How Women are Reshaping Media with Emily Parkhurst

The media landscape and industry is shifting beneath our feet—and with it, our sense of trust, truth, and community. In this fun and informative episode of The Space In Between, I sit down with veteran journalist, publisher and noted media executive Emily Parkhurst to explore how news is evolving, why it matters for democracy and daily life, and how a women’s lens changes the stories we tell and the voices we hear. Together, we unpack the decline of local journalism, the transformation of the media industry, the rise of social media and AI, and the urgent need for leaders—whether in newsrooms, classrooms, or boardrooms—to build trust through curiosity, courage, and listening across divides. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the. Space in between podcast. I'm your host Lee Morgan. Again, this podcast is for listeners who are fed up. Up with the hyperpolarized nature of the world today. And who crave. Craves spaces where current events can be discussed in construct. enlightening and delightful ways. Let's get. Hi everyone. Today we will talk about the evolving landscape of media, what is changing, why it matters, and how the media influences culture, politics, and our sense of what truth is and is not. And this is all happening at a time of increasing polarization and fragmentation here in the US and abroad. We will also explore how news analysis changes when a woman's lens is brought to the curation and reporting on current events. My guest, Emily Parkhurst, is just the person to help us make sense of all of this. Emily spent three years as a top executive with the venture backed newsletter, startup 6:00 AM City, where she tripled the business and launched 20. Local news publications. I did say 20, that's a lot. Prior to that, she served as editor-in-chief and then publisher and president of the Puget Sound Business Journal. That news service distinguished itself as the most profitable business journal in the country, and I can tell you as someone who lives here in Seattle, the same city with Emily, it's a very, very well respected news platform for the greater Seattle region and and has been for many years. Her. Current focus is scaling her new company, which is called Formidable. Formidable is a comprehensive online media platform that includes news and analysis of current events. Yes, through a women's lens. So Emily has a great team at Formidable, and one really cool part of the work that she does is also hosting a fantastic. Podcast also called Formidable. The last thing I'll say before, welcoming Emily to the show is that she is an amazing gatherer and curator of community. And I have been a part of this and I'm always just so impressed when I show up at any event, Emily's one of these people when she says, get on the bus, you just get on the bus'cause something good happens. But she pulls together really diverse leaders and particularly diverse women leaders. And she does this with a lovely mix of. Confidence, humor, and humility. So Emily, I'm really glad we're spending time together today and welcome to the Space in Between podcast. Thank you so much for having me. What an intro. I feel very, very important right now. Well, thank you. You are very important and yes, I'm so excited to share this. Virtual space with you and Emily, as we've gotten to know one another, I've been struck by what a dynamic leader you are. And as I mentioned you, have this unique ability to bring people together. You're a curator, a community builder, and you've also have this, Cutting edge business leader part to yourself. And I should say you were also interim president of Cornish University and brokered a beautiful merger there with Seattle University. So you can slide in and lead in a lot of settings. My first question is, where does your passion for leadership come from? It's such an interesting question, Lee. You know, I've really thought about it quite a bit lately, because of the, the changing nature, like you were saying, of the different organizations that I've had the opportunity to be a part of and, to lead through, really transformational changes and in several cases. And I think what it comes down to is actually my time as a journalist. You really learn as a journalist. I spent, I spent 20, 20 years, in journalism and media. You really learn how to listen to people. That's your job. Your job is to be curious, to ask really good questions, and then to question. The assumptions that people are making and try to push them, to a different place and see if they can open up a little bit. And I think that that actually really informs my leadership style. I genuinely enjoy listening to other people's point of view, and I'm very open to other perspectives as a result. And I think that's my training from, from a lot of time in the media. It's not only your job to listen, it's your job to go seek out alternative perspectives and points of view even if you personally disagree with them. I, I love that. Listen and seek out what a wonderful mix. Yeah, and I think that that, you know, particularly you were mentioning Cornish, you know, that was a really difficult transition that happened very quickly. And so anytime you're in a situation where a business transaction is happening as quickly as it did at Cornish, that's a lot of change for a lot of people very quickly. Nobody loves that, and especially when it impacts their livelihood and their lives, and so. What we started doing was these regular fireside chats where people could just ask whatever questions they wanted. This is