 Delight to be here. I'm Nicholas Thompson. I'm going to be moderating this panel here on the future of media I have a fantastic panel. You probably know all their bios in detail But the thing I like most about everybody who's gonna be on this panel is that they have all invented more than one thing They've all done at least two extraordinary things Tom Preston here who upcreated MTV became a mogul I've create vice changing the media in Afghanistan a whole set of amazing things Isaac Lee created all sorts of publications in Columbia when a Columbia's most impressive successful journalist and this turned univision into I Don't know. We'll probably soon be the most watched television network in the country one on this current trajectory Chris Hughes made a little thing help make a little thing called Facebook and it's now reinventing the New Republic So and Pat Mitchell who will be here shortly has had about 17 amazing careers. So Let's go future media. Let's start with you Chris and Let's um Let's talk about the reinvention of the New Republic. So you've got this magazine. It's made by Walter Littman Long time ago. You're trying to turn it into something new. You've got a man here Tom Preston Who created vice magazine which a lot of people talk about as the future of media? They've gone very aggressively into video They've sent Dennis Rodman to North Korea. They have done all sorts of extraordinary things both serious and fun What do you think the New Republic can learn from vice? I Mean and I should mention that I feel like you're going a little bit in that direction I saw the shirtless photo of Netanyahu in the current issue. I Think I think it's really difficult to talk about the future of media because media can mean everything from Netflix's house Of cards to the New Republic to the New York Times device, etc So I think historically we've done that because there were only a few people who could create media There were only a certain number of ways to produce it but increasingly in 2013 the term I think is almost unraveled So I think that there are a few things that we're really betting on One is going very specific on a small group of people for us It's highly influential people are interested in politics and culture It's investing deeply in experiences rather than just access to content So for us that means picking up a magazine and going page by page But in other cases could mean a tablet experience could mean good video could even mean something like Snowfall or whatever other initiatives the New York Times in that vein is is Working on so I think that that increased focus on A certain group of people and a certain kind of experience is where we increasingly have to go But I think that's not just something that's specific to the New Republic. I think it's What most media companies are investing in how do you think people will be reading the New Republic in I guess We're talking about 2020 in 2020 will I be reading the Republic in principle? I'll be reading it in my Google glasses you will probably be reading it in print along with Tablet maybe Google glasses Not sure about that Prince really strong for magazines. I think it's really different from newspapers But we've done a lot of research around the these questions and About 70% of our print subscribers also own tablets But they still subscribe to it in print and It's I think it's for a lot of reasons the reasons that they say is that well It's just easier for me to lean back and focus on it and print But I also think it's because I'm a big believer that print is a highly Undervalued technology. I mean it is It's colorful. It's beautiful in our case. It's glossy. It's light. It's disposable shareable, it's all of these things that we just sort of take for granted because most of us grew up with print everywhere, but it really has A shelf life that I think a lot of people undervalue in the magazine industry I think something like newspapers. It's much more difficult because with newspapers. They were always sort of rather unwieldy experiences in the first place where you you know got You know stains on your hands and it was hard to read on the subway So I think that the the lifespan there is shorter, but I think print is is alive and well There's one great advantage of print newspapers that I've discovered as someone with young children is that they absorb food coloring really well Tom are these the are these the right lessons? Let's talk about vice. Are these the right lessons that? Media should be learning from vice. I mean the New Yorker just spent 12,000 words describing your wonderful institution media empire that you're building. What should what should other people be learning from vice? Well, I don't just a correction. I didn't start vice magazine. I Help turn it into what it is you played a big role in that became a you know It's been around since 1994 and you know it's been an organic brand It's kind of developed and as it's developed the folks who run it have gotten more and more ambitious and really wanted to become sort of premium video Producers and they've built up a wonderful audience. They've got a suite of websites I mean they basically are it's a youth brand a kind of skews mail and they they're trying to among other things engage Younger people in the world of news and trying to do it with their own spin. It's sort of non-celebrity talking head driven It's more immersive and They're they've turned out to be really quite good storytellers and they've been absent for seven or eight years now In terms of producing video and on YouTube where they have a channel that exists separate from their websites They're the most engaging. I think people people tune in an average tune of like 35 minutes So it's obviously resonating with the audience They're a worldwide brand and they you know take full advantage of the the footprint of the internet so to speak They're in 34 countries. They've got offices all over the world that basically they started with their magazine going from country to country and People kept sending stories and they started doing it. So they've got this great great sort of field of reporters out