people don't feel like they need to know about the shooting in Texas they they're like this is not actually relevant to my life and so I would say under the new definition I hope what we do is considered news people are learning about the world they're learning about current events that are somewhat timely but it's a much wider aperture of what is considered news which I love

I think the volume of news and the fact that it is so polarized makes it really difficult to know when you look at a headline or
an article is that actually the take like is that the real take the factual take and I'm not talking about like you know the kind of fearmongering that's around media I just mean the very necessitation of creating a title that grabs eyes is going to mean that that headline is could be misleading or mis context or not capture the full picture

the difference between like Anderson Cooper and you is that Anders Anderson Cooper is not like he has no hand probably in
the ads that play yeah on CNN like you have to have an opinion on the ads what we yeah cuz I'm saying the words exactly right coming out of your mouth

what do you think creators uh need to beware of who do make journalistic content on YouTube Who deliver information when it comes to taking on an Advertiser like um that's you I'm like yeah I I think you have to be really careful of being advertised uh or sorry you have to be really careful about advertising for someone you might report on at a future Point

we want it to be accessible yeah yeah I don't want it to be only accessible to People Like Us that are subscribing to news I want it to be accessible to the 12-year-old behind their keyboard who wants to learn about like the war in
Bosnia I want it to be accessible to some 54 year-old who is just sitting on their couch and suddenly wants to learn about who got rich off the war in Afghanistan

we can do our journalism within the algorithm we do the title and thumb thing I do this on a
thumb and can we get theum that's why it works that's why it works it's actually that face that face every time you guys have really nice thumbnails well that's that's our thumbnail designer and well and Izzy works very hard on that I it's improving but I think that with the packaging conversation the question is what behind the packaging and is the packaging I mean we talked about this really early on in YouTube it was a big thing of like is it uh click bait or cck click worthy

I started a YouTube channel well before it was like a business as a outlet for me to explore my curiosity that was the root of this that's how it all started and it has now turned into a thing called news on YouTube which I'm very proud of and very excited about we're building out what we believe is the new version of news and yet there's this
weird Paradox where like the definition of news allows for those weird quirky interests to also be to fit under that umbrella where I can do bread and shampoo right next to like a trump investigation about money laundering or whatever and it's like that the audience is like okay but it's also it I think it's Fant it's also why it fits squarely it is him everything that you see on this channel on his channel is his brain just put into video it is everything that he's excited about and energized about and curious about and
and if it's not it typically underperforms

I was surprised to hear you guys had 25 employees

it's so complicated and like looking back I have some better understanding of it I was talking to my sister the other day and I was saying it's like it was a breakup with like a bad boyfriend you know but man did I love him like I loved that boyfriend so much and I was almost hooked on him and we've all been there right clarify the boyfriend is YouTube boyriend is theal metaphorical boyfriend it's YouTube YouTube no it's
YouTube and for me what led up to it was I was kind of at like the height of the success I'd seen thus far in in doing what I was doing I had shared a lot about my life a lot and um a lot about some of the most personal things in my life I had shared about sexual assault I had shared about my son who is autistic and raising him our son um he's yours I'm the father yes yeah he is the father

Johnny gets really excited about something and I'll kind of put on the brakes a little bit and be like I don't know I don't know I just don't feel like we've landed there and like Johnny says I have a trump card if he says I see it the Donald Trump card and I know it will
be good sorry he's looking at me this whole time he's pointing at you yeah he really is if he says I see it and I know it's going to be good then like there's enough trust between us that we can like disagree and commit you know well and and part about being the stallion is like disagree and commit that's azos yeah you've read some books getting good I'm big on disagree and commit it's important

our team is made up of a lot of post-production people editors and animators we have a senior production manager who oversees the entire production from a project management standpoint she also field produces um and she has a production coordinator who works with her in tandem to keep all of the videos across all of the channels moving forward we do not miss our
deadlines we do not publish late we H you know it's like everything is sched out for the next six months right now and all of my time all of my writing time is scheduled out until probably the end of January almost just like audibly gasped but every video for the next six months yeah yeah across all channels and and every deadline and every deadline is already articulated and my time is literally articulated and accounted for

I believe that the best stories I really feel this strongly like if you're GNA convince me that you should get 4 million people to sit down for 30 minutes of their time precious time to watch a thing then you sure as hell should be able to defend that story

everyone's welcome to pitch we now we went through all sorts of pitching mechanisms and made them way too complicated and now I just say one sentence one sentence pitch that's all I need if you want to make do more you go right ahead ft true they do flesh out a couple there's a visual but it's reallying it can you really boil it down