students, faculty, administration, and this. Exactly. And could you tell for listeners who may not be in Seattle, what, what it was that you architected there? Yeah, sure. I stepped in as the interim president at Cornish in July of last year. Um, the college had been struggling for, for quite some time. I don't think that's, um, news to anybody. It's a small, um, private arts. College in downtown Seattle and we had about 500 students, which is very small, and we've been struggling. It's hard to teach dance over Zoom. The pandemic was really hard on us and um, and so it had, it had shrunk a little bit to a point where something needed to change and it needed to change pretty quickly if the college was going to continue. And so we began pursuing a lot of different options. Um. By December of last year, we had a letter of intent with Seattle University that we were able to announce and ultimately closed that transaction in June, which is really fast for higher education. Um, if anybody listening has ever worked in higher ed, it is not known for speed. It's like Lightspeed. It's, it was very much like Lightspeed, and I think that had to be, there weren't a lot of other options. Something needed to change that year pretty dramatically. It was absolutely the best possible outcome, from a, a lot of options that we had. But it also meant that we had to change everybody's lives and their experiences, and even the organization they were working for, you know, all the HR things and all of the, benefits and everything was gonna change for them. Including their titles in a lot of cases. And so bringing people along through that, was a, was a real challenge. And so we did a lot of open conversations. I always kind of joke my door is always open except when it isn't, because that's the reality. But, but you know, try to, listen to people. Different stakeholder groups and, go outta your way to seek them out. And I think that was, that was one of the things that we really tried to do. You can't just say My door is always open. You actually have to go invite people to walk in. Yeah. Because there are. People who will walk in your door and then there's a lot of people who won't and it's the lot who won't that have so many questions and insights and perspectives that is missed if you don't seek them out like you did. Absolutely. I think one of the things that I learned very early on, Cornish had four unions, which, for a, small college like that is a lot. And I spoke with a gentleman who had been a union organizer. Very early on in my tenure, I sought him out and I said, I've never really worked, with unions and negotiated with unions before. I'd love your take since you sat on the other side of the table of management for a long time. And so I had a great conversation with him and I said, you know, is it okay to reach out to them now? He's like, not only is it okay, do it now. Build those relationships now because if you do make major changes and need something from them down the road. You'll have built a level of trust with the people you're gonna be negotiating with. And I think that applies to everything, and maybe it seems obvious, but I think particularly with organizations like unions, it can be very intimidating, especially for new management to come in and interact with them face on right from the get go. But I did, and that paid off dividends. Mm-hmm. I had built relationships with these people where they, they knew I was an honest broker that I was not trying to screw over. The staff and the faculty that I wanted them to have opportunities on the other side of this transaction, and that I was truly negotiating with their best interests in mind. I wasn't going to have a job on the other side of it, and I knew that and I wanted to make sure that they, that they did. Um, so it did. There were a lot of negotiations that we had to do, but it taught me a lot about the importance of communication and, and seeking out those opportunities to communicate before you even really need it. I love that. And tracking that back to your time as a journalist, right, where that was your job. Ask another question. Another question, or come to something from a different angle and you just. You know, you didn't have experience working with the unions. That's a new angle, so let's go learn about it. So, thank you for that because for the community here to see the legacy that Cornish has now being a part of Seattle University, which is a, crown jewel here. In Seattle. Really excited for everyone involved in that, effort. And I'd love to. Shift a little bit to the media landscape, which for me is someone not in in media a little confusing at times, and it just feels like the, where do you go? Who do you listen to? Social media is everywhere and I find a lot of dissatisfaction, like where do I go? Although I now go to Formidable, which is a great news source and has a great newsletter, but what I'd love is help kinda set the table of how media changed and evolved over the last five to 10 years, and maybe you'd focus us just in the last five, but from what to what? Then we'll talk a little bit about where it's going, but describe for us the media landscape now. Like how has it evolved? Sure. And it's uh, it's interesting that you say that you're not part of the media because I think we're doing a podcast right now, Lee. So, oh my God, you are part of the media, my friend. I'm just a queen in media now apparently. You are, you are. Um, and I think that actually kind of gets to what I wanted to talk a little bit about, which is the media has grown. It wasn't that long ago