there that Feed them really interesting stories and they're able to do it with their own, you know Tell me what the vice advertising model can tell the rest of media about how advertising and editorial content will interplay in the in the future well In video, they're big believers that the world of the 32nd commercial the interrupted television Interrupted video model is going away, right because of the DVR and on demand and and so many other things so you need to find other ways to engage advertisers and their Their strategy is to you know to do Sort of sponsorship what's called integrated marketing they'll they'll dev for example They created a website a separate website called creators project with Intel where Intel was a sole sponsor of this website and it just says at the bottom brought to you by vice and Intel and This thing has like 17,000 contributors around the world There's no display advertising or virtually none and they're able to Convince Intel and other large advertisers that they have some secret sauce for reaching this millennial audience that If if Intel was looking in this case to appear to be somehow in the nexus of technology and an art This was a way to demonstrate that and Intel's just in one example quite happy to you know They're quite happy with the results thus far so Sponsorship rather than 30-second pre-rolls Greetings Pat welcome We're delighted delighted happy here. We just started a minute ago Isaac I've been on a lot of Media panels over the last couple of years and there's one I haven't but there's a question that I have been dying to ask somebody I can finally ask you what does it feel like to run a media company whose future looks awesome? I mean just some stats about Univision so he doesn't have to toot his own horn So Univision is growing incredibly quickly has recently overtaken NBC is on trajectory to overtake many of them And there's a statistic that has stuck in my mind from a piece that we ran in the New Yorker that was partly about Univision Which is that of the 18 to 49 year old to watch Univision for 70 percent of them It's the only channel they watch whereas for all of its competitors its networks 10 percent of them are as loyal to one channel So changing demographics Loyal viewership. It's a it's a bright future. So tell me tell me how many years until until you're the most Popular network in the country by 2024 sure by 2020 for sure We we are doing incredibly well. We are today a news department that not only is growing in ratings It's growing in profits and that's very hard to see in news especially in network news and All of our news shows are growing compared to last year We are very very happy about that but I think that there's something that that we can make an Analogy between vice and us which is hard to think of and it is that they they They were not paralyzed by the success of the magazine and they did not just stop at posting online They they were Very very fast to get into video and reach an audience in a different way And what I can tell you is that although we're doing Amazingly well at Univision and we we did beat NBC in prime time. There are five different Markets including Miami LA New York Chicago where we beat GMA in the morning and and our LA Television station is the number one in the country regardless of language our average viewer is ten years younger than the Average viewer of the other networks We are not standing still we are launching a new network called fusion in partnership with ABC news to reach Hispanic Millennials in English and and I think it's gonna be a huge huge success and I'm still Amazed that nobody did it before I mean that that Understanding the changing demographic of this country and seeing what is going on with with Hispanics and Knowing that one out of three babies that are born One is a Hispanic that every year 500,000 Hispanics turn 18 That although we are only 60 percent of the population in Millennials. We are 20 21 percent and that they are Completely acculturated that their main language is English that they were born here. They went to school here They're part of the banking system. They're part of the political system No one has thought how to reach Hispanic Millennials before And that's what we are doing now. I think it's a very very exciting project And that's it. Let's let's let's talk about the editorial content of Univision. So it's There's a lot of hard-hitting stuff and my understanding is that you were brought in to create more of that We were writing about a deep investigation of Marco Rubio was clear that but it's also it's seven hours a day of soap operas How is the editorial content of Univision going to change over the next few years? Look, I Univision has a great formula in terms of prime time has to do a lot with Televisa We we cheat, you know, we have a focus group the size of Mexico They run the telenovelas there They become really successful and then we bring the best ones here and we are them So, you know, it's not it's not rocket science And you know being a monopoly is not a good thing unless you are the monopoly So so I don't think it's gonna change much in terms of the novelas I think Televisa is doing a very good job understanding the market And producing, you know, really really good telenovelas The editorial content of the news department has changed a lot substantially. We created an investigative unit We are getting our first Peabody on Monday. We did Fast and Furious We created a documentary unit We we were able to prove to the company that the audience is interested in serious journalism Our documentary is outperformed novelas We're very very happy about that Yes, I mean when when we got there and we we produced our first for example an Investigation about the influence of Iran in Latin America It took us a year to do it hard up, you know, large team of people working on it And then it was all about the grid, you know Where is this going to be aired and there was a big discussion and and of course They were very afraid to put it on prime time because you know, they do incredibly well they have novellas etc and we convinced them to try and Fortunately for