When Ezra Klein left The Washington Post and announced his new startup, Project X, everyone in the media industry grew curious and excited to watch the mysterious venture unfold. The announcement marked yet another established journalist stepping away from a mainstream publication to create content in uncharted waters. These digital content creators have taken a leap of faith and are now poised to reinvent the publishing industry.
Such content creators include Andrew Sullivan, who left The Daily Beast in 2013 to relaunch the Daily Dish blog as an independent, subscription-based site with no ads and no corporate owners. In December 2013, Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, co-executive editors of AllThingsD, withdrew their partnership with Dow Jones & Co. to launch their own venture, a site called Re/code, which offers independent tech news from influential journalists in technology and media. Also taking the plunge is former editor in chief at The Wire, Gabriel Snyder, who announced his new position as chief content officer at mobile news startup Inside.com.
Plenty of others have fallen into what seems like a natural next step in digital and more are likely to follow. Matthew Drake shared his perspective and insight into why he left ABC News and what it’s like as a senior producer at the video content startup NowThis News. Joining in 2012, Drake was on the original team tasked with launching the company. He leads the production staff of 20 producers and editors that create content across a variety of digital and social platforms. He also oversees production of the creative services team, working with brands on creating native content campaigns. The site harbors video content that is shared across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Google+.
The main concept for the site is to feature short news clips—never longer than 15 seconds— that address serious topics. This makes long-form reporting impossible, but these digital snippets are still able to convey the important message of a story. Drake has used his five years of experience as a digital producer at ABC News to push the boundaries further.
“Despite having come from a digital team housed at a legacy news brand like ABC, there still remains the necessity of learning how to ‘punch about your weight’ in digital. How can you take a smaller amount of resources and produce in a way that feels ‘big’ in terms of scope and impact,” he said.
“I think for anyone involved in digital, the traits of versatility and nimbleness prove absolutely essential.”
So what provoked Drake to leave a mainstream news site for a startup? “I think for creatively driven people, there is just an inherent pull toward the idea and potential that a startup environment provides,” Drake said. “To try and swim out a bit further and see if the same stories can be told differently.”
Financially backed by Kenneth Lerer, Buzzfeed chairman and founder of Lerer Ventures, the beginning of NowThis News was, like many startups, a testing site for revolution. “We had a clean slate when we started NowThis News, with no preconceptions or identity to be beholden to. It’s truly a laboratory in which we can constantly experiment and refine what we think is the content that represents our ‘voice,’” Drake said. “It’s a state of perpetual aspiration and movement that can be incredibly refreshing.”
Much of the NowThis News staff is comprised of former mainstream journalists, such as editor in chief Ed O’Keefe (ABC News Digital), senior producer Betsy Rate (Newsweek/The Daily Beast) and managing editor Katharine Zalenski (Washington Post).
As the digital publishing space gets more progressive, it seems that journalists have followed a natural evolution towards careers in startups or the mobile industry. The traits of a good journalist are the very same traits that foster inventive content in the digital realm, and vice versa.
“It’s a great time for digital as a whole because I think that the larger networks are very interested in adopting more of a startup mentality in their offerings. It’s been a case that non-traditional digital media has spurred the more legacy-based outlets to push themselves, and that’s just a good thing for the space as a whole,” Drake said.