that your sources for news and information were pretty limited. You know, that's, that's easily within our lifetime that, you had what, three major television stations? You had your daily newspaper in your, city or town. Maybe you had a second newspaper. Um, Seattle was lucky enough to have one for, for quite a while. Um, and. And maybe you had a couple of other sources, radio, um, public radio, things like that. These days, the news comes from everywhere. Constantly dizzying. Yeah. It never stops, right? It's coming from your social media. It's coming from push notifications to your phone. You're standing in line and somebody's got CNN on in the background. You're driving in your car and you're listening to Lee's wonderful podcast. You're getting news from a lot of different places, and that is part of, of what I would say. We're gonna see both more of that and then consolidation within that. So as these new platforms come out, they're coming up with different business models. It's not a mystery, probably to your listeners that traditional media is, business models have been challenged for quite a long time. That's not new. Google and Facebook took the ad revenue years ago. That disappeared for a lot of newspapers, and that is why you're seeing so many closures. There are now whole major cities with no major news, publications, no print. What, what's a city that I would expect there to be a big local newspaper that there's not, there's actually quite a few regional, um, whole regions, um, where there's, there's missing. Any major dailies. I believe Memphis is one of them. Um, there's, there's been so many closures. Wow. If you look at the, um, McClachi papers that have closed, if you look at a lot of these papers that have shut down over the years, um, it's, it's decimated these communities. And now there's communities with hundreds of thousands of residents with no, nobody covering the city government. So that's really a. Bit of a horror story because you really want local journalists like you seeking out asking questions, elevating local news, and then instead we just have social media or national outlets, which may or may not get the local nuance of what. It's happening in the local area. And I think all, all news is local at the end of the day, right? You know, what the federal government is doing, grabs all of the headlines. Uh, how that translates to your daily life is often very difficult, uh, to figure out. And you do need local journalists who are embedded in your community. To figure that out because it's gonna affect them too, right? And they're living that same experience. So the decisions that are made in Washington DC affect Washington state. But if, unless you have people in Washington state covering those decisions through the lens of the audience that they're writing for, which is what journalists are really good at doing, is identifying who their audience is and writing for that particular point of view. That you're not, you're gonna get these big scary headlines that you get, um, from the national media, and it's not ever really going to have any meaning. It's just gonna raise your blood pressure, it's gonna freak you out, but it doesn't really have any. Actual meaning for you as an individual. Meanwhile, decisions like, you know, that the planning board is making, um, in your city or that the, you know, they're, they're voting on a new, um, ordinance that includes an increase in your property taxes. Yeah. Things like that. That's what's not getting covered now. And that's the stuff that we're. Really matters and really does impact people's lives. And so in the absence of that, we have people who may post on social media or national media that want to say, gosh, look at all the horrible things that are happening in Seattle or the big blue cities when actually they make it. Overdue what's happening, like all this looting that's happening. And actually I, I live downtown. I know third Avenue, right? It's, it, there's a couple blocks that aren't good, but it's, it's not like this nightmare place that everyone makes it out to be. If you hear stories about Seattle and how it's not doing well downtown, which we not true, it's coming back to life. So is that the sort of thing that in the absence of that kind of rigorous professional journalism, you have people stepping into the void? Absolutely. And of course, right. Um, a lot of times they're influencers. A lot of times they are incentivized maybe financially to say some of these things. There's the sort of old media, it bleeds, it leads, um, concept, which is, you know, put the bloody car wreck on the front page.'cause that's gonna get people to pick up the paper that goes back centuries. Um. I think that the social media age where we were so heavily reliant on clicks, right. You know, think about what Buzzfeed was doing with all of those Click Beatty, um, lists and things like that. For, for a while there it was. So the business model was so tied to page views. That has shifted and we can talk about that a little bit. But that was driving the business model and thus, the crazier the headlines, the wilder, the stories, the more clicks you were gonna get and the more revenue you were gonna get. And that model, um, is, is I think why we find ourselves in the position that we do. You're starting to see other models, business models that are not relying on that. I think if anybody is still relying on it, they should be terrified. Why is that? Well, part of it's ai, okay, so it used to be very profitable for if it bleeds, it leads sort of headlines, which also if you're on