 From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hello everyone, welcome to this special live stream here in theCUBE Studios, I'm John Furrier, your host. We've got a great panel discussion here for one hour, sponsored by Lumina PR, or not sponsored, but organized by Lumina PR. An authentic conversation around professionals in the news media and communication professionals, how they can work together. As we know, pitching stories to national media takes place in the backdrop in today's market, which is on full display, the coronavirus, racial unrest in our country, and a lot of new tech challenges from companies, their role in society, with their technology, and of course, an election, all make for important stories to be developed and reported, and we've got a great panel here, and the purpose is to bridge the two worlds, people trying to get news out for their companies in a way that's relevant and important for audiences. We've got a great panelist here, Gerard Baker, editor-at-large with the Wall Street Journal, Eric Savitz, associate editor with Barron's, and Brenna Gott, who's a Southwest staff, corresponds with Bloomberg Publications. Thanks for joining me today, guys, appreciate it. Thank you. So, we're going to break this down, we've got about an hour, we're going to probably do about 40 minutes, love to get your thoughts on this kind of power panel, and you guys are on the front lines, I mean, decades of experience, seeing these waves of media evolve, and now more than ever, you can't believe what's happening, you're seeing the funding of journalism really challenging at an all-time high. You have stories that are super important to audiences and society really changing, and we need this more than ever to have more important stories to be told. So, this is really a challenge. And so, I want to get your thoughts on this first segment. The challenge is around collecting the data, doing the analysis, getting the stories up, prioritizing stories in this time. So, I'd love to get your thoughts, we'll start with you, Brenda, what's your thoughts on this as you're out there in Arizona, coronavirus on the West is one of the states there. How do you, what are your challenges? Yeah, I would say for me, one of the challenges of the past couple months is just the sheer influx of different types of stories we've had and kind of the amount of news coming out. So, I think one of the challenging things is a lot of times we'll get kind of into a bit of a routine covering one story, so early on maybe the coronavirus and then something else will come up. So, I personally have been covering some of the coronavirus news here in Arizona and in the Southwest, as well as some of the protests we've seen with the Black Lives Matter movement and prioritizing that is pretty difficult. And so, one thing that I've been doing is I've noticed that a lot of my routine projects or things I had been working on earlier in the year are kind of off the table and I'll get back to them when I have time, but for now, I feel like I'm a little bit more on breaking news almost every day in a way that I wasn't before. Gerard, I want to get your thoughts on this Wall Street Journal has been, since I could remember when the web hit the scene early on, very digital savvy, reporting honestly, it's awesome as well. As you have people in sheltering in place, both journalists and the people themselves and the companies, there's an important part of the digital component. How do you see that as an opportunity and a challenge at the same time because you want to get data out there, you want to be collecting and reporting those stories. How do you see that opportunity, given the challenge that people can't meet face to face? I think, first of all, thank you very much for having me. I think as we've all discovered in all fields of endeavor in the last three months, it's been quite a revelation how much we can do without using, without access to the kind of traditional office environment. One of the things that coronavirus, this crisis will have done, we all agree, I think, is that it will have fundamentally changed the way people work. There'll be a lot more people, there'll be a lot more working from home, there'll be a lot more remote working generally, there'll be a lot less travel. So on the one hand, it's been eye-opening actually how relatively easy, I use that word carefully, but how we've managed, and I think it's two of all news organizations, how we've managed surprisingly well, I think, without actually being at work. The Wall Street Journal, we have a big office obviously in Midtown Manhattan, as well as dozens of bureaus around the world. Nobody has really been in that office since the middle of March, and yet we've put out a complete Wall Street Journal product, everything from the print edition, obviously through every aspect of digital media, the website, all of our apps, video, everything, audio, podcasts. We've been able to do pretty well everything that we could do when we were all working in the office. So I think that will be an important lesson, and that will clearly induce some long-term changes, I think, about the way we work. That said, I pointed to two particular challenges that I think we have not properly overcome, or if you like, that we have two impediments that the crisis has produced for us. One is, as you said, the absence of face-to-face activity, the kind of sort of the hive process, which I think is really important. I think that a lot of the best ideas, a lot of the best stories are developed through conversations between people in an office which can't necessarily replicate through the online experience, through this kind of event, or through the Zoom meetings that we've all been doing. And I think that has inhibited, to some extent, some of the more creative activity that we could have done. I think the second-larger problem, which we all must face with this, is that being essentially locked up in our homes for more than three months, which most of us has been, I think accentuates a problem that has been a problem in journalism for a long time, which is that journalists tend to cluster in the major metropolitan areas. I think a couple of years ago I read a study which said, I think that more than three quarters of journalists work for major news organizations, print, digital, TV, radio, whatever, live and work in one of four major metropolises in the US, that's the New York area, the Washington DC area, the San Francisco area, and the LA area. And that tends to create a very narrow world view, unfortunately, because not enough people either come from those areas, from outside those areas, or spend enough time talking to people from outside those areas. And I think the coronavirus has accentuated that. And I think in terms of coverage, I'm here in New York, I've been in New York continuously for three and a half months now, which is quite unusual, I usually travel a lot. And so my reporting, I write columns now mainly, but I talk to people too, but the reporting, the editing that we're doing here is inevitably influenced by the experience that we've had in New York, which has obviously been, frankly, devastating. New York has been devastated by coronavirus in a way that nowhere else in the country has. And I think to some extent, that does perhaps have undue influence on the coverage. We're all locked up, we're all mindful of our own health, we're all mindful of people that we know who've gone to hospital or have been very, very sick, or we are heavily influenced by our own immediate environments. And I think that has been a problem. Imagine