New York trip provides insights into media, audiences and entrepreneurship
Students could “explore what our careers could look like at the intersection of media and tech”
As part of the annual “Medill Explores” program, Medill School master’s students spent a week in New York City visiting companies and meeting with people with expertise in digital audience engagement, media innovation and entrepreneurship.
Students from the Media Innovation & Entrepreneurship Specialization visited companies focusing on media analytics and engagement (such as Chartbeat and Piano Software), digital publishing businesses (New York Media and Group Nine) and people and organizations involved with startups and entrepreneurship.
“It was great to visit so many distinct media companies to get an idea of the many different career paths available in the industry,” said student Melissa Hovanes. “I also appreciated the opportunities to connect with people working in very different roles in the industry.”
“It was incredibly valuable to meet face-to-face with so many people in roles I can see myself applying for after this program, at companies I have always dreamed of working at,” Isabel Miller-Bottome said.
AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT AND METRICS
This year’s trip was connected with “Audience Development and Analytics,” a class all the students were taking in the winter quarter. Several of the visits focused specifically on topics directly relevant to the course.
Chartbeat
The company: Chartbeat provides software that allows digital publishers to track and analyze how visitors discover and engage with their site. The technology can drive publishers’ content and editorial strategy, helping editors at companies such as CNN, The Washington Post and The Atlantic to make data-driven decisions about headlines and positioning of stories on the home page.
Insights: Josh Schwartz, head of product, engineering and data, gave students a look into the behavioral insights Chartbeat has gained through its clients. Looking over 2017 and 2018, visits from desktop computers dropped and from mobile devices grew. A key area of insight involved major changes in where traffic to news sites comes from. Referral traffic from Facebook declined 40 percent from the beginning of 2017, while traffic from Google increased thanks to Google News, Chrome browser suggestions and the adoption by publishers of Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages.
In fact, Google and direct visits have become the top sources of traffic for Chartbeat clients, with Facebook now third, Schwartz said.
Quote: “I really enjoyed Josh Schwartz’s deep dive into Chartbeat data, analyzing the shift to mobile news traffic. I found his analysis of mobile portals most interesting. Pre-installed mobile apps, like Google News on Android devices and Flipboard on Samsung, are becoming major referrers for news sites, a trend to watch.” — Melissa Hovanes
Simulmedia
The company: Simulmedia, a pioneering TV advertising startup founded by serial entrepreneur Dave Morgan in 2008, helps advertisers buy linear television advertising efficiently. Pravin Chandiramani, senior vice president, talked about the company’s business approach and the future of TV advertising in the modern media landscape.
Insights: Chandiramani explained Simulmedia’s business model, which focuses on finding cost-effective ways for marketers to buy TV advertising. Marketing people often have the impression that TV ad campaigns are too expensive, but agencies don’t pay enough attention to television programs with a small or niche audiences. By analyzing the behavior of different audiences through data partners, Simulmedia can help advertisers to reach their target audiences through niche channels at reasonable costs.
Quote: “Linear TV is still a big sector for advertisers and there is a big market behind it.” — Wuqiu Sun
Piano Software
The company: Piano Software provides a technology platform and consulting services to help media companies communicate with and understand their customers — with a special focus on paid subscriptions. Their software is being used by hundreds of media companies across the world including Business Insider, NBC, Bloomberg, The Economist, and Hearst.
Insights: Without Piano, clients don’t understand what’s working to drive subscriptions, said Anna Caselli, Piano senior strategist. Piano’s data and experience enable the company to recommend ways of building subscriptions and donations. People likely to subscribe can be sent a targeted subscription offer while others would not be bothered. Piano Software helps publishing companies understand their customers’ experiences and recognize how to target different customers in different ways.
Quote: “It takes a while to get good at paid strategy,” said senior vice president Michael Silberman. “For most media companies, this is an entirely new discipline.”