social media, you wanna get big followers, which then you have a lot of followers on Instagram or Facebook, the other, um, alphabet letter. I just can't say it. So individuals can get money and then companies like Facebook can dial up algorithms that. Intentionally addict young girls who express some body dysphoria issues and then they'll dial up algorithms. That show them ads for plastic surgery or products, I mean, it's really crazy. So that. That sells ads. So Facebook makes more money. That's a, it bleeds, it leads example. Is that, did I get that right? Yeah, you did. And I think you're, pushing us to the second part of the question, which is the future of media. And it's really, uh, your example is, is both chilling true and, not going anywhere anytime soon. And part of that is if you think about the original way that, newspapers were structured. I worked in very, old school newspapers for, for quite a while, and in some cases the ad staff were not allowed on the same floor as the editorial staff and vice versa, I mean, there was a church and state, kind of very traditional divide. You weren't. Even really supposed to hang out with those people because of ethical concerns. Exactly. Wow. I wish we had more of those concerns these days. Exactly. And so that prevented kind of what you're describing, which is this content is aimed at this particular audience, and we think these ads will work really well for that particular audience because they're now scared because of this content. But if you don't know what the content is as an advertising executive, then you can't sell against that specific content. What you see now and what has become much more popular is content-based ads. Content-based ads. Yes. And organizations and, companies that are doing their own content. We can talk a little bit about that. I think that that, to me is less scary than what you describe, which is products and services that are a little predatory aimed at an audience very intentionally., And the, the social media companies, they just function differently than media companies. Their goals are different. They are there, there's no public service mantra to what they're doing. Every journalist I have ever worked with has this just deep. Passion for what they do. They really genuinely care about reporting the news that is important to their audience. Getting the word out there about stories, I knew reporters who would come back to the office and they couldn't type fast enough because they wanted to get the story out there. Wow. That was what drove them. It's the public service piece of it. These are mission driven people. Um, but media, most media is for profit. And so that was why there was this divide between the editorial department, which was very mission driven and the ad department. Well, now that that divide in the social media companies is totally gone. Cross that line as much as you want. And there's no journalists saying, you will not run that ad next to my story, or I will walk and journalists do that. Wow. Yeah. And we saw that some with the Washington Post. Exactly. And LA Times when I think. Uh, the last election cycle, the editorial board or the publisher decided not to do an endorsement for president, which on the one hand I would say is not a journalist or, well, apparently now I'm a media queen'cause I have a podcast. But as someone who doesn't know media that well, Okay. Maybe don't do an endorsement, but I think what we understand is there that was politically motivated so that these newspapers would not come under scrutiny or extra attack from the current administration or incoming administration. Yeah, and I think that is a really interesting case at the Post. I have friends there, um, who were very upset by that decision for obvious reasons. And I think it was also the timing of when it was made. You know, if you're gonna make a decision like that to not endorse, uh, um, the candidate for president, you do that two years ahead of time. To show that this is not a politically motivated decision. Then you do an op-ed talking about why you're doing it and you explain it. You know, there is absolutely a rationale there. Yeah. To say, we don't wanna play in this space anymore and here's why. But you don't just make a rash decision and ideally, your newsroom comes along with you when you're, making these decisions. Publishers and editors do not always agree. I've been on both sides of that table. Yes, you have. There are a few times, there are definitely times when you disagree with the publisher or the editor disagrees with you. Um, and in a, a good, healthy news organization, there should be a little bit of tension there. Yeah. Yeah. There should be. And you want that. You want that back and forth. You want your editor to push you and say. Yeah, that feels honestly a little bit like pay to play content. I'm not comfortable with that. Maybe they should be paying for that article instead of the newsroom writing it and which yeah, you want, we want those sort of conversations, which one might describe as being in the space in between two different approaches. And so that can be a healthy tension. And now we've moved from, a healthy tension, to now places where there's just no boundaries, even in formal media. Platforms. And then we have this social media where again, all bets are off. And you know, I had a friend that was on the Facebook board for a while, a very high integrity leader who said to me once, Facebook is, it's not a social media platform, it's an ad agency. And people forget that. And when you're on the board or in the leadership