if the journalists in the country, instead of being clustered in New York and LA and San Francisco, had been sort of spread over Texas and Missouri and Florida, things like that. I think you had a very different overall accounting of this story over the last three months. So I think it's just, it's accentuated that phenomenon in journalism, which I think we're mindful of and which we all needed to a better job of addressing. It's really interesting and I want to come back to that point around who you're collaborating with to get this. Now we have virtual ground truth, I guess, how you collaborate, but decision-making around stories is, you need an open mind. And if you have this kind of, I guess, I'll call it group think or clustering, is interesting. Now we have digital and we have virtual, it opens up the aperture, but we still have the group thing. But I want to get Eric's take first on his work environment, because I know you've lived on both sides in New York and Silicon San Francisco area, as well as you've worked out in the field for agencies as well on the other side, on the storytelling side, how has this current news environment, journalism environment impacted your view and challenges and your opportunities that you're going after the news? Well, so there's a few elements here, right? So one, Barron's of course covers the world, looks at the world through a financial lens. We cover the stock market every day. The stock market is not the center story, but it is an important element of what's been unfolding over the last few months. And the markets have been incredibly volatile and change the way that we approach the markets. Because everything, the big stories are macro stories, huge swings in stock prices, huge swings in the price of oil, dramatic moves in almost every financial security that you can imagine. And so there's a little bit of a struggle for us as we try and shift our daily coverage to be a little more focused on the macro stories as we're still trying to tell what's happening with individual stocks and companies, but these bigger stories have changed our approach. So even if you look at say the covers of our magazine over the last few months, typically we would do a cover on a company or an investor or that sort of thing. And now they're all big thematic stories because the world has changed and has changed in how it looks at the financial markets. I mean, I think one thing that Jared touched on is the inability to really leave your house. I mean, I'm sitting in my little home office here where I've been working since March. And my inability to get out and talk to people in person to have some interface with the companies and people that I cover makes it tougher. I mean, you get story ideas from those kinds of interactions. And I think Jared's right, some of it comes from your interactions with your colleagues but some of it also just comes from your ability to interact with sources. And that is really tougher to do. It's more formalistic if you do it online. It's just not the same to be in a Zoom call as to be spending a Starbucks with somebody and talking about what's going on. I think the other elements of this, right, is that there's, we have a lot of attempts, new things trying to reach our readers. We'll do video sessions, we'll do all sorts of other things. And it's one more layer on top of everything else is that there's a lot of demands on the time for the people who are working in journalism right now. You know, I would say one other thing I'll touch on, John, which is what you mentioned, I worked with corporate communications for a while and I do feel their pain because the ability to do any kind of normal PR pitching for new products, new services, the kinds of things that PR people do every day is really tough. It's just really hard to get anybody's attention for those kinds of things right now and the world is focused on these very large problems. Well, we'll unpack the PR comms, opportunities in the next section, but I want to just come back to this topic, kind of teased out from Gerard and Brennan, we're guys that we're getting at as well. It's virtual ground truth, you know, ultimately at the end of the day, you got to get the stories, you got to report them, they got to be distributed. Obviously the Wall Street Journal is operating well and by the way, I love the Q and A video chats to do what they got going on over there. So the formats are evolving and doing a good job. People are running their business, but as journalists and reporters out there, you got to get the truth and the ground truth comes from interaction. So as you have an aperture with digital, there's also group think on, say, Twitter and these channels. So getting in touch with the audience to have those stories, how are you collecting the data? How are you reporting? Has anything changed or shifted that you can point to because ultimately it's virtual, you still got to get the ground truth, you still got to get the stories. Any thoughts on this point? I think in a way what we're seeing is in writ large, actually, is a problem again, another problem that I think digital journalism or the digital product, digital content, if you like, actually presents for us today, which is that it's often said, I think rightly, that one of the as successful as a lot of digital journalism has been and thank you for what you said about the Wall Street Journal and we have done a tremendous job. And by the way, one of the things that's been there's been a striking feature of this crisis has been the rapid growth in subscriptions that we've had at the Journal. I know other news organizations have too, but we've benefited particularly from a hunger for the quality news and we've put on an enormous number of subscriptions in the last three months. So we've been very fortunate in that respect. But one of the challenges that people always say, one of the drawbacks that people always draw attention to about digital content is that there's a kind of, there's a lack of, for want of a better word, serendipity about the experience. When you used to read a newspaper, print newspapers, when maybe some of us are old enough to remember, we'd get a newspaper, we'd open it up, we'd look at the front page, we'd look inside, we'd look at what other sections there were and we would find things, very large number of things that we weren't particularly, we weren't looking for, we weren't expecting to, we weren't looking for a story about such. With the digital experience, as we know, that's a much, it's a much less serendipitous experience. So, you know, you tend to, a lot of search, you're looking, you find things that you tend to be looking for and you find fewer things that, you know, you follow particular people on social media that you have a particular interest in, you follow particular topics and have RSS feeds or whatever else you're doing and you follow things that you, you tend to find things that you were looking for. You don't find many things that you weren't looking for. I think that the virus that's being locked up at home again has had a similar, kind of a similar effect that we, you know, again, some of the best stories that I think news, anybody comes across in life but news organizations are able to do. Are those stories that, you know, that you come across when you might have been looking for something else? You might have been working on a story about a particular company with a particular view to doing one thing and you came across somebody else and he or she may have told you something actually really quite different and quite interesting and took