker 2: how good or bad a leader is. If you don't
Speaker 2: have a balanced media diet sitting under that, it's pretty
Speaker 2: hard to make sense of why that criticism is being
Speaker 2: leveled at that person or party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean even taking a step back to
Speaker 1: understand and to have that civics education of how do
Speaker 1: I vote, how does referential voting work? What is minority government?
Speaker 1: All of these sorts of questions. You can't assess whether
Speaker 1: or not minority government's going to be a good or
Speaker 1: bad thing if you don't have that level of knowledge.
Speaker 1: And so I think that is why it's so important
Speaker 1: for us to show up every single day and to
Speaker 1: give people that baseline so that they can go out
Speaker 1: and read those opinions and fully understand the context in
Speaker 1: which those opinions are formed.
Speaker 2: And people have said to us over the years, Sam
Speaker 2: and Zara, have you guys thought about doing opinion ye?
Speaker 2: Have you thought about doing really strong views because that
Speaker 2: will do a lot better. You'll go viral, quicker and
Speaker 2: all of that. I'm so glad we've held out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that we have stuck to our guns
Speaker 2: on providing that strong base because I think that's the
Speaker 2: DNA of TDA.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent.
Speaker 2: Well, that's nice, and I'll put that in the poster.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get to number seven. It's a bit
Speaker 2: more of a business lesson than a lesson about the news,
Speaker 2: but it is one that we remind ourselves every day.
Speaker 2: If this was easy, if it was easy to build
Speaker 2: a news company, then everyone would be doing it. And
Speaker 2: I think our youthful enthusiasm of you know, how hard
Speaker 2: can it be?
Speaker 1: Naivity would be what I call it.
Speaker 2: Throw some news on a page, it'll grow, they'll make money.
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember telling a room full of advertisers that no,
Speaker 1: we will never do advertising.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: Enjoy this podcast.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's clearly not true today. But we've built a
Speaker 2: sustainable business on the back of it. You have to
Speaker 2: work around the clock, you have to make smart financial decisions,
Speaker 2: you have to hire the right people, and if you
Speaker 2: take all of those factors of making any business and
Speaker 2: realize how hard that is, and then add the news
Speaker 2: on top and all the complexities of news, you've got
Speaker 2: a very challenging environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, especially in Australia. I feel like
Speaker 1: we've spoken about this time and time again. We've an
Speaker 1: extremely concentrated media market here. It's an extremely hard market
Speaker 1: to break into. We don't have new media often succeeding
Speaker 1: here because it's so concentrated and the ownership is so concentrated,
Speaker 1: and so building in this space is important, but it's
Speaker 1: really hard and if it were easy, Sam, we'd all
Speaker 1: be doing it exactly.
Speaker 2: And finally, the eighth lesson brought to you by one
Speaker 2: of my favorite moments from Ted Lasso, who stole it
Speaker 2: from somebody else. Be curious, not judgmental.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 2: So this is about approaching stories, issues and people with
Speaker 2: genuine curiosity rather than just these preconceptions about how they're
Speaker 2: going to behave or what they're going to say. And
Speaker 2: we try and do that in every part of the business.
Speaker 2: It's about asking questions to understand ideas further rather than
Speaker 2: just looking for a way to confirm what you already think.
Speaker 2: And so whether it's asking the audience what they think
Speaker 2: through you know, putting up a poll to actually understand
Speaker 2: a point of view. We're working on something really exciting
Speaker 2: that that goes a bit deeper into exactly what young
Speaker 2: Australians are thinking.
Speaker 1: But excellent, I believe the kids call that easter eggs.
Speaker 2: Yes, nice, you can throw that one in there. But
Speaker 2: the whole idea about being curious not judgmental is not
Speaker 2: pretending we're experts. Yeah, I mean we are learning alongside
Speaker 2: our audience. We're trying to figure this out. There is
Speaker 2: no such thing as a silly question that would make
Speaker 2: a good title for a book, and I think being
Speaker 2: curious and not judgmental makes for more honest and more
Speaker 2: helpful journalism.
Speaker 1: Well, Sam, what a note to end on eight years
Speaker 1: eight lessons. What a journey it's been. We absolutely could
Speaker 1: not have done it without all of you, our listeners,
Speaker 1: the people that read us, the people that watch us.
Speaker 1: We couldn't have done this.
Speaker 2: Without all of you, and especially on the back of
Speaker 2: us talking about some of the challenges that we face
Speaker 2: as a media company. It's a perfect day to give
Speaker 2: us a little birthday present and become a contributor of TDA.
Speaker 2: I really need to stress that this is not about
Speaker 2: giving a contribution if you can't afford it. If you
Speaker 2: can afford it and you're feeling like you're in a
Speaker 2: position to do so, that's a way to back our work,
Speaker 2: and we'll throw a link in the show notes for that.
Speaker 2: We are so proud of how accessible TDA is for everybody,
Speaker 2: and we want to keep it that way.
Speaker 1: We'll be back again later today with the headlines as usual,
Speaker 1: but until then, have a brilliant day.
Speaker 2: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 2: Bunjelung Kalkutin woman from Gadigl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 2: Gatighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 2: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 2: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.