and that's, what the company's there to do. Make as much money as possible, selling ads. And we were, we were speaking right before we started about a book that I just finished called Careless People, and the subtitle is A Cautionary Tale about Power, greed, and Lost Idealism. Great title, but the author Sarah Wynn Parker was the one of the first. F employees at Facebook to work on global policy. She ended up leaving and wrote this book, which even if only 60% of it's accurate, it's frightening. Um, careless. Ness about that, company. But you'd mentioned earlier about ai. Can you tell us how do you see AI influencing media? How has it now and where do you think it's we're gonna be headed? Yeah, I think there's a lot of, ink spilled, digital ink spilled on this topic already. And I'm not sure anybody fully understands or can predict where we're going. What I can say is that already there's a mountain of crap on the internet, that's AI generated. It's, wrong all lot. And if you look for instance, Google something, right? And it creates that little AI generated response well. You can't help but use it because it's built in now to, to Google. You can't opt. I think maybe you can't opt out of it, but it, it's built into the platform often. If you look at what the AI spits out there and then you click through to the links that it's citing, and at least Google is citing its sources and I appreciate that. That is good. Um, that is good A lot of times. It doesn't say that in the article. So for those of you who rely on those summaries, click through, read the actual article that it's based on.'cause it's not always right. Sometimes it gets the numbers wrong, sometimes it confuses things. It's still in its infancy and trusting it blindly, that's what scares me. So as media evolves and as AI creates more and more. Content, podcasts, things like that, that, um. Streamline people's lives and make it easier for them to get information, we run the risk of that information being inaccurate. Because there's nobody saying, huh? Is that millions or billions? That doesn't make sense to me. I mean, that's not a rounding error. That's not a rounding error. Right. But. Journalists make that mistake a lot. I worked in, in business journalism long enough to, to edit my fair share of millions civilians, the s and the Bs after some of these, I mean, it's easy to do, right? Mm-hmm. And, and that, that's kind of a glib example, but it's the kind of thing that, people mess up and that's why you have editors. AI doesn't have an editor. It doesn't have somebody checking its work. In that same way or asking the question, does this make sense? Does this make sense? Is it logical? Does this make sense? It just spits it out with a sense of authority that doesn't belong. It hasn't earned. It's funny you say that because I we'll do Google and we will type something into search. I also am pretty active on chat, GPT and also Claude. So I go to these sources and I do like that Google does include that little icon, that Infinity symbol that you can click and find the source and. What happens for me is I think, oh good. It's based on a source and I don't open up the source. And I think that's your point. And I would say I do actually do that extra, click it. Maybe everyone does. I don't know. But I'm pretty meticulous around some of the statistics that I would cite, and I'm so, I'm sure some of them are wrong now. So thanks for pointing that out. Definitely check. And I think the other piece is that ties to the business model, okay. That we were talking about earlier. So for many, many years, media companies have been relying on clicks. SEO. Every media company had multiple people on a team focused on S-E-O-S-E-O search engine optimization. Correct. So that would be to show up at the top of a Google search result when somebody was looking for news on, the latest executive order and now Google is doing that recap for you. There's no reason for you to click through, and thus the page views have dropped precipitously. Okay. For most media, and that has absolutely decimated the digital ad model. Wow. That's almost overnight. I did not know that. And it makes so much sense. What does that mean in a year or two or three? What do you imagine? I mean, just today we're recording on the 8th of August, uh, chat, GPT just came out and Sam Altman is saying, Hey, our latest version is. Way less inaccurate. Basically what we've just been talking about, it's so much better and distinguishes itself from Google or Claude or Copilot. I don't know if he's accurate or not, but he's making that claim. Will SEO just become completely not. Used in the future. I mean, if I were an SEO person, I'd be nervous, but one thing I wanna, you know, you're talking about Sam Altman saying, Hey, it's way less inaccurate than it used to be. Imagine if that was the New York Times' model. Well, we're way less inaccurate than the Wall Street Journal, so that's why you should read us like that's not a great argument. Okay, thank you. We have the wrong bar, is what you're saying. Yeah, thank you for that. I think that's so important, what you just said. Yeah. And it, but yes, to answer your question about the SEO business model, anybody who isn't running screaming from that right now should be, it's. It's not a long-term solution anymore. And so you're seeing a lot of these, SEO farm type media companies really trying to pivot and pivot fast to what? To a Yeah. What's the thing they're going to? So I think there's a couple of things. Most media companies have some sort of events arm and an event part of their business