you in a different direction. That is easier to do when you're talking to people face-to-face, when you're actually there, when you're, you know, calling, when you're tasked with looking at a topic in the round. When you are, again, sitting at home with your phone and your computer, you tend to be more narrowly for, you tend to sort of operate in lanes and I think that we haven't had the breadth, probably, of journalism that I think you would get. So that's a very important, you know, you talk about data. I mean, the data that we have is obviously, you know, we've got access broadly to the same data that we would have to say electronically delivered data that we would if we were sitting in our office. The data that I think in some ways is more interesting is the non-electronically delivered data. That is, again, the casual conversation, the observation that you might get from being in a particular place or being with someone. The kind of stimuli that arise from being physically in a place that you just aren't getting. And I think that that is an important driver of a lot of stories and we're missing that. Well, I want to just ask real quick before I go to Brenna on her take on this. You mentioned the serendipitous and taking the stories in certain directions from interactions, but also there's trust involved. As you build that relationship, there's trust between the parties and that takes you down that road. How do you develop trust as you are online now? Is there a methodology or technique because you want to get the stories out fast. It's a speed game, but there's also the development side of it where a trust equation needs to build. What's your thoughts on that piece? Because that's where the real deeper stories come from. Are you, I was the truth, you're asking me. Jared, if you want to ask that, just the trust piece. Yeah, I'll let the others speak to that too. Yeah, it is probably harder to establish. I mean, again, probably most people, most good stories, most investigative stories, most scoops, most exclusives, tend to come from people you already trust, right? So you've developed a trust with them and they've developed a trust with you. Perhaps more importantly, they know you're going to treat the story fairly and properly. And that tends to develop over time. And I don't think that's been particularly impaired by this process. You don't need to have a physical proximity with someone in order to be able to develop that trust. And my sources, I generally speak to them on the phone 99% of the time anyway, and you can still do that from home. So I don't think that's quite, so for us, I don't think, I mean, obviously, again, there are many more benefits from being able to actually physically interact with someone. But I think the level of trust takes a long time to develop, let's be honest too, as well. And I think you've developed that trust by both by developing good sources. And again, it's the same with the sources understanding that you're going to do the story well enough. Brenna, speed game is out there. You got to get stories fast. How do you balance speed and getting the stories and doing some digging into it? Get your thoughts on all this. Yeah, I would say kind of every week is looking different for me these days. A lot of times there are government announcements coming out or there are numbers coming out or something that really does require a really quick story. And so what I've been trying to do is get those stories out as quick as possible with maybe sources I already have or really just kind of the facts on the ground I can get quickly. And then I think in these days too, there is a ton of room for following up on things and some news event will come out but it sparks another idea. And that's the time too that when I'm hearing from PR people or I'm hearing from people who care about the issue kind of right after that first event is really useful for me to hear who else is thinking about these things and maybe ways I can go beyond the first story for something that's more in depth and adds more context and provides more value to our readers. Awesome. Well guys, great commentary and insight there on current situation. The next section is with the role of PR because it's changing. I've heard the term earned media as a term has been kicked around. Now we're all virtual and we're all connected. The media is all virtual. It's all earned at this point. And that's not just a journalistic thing. There's storytelling. There's new voices emerging. You got these newsletter services. Audiences are moving very quickly around trying to figure out what's real. So comms folks are trying to get out there and do their job and tell a story. And sometimes that story doesn't meet the cadence of say news and or reporting. So let's talk about that, Eric. You brought this up. You said you feel for the folks out there who are trying to do their job. How is the job changing? What can they do now? The news cycle is so ferocious at the moment that it's very difficult to insert your way in on something that doesn't touch on the virus or the economy or social unrest or the volatility in the financial markets. So I think there are certain kinds of things that are probably best saved for another moment in time. If you're trying to launch new products or trying to announce new services or those kinds of things are just tougher to do right now. I mean, I think that the most interesting questions right now are how can I, if I'm a comms person how can I make myself and my clients a resource to media who are trying to tell stories about these things do it in a timely way, not overreach like not try and insert myself into a story that really isn't a good fit. Every time one of these things happen we get inboxes full of pitches for things that are only tangentially relevant and are probably not really that helpful either to the reporter generally or to the client of the firm that is trying to pitch an idea. But I will say at the same time that I rely on my connections to people in corporate comms every single day to make connections with the companies that I cover and need to talk to. And it's a moment when almost more than ever I need immediacy of response, accurate information, access to the right people to the companies who I'm trying to cover. But it does mean you need to be, I think, sharper, a little more pointed, a little more clear thinking about why am I pitching this person this story? Because there's no time to waste. We are working 24 hours a day is what it feels like. And it's, there's not, you don't want to be wasting people's time. Well, you guys, you guys represent big brands and media, which is phenomenal and anyone would love to have their company mentioned obviously in a good way if there's their goal. But the word media relations means you relate to the media. If there's no media to relate to, the roles change and there's not enough seats at the table, so to speak. So, you know, getting a clip on in the clipbook that gets sent to management. Look, we're on Bloomberg. Great, check, but this, is that it? So people, this is a department that needs to do more. Is there things that they could do that isn't just chasing, getting on the, in your franchise's stories? I mean, that's, because it obviously be great if we were all on Barron's Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg but they can't always get that. They still got to do more. They got to develop the relationships. What can it do? I would say one thing I would be conscious of here is that many of, many of our publications it's certainly true for the journal it's true for