ProPublica
The company: ProPublica is the best-funded and arguably best nonprofit investigative journalism organization in the world. Founded in 2008, ProPublica’s now has about 120 employees working for its national operation, its local reporting network and ProPublica Illinois. ProPublica is a mission-driven organization, with a priority of maximizing the impact of its journalism. The students met with director of marketing Cynthia Gordy Giwa and product developer Frank Sharpe.
Insights: The main focus of the visit was ProPublica’s outreach campaign for A User’s Guide to Democracy, a data-driven approach to personalized information about local politics. While the tool itself was useful and powerful, ProPublica found ways to promote its usage beyond politics junkies. It created a multipart newsletter campaign to raise awareness about the product and promote its usage, which resulted in more citizen political participation and a maximized impact of ProPublica’s journalism.
Quote: “The reason why we are building these creative tools is to help readers better understand the story instead of simply thinking the tools are cool to build,” Giwa said.
DIGITAL PUBLISHING
The students visited traditional media organizations (The New York Times and New York Media) and digital-first publishers Group Nine Media, Skift and Atlas Obscura.
Group Nine Media
The company: Group Nine encompasses social-media-native millennial publications focusing on food and travel (Thrillist), social news (NowThis), cool science (Seeker) and adorable animals (The Dodo). In an information-packed session hosted by journalist-turned-product manager Chao Li, students learned about the company’s technology, audience development and business strategies. Speakers included CTO Ken Peltzer, senior director of engineering Joseph Higgins, chief insights officer Ashish Patel, and east coast sales vice president Jon Smolin.
Insights: Group Nine’s audience strategy is boiled down to this equation:
Brand + Platform + User = Success
The company understands that while much of their content goes viral, virality is not a strategy. The audience team drives greater awareness, creates more touchpoints and builds deeper connections with the audience. The staff works to improve content by ideating the right concepts, creating the right content and reaching the right audience.
Quote: “I consume a lot of my news and fun features on Facebook, and that often involves a lot of Now This videos and The Dodo features. It was so cool to visit this company and hear about how they have been doing as I am an avid fan!” — Nicki Kaplan.
Skift
The company: Skift launched in 2012 as a B2B news and information site, covering the business of travel. Co-founded by media entrepreneur Rafat Ali and travel editor Jason Clampet, Skift was able to grow a loyal audience thanks to its fresh, modern perspective. “We had a point of view about the world, travel’s place in the world, and we ran with it,” said Ali. Today, Skift has grown to cover the restaurant and wellness industries and includes a thriving events business, a research and analytics arm, and a branded-content studio.
Students met with Ali, as well as Managing Editior Tom Lowry and News Editor Hannah Sampson.
Insights: Ali talked about challenges he faced as an entrepreneur and reminded students that it’s possible to sustain a business without a reliance on venture capital. Although Ali had little difficulty raising seed funding, he struggled to raise a Series A. In early 2014, Skift was just three months away from running out of money. That’s when Ali decided to stop trying to raise funds and instead focus on building revenues. This led to the launch of the first Skift Global Forum conference. “Conferences, by nature, generally bring cash flow because people start buying tickets, you get sponsorships, and the money comes up front,” Ali said. “[Launching Skift Global Forum] basically saved our business.”
Skift’s decision to stop relying on venture capital led them to embrace their identity as a boutique media company. “Boutique hotels embrace the ethos of high touch, as in one-to-one communication, open, accessible, different compared to the corporate hotels. Each has a personality or point of view about how they present themselves,” Ali said. Similarly, Skift has cultivated a distinct brand with a unique voice that has attracted a smaller, but loyal audience.
Quote: “Rafat Ali is refreshingly candid about his road to success. Skift is a good role model for product-market fit backed by strong editorial and design.” — Elaine Ramirez
The New York Times
The company: The visit focused on digital transformation at the iconic newspaper company. Rebecca Halleck, a Medill MSJ alum who is the Times’ editor of digital storytelling and training, facilitated the session. The students also heard from Kellen Henry, another MSJ alum and a product manager at the Times. Others who participated in the session were Assistant Managing Editor Matt Ericson, Assistant Mobile Editor Eric Bishop, Senior Software Engineer Isaac White and Graphics/Multimedia Editor Umi Syam.