our project and what we had planned for it outperformed the novella that was in that place at that time in ratings and The conversation in social media was amazing. It created congressional hearings Investigation a console of Venezuela was declared persona non grata and and it was news and and so You know, we are able to to to also produce serious things for an audience that is eager to have You know information and I think that there are two very good examples and and it is on the presidential debate and The people that in this city decided to create a presidential debate Commission Did not think that it was relevant enough to include 50 million Hispanics as part of the conversation They did not choose a Hispanic moderator. They did not Do anything in Spanish, but that's not the worst Mexico was not mentioned, you know, so we talk about Iraq and Afghanistan and all kinds of things We we talk about People's religion, but but Mexico who's right here influencing this country more than any other. It was not mentioned Latin America Why, you know, so so, you know immigration is a is a little side conversation So we we went to the presidential Commission Nick and asked them to You know invite us to participate to have Jorge Ramos there And they said no, so we did our own presidential forums and in my opinion our journalists were able to prove that they are more You know tough serious and asking about the issues that our community cares for well I mean you may have you may have done even better than that and that if they're reporting the New Yorkers to believe the Republican presidential candidates were so scared of having a debate on Univision that they engineered a scandal involving Univision So they could back out of it, but we digress Pat welcome Let's talk about something that Isaac just said which is paralyzed by successive magazines innovators dilemma You have a very the product that people love you're trying to change it into something new But you don't want to give up the product that people love so you have taken a museum You've turned it into a center. You have taken something static. You've turned it into something live What are the things you were worried about losing as you went through this transition? I'm I guess I thought you were actually talking about the beginning of my career, which was for a magazine which probably We're lucky right to let me unemployed Which is why there's an experience that many people in this room will have shortly That was a long time ago, too. That was the first death of magazines and 1969 to show you how long ago that was And and that led to television, but you know an Institution that serves the media there are that leads the conversation about media can't be a museum I mean, I'm constitutionally unable to run a museum anyway I don't It doesn't work for me But it also doesn't work for an institution that really does need to be a place where the media industry gathers and talks about issues of mutual concern when they're not negotiating with each other a place that looks at what Isaac has just Described so so well the the future of media and how it's being defined in entirely different demographic terms and Ethnic terms and all other ways in which we as consumers are shaping new responses to that So we we had to become a a center because that is in in fact was there anything that as you made this transition was there Any moment where you broke something and somebody who had been a loyal donor or somebody who had been a big fan said hey Hey, you just broke that that thing is great. What are you doing? Absolutely? You and so what was that thing that caused the biggest problem for you? Were you in my boardroom? No quite seriously you can't make changes in any institution certainly not one that's been around for a long time It's you know, right Chris Can't you can't do that without breaking glass? I mean it's just and the thing you have to do with with your board and with your patrons and supporters It's convinced on that the broken glass is going to end up as a whole thing by the time you get to the end of the path of evolution and so that that takes Negotiating and taking smaller steps and maybe you would want to take but I don't know how any of us who have anything to do with The media and technology landscape can do anything but move as fast as we can because no matter how fast we're moving We're never going to move as fast as the innovators and the disruptors are we had a gala this week Our biggest fundraiser which Tom very happily lent his name to last year We raised money off of him this year We raised it off AOL and Tim Armstrong But the big event of the evening was that the people from Google came in wearing Google glass Well forget that anybody else had anything to say or anything to talk about because the whole entire evening We were all going over and say okay, so how does it work and while they're staring at you with that thing? You're thinking are they recording every word? I'm saying So, you know, you can't you really can't keep up as we've seen in the last few days There is a conspiracy theory that Google glass actually doesn't work and doesn't do anything It's just a way for Google engineers to get dates at parties, but that's a minor conspiracy Well, it certainly worked at the gala All right, so let's talk about but it did bring up just to pick To pick up on your point of how do you make the transitions? You pick the big issues and the big evolutions and you try and focus on Those in a way that has some meaning to all of your constituents The consumers of media as well as the people leading Media and technology and data and the collection of data and what we're doing with it And how it's being collected is one of those big themes that we're really focused on this year because It cuts across everyone's interest From us as individuals to those big companies that are collecting it. Well, let's talk about let's talk about breaking things Chris and let's talk about the changes you've made in your public and let's drill down a little bit So from an outsider's perspective, it seems clearly you've massively redesigned the website You've