us at Barron's and I'm certainly true for Bloomberg. We're all multimedia publishers, right? We're doing lots of things. Barron's has television show and Fox. We have a video series. We have podcasts and newsletters and daily live audio chats and all sorts of other stuff in addition to the magazine and the website. And so part of it is trying to figure out not just the right publication but maybe there's an opportunity to do a very particular, maybe be great for this thing but not that thing and having a real understanding of what are the moving parts? And then the other part which is always the hardest part in a way is truly understanding not just I want to pitch Bloomberg but who do I want to pitch a Bloomberg, right? So I might have a great start for the Wall Street Journal and it might maybe Jerry would care but maybe it's really somebody in the herd on the street who cares or somebody who's covering a particular company. So you have to sort of navigate that I think effectively and even more so now because we're not sitting in a newsroom I can't go yell over to somebody who's like a few desks away and suggest they take a look at something. Do you think that the comms are important? Do you think the comms teams are savvy and literate in multimedia or they still kind of stuck in the print ways or the groove swing is get used to what they're doing and haven't evolved? I mean, is that something that you're seeing? I think it varies. Some people really get it. Some people, you know, the best, so I mean, I think one of the things that this comes back to in a sense is it's relationship driven. It's a Jerry's point. It's not so much about trusting people that I don't know. It's about like, I've been at this a long time. I know a lot of people, I know who I trust and they know the kinds of things I might be interested in. And so that kind of relationship is really important. It's a lot harder to try that that was something new. And the other thing that's I think relevant here is something that we touched on earlier which is the idiosyncratic element, the ability for me to go out and see new things is tougher, right? I mean, I'm in the technology business. If you could spend half your time just going to events, right? You could go to the conferences and trade shows and dinners and lunches and coffee. It's all day long and you would get a lot of good story ideas that way and now you can't do any of that. There's no digital hallway. I mean, there were a mother out there. I mean, it's called Twitter, I guess, or... Yeah, well, you're doing it from sitting in this very... I'm sitting in the same chair having conversations in some ways like that, but it's not nearly the same. Gerard and Brenna, what do you guys think about the comms to opportunity challenges either whether it's directly or indirectly, things that they could do differently? Share your thoughts. Gerard, we'll start with you. Yeah, well, I would echo Eric's point as far as knowing who you're pitching to. And I would say that in, at least for the people I'm working with, some of our beats have changed because there are new issues to cover. Someone's taking more of a role covering, virus coverage, someone's taking more of a role covering protests. And so I think knowing, instead of casting a really wide net, I'm normally happy to try to direct pitches in the right direction, but I do have less time to do that now. So I think if someone can come to me and say, I know you've been covering this, this is how my content fits in with that. It's a lot, it grabbed my attention more and kind of makes it easier for me. So I would say that that is one thing that as beats are shifting and people are taking on a little bit of new roles in our coverage without something PR and marketing teams could definitely keep an eye on. I agree with, I mean, I agree with all of that. And all of everything everybody said, I'd say two very quick things. One, exactly as everybody said, really know who you are pitching to. It's partly just, it can be much more effective if you're pitching to the right person, the right story. But when I say that, also make the extra effort to familiarize yourself with the work that that reporter or that editor has done. You know, you cannot, I'm sorry to say, overestimate the vanity of reporters or editors or anybody. So if you're pitching a story to a particular reporter in a field, make sure you're familiar with what that person may have done and say to her, I really thought you did a great job on the reporting that you did on this. So I read your really interesting piece about that or I listened to your podcast. You know, just, that has extraordinarily, it's a relatively easy thing to do that yields extraordinarily well because it, A, because it appeals to anybody's vanity and we all have a little bit of that. But B, it also suggests that to the reporter or the editor or the person involved that the person contact, the PR person, the communications person pitching them really knows this, has really done their work and has really actually takes this seriously. And instead of just calling, I mean, the number of emails I get, and I'm sure it's the same for the others too, or occasional calls out of the blue or LinkedIn messages, oh, you know, I love your work. I love your work. I love your work. I love your work. Well, I have a technology story for you. I mean, it's absolutely valuable. So that's the first thing I would really emphasize that. The second thing I'd say is, especially on the specific relation to this crisis, coronavirus issue, is it's a tricky balance to get right. On the one hand, you know, make sure that what you're doing is not, what you're pitching is not completely irrelevant right now. I mean, this is not, the last three months has not been a very good time to pitch a story about, you know, going out with a crowd of, with a bunch of people, you know, to a crowded restaurant or whatever, or something like that to do something. I mean, clearly we know that. At the same time, don't go to the other extreme and try and make every little thing you have seen, every story you may have, every product or service or idea that you're pitching, don't make it, don't make it the thing that suddenly is really important because of coronavirus. I've seen too many of those too. People trying too hard to say, you know, in this time of crisis and this challenging time, what you, you know, what people really want to hear about is, you know, I don't know, some new diaper, children, you know, baby's diaper product that I'm developing or whatever. It just, that's trying too hard. So there is something in the middle which is, you know, don't pitch the obviously irrelevant story that is just not going to get any attention right through this process. And it'll say, don't bend, don't go too far in the other direction and, you know, essentially, you know, you know, underestimate the reporter's intelligence by, because that reporter can tell you, I can see that you're trying too hard. So no shotgun approach. Obviously, hey, I love your work, you know. Okay, yeah. And then be sensitive to what you're working on, not try to force an angle on you. You know, if you're doing a story, Eric, I want to get your thoughts on the evolution of some of the prominent journalists that I've known and or communication professionals that are taking roles in the big companies to be storytellers or editors of large companies. I interviewed Andy Cunningham last year who used to be with Cunningham Communications, you know, formerly of Apple, veteran of the tech space and in PR. She said, companies have to own their