I don't know if this is a strength or a weakness it's a strength at the end of the day there is a final filter which is I have to be excited and she can make me excited about something but if it doesn't click for me it does not get made even if it's an objectively good idea and like that is frustrating give me the few things that make it click just like a couple things
actually wrote down it's if I can see like I have a very visual kind of weirdly visual where like things that shouldn't be visual are visual for me and he sin sthesia in addition to all sorts of other weird quirky things um everybody knew what that was except for me in this room like to words sees colors aot of I if I okay if if if a story comes in and intellectually it makes sense so like the intellectual filter I'll be like oh yeah that causal mechanism makes sense this equals this equals this but
then I need to be able to see something sexy I need to be able to see uh an intro or a a data Vis or even a color scheme that makes me like see it in in After Effects like see it in the editor and and and like feel and like I I start to see the edit kind of very apparent once it if I can get a little figment of just that

we were in Scotland on with our children road tripping around and the Washington Post published this like bombshell investigation like like this investigative report about Trump and Egypt in the 2016 campaign it was like this sort of wonky investigation we read that together we listened it was 30 minutes we listened we listened to the AI version of it um and as I was listening I could see this I could see exactly like the dark color scheme of
the map I could see the thin lines connecting I could see the money icons and I was like done like yes and it's like and then we talked about it like we can make it this and then you know like the we have to actually make it into a green Lighty type thing but if I can see that well that just through it's like a fire is starting to actually catch and I need some version of that for me to feel good about a story I'll get through a story and sort of if I don't feel that um but it's way harder and it's way less
Pleasant and it doesn't at the end of the day it doesn't have the same kind

what I'm referring to is
way more subjective and way more of like a feeling it's like a weird like sort of inspirational kind of feeling that I do get I get it like I was just on the airplane writing a story about AI war and I was just trying to like get that that kind of like excitement the art of it the because I want these stories to be Artful I don't want them to just be information I want them to I want people to feel something when they watch them and that feeling starts with that little kind of spark early on so like that is
the final filter for me

I'm just not sure how I'm going to shape this thing you know the stallion has been domesticated it's in the stable but uh that process is going to be us sitting probably in Premiere and we're workshopping what the assembly is of that and how it's going to work and what is the hook and and what and I'm looking at the script and I'm story editing that and and it's not to say I go in there and I make magic he makes magic but I come in with what we call on our team
fresh brain and fresh brain cannot be underestimated when you're steeped in a story when it's everything that you know and you been thinking about you no longer know or it's very unlikely that you do know what is the most interesting part yeah it's why you talk to people about something and like experts they're terrible experts are terrible about talking about what they know you know and and so you you need someone with fresh brain who's like actually the most interesting part that struck me is this
and that's a collaborative process

it was three things please stop doing this because it makes my job so much harder I'm so tired of pulling you through stories that you don't want to do I'm so tired of trying to get you to leave notes on stuff that you are over you know it was also don't do this cuz it's going to hurt something that you really love doing you're he really loves making videos you know I do and then the third was I need you to be a little bit more of a diva I need you to throw your elbows around I need you that's coming
across just the is back it's back you know but I really was like I need you to walk into these rooms and say no no we're not telling that story yeah because I don't find it interesting we're not telling that story Co basally said I will do that but I can't pump out four videos a month I can't like and I was like too bad and so this year was actually the first year that this is fairly new like this is the first year that we went down to like two videos so we know we could do more two and a half

collaboration more I can chat with you is incredibly challenging um
scal taste is probably the hardest thing being bottlenecked by taste is incredibly challenging

we are building a new news media entity called new press and and that is going to be the umbrella company that is over five to eight excellent Creator Le independent journalism channels and they're all lovely and I'm lucky truly to work with each of them um so so it
will be those channels and those creators will have very small teams that creatively they manage but operationally and project management wise they do not we have a full operation go ahead I can they get a salary or they partnered channel it's a great question we have full ownership of the channel they get a salary and benefits and then they get a generous we share over time as the channel scales and um they are all very very happy with the deal and we feel with the perspective of creators that it's a it's a good deal
given the fact that they will not have to one take the risk of launching their own business but that is kind of I don't know if that's like the cell really because they'd be successful and I tell them this on the call they'd be successful they'd make something huge look at Cleo you know um but they really don't want to run a business

I'm deeply deeply passionate about it majority of Americans do not read past a sixth grade level that is a real fact and it's a real problem and if we don't acknowledge it we're leaving so many people behind in what is already an information Vortex you know like it is a
tornado out there and so I really first and foremost want our videos to be accessible to anyone and everyone who wants to learn about the world what does that like mean you know it means using planer language not being jargony and wonky because it feels good not getting caught up in what's really easy to get caught up in which is speaking to your peers and to experts it's still having to be rigorous

what the newspaper had was that it did have the front page it did have the the crossword that kind of is what people bought it for they most people buy it for the entertainment and The Sensational thing but then in between in the middle of these Pages there is deep dive investigations the spotlight section that's doing really important
journalism the people aren't paying for that they're not buying this for that but because they're buying it for the front page and the crossw the the the the journalist can do this the six-month investigation I want to be able to do the six-month investigation that doesn't really make sense financially but because we have a big organization

how do we protect ourselves from that risk of becoming so big and so corporate that your audience feels distant and disconnected from what you're making uh the and your talent leaves your talent leaves so the first Sol was how do we create a deal that
gets talent to want to stay turns out you pay them for the work that they're doing you pay them some part at least of what they are bringing into the company