massively reduced the number of links the number of stories. It's very much focused on one store There's a big big design change make it easier to read long stories it seems and I may be wrong that you become more of a general interest magazine and less of a political niche magazine tell me about the Specific changes you've made and the things you've broken in the process that were most difficult to break We changed a lot I think the biggest change that we've made or where the most glass was broken was moving out of a category of generally ideological magazines that The New Republic was traditionally grouped into the nation the weekly standard the national review etc and Towards a group of magazines that is less about opinion journalism and more about feature writing Hopefully, it's the economists the Atlantic the New Yorker the set that you know, we are increasingly a part of And that's a big change for our institution. I mean for nearly a hundred years we were doing opinion journalism and by that I mean oftentimes Short pieces Where individuals who had a big idea? They had to go to the New Republic to print it because this was before the internet before blogs before Facebook before Twitter You had to have some outlet to To to share express your opinion of course in 2013 everybody has an outlet We have tons of outlets and so having in my mind having a journal that's that's just devoted to political opinion didn't make a lot of business sense and so We've massively shifted in the direction of feature writing We've gotten rid of the editorial for the magazine, which is not something we take lightly the editorial has been written for 98 years 99 years but it was part of another time where there's this omniscient narrator who has the opinion of the institution and And while that contributes because it's an important opinion. It's I'd much rather have A half-dozen opinions with different perspectives so that I as an individual can evaluate What seems true and what? What what doesn't ring is true and so that shift is is very important for us strategically But is probably one of the biggest The biggest things that we've done So Isaac as you you know You're on a great part of your trajectory right now But you also know that soon you can get threatened by the same things that threaten CBS NBC you can get threatened by Cord cutters you're gonna get threatened by you all sorts of the infinite, you know cable worlds You're gonna be threatened by a ton of things that have brought these people down So what are you doing now to prevent that from happening? How are you? How are you innovating to prevent the inevitable onslaught? We were so far behind that we need we needed to start with catching up I think that we were not working in nimble way That we were not using the resources that we had to the best of our ability We were not being very good in digital And and we we did make one huge step. We took one huge step Which was starting to do English language news, right? You know to convince the company to to let us do English language news was a big Controversy because when a company is doing so well in Spanish and he's by far the leader There is a question of why are we going to get into a different market and how is that going to affect us? and and so it It takes up, you know a brave CEO and a and a very supporting board to let us get into projects like this one and and I think that we are now Very well aware that that for our young audience the the second screen is actually the first screen And we are producing news content for them. We are doing a lot of short form We are producing stories that are for digital only not working as a as a news network department that thinks that has a 30-minute a You know block at 6 30 p.m. And then one at late news We we are at 24 hour news News department that we are producing news for for our audience all the time and and also by realizing that for breaking news Social media is better And that if we cannot come up with something where we can give more context information Get in depth then we're not doing our job Well and and not to try to compete with social media in breaking news because we we saw what happened with a Boston Marathon bomb on how ugly it can get when television improvises And so but also how they can get when social media jumps ahead of itself. Oh, of course Of course I mean to be a good journalist doesn't change much if it's on social media if it's on Twitter Or if it's on a documentary There are certain things that you have to do like fact check for example but but but it is There are tools that allow you to act much quicker Than what we were used to So I guess that we are doing that but I don't think that we are where we need to be Which is one very important thing to be conscious of But we are moving forward fast and I am allowed to break things. So so good Well, let's talk about social media for a second. We have one of the world's great experts on social media Some of you may know Tom was fired from one of his previous jobs for not acquiring my space for 500 million dollars and my space was just sold for 30 million dollars So Tom Of the social media sites that people are excited about today. Yeah, who's maybe gonna buy a tumbler for a billion dollars What should we not buy? What is going to fail show us the Insight that led you to see the demise of my space before everybody else Well, the my space stories, I mean we had some issues about its its traction and where I was going and we were still in negotiations With him and Murdoch came in and he just bought it over the weekend. No due diligence anything So a first rule would be if you're gonna buy something Look into the business a little bit lift up the hood and and check it out. I mean it's it's hard in the You know, it's hard to think if you were looking to buy an online property at first Well, if you're an established media company It's very hard to think of almost any instance where any established media company has bought a digital property And it's really paid off that that has been successful. It's almost hasn't happened almost You know, you can start with AOL and Time Warner is one