own story and tell it and put it out there. I've seen journalists say on Facebook, I'm working on a story of X and then kind of crowdsource a little inbound thoughts on this new role of corporations telling their own story, going direct to the consumers. Yeah, you know, I think to a certain extent, that's valuable and in some ways it's a little overrated. I mean, I mean, you can, you know, there are a lot of company creating content on their websites or they're creating their own podcasts or they're creating their own newsletter and those kinds of things. I'm not quite sure how much of that, what the consumption level is for some of those things. I mean, I think to me, the more valuable element of telling your story is less about the form and function and it's more about being able to really tell people, explain to me why what they do matters and to whom it matters and understanding the audience. It's been only hear your story. I mean, there are, to your point, there are quite a few journalists who have migrated to either their communications or in being sort of the house storytellers, one kind or another for large businesses and there's certainly a need to figure out the right way to tell your story. I think in a funny way, this is a tougher moment for those kinds of things because the world is being driven by external events, right? By these huge, global forces are what we're all focused on right now and it makes it a lot tougher to try and steer your own story at this particular moment in time. And I think you do see it, that Jeff was talking about, don't try and like just, like you wanna know what other people are doing. You wanna, you do wanna be aware of what others are writing about. But there's this tendency to wanna say, I saw you wrote a story about Peloton and we too have an exercise story that you can, you know, something you can do. A story ship array. Right? Like, yeah, you know, we have a dance video app or something. Like, there's all these other people are trying to like glom on the things and sort of take it a few steps too far. But in terms of your original question, it's just tougher at the moment to control your story that in that particular fashion. Well, this brings up a good point. I want to get to Raj's take on this because the Wall Street Journal obviously has been around for many, many decades and it's institution and journalism. In the old days, if you weren't relevant enough to make the news, if you weren't the most important story that people cared about, the editors make that choice and you're on the front page or in a story editorially. And if you, companies will say no, but I should be in there and you say that's what advertising is for. And that's the way it seemed to work in the past. If you weren't relevant in the spirit of the decision making of important story or it needs to be communicated to the audience, there's ads for that. You can get a full page ad in the old days, right? Now with the new world, what's an ad? What's a story? You now have multiple on the channels out there. So traditionally, you want to get the best, most important story. That's about relevance. So companies might not have a relevant story and they're telling a kind of a boring story. There's no, they're there, right? Or they missed a story. So how do you see this? Because this is the blend, this is the gray ear that I see. It's certainly a good story, depending on who you're talking to, the 10 people who like it, not. Yeah, there's no question. We're in the news business, topicality matters. It's, you know, you're going to have a much better chance of getting your story, getting your product or service, whatever, covered by the Wall Street Journal of Barons or anywhere else for that matter. If it seems somehow news related, whether it's the virus or these sort of unrest that we've been seeing, people, you know, obviously that's, or, you know, to do with the economy or what do you, clearly you can have an effect. But I wouldn't, but it's not, you know, newspapers, news organizations or all the three news organizations we represent don't just, you know, are not just obviously completely obsessed with what's happened this morning and what's going on right now. And we're all digging into deeper stories, especially in the business field. I mean, part of what we all do is actually try to get beyond the daily headlines. And so what's happening, the fortunes of a particular company, obviously they may be impacted by, they're going to be impacted by, you know, the lockdown and coronavirus, but they actually were doing some interesting things that they were developing over the long term. And we would like to look into that too. So, so again, it's, there is a balance there. And I'm not going to pretend that if you have a really topical story about, you know, some new, you know, medical device or some new technology for dealing with this new world that we're all operating in, you're probably going to get more attention than you would if you don't have that. But I wouldn't also underestimate, you know, the other thing is, as well as topicality, everybody's looking at the same time to be different. And every journalist wants to do something original and exclusive. And so they are looking for a good story that may be completely unrelated. In fact, I would also underestimate I wouldn't underestimate either the desire of readers and viewers and listeners to actually have, you know, some deeper reported stories on subjects that are not directly in the news right now. So, again, it's about striking the balance right. But I wouldn't say that, you know, that there is no, not at all. I wouldn't say there is not a strong role for interesting stories that may not have anything to do what's going on with the news right now. Brenna, you want to add on your thoughts from your front lines as well, Bloomberg. Everyone wants to be on Bloomberg. There's Bloomberg radio. You guys got tons of media too. I mean, there's tons of stuff to do. How do they navigate and how do you view the interactions with comms folks? Eric looks to have a little bit of challenge with them. Eric, your thoughts on comm professionals, the questions in the chats are, everything's so fast paced. Do you think it's less likely for reporters to respond to PR comms, people who don't have interacted with you before? In other words, people haven't met before. That's kind of an internal problem, right? You know, there's some, I've seen data that talks about like the ratio of like comms people to reporters. And it's like, I don't know, six or seven to one or something like that. And there are days when it feels like it's, you know, 70 to one. And so it is challenging to break through. And I think it's particularly challenging now because some of the tools you might have had, you might have said, oh, can we, you know, can we grab coffee one day or something like that? Like trying to find ways to get in front of that person when you don't need them, right? Like it's a relationship business. I mean, I know this is a frustrating kind of answer, but I think it's the right answer, which those relationships between media and comms people are the most successful when they've been established over time. And so, you know, you're not getting like the, it's not the, you know, the spray and pray strategy doesn't really work. Like it's about, you know, Eric, I have a story that's perfect for you. And here's why I think you should talk to this guy. And if they really know me, there's a reasonable chance that I'll, not only we'll listen to them, but I'll at least take the call. And, but if, so it's, you know, you