that's smart. AI can't do live events. At least yet. Maybe someday we'll be interviewed by robots on stage. But, for now, you can't do live events. And that is where there's some secret sauce. At the Business Journal, that was when I was there, a third of our revenue was events based revenue. It's probably higher now. It's probably higher, or if not. They should be thinking of that, that's what you would encourage for your former, I hope that's what they're doing. Okay. And I have a lot of friends there, so they're very smart people. The other models are, are sort of what we're doing at Formidable, which is we've created this, this platform. The formidable newsletter and, as you mentioned, the podcast. And what that becomes is the showcase of what we can do for other organizations. So we do what I call content as a service where we will spin up newsletters or take over existing newsletters for our clients and then run them on their behalf. And we have a newsroom full of people. Whose job it is to do actual reporting through the lens of the customers that our clients have. So, for instance, we work with a couple of hospitality companies and they wanna reach, you know, wealthy people in the Pacific Northwest who want to go out and explore what's going on in the community. And so we created a newsletter on their behalf that's white labeled for them. And it's called Explore p and w. It's great publication all about getting out there and exploring the Pacific Northwest. Now is it a blatant ad for these hospitality companies? No, it's real content that's useful to people, but we're doing it on behalf of these brands and I think that is where you're gonna start to see some creative business models in media content as a service. That makes sense. And how do you navigate the. Ethical questions, right? Because we were talking earlier about, clicking for ads and now we're moving into this new space and you just said they're paying you. To talk about great places to go in the Pacific Northwest and when they say, Hey, why don't you talk about this lodge and resort that we own? How do you navigate that? Because I you are this highly ethical person navigating a lot of complexity. Yeah, I mean the, the biggest thing is disclosure, right? And that's what a lot of social media companies don't do. So in every single one of our newsletters, it is very clearly. Stated that this is in partnership and we list the four organizations that are part of that partnership. And that's, that's something that you're seeing less and less of where it says sponsored content. Most people don't even notice that, but at least it's labeled. Okay. I think what scares me a little bit is when it's completely masked and it's harder to tell, I guess I'm not super scared about it if it's legitimate content. Yeah. What I'm scared about is the stuff that, if you think about a lot of the wellness blogs, a lot of the influencers kind of in that health and wellness space, selling supplements, they're talking about cloud. Peace, love, and kindness. And oh, by the way, if you go to the website for 1999, we're gonna get you some pills that, really work. And if you see, there's a couple of documentaries lately about, people who claim to have cancer just to sell, a supplements and, cookbooks and crazy things like that. It's, it's that line. Yeah. That social media maybe allows to be blurrier than it should. I'd like your perspective on generational differences in consumption of media. It seems to me that younger generations are less on email and. I've heard get more of their news from their peers via social media. And then those of us who are a little older, you know, you and I in our thirties, sure we, we might actually take time to go to more traditional media sources, but what are you noticing in terms of consumption of news and generational differences? Yeah, I, I, I've thought a lot about this and at my previous company at 6:00 AM City, I worked with a lot of younger, um, journalists actually. So 95% of my team was under 40. And that. Was very informative to work with that many young people. I think I had a hundred or so people on my team, at that time, most of whom were journalists across the country from different regions. And what really struck me was, yes, they are getting a lot of their news and information on social media. They're also better at identifying the crap. Oh, they, I think are more attuned to it. They're. These are people who grew up on social media and so they're willing to say, that doesn't sound right, and they'll call you out on it in a way that I think older people might be more naive to some of those. So I do think that, that's a product of just constant exposure. Right., That said, you mentioned attention spans are, are certainly. Shorter. Yeah. Uh, I, I don't think that's generational. I think that's true for any generation right now. You know, it was interesting. My mother came to visit earlier this summer and she's in her seventies. And then, my stepson, who was 15, they were sitting next to each other on the couch with their headphones on. Scrolling YouTube. Oh my gosh. That's hysterical. So I, I, I try Did you get a photo of that? You know, I should have, because it was pretty funny. And my mom gets a lot of her news from YouTube. Yeah. And so does the 15-year-old. And so I'm not sure that that's generational. Interesting. Right. Well, YouTube's such a amazing platform. I mean,'cause most of us are visual learners. It's a brilliant business. It really is. It is. And I think what, when I think about the future of, of media, those are platforms. You don't