of the worst examples Although of course the purchase was the other way around, but right So, I don't know as if there's a magic formula. It seems though that Reddit that actually has worked out really well for us Yeah, read it and there's been you know, there's been some small things like ESPN's bought some most more some Sports size that kind of fit into your existing business that can work, but you know, there's usually cultural problems and You're inheriting someone else's things The things that have really been wonderful in the digital age have sort of been the organic things that have started small With the with a strong vision and have prospered over time and kind of grown step-by-strep And then the focus has been more on the user experience and how do you monetize it? I think you know, we have a lot of great examples of that out there today with Facebook and so on so I don't know You know what the answer is if you're looking to buy something for the opposite I was looking what you're looking. I'm looking what not to buy. I Wouldn't buy most things probably not that I'm on the market to buy tumbler at the moment But I'm just curious for the audience I really you know, I think mostly everything you're gonna look at in the digital space is probably gonna be something You're not gonna want to buy unless it's a direct fit with what you're already doing and it kind of fits in and you think that Culturally this thing is gonna play out and that and that you and that you're not gonna have to cram all kinds of Advertising or whatever down the throat of what you just purchased to make it pay off in the minds of investors Are you also having to serve? I would add that one of the things we're doing at the Paley Center on a regular basis now Which is not only informative about what you should buy and not buy But also just how much is changing and how fast the series is called the next big thing and Four or five entrepreneurs get the chance to pitch their ideas in five minutes and then they get grilled by Some people in social media who really know a lot about running those successful companies And it's really interesting to watch the appetite in the room because it the room includes venture capitalists advertisers other media companies and some alliances are made and I could you know name a couple of companies that that actually got launched But I could also name 22 that maybe aren't even in business now So you do have to move caution not not be attracted by every bright shiny new thing But there's certainly a lot of new big things coming up On a daily weekly basis, and we're seeing them. Well, I if we're on this topic. We ought to We fortunately happen to have somebody on this panel who created one of the brightest and newest and shiny things and then left it to run one of the Oldest and coolest and wonderful magazines. How should old media think of social media? Should we view it as a threat? Should we view it as an opportunity? What give me some depth on how it should be approached every how everybody else on this stage here should approach All these great things that you've helped create I think I mean just the way you phrasing the question is really useful I think it is in many ways an enormous opportunity, but also threatens the way these businesses work It's an opportunity because it's so much easier for established brands to reach new markets and it's ever been before I mean at the New Republic for instance, we have a 99 year old brand nearly 50% of our traffic comes from social Which is enormous for us because it means that you know a brand that in many ways had Atrophied over time. We're able to take it out to market and and expose people who haven't really seen it in the past A few years without us trying to acquire email addresses or do paid media or any of that type of work So there's an enormous opportunity there a big downside for I think for us as a Society with social media and it's something that I'm increasingly concerned about is the bubbles that it puts us into I mean Eli Paris or had a book a few years ago called the filter bubble but the idea I think has become increasingly concerning even since he published it then and The basic idea is that it's easier and easier for us to live in our own little worlds Because of the increasingly specific nature of social media and our ability to configure our own filters So I can go on Twitter all day and never see anybody that I disagree with I can go on Twitter And I can and or on Facebook and I'm much more likely to click on Headlines that are that are clever regardless of what kind of content it leads to And that it just in general we can see the content that moves on social media is often emotional is Ideological more often than not It's clever and we work within that paradigm I mean it'll be one thing if we said well This is just a lot of people who are just tweeting emotional things We can't work in that realm because we're high quality journalism instead We say okay, this is the way the internet works in 2013. How can we adapt to it? So we have done journalism particularly over the past couple months where it's just one quick case is We did a story that was About a group of people who saved these texts and Molly that were hundreds of years old in the midst of The coup just over the past few months and if you read it I mean it really reads like an oceans 11 for book lovers It is just a nail-biting story of people whose families, you know They take the books to the basement they hide them they cover them they put them on boats They shipped them down the river and as a result the texts were saved you read this story It's several thousand words long but in the process you learn about everything that's happening and has happened in Molly and you also see from our internal analytics using chart beat that the time on site for that piece was like nearly four minutes Over 50% of people on the site got like 2,400 words in which you know for those of us who count words is really far into the story And it dominated our traffic for days So it's not that you know I don't think that the right response to the environment that that social