need to have that like high degree of targeting. It is really hard to break through. And, you know, people try everything. They try sort of the insincere version of what, of the, I read your story, it was great. Here's another great story, right? Like, which maybe they read your story, maybe they didn't, at least it was an attempt. Or, you know, if you like this company, you'll love that one. There's, you know, people try all these tricks to try and get to you. I think the most, the highest level of highest probability of success comes from the more information you have about not just what I covered yesterday, but like, what do I cover over time? What kinds of stories am I writing? What kinds of stories does the publication write? And also to keep the pitch tight, right? I mean, I was a big believer when I was doing Coms, like you should be able to pitch stories in two sentences and you'll know from that, like whether there's going to be a connection or not, don't send me 500 more pitches, right? Times of the essence, keep it short and as targeted as possible. That's a good answer to Paul Bernardo's question in the chat, which is, you know, how do you do the pitch? Printed, you're back. Can you hear us? No? Okay. We'll get back to her when she gets logged back in. Gerard, your thoughts on how to reach you? I mean, I've never met you before. If I'm a CEO or a Macomb person, a company you've never heard of, how do I get your attention? If I can have a coffee with you with COVID, how do I connect with you virtually? Are your demands okay? Exactly as Eric said, it is about targeting. It's really about making sure you are, and again, I hate to say this, but it's not that hard. It's really, if you are the comms person for a large or medium sized company, even a small company, and you've got a particular pitch you want to make, you're probably dealing in a particular field, particular sector, business sector or whatever, let's say it's not technology for change. Let's say it's fast moving consumer goods, something like that. You know, Bloomberg is an enormous organization very, with a huge number of journalists who deal in a great deal of specialism and quality with all kinds of sectors. The Wall Street Journal is a very large organization. We have 13, 1400 reporters, 3400 journalistic staff, I should say. Barons is a very large organization with a special or particularly strong field of coverage, especially in certain sectors of business and finance. It's not that hard to find out who, A, who is the right person, the actually the right person in those organizations who's been dealing with the kind of story that you're trying to sell. Secondly, it's absolutely not hard to find out what they have written or broadcast or produced in that general field in the court for the last. And again, as Eric says, going back, not just over the last week or two, but over the last year or two, you can get a sense of their specialism and understand them. It's really not that hard. It's the work of an hour to go back and see who the right person is and to find out what they've done. And then to tailor the pitch that you're making to that person. And again, I say that partly, it's not purely about the vanity of the reporter, it's that the reporter will just be much more favorably inclined to deal with someone who clearly knows, frankly, not just what they're pitching, but what the journalist is doing and what he or she, you know, in his or her daily activity is actually doing. And I think so. So it is, you know, targeted as narrowly as you can. And again, I would just echo what Eric and I think what Brenna was also saying earlier too, that I'm really genuinely surprised at how many very broad pitches, you know, again, I'm not directly in the different role now, but I was the editor-in-chief of the journal for almost six years. And even in that position, the number of extraordinarily broad pitches I'd get from people who clearly didn't really know who I was, who didn't know why I didn't. In some cases, didn't even really know what the Wall Street Journal was. I mean, if you can find that, if you can actually believe that, it's not hard. It's not that hard to do that. And you will have so much more success if you are identifying the organization, the people, the types of stories that they're interested in. It really, it's not that difficult to do. Okay, I really appreciate it. First of all, can take great insight there. I want to get some questions from the crowd. So if you're going to the chat, there was a little bit of a chat hiccup in there. It's all should be fixed. We're going to go to the chat for some questions for this distinguished panel. Talk about the new coffee. There's a good question here. Have you noticed news fatigue or readers seeking out news other than COVID? If so, what kinds of news stories have you been seeing trending? In other words, are people sick and tired of COVID or is it still on the front pages? Is that relevant? And if not COVID, what stories are important, do you think? Well, I could take a little bit of a rest at that. I mean, I think it's not just COVID per se, but between the, you know, the, I mean, for us, the volatility of the stock market, the uncertainties in the current economic environment, the impact on joblessness, the sort of these massive shifts in perceptions on urban lifestyles. Like there's a million elements of this that go beyond the core, sort of what's happening with the, you know, the virus kinds of story. I do think, you know, as a whole, all those things. And then you combine that with the social unrest and black lives matter. And then on top of that, you know, the pending election in the fall, and like there's not a lot of room left for other stuff. And I think it's, I think I would look at it a little bit differently. It's not like finding stories that don't talk on those things. It's finding ways for coverage of other things, whether it's entertainment, obviously, there's a huge impact on the entertainment business. There's a huge impact on sports. There's obviously a huge impact on travel and retail and restaurants and, you know, even things like religious life and schooling. And, you know, I haven't done the parents of a college. It was about to be a college sophomore who's praised every day that you can go back to school in the fall. There's, there are lots of elements to this. And it's pretty hard to imagine. I mean, well, I would say to Jerry's point earlier, people are looking for good stories on, you know, they're always looking for good stories on any, but trying to find topics that don't touch on any of these big trends, there's just, there's not a lot of reasons for those. I agree, and let me just give you an example. I think, I think exactly, Eric's exactly right. It's hard to, to break through. I just give you an example. I just, when you asked that question, I just went straight to my smart, my Wall Street Journal app on my phone and of course, like every organization week, you can even sort of look at stories by sections and by interests and by topic and by popularity. And, you know, one of the three most popular stories right now on the Wall Street Journal app, I can tell you the first one is how exactly do you catch COVID-19? I think that's been a, that's been around since for about a month. The second story is cases accelerate across the United States. And the third story is New York, New Jersey and Connecticut tell travelers from areas with high virus rates to self isolate. So look, I think anecdotally, there is a sense of COVID fatigue when we're all kind of slightly tired of it. And