Brian Morrissey has been fascinated with how sustainable media businesses scale for quite some time. Amidst the pandemic, he left Digiday Media, moved to Miami and started to build a newsletter and podcast called The Rebooting to examine what makes a modern media company hum.
As a big fan of Brian's works, especially his interviews, it was extremely fun to have him on the other side of the microphone answering questions about building his own business.
We talk about the rise of niche (or is it neeeesh???), how long it takes for him to realize someone is full of shit and serving a growing audience as a solo practitioner.
Some of the quotes from the interview are below:
On running your own business vs. managing a large group:
6:27 But you know, all the other sort of the more administrative stuff I've found a challenge. I'm not naturally super organized, and I think that's a common trait among journalists. And a lot of times people think that like journalists drink a lot of coffee because they love coffee, but I actually drink a lot of coffee because you have to go, you have to make the coffee, or you have to go get the coffee because for procrastinators, it's really just procrastination is the thing.
On his choice to do advertising over subscriptions:
9:15 And so for me, it just made sense because a lot of people are going to subscriptions, and I thought for my own model that it made more sense to really start with sponsorships. Doesn't mean that I wouldn't eventually. I want to eventually have a membership offering. But I think for right now, it makes a lot more sense because I can reach more people and I just see it. You know, I get a lot of people, I get a lot of students and stuff, and I know there's ways to do that, but, I think it's important, you know, that I hope what I do is useful and quality information that it's not like a luxury good.
On battling the incumbents:
12:03 there's so many advantages to being an established player. You have distribution built in, you've got an audience built in. 60 percent of the audience comes from search and that's just built up over years and stuff like this. You have like clients that are already working with you. They're going to re-up. Maybe they're going to spend a little more. Maybe some are going to spend a little less, but there's tons and tons of advantages you have. And so the way I look at it's, I need to do stuff for people that the incumbents either can't or won't do.
On the power of the newsletter:
16:55 I remember I had a podcast at Digiday for five years. You know, you go to places and people would be like, Oh, I listen to you, and it's a little bit weird, you know, I'm not like an egotist, I think. But like, you know, they're like, Oh, it's so great to meet you, I've been hearing you all the time, because the voice is very personal. The reason newsletters took off is not because of a newsletter. Something about sending to someone's inbox is more personal. I think what you're seeing emerge within the sort of newsletter space, also is the format is more personal.
On learning from other media company’s while reporting on them:
Keith: [00:20:02] And I always joke with people, and I might have even joked with you about this is, your podcast was the best tool to learn how the entire ecosystem was working so that you could apply that to Digiday. Did you actually do it that way? Yeah. OK, cool. It was such a good cheat code because you're getting some of the biggest and best business minds in publishing. [00:20:21][19.0]
Brian: [00:20:22] Oh, that was like our the biggest competitive advantage that I saw was like, I'm like, I would assign stories based on stuff or try to figure out because I'm like, we don't have any resources. We don't have any funding or anything like this. But I know if I'm trying to figure it out, other people are likely also trying to figure it out. So I'm like,
Keith: [00:20:43] give them a call and see how they're doing it.
Brian: [00:20:44] yeah, so I definitely I will, I will cop to that. I definitely assign stories just because, like it was something that we were trying to figure out and I was like, you know, like if BuzzFeed is like big, they'll figure it out for us.
On the real value of hosting events:
23:03 Yeah, I did that on the stage. I did the bluster and the bullshit part on stage, because I was like, I realized, the stuff that happens on stage at these events is, it's not, it’s necessary, but insufficient. What people are looking for is the connectivity. You know, it was about the networking and stuff like this and it would be easy to as a journalist to be snobbish about that. But I'm like, Oh my God, this is paying my rent. What are you talking about? I'm all into it.
On our potential missed opportunity:
27:57 You know, I think when COVID happened, there was people who are just like, We got to get right back to normal, we gotta get right back to normal. And I found myself. I'm not usually like a maximalist just by temperament but I found myself more towards the maximalist side of you know, this would be horrible. This is a horrible thing that's happened. But it would be horrible not to use this to make things better societally, economically. We've had so many inequalities in our society with how people are treated and with income inequality that it would be terrible for us not to use this as a way to reset or reboot start a little bit over.
On the depressing trend of publications going after the “insider”
33:15 I find the explosion of publications in Washington to be, like, fascinating, right? It's fascinating and depressing, to be honest with you. And I say that because 1. They've proven that like there is a very, very lucrative market for targeting influentials in government and these institutions. But 2. it's depressing because it just shows like how the sausage is made in this country, you know. And that sucks. But I think my hope is that these kind of innovations can spur more focus on how to solve the problems of like local news and stuff like this. It's incredibly important to solve this problem and to have it broadly accessible to people, as I said, credible information should not be a luxury good.
On potentially growing from a solo practitioner to managing again:
50:14 I think in a year's time, I want it to be more than like a one person thing. Like I've been really just thinking a lot about how I want to build it because like we said, I can't do everything. And so I looked at this is like kind of sort of like a version of an elimination diet. I was like, I'm going to do everything, and then I'm going to understand where I provide the most value and where it's like, I'm just like doing a terrible, terrible, terrible job. I'm starting to learn that and stuff, but I also want to figure out a way to have a different type of model that is, you know, it's more like sort of partnership based like, I mean, I spent a lot of years managing people and being like the boss guy who sits at the like head of the table and stuff like this and like, I hate that.
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