media creates is just to to you know Put up your hands and say we can't deal with it But it does challenge us to think about the journalism that we do and we have to adapt Towards it, even if it does prevent some of these There are some of these almost perverted incentives for what gets clicked on more often than not oceans 11 for book lovers Is an awesome tweet and I'm gonna find the story and tweet it out with that line I'm afraid of my editor Frank forward for that. It's not my original Isaac So not that long ago. You were a 25 26 year old Journalist in Columbia starting things creating things there a lot of young journalists here out right now Give some advice on if you were to start a new media company if you were 26 years old And what you wanted to do is to start a media company that was gonna blow up. What would you do? And what would it be? Go to Brooklyn and visit vice You would be very impressed. I was there yesterday And it is amazing to see how one good idea Can can get to a tipping point where it really explodes and it's all about Reaching people with authenticity. I think that is what they do best and and when we study what Millennials want They are very tired of things that are very that are Overproduced they do not want people to read the news or Reporters to tell them what they have to think they want a Frank transparent direct conversation They want things to be funny. I Find that humor is a huge currency for this generation if you go and see Facebook pages, they're all trying to be funny and and tell jokes and send videos So I think that they're very good examples out there to follow But but more than anything I think that it's important to to not be afraid To know that the possibility of success is is very very slim So if you're going to create something new do it with your own ideas Convinced of what you are doing in a unique way Instead of trying to copy some other people because that it's the only way to fail for sure and and The other thing that I have to say that it it it's it's supposed to be very obvious But it's not is that this is not a country where you will only find white males consuming news this country has changed and It's not only the news that change is all culture changes because The demographics of this country what is making the fiber of the United States today? It's completely different. So if you're trying to communicate to an audience that I mean I remember when the president went to Mexico a couple of weeks ago if you would check the most important news outlets and what they had on their Home page the trip to Mexico was not there And and so I don't know how can they disregard the fact that? You know, there are 50 million Hispanics 80% of them are Mexicans Latin America is important the border is the biggest trade with Mexico is You know the most important one for this country the president is there and we are focusing about things that are completely Isolated and it's what Chris is saying you can actually Read only happy news and believe that the world is all going to be okay And things are wonderful and nothing is going on with the environment or with the endangered species just by how you filter your Facebook and your Twitter so to to stop and realize that this is a new country and that the Identity and the DNA of the United States today. It's a different one It's very important to be successful in anything you do So speaking of vice magazine I went on the site just a little while ago to see what the most recently posted videos We're and number one was from the pre-start Syrian army Which was a fascinating number two is from Mauritania and number three was scum dads fat Jews new web series where he does drugs in front of a baby I just read that one tell my way down So do what vice is doing. I want to go to audience questions, but before you do that I want to a column Pat and then ask another question Didn't say do what vice is doing just to go and look at that experiment because it's working really well. It's There it's amazing. I would just add to this look at What's changed and how? Demographically certainly Isaac you make the big point but what if you look at media and technology and and you look at the stories being told the news being reported and you look at the main actors and and People behind the scenes of the entertainment program. You'll still find there's a huge population Unrepresented and interestingly enough, it's the largest population of media and technology consumers and that population is women So let me ask you a poll of just astonishing to me that you know We look at this landscape of thousands of options of every possible Kind of content and story to consume and you still have the hardest time finding those that appeal particularly to educated Women now having said that an interesting new study is really should be of great concern to all of us And there is a new digital divide in this country And it is between educated women who get most of their news including their political news their consumer news There what's going on in the world? They're global news from social media, but 20 the less than 24 percent of High school graduate women of all ethnicities So there's an educational Barrier that is creating In social media use that is creating a different kind of digital divide I would just add that the root of a lot of this this Senseless exclusion of a huge audience is is the fact that most of these companies are much more undiverse than the general population I mean the percentage of African-americans Hispanics women at the I mean it for example in the movie business. It's almost zero You go into the television business particularly the older line networks. It's not much better than that So there's no reference points that these people have other than you know looking at each other and putting on what they like I just came from the White House and I Meeting on this subject of women and girls and I told them we need to seriously look at the hiring practices of Media and technology companies To your point Tom, and we also need to look at the regulatory policies because we backed off all of them I mean there when I got