Insights: “Product” at the Times is organized in cross-functional teams, with design, product, tech, and editorial representatives collaborating to solve problems. Halleck, White and Syam went over a new internal product they developed: a central knowledge based called Library. Powered by Google Docs, Library houses all of the best practices, guides, and helpful information about everything from SEO optimization to social media in one place.
Bishop said push notifications are one of the most powerful tools for driving traffic today, but they also offer little transparency in terms of exact performance metrics — users either opt in or opt out of notifications, and they either open a notification or they don’t. The Times is experimenting by embedding images into notifications, A/B testing headlines and text, and targeting people with specific push notifications based on location and reading history.
Henry joined the Times in 2014, when the team was just starting to innovate with the mobile homepage, expanding it into more than just a responsive version of the desktop site. Now, she works on a recently created “engagement team,” focusing generally on getting users to come back to the Times more and more frequently.
Quote: “The Times was really cool. Every speaker we talked with offered a wealth of knowledge and insight.” — Louis Oh
Atlas Obscura
The company: Atlas Obscura is an online magazine and digital media company that highlights obscure travel destinations. The company goes beyond content by offering international guided trips and specialized events on little known aspects of local culture and history. The company has also published a spin-off book titled Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders that has generated significant press and sales. Students met with Jordan Schultz, director of marketing & audience (and Medill MSJ alum); Nathan Igdaloff, director of product; and Eric Grundhauser, community editor.
Insights: The Atlas Obscura team underscored the importance of identifying a niche audience and creating products for that audience that might extend beyond just content. Atlas Obscura targeted an audience of underserved travelers, those who crave experiences in destinations around the world beyond the obvious tourist options. In particular, Atlas Obscura worked to rank highly in search engine results for the phrase “unique things to do in x city.”
Once people discover its content, Atlas Obscura engages the consumer with a multi-faceted experience encompassing forums, live events, and trips. This provides Atlas Obscura with multiple revenue streams and a way to monetize their content beyond advertising revenue. Atlas Obscura views high-quality content as the way to reach its audience, who then might engage in Atlas Obscura’s other revenue-producting products. The expansion into trips and live events offers the company a sustainable way to keep their audience engaged and to have dynamic brand experiences beyond the page.
Quote: “It was really cool to see different models of revenue in action. As someone who’s read Atlas Obscura since it was a ‘site about visiting weird cemeteries,’ it’s fascinating to see how they’ve managed to shift focus while still retaining the core of their brand by focusing on travel and getting people to pay for these curated experiences.” — Alexandra Holterman
New York Magazine
The company: New York Magazine has been on the cutting edge of fashion, culture and political movements since its first issue in 1968. Now, the company seeks to be a profitable digital media company, while still maintaining journalistic integrity and the substantive content that made it legendary. New York Media has five brands apart from New York Magazine itself, with The Cut (for women), GrubStreet (food), the Intelligencer (news and politics), The Strategist (shopping and product discovery) and Vulture (culture). The group spoke with Daniel Hallac, chief product officer; Camilla Cho, GM of ecommerce; Jason Sylva, head of consumer revenue; and Corinne Osnos, who graduated from Medill’s MIE specialization last year and is now director of audience strategy.
Insights: New York Media is incorporating numerous revenue streams into its business model. Apart from advertising and paid subscriptions, the company has built successful e-commerce/affiliate marketing strategy by using The Strategist to feature and sell curated products. The company is also exploring licensing its content management system to other publishers, as well as developing a consulting component.
New York Media has decided to offer only a bundled subscription, at one price, for all of its verticals. There are no holiday sales or $1 for two-month offers, everything is $5/month for digital access and $70/year for digital + print.
