Q&A with Emily Ramshaw, CEO and co-founder of The 19th*
This week, we caught up with Emily to learn more about The 19th— a news outlet that sits at the intersection of women, politics, and policy. Read to learn about how the pandemic has spurred The 19th to produce journalism ahead of its full launch and Emily’s long-term vision for the outlet. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.
What inspired you to start The 19th?
This idea first occurred to me about three and a half years ago when I was on maternity leave. I had just had a baby girl, Trump had just been inaugurated, the #MeToo movement was underway, and there were women’s marches all over the country. I felt in that moment there ought to be a destination platform for women to build their own news ecosystem and news community.
It wasn’t the right time for me to launch such a venture for a lot of reasons — namely, I had an infant. But over the coming three years I kept expecting that somebody else would do this. There were nonprofit newsrooms cropping up for a whole range of things and it felt obvious to me that someone would step into this gap.
At a certain point no one had. Heading into 2020, I felt passionate that women needed a news platform that really respected them and gave them the tools, information, and storytelling they needed to be more deeply engaged in our democracy.
How does The 19th set to distinguish itself within the women’s news space?
There are other news organizations that have done extraordinary work in this arena. There are also women-focused verticals that are part of legacy news organizations and even news organizations that have focused on this work internationally. Whether it’s the Fuller Project or The Broadsheet by Fortune there is a lot of really extraordinary work happening in this space.
We felt very strongly that there was nothing specifically addressing women, politics, and policy. We also observed that many news organizations treated these questions about gender policy as a side dish and not the main course. That’s the gap that we felt like we were trying to fill.
How has COVID-19 impacted the launch of The 19th?
Candidly, we weren’t expecting to be producing true journalism until this summer.
The world has changed dramatically in the window between our January soft launch and our anticipated full lunch this summer. We are deeply committed to storytelling that exposes disparities and presents potential solutions for women across virtually every vertical. For us, that was the economy, the healthcare system, and political representation. When COVID-19 hit, all of those responsibilities were heightened because women are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic in literally every way other than mortality rates. These problems are more exacerbated when it comes to women of color.
Since COVID-19, we have had to kick into high gear. We are turning our weekly newsletter into a daily newsletter with original journalism. We’re publishing stories with The Washington Post, our first national partner, and with The Philadelphia Inquirer, our first local partner. Despite the economic fragility of this moment, we feel an obligation to forge ahead with our launch this summer as originally planned. It was tempting to put on the brakes, but we felt like our responsibility to the nation’s women was too great at this moment.
There are dozens of stories about how white women of means are navigating this pandemic. In contrast, there are far fewer stories like the one we wrote a few weeks ago about the black Philadelphia high school teacher who has three children at home, and hasn’t heard from a third of her high school students.
The inequity and the disparities playing out in this pandemic are critical and The 19th is committed to making sure those voices don’t get lost.
That being said, we also recognize that we have a responsibility to not just write about gender disparities in the pandemic, but also to remind women that there’s a critical election coming up.
This summer is the hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment, which is our namesake. This is also a moment in American history where suffrage is in many ways more at risk than it’s ever been. We want to keep reminding women about this election and ways that they can get engaged in this disorienting time.
What is The 19th’s business model?
Our startup revenue is largely philanthropy. During our soft launch in January, we raised almost $100,000 in the first 24 hours largely from individual $19 gifts.
Our long-term business model will consist of five primary buckets of revenue: individual philanthropy, foundation support, corporate underwriting, membership (a “viewers like you” model), and corporate underwriting of live events.
Aside from news, The 19th also places an emphasis on providing women with resources and community. Can you tell me more about that?
I believe that as women we don’t move the needle if the same women are talking to the same women all the time. We have an obligation to get outside our comfort zone, to be with people who don’t resemble us and whose lived experiences are different than our own. Live events are a really promising way of doing that.
It proved to be quite fruitful in the last 10 years I spent at the Texas Tribune. I hope to extrapolate that onto a national stage for women by having regional events around the country where we bring women into conversation with elected officials and give them opportunities to talk to one another.
Prior to the pandemic, we had announced a six-city listening tour, and the first event in that listening tour sold out in about two hours after we announced it. Now, we’re pivoting to a virtual town hall series where we bring high-profile women both in politics and in this current moment into virtual convenings. We had our first one today with Stacey Abrams.
What’s your long-term vision for the organization?
My vision is that The 19th can ultimately provide voting guides, data visualizations, voter lookup tools and take-away materials that can help educate communities and give women the literal tools they need to be more engaged at the ballot box and in policy issues.
I also believe that we will build a destination web platform that will draw a lot of women who I describe as “front liners” — women who are already deeply engaged on one or more issues and are looking for a community.
I think the harder piece is reaching women of color, women off the coast, conservative women and other women who already find themselves underrepresented and under-reflected in American media. To me, this means go going to them wherever they are — distribution on virtually every channel or platform imaginable. In other words, free distribution to every other news organization in America. Hundreds of regional news organizations around the country can freely republish our stories with a click of a button. We want to reach women on social media platforms and even in print local media. And, we hope these stories will reach men too.
That said, I understand that we cannot reach all women at all times. I think different stories will be distributed on different platforms and to different news organizations and different audiences. In the end, however, our responsibility is to flood the zone.
Where do you think The 19th falls along the scale of local and national news?
Our vision is to serve the nation’s women. This is not a niche publication that our audiences — our audience is more than half of the American electorate. That said, I think organizations like mine that are national in focus, need to have a more narrow niche in order to claim a stake in the market. For us, that is the intersection of women, politics, and policy
What’s something interesting that you’ve observed in the media space?
We’re heading for a local news reckoning. In many ways, we’re already here. Lately, my news interests have been exceedingly local or exceedingly national. I want to not only know more about the nation writ large, but also my community.
The pandemic is going to make or break a lot of local news organizations. I’m inspired by local news organizations where journalists are furloughed one day and come back to tell critical and heartbreaking stories the next day. I’m inspired by local news outlets where editors and publishers are fighting just to keep the lights on while providing critical services to their readership. Local news outlets are doing exceptional work. I fear that in this moment in history where exceptional work is called for more than ever before, we are going to wake up one morning and not have what we need to get by.
Rapid Fire
What is your first read in the morning?
The Texas Tribune’s newsletter, The Brief.
What was the last book you consumed?
Between Thanksgiving and April I read every single Pulitzer finalist — I’m on the board, and it’s the best book club in America.
The next read on my bed stand though is the Jessica Simpson memoir “Open Book.” Don’t judge me; I need some brain candy.
What job would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?
If I weren’t in my current role, I would be an emergency room doctor overseeing triage.