my job in television because this country had quotas How many of you knew that? That in 1968 to 1970 there was an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Which required that if you operated a media company you were operating in the public interest and therefore your Public interest needed to reflect the entire public and so you had to produce a list at the end of every year of minorities and Women that were hired during that year and the face of television and the voice of radio changed and those years Because the government said isn't we're not going to leave it up to you You leave it up to business and you'll be where we are now with less than seven percent of all Broadcast and cable licenses held by women less than seven percent less than five percent of the clout jobs that you're talking about at the decision-making Top and why does it matter? Well it matters because though You know we learn from the stories we tell we we we are informed to consumers or not and largest number of Media consumers in this country of all media and technology Are women and then you have to look at what we're telling our our girls and our boys In the roles and what they actually see in media too So there's a big gap still remaining and unfortunately with social media is getting larger I think you wanted to comment on that. Yes, Nick I was just thinking that there are two departments that need to cease to exist in media companies diversity and digital We all have them but if media companies do not understand that they need to be diverse But not not a department the whole company and they need to be digital. They are in big trouble That's a great point. All right. Well Matt. No, let's let's move to audience questions. So raise your hands ask some questions And if there are no questions before I count to three. Yes Wait microphone is coming. We are being live streamed. So please speak into the microphone so that everybody can hear around the world Can you repeat that study the digital divide among women? Can you yeah? You know, I'd love I wish I could think of the name of who did it. It was presented today. Can I get it to you because? Can you just say again when I didn't understand what it was opportunity challenge and what's the divide exactly? Oh the level of education That college educated women are getting their news 42% of them are getting their news from social media Where is only 22% of high school graduates and below are and that This is a divide that they've seen growing over the last five years that educated women are are Getting more information from social media, which is where a lot of us go. I Should get you the details of it. I believe it was the opportunity challenge We had a whole tweet it out tonight at any I will I will because there were really some very interesting research All right, it's going out over the internet everybody I will Right here. Thank you. This is to anybody who wants to have a go at it I recently saw vice and indeed it's a powerful sensory experience The particular segment I saw was was about child soldiers But it it made no attempt at putting the plight of child soldiers How they got to the to the horrible place where they were they were child soldiers were depicted as as just really vile killers Nothing about how they got to be child soldiers how they've been abducted by this heinous criminal named Joseph Coney and nothing about Their future what what lies ahead for them when they're no longer child soldiers and and do they Have a future indeed. So so that Tom would be my only criticism It was brave footage and and an extraordinarily authentic all of that But but left me shaken without without any It was it was there there was no attempt to to really inform it was just pure Your your gun in your face. Yeah, well, I don't know if I've seen that particular piece Kati But I would say, you know, they they make a lot of news. They have a lot of producers they and You know every piece that they do isn't, you know, totally comprehensive hitting every particular button It's quite often it's the it's it's the narratives sort of from the mind of the producer So when you talk about child soldiers, there's a lot to talk about and obviously there's a lot of graphics sensationalist footage Which I gather they had some in there, but I Can't believe that the piece was totally without any context. I don't know what the point was from this particular one But I mean they'd be the first to say look, we're not State-of-the-art serious journalists. We're basically started as an entertainment company We do news because we know that increasingly we know that young people are interested in this We're trying to get better at it themselves ourselves. They're not totally objective But they do it in a way and in a style You know in a less formal way that you see in most broadcast networks and news networks And it and it seems to resonate with the audience But they'd say look we make a lot of things everything's not going to be perfect Tom we spent a lot of time talking about your involvement and vice Why don't you quickly tell us about what you've helped build in Afghanistan too since that's also a major part of the media light when I was Younger I lived in Afghanistan before the the wars that started in the late 70s I lived there for a bunch of years so I had a connection there And I've gone back there since I left the job at MTV networks in Viacom and worked in the television business and it's not often you can find a Country that had no television a totally virgin market But here you got a country that was essentially cut off from the world cut off from each other the Taliban eliminated what small amount of television that there was and One of the great success stories that's happened over the last 12 years or 10 years in Afghanistan has been the development of television and Communications and it's sort of embedded in their constitution consider they had 10,000 phones 10,000 landlines when the Taliban were overthrown in 2011 There's now 20 million cell phones in a country of 30 million people So they're sort of connected to each other into the outside world, you know really