when I was at Vox doing borders and I was the most popular show I was getting paid a good salary but Vox was not monetizing that show it would get 100 million views per season and they were not monetizing that sign Bon so I was not getting paid for that and there was no plan to say Johnny or
Cleo or whoever is is a someone who wants to build a sort of brand here we're going to give you a path they tried but it it was never a priority

if you want people to stick around and grow this thing and put them above the brand that is why new press is going to be something that no one really knows be I mean us industry folks we talk about it
but like it's going to be search party and it's going to be uh tunnel vision it's gonna be Johnny Harris that's people know know and you may not know that they're totally connected because we think that the creators will stick around if they're if they are given freedom and compensated and so that that is our an the audience will feel most connected if it's more about the Creator than the brand itself

separation of creative and operations yeah they cannot overlap and revenue on the operational side yes although those are deeply intertwined they're deeply interwined deep interwined my team does not need to know that something and I'm talking about my team of hosts and creators they don't need to know that something underperformed one time they don't need to so know that on this video
their conversion levels were this bit below they do not need to know that it does not matter it's okay we're in it for the long term like the Long Haul

when I hire someone on the operation side I have a very clear conversation that they will not touch creative they will not Pitch stories they will not shape
stories they will not talk about what the color should look like or what the map should look like they won't talk about how the thumbnail should look like they can talk about it with their friends they could even talk about it with their colleagues though I'd prefer they don't don't you dare bring up Finland because the creative team is in charge

you have to keep the processes Scrappy you have to be wary of just increasing overhead for overheads sake yeah The Hires have to be really strategic they have to one amount to
more volume for the most part so that they're not just a weight on the system and there's some fun weights to hire but they just create pressure to make more so you have to be really strategic and go like am I am I going to get what we need out of this to support this Creator if the answer is no if it's not going to make their life easier and them better at doing what they do best or it's not going to make the operation side more strong and scale what they're doing to get more bang for their buck with that effort it has to be
a no

we secured almost all of our sponsors for next year which I've never done at this point in the year was very exciting and then more and it was we knew how many videos we were making how many videos three per month on average 25ish three 36 videos 36 36 next year mhm yeah and there's ways that work
Johnny Harris channel joh on the Johnny Harris channel for new press across the board how many videos do you think you guys uh 2 24 on search party so and then the other channel will be making likely a weekly show 100 video oh well if it's a weekly show then tunnel vision we'll be making every scare the [ __ ] so between 100 and that you know are and all of them are billion shorts yeah and they're all going to be sponsored not the shorts though no the shorts won't be sponsored but all the single long form VOD is
sponsored yes I don't let something go live 100% flow rate

this is stealing one from Cleo who is one of my best friends her husband um who is also one of my best friends um but he always says that bias towards action should be number one and that is something something that we have in Spades Johnny and I we have no patience to do things the right way or the long way

I want us to be the the nicest and coolest rocket ship in town it's like everyone wants to work with us
because we treat them well they leave us feeling good um but we have high expectations and we're moving fast you know and it's like come on the rocket ship but you better hurry up you better move at our Pace but at the end of the day we're going to show up with kindness and respect

I would say the the one that has been so fundamental for me in this relationship is finding where structure works and leaves room for your creativity and that you can create reliable structures templates like for me it was just templates for a really long time it was temp my script templates our script is this very very large document with all of these
templates and tables and color coding and all stuff inredible what he's made that allows a team to actually work together with with a lot of communication and structure that's reliable the another version of that is what Izzy's built with the operation and the project management it is structure that still allows for creativity so any kind of repetitive creative that system that doesn't constrain the creativity it can't constrain or so you have to find the places where you can put structure
and template around your creativity

caring more about getting it right than being right and this could be applied to like everything marriage being a parent being a journalist being a CEO being a team member in our team there is an expectation that each and every one of us cares more about getting it right than being right and that shows up in different ways if I come to you with feedback one I hope you trust that that's a sign of respect and that I believe that you can grow on this team and that if I weren't giving you feedback that might that should like
raise some red flx feed about to get asked yeah yeah or maybe I just don't think you can like do that thing and so you know when you get a hundred notes on a cut know that it's because I see the potential in that cut and the potential in you and I know you can handle it you know but let's say I'm coming to you with feedback my my hope would be and I I express this in return that that you hear me and you take a moment to care more about getting it right than being right it does not matter in that moment

the quickest way to shut down good dialogue to show up and like pretend you know everything about Israel and Gaza when like there's a few people in the world who are experts and spend their entire careers on this and they would say they don't know everything about Israel and Gaza right so like it's just
silly so the goal there is that every single time we show up in a discussion or with ideas that you care more about getting to the destination where you understand it getting it right which is going to mean dialogue and questioning and asking and admitting what you don't know instead of being right and showing up with all the information if you have hires who can do that you've got a really great team