certainly, you know, we were probably all getting tired of rather distressed by that, you know, those terrible cases that we were seeing that really accelerate back in March and April and these awful stories of people getting sick and dying, was kind of COVID fatigue. But I just have to say, all of the evidence we have from our data, in terms of, as I said earlier, the interest in the story, the demand for what we're doing, the growth in subscriptions that we've had and just as I say, little things like that that I can point to you at any one time, I can guarantee you that in our, among our top 10 most read stories, at least half of them will be COVID-19. I think it's safe to say general interest in that outcome of progression of that is super critical. And I think this brings up the tech angle, which we can get into a minute, but just stick with some of these questions. I want to just keep these questions flowing while we have a couple more minutes left here. In these very challenging times for journalism, do byline articles have more power to grab the editor's attention in the pitching process? Well, I think we, I assume with what the questioner is asking, we say byline articles is like contributed content. Barons doesn't run a lot of contributing content that way, in a very limited way. When I worked at Forbes, we used to run tons of it. I think I don't, I'm not a big believer that that's necessarily a great way to generate a lot of attention. You end up with, you know, you might get published in some publication. If you can get yourself onto the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, like more power to you. But I think in most cases, it may not be the best option. Exception not the rule, so to speak, on the big one. Well, this brings up the whole point about, you know, certainly on SiliconANGLE Art property, Rob Hofer, writer-in-chief. We basically debate, oh, we get so many pitches, hey, I want to write for you, here's a contributed article, and it's essentially an advertisement. I mean, come on, really, I mean, it's not really relevant. In some cases we've had analysts come in and done that. But this brings up the question. We're seeing these newsletters like Substack and these services really are funding direct journalism. So it's an interesting, if you're good enough to write, it's about, Troy, what's your take on this? You've seen this, you and Erica have been so experienced. Yeah, I think the fundamental problem here is that, is people like the idea of doing a by-lines or contributed content, but often don't have enough to say. So you can't just do, you know, turn your like marketing brochure into a piece of, you know, an 800 word content and think that that's going to be compelling or it really attract any attention. I mean, I think there's a place for it if you truly have something important to say, and then if you really have something new to say, and it doesn't, it's not like kind of thinly, you know, thinly disguised like marketing material. Yeah, you can find, do that, but it's, I'm not sure I would over, over rotate on that as a approach. No, I just briefly, again, completely agree. The journal, we just don't ever publish those pieces. I mean, as Eric says, everybody's always welcome to try and pitch to the op-ed page of the journal, but, you know, that's, they're not generally going to, they're not, I mean, I don't answer for them, I don't make those decisions, but I've never seen a kind of sort of a marketing pitch run as an op-ed effectively. I mean, I just think you have to know, again, who you're aiming at. You know, I'm sure it's true for Bloomberg, Barron's and the journal, most other major news organizations are not really going to consider that. There might be, there might be organizations, there might be magazines, digital and print magazines, I mean, there might be certain trade publications that would be considered that, but it's just, again, the journal and most, sure of most of the large news organizations, we have very strict rules about what we can publish and, you know, and how, and who can get published. And it's essentially journal editorials, so journal news staff who can publish stories we don't really take byline outside contribution. Given that your time is so valuable, guys, what's the biggest best practice to get your attention? Eric, you mentioned keeping things tight and crisp. Are there certain techniques to get your attention? Well, I'll mention just a couple of quick things, right? You know, email is better than most other channels, despite the volume. Patience is required as a result because of the volume. You know, I, you know, people do try and, you know, crawl over the transom, hit you up on LinkedIn, NEMU on Twitter, like there's a lot of things that people try and do. I think a very tightly crafted, highly personalized email with the right subject line is probably still the most effective way, unless it's somebody you actually, like there are people who know me who will, you know, sort of know they have the right to pick up the phone and call me if they really think they have, but, you know, that's like a, that's a relationship that's built over time. The one thing on this I would add, which I think came up a little bit before, is what I'm thinking about is, like you have to engage in retail PR, not wholesale PR, right, like the idea that you're gonna spam a list of a hundred people and think that that's really gonna be a successful approach. Isn't, it's not, it's not unless you're just making an announcement. And if you're issuing your earnings release, or you've announced a large acquisition or those kinds of things, fine, then I need to get the information, but simply sending around like a very wide, a very wide list is not a good strategy in most cases, I would say probably. Well, we've got Brenna back, can you hear me? She's back, okay. Yeah, I can hear you, I'm back. Well, let's go back to you. We missed you, thanks for coming back in with a little glitch on our end, but appreciate it, bandwidth internet is keep virtual zone challenge to do live, but thank you. The trend we're just going through is, how do I pitch you? What's the best practice? How do I get your attention? How do I get a, do buy lines work? I see Bloomberg doesn't do that very often either, as well as like the journal, but your thoughts on folks out there are really trying to figure out how to do a good job, how to get your attention, how to augment your role and responsibilities. What's your thoughts? Yeah, I would say, going back to what we said a little bit before about really knowing who you're pitching to. If you know something that I've written recently that you can reference, that gets my attention. But I would also encourage people who try to think about different ways that they can be part of a story if they are looking to be mentioned in one of our articles. And what I mean by that is, maybe you are launching new product or you have a new initiative, but think about other ways that your companies relate to what's going on right now. So for instance, one thing that I'm really interested in is just kind of the changing nature of work in the office place itself. So maybe you know of something that's going on at a company, unlimited vacation for the first time or sabbaticals are being offered to working parents who have nowhere to send their children or something that's kind of unique about the current moment that we're living in. And I think that those make really good interviews. So it might not be us featuring your product or featuring exactly what your company does but it still makes you part of