for the first time on that basis There was no television. There was no radio on now There's 75 TV stations 120 radio stations They are embedded into the Constitution as being independent and they've been the biggest platform for social change in this country and You know, this is a country where The median age is 17. It's the second youngest country in the world imagine that they've been a war for 35 years And the average person is 7 to 50 percent of the people are under 17 There's been great gains in this country that had kind of go under reported because the focus has always been the covers that we see on the military Situation in Afghanistan whereas some of the changes that have rippled through this society That's increasingly urbanized now about 50 percent of the people live in cities There's a lot of gains have been made in terms of life expectancy and whatnot, but the media Which was didn't take a lot of money to get going that the station that I work for we have like a 65 share And it's sort of a general entertainment network It does 17 hours of programming a day big news a lot of news covers people are really interested in the news in Afghanistan It makes a big difference, but in terms of gender equality, you know Just imagine just having a man alone a man and a woman sitting next to each other Giving the news sends big signals to people gender equality your desire that your children to go to school Particularly your daughters just basic literacy and education 70% of the people are a literate sesame street Which we run a Afghan a Dari language version of 50% of the audience is over 20 years old I mean they watch it to learn how to count and speak. It's pretty interesting You know the willingness for a woman to be beaten by their husbands very basic things family size all of these things have rippled with great changes through the country and It's what it says to me is that it's very unlikely that the Taliban is just going to march back in when we leave in 2014 and take over the country because the population the psyched a population has shifted so much in fact I just spent a bunch of time there talking to young Afghan professionals who are from the private sector or work at ministries They talk about the Taliban as if this was from the Stone Age It's just you know, they just have had it with them and they've they've moved past they're ready to get on with their lives and join the world and I think it costs like a million and a half dollars a year to keep a marine on the ground We spend ten billion dollars a month in Afghanistan for the military you know, I hope when we pull out that there's gonna be some money and What not and supporting the private media which has been a great success there and really has given these people for the first time a Window into the outside world so they can see where they stand and they've learned an awful lot Identify the media organization only media organization growing faster than you know All right admittedly this question is far less consequential in the greater scheme of things than how tens of millions of Afghans do in the future That being said it is a panel about the future of media. So I'm gonna ask it anyway you know, there's a vast amount of Opportunities if you are young if you want a job creating content if you want to be a junior producer You can earn, you know a good living if you're in your 20s early 30s. There's a huge gap now in terms of the profession of What do you do in that more senior role? You know, you want to have a family you want to support? What are the economics of this world going forward where there's a lot of okay-paid opportunities that kind of an entry or young level? but there's an entire sort of Broken-down economic system that has yet to be replaced by something else if this is something that someone wants Certainly relevant to New America as a career. I actually think that we've done a lot of growth and expansion at the New Republic we've doubled the editorial staff over the past year and one of the trends that We have seen is that a lot of the seat more senior editorial staff that fit the description that you're making The market is still really strong for those talented individuals because in many cases They have really well-developed networks and they have connotations that consumers know and sort of have a connotation of Trust with and so if anything, I'm more concerned about I think we may flip on where I'm concerned from a Economic standpoint. I think it's harder and harder for you know people in there Who are just beginning their careers in journalism to find a foothold because you know, there are a few very You know entry-level sort of reporter Jobs at some institutions, but more often than not you're forced to freelance and in freelancing in 2013 often means getting paid Very little money to publish Digitally and so a lot of those folks get run out of the profession the ones who have been writing for a really long time I think at least in our space of you know, particularly political and cultural news between Bloomberg's entry into the market Politico's you know strengthening role and obviously some of the institutions that have been around for a long time those Those jobs in that top end of the market seems much more insulated than than the other side or than the younger folks I'm just really Touched to hear it because I see this with my own children. How old are you by the way? I mean just vaguely, you know, I mean I mean within 10 years Yeah Good because that's the age groups that I have a mentor a lot of young men and women in that age group And I have children in that age group and they have found exactly what you're describing That they're great wonderful careers for the first 10 years Generally in new companies and working for not a lot of money But got to do innovative and creative work and they've now hit that kind of wall of There aren't as many jobs in that middle place and send them our way Speaking of hitting a wall I have promised that I would end this on time. It is now time to wrap this up So thank you. We have a fantastic panel a great conversation and we are out of here. Thank you