Quote: “New York Magazine came across to me as the most progressive media organization out of all of the places we have visited. They were really making an effort to integrate design thinking into their product management workflow, with an open mind about the kind of value they were providing to audiences and how they would make it a sustainable progress.” — Danny Hwang
STARTUPS & ENTREPENEURSHIP
The students got multiple perspectives on startups and entrepreneurship from serial entrepreneur Michael Lazerow, leaders of startup incubator Betaworks and the founders of Pico, a startup helping publishers and other businesses manager customer relationships.
Lazerow (BSJ96, MSJ96) has launched and sold three digital/technology companies, including Buddy Media, which was acquired by Salesforce. He is currently an investor and is building a new startup.
“Michael was an inspiring example of how successful entrepreneurship isn’t always an elusive idea,” Isabella Jiao said. “It’s also worth noting how he constantly gives credit to people around him, such as his assistant who accompanied him, and never held back compliments for those people. That’s a wonderful leadership trait that I’d definitely want to acquire as well.”
At Betaworks, students learned how the company identifies, supports and invests in startup companies — including success stories such as Giphy, Bitly, Chartbeat, and Tweetdeck. Students met with Danika Laszuk, the general manager of Betaworks Camp; Jared Newman, an analyst for Betaworks Ventures (the studio’s investment fund); and Sarah McBride, Betaworks’ marketing and social media specialist.
Laszuk described her career path from being a creative writing major to marketing at Hewlett-Packard and Apple. “It pays to question conventional wisdom,” she said. “Naivete can be your friend: Take your experience and be curious.” While technology in itself may be cool and innovative, it takes a creative and empathetic mind to turn that technology into a meaningful and common-sense product for consumers, she said.
“I never thought I’d be saying this as someone who’s never had an interest in seed ventures or accelerators, but Betaworks made me excited about the intersection of finance and media and the benefits that can arise from such a pairing,” Holterman said.
The co-founders of Pico, Nick Chen and Jason Bade, gave students a candid look at the evolution of an early-stage startup.
Pico has built a customer relationship management (CRM) system specifically for digital publishers and other companies that seek to sell content or other products. They started out focusing on micropayments but pivoted — too slowly, they said — when they realized publishers needed a different kind of product.
“It was refreshing to meet with an early-stage startup in this space to have a candid conversation on the founders’ journey and market challenges and opportunities,” Elaine Ramirez said.
The co-founders walked through the slide deck they’ve used to attract investors, providing valuable advice, especially for students currently enrolled in the NUvention Web+Media entrepreneurship class.
“It was a really valuable experience to do a deep dive into Pico’s pitch deck and learn insider tips for when we have to do this in NUvention and in the real world,” Nicki Kaplan said.
NEW YORK EXPERIENCES
Besides their visits to companies, the students participated in two events with Medill alumni in New York, and saw the play “Network” on Broadway. Some of the students even managed to have a few words outside the theater with “Network” star Bryan Cranston.
On their first night in New York, students had dinner with Medill alumni Emily Goligoski (design researcher who is research director for the Membership Puzzle Project) and Kate Gardiner (founder of feminist communicatons agency Grey Horse).
They joined Medill alums for a panel discussion — “Navigating 21st Century Media” — moderated by Bethany Crystal, general manager at Union Square Ventures. The discussion revolved around the role of media in 21st century society, ‘new media’ and what that means and career advice. Panelists were Mark Jannot, story editor for The New York Times Magazine, and Kelsey Keith, editor in chief of Curbed, Vox Media’s site focusing on neighborhoods and housing.
“Getting to learn how organizations involved in different facets of the media industry are navigating the dynamic landscape helped me get a sense of the questions I should be asking as I make career plans with my MIE degree,” Hwang said.
“The trip provided insights into the center of the media industry in the US,” Ashley Austin said. “It offered the opportunity for us to explore what our careers could look like at the intersection of media and tech.”
About the MSJ Media Innovation & Entrepreneurship Specialization:
Medill website | Video | Sign up for Medill Media Innovation newsletter | Rich Gordon’s guest column (Entrepreneurial Journalism Educators Network)