the conversation. And I think it's still, it's probably valuable to the company as well to get that mentioned and people may be looking into what you guys do. So I would say that something else we are really interested in right now is really looking at who we're quoting and the diversity of our sources. So that's something else I would put a plug in for PR people to be keeping an eye on is if you're always putting up your same CEO who is maybe you know of a certain demographic but you have other people in your company who you can kind of give the opportunity to talk with the media. I'm really interested in making sure I'm using a diverse list of sources and I'm not just always calling the same person. So if you can identify people who maybe even aren't that experienced with it but they're willing to give it a try, I think that now is a really good moment to be able to get new voices in there. Rather than the speed dial person you go to for that vertical or that story building out those sources. Exactly. Great, that's great insight everyone. Great insights and thank you for your time on this awesome panel. Love to do it again. This has been super informative. I love some of the engagement out there and again I think we can do more of these and get the word out. I'd like to end the panel on an uplifting note for young aspiring journalists coming out of school. Obviously journalism programs are evolving, the landscape is changing, we're seeing the sea change. As younger generation comes out of college and master's programs in journalism we need to tell the most important stories. Could you each take a minute to give your advice to folks either going in and coming out of school? What to be prepared for? How they can make an impact? Brandon we'll start with you, Gerard and Eric. That's a big question. Yeah, I mean I would say one thing that has been encouraging about everything going on right now is I have seen kind of an increased hunger for information and an increased hunger for accurate information. So I do think it can obviously be disheartening to look at the furloughs and the layoffs and everything that is going on around the country but at the same time I think we have been able to see really big impacts from the people that are doing reporting on protests and police brutality and on responses to the virus. And so I think for young journalists definitely take a look at the people who are doing work that you think is making a difference. And I'm inspired by that to keep pushing even though the market might be a little bit difficult for a while. Yeah, I'd say two things. One, again, echoing what Brenna said. Identify people that you follow or you admire or you think of making a real contribution in the field and maybe directly interact with them. I think all of us, whoever we are, always like to hear from young journalists and budding journalists and again, similar advice to the advice that we were all giving about PR pitches, if you know what that person's been doing and then contact them and sort of follow them. And now I've been contacted by a number of young journalists like that. The other thing I'd say is this is more of a plea than a kind of piece of advice but I do think it will work in the long run. Be prepared to go against the grain. I fear that too much journalism today is of the same piece. There is not a lot of intellectual diversity in what we're seeing. There's a tendency to follow the herd. Goes back a little bit to what I was saying right at the opening about the fact that too many journalists, quite frankly, are clustered in the major metropolitan areas in this country and around the world. Have something distinctive and a bit different to say. I'm not suggesting you offer some crazy theory or set of observations about the world but be prepared to be prepared. To me, the reason I went into journalism was because I was always a bit skeptical about whenever I saw something in any media, which especially one which seemed to have a huge amount of support and was repeated in all kinds of places. I always ask myself, is that really true? Is that actually right? Maybe there's an alternative to that and that's gonna make you stand out as a journalist. That's gonna give you a distinctiveness. It's quite hard to do in some respects right now because standing out from the crowd can get you into trouble and I'm not suggesting that people should do that but have a record of original storytelling of reporting of doing things perhaps that not because look, candidly, there are probably right now in this country, 100,000 budding putative journalists who would like to go out and write about a report on Black Lives Matter and the reports and the problems of racial inequality in this country and the protests and all of that kind of stuff. The problem there is there are already 100,000 of those people who wanna do that in addition to probably the 100,000 journalists who are already doing it. Find something else, find something different, find a different, have something distinctive to offer so that when attention moves on from these big stories, whether it's COVID or race or politics or the election or Donald Trump or whatever, have something else to offer that is quite distinctive and where you have actually managed to carve out for yourself a real record as having an independent voice. Brennan, Jared, great insight. Eric, take us home, close us out. Sure, so I'd see a couple things. So one is, as a new, as a young journalist, I think, first of all, having a variety of tools in your toolkit is super valuable. So be able to write long and write short, be able to do audio, blogs, podcasts, video, if you can shoot photos. The more skills that you have, following on social media, you wanna have all of the tools in your toolkit because it is challenging to get a job and so you wanna be able to be flexible enough to fill all those roles and the truth is that a modern journalist is finding the need to do all of that. When I first started at Barron's many, many years ago, we did one thing. We did a weekly magazine. You'd have two weeks to write a story. It was very comfortable and that's just not the way the world works anymore. So that's one element. And the other thing I think, Gerald, Charles, you really wanna have a certain kind of expertise if possible that makes you stand out. And the contradiction is, but you also wanna have the flexibility to do lots of different kinds of stories. You wanna get cooking hold, but if you have some expertise that is hard to find, that's really valuable. When Barron's hires, like we're always looking for people who can write well, but also really understand the financial markets and it can be challenging for us sometimes to find those people. And so I think there's, you need to go short and long. It's a barbell strategy. Have expertise, but also be flexible in both your approach and the things you want to cover. Great insight, folks. Thanks for the great commentary, great chats for the folks watching. Really appreciate your valuable time. Be original, go against the grain, be skeptical, and just do a good job. I think it's a lot of opportunity and I think the world's changing. Thanks for your time and I hope the comms folks would enjoy the conversation. Thank you for joining us, everyone. Appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Okay, I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE. For this CUBE Talk was a one-hour power panel. Awesome conversation. Stay in chat if you want to ask more questions. We'll come back and look at those chats later. But thank you for watching. Have a nice day.