own your audience there in the same way that, you know, an organization like the New York Times, it's an easy one to talk about. They know who their audience is. Because their audience is paying to subscribe to them. If you have a really successful, uh, videos on, on YouTube, you could get 10 million views every time. Maybe that's small these days. I don't even know. Just like our podcast, just like our podcasts, and you don't really know who those people are. You just know volume and then add. Agencies or folks are like, oh, you have 10 million so I wanna be on your platform. But they probably look at the content you do, right? Just they do. Yeah. And you can, you can suss out, you know, demographic data and that kind of stuff in aggregate. It's very different than I can go into the backend of my system right now and click on your name Lee, in my CMS and see Media Queen, media Queen Lee Morgan in my, in my backend. I can see. Which newsletters you open. Yeah, I can see where you are. I can see. So that first party data is really, really important. And if you hand off your content to another organization to manage your audience for you, you lose that. Oh, interesting. Ah, I'm learning so much. So let's talk about news and analysis from a women's perspective.'cause Formidable was really founded based on your vision around what if we did bring a women's lens? Tell us why a women's lens on news and analysis seems important these days, and how would what I would read in your formidable newsletter differ than what I might read on cnn.com or some other thing? Yeah, why does that matter? It's a little bit the origin story of why I started it in the first place, which is. You know, I spent about a decade at the Puget Sound Business Journal, which as you mentioned in in the intro, is a prominent Seattle business publication. And when I was editor there, I was managing editor, and then I was editor. I think that was about six years. That span of managing editor and editor, I think women pitched me columns or op-eds maybe five times. Wow. And then every week at least two men would pitch one. Okay. So it was staggering. Absolutely staggering. How different that was. And I think that there are a couple of reasons for that. Um, you know, women are, are taught very early on that our opinions are not always welcome. And you can experience that in any meeting that you ever go to where a woman will say, I'm sorry, can I jump in here? It always starts with an apology. The apology or the acknowledgement. Yeah. We just got, it kind of gives away our power. It does. I don't think I've ever heard a man say that. And I think it's also, you know, men are, are gendered or early on and encouraged to express their opinion in a way that women just aren't. And so that was part of it. The other piece was, you know, when I, I was really pushing the newsroom to diversify our sources. To find more women and people of color to talk to about the business news in Seattle. And time and time again, they would come to me and they'd say, I called seven different women, and none of them would talk to me and they kept turning it over and say, you know, I'm not really the right person to talk about this, but if you could go talk to Joe over here. He's great. And so they would defer and deflect. And that also is a, a gendered response. But I also think there are more consequences for women when they talk to the media. If you say something that people don't like, you're gonna get threatened. Your family could get doxed. You're gonna get. All kinds of nasty comments about what you look like, what you dress like. It's just a very different experience as a woman when you speak to the press. Yeah, and so what I wanted to do with Formidable is create a space where women could talk to the media in a safe environment and feel like their opinions. I'm not gonna ask them about their work life balance or how they manage their kids and their career, because I find that to be incredibly pedantic and insulting. I am gonna ask them about, you know, debt equity and how that's working these days and what are the trends like. I wanna treat them like they're professionals that they are. Assume that they really understand and know what they're talking about in the professional setting that they're experts in. What are you finding that is different? I mean, I, I, I have to say and let everyone know. Go, go to the website. I'll leave it in the show notes. It's really hard hitting in depth nuanced stories, which I crave. Not everyone does. Say a little bit more about how the content has changed. Yeah, it's a couple of things. So when we talk about the news through a women's lens, yes. One aspect of it is to find as many women experts to talk about the news as we possibly can, because we just recognize that women approach problem solving and topics maybe a little bit differently. And so we might have the same story as cnn.com, but we're gonna approach it. By asking these couple of women who are experts about what they think about it, and they're just gonna bring a little bit of a different approach than the, you know, the man that CNN almost inevitably interviewed for this, for this story. And that's one way, yeah. Another way is to think about, we're really aiming this at an intellectual, highly educated female audience. These are smart women who know what they're talking about. They've run companies. They know what they're doing. So we're gonna choose our content to be things that are gonna resonate with that group of people. Got it. And so. That's a great example of bringing your framework, your values plus your lived experience as a journalist. As someone as a publisher, and understand your audience in your business model, which, as I heard, again, you're trying to skate where the puck is going around some of the events and content as a service. Exactly. Yeah. That's, that's really good. And so, uh, one of the questions I, I always ask guests because. We live in fairly polarized, fragmented times, and we know this based on lived experience. Most people will say, yeah, it just feels like we're really fractured. And then there's lots of studies and research that just confirms this. You know, we saw from the Edelman Global, uh, opinion survey that. The levels of trust in leaders and government, and nonprofits in business is spiraling downward, like dramatically in the last year. So those of us in leadership roles, whether it's leading a a team at a restaurant for a shift or being a publisher or leading some big corporation, we all have a role to play. And I wonder what. Learnings you would share about how can we both hold firm to our convictions and also find ways to bridge the fragmentation and divides that are out there? It's such a good question. I guess kind of the question of our time. Right? And Lee, I think you might actually be providing a little bit of a model for that with your podcast in that you are intentionally seeking out points of view and opinions that you don't always agree with. I think you and I are pretty aligned, but, uh, some of your guests, that's not been true and that's really powerful. I think that's a great model for people to follow and, and one that I try to embody in the work that we do at Formidable, where it's, you know, we're not just gonna seek out these same women to comment for the same stories over and over and over again. We're gonna try and find some people whose opinions surprise us, whose point of view. Is complicated and nuanced and not maybe a, a convenient, perfect little soundbite. You know, let's, let's dive into that nuance a little bit and not be afraid of, that uncomfortable space where maybe you're not a hundred percent sure where this person aligns politically. That's okay. It's okay to, to have, a little bit of that nuance in, in a blue.like Seattle, where, um. You're either blue or bluer. Mm-hmm. Uh, it is, particularly true here that you have to kind of go outta your way to find perspectives that are unique and, and different, but it's worth doing. It's so worth doing. And honestly, I, for listeners, what's in, in front of the podcast, it's actually do more of that. I really want, folks that, um, identify a little more conservative, on the political front. And usually, if it's an issue, I say, well, what's the other side of that? What do can conservatives get? Right? If we're, or if it's someone that's a conservative, what, what do the liberals get right about that? So I try to introduce that in the conversation, but I, do find I have to work really hard to find folks. Who, who are outside of urban centers. And I think we've seen a lot of that divide, right, of these blue dots. And um, if as we look at voting patterns and for president around the coast where urban centers tend to go more towards liberal candidates and in more rural areas, go more. To right wing or MAGA identified candidates, but that wasn't always the case. And I think that's what's really interesting. You know, I grew up in Central Maine and most people when they hear Maine, they think New England, they think blue, right? Um, not Central Maine. Central Maine voted for Trump. Well, both elections and, um, it tends to be more conservative. However, when I was a kid it was bright blue. And why was that? Unions. It was a very union controlled part of the world. And you did a pulp and paper there, is that right? Or a lot of pulp and paper. Yeah. There were also unions for the manufacturing as all the manufacturing. And frankly, the paper mills shut down all of that power left. It and it became a, a power void. If you go back to Central Maine now, I, I call it the Appalachia of New England. It really is a very, very different place than the place I grew up in politically. Um, it's very poor. People don't have a lot of opportunities. Multiple generations work at Walmart and I'm, I'm not being glib my family. That's true. And that's'cause it's probably the largest employer. That's exactly, it's that, or you work for the hospital systems. There's not a lot of options and so there's not a lot of hope. You see a lot of people who just feel trapped. And I think that that led to this shift. Nobody was listening. Nobody was seeking out these people and trying to understand what their struggles were and what they needed. They were just making assumptions that this was a blue area and it was gonna remain blue. And now you're starting to see the politicians realize that you can't ignore these populations, or if you do, you're gonna lose them. They actually. Have needs and you need to address those needs and you need to listen to them. And even if Donald Trump is not actually listening to them, he's saying that he is. And for them, that's more than they've gotten in a really long time. I love that you said that. That's more than they feel like they've gotten in a long time. And I think that's really the, money line right there, which is people wanna feel seen and heard. And not just given lip service, and this is the opportunity, of great restoration of connection. There's unlimited potential for communities to listen to each other in new ways. I mean, I'm not a hopeless optimist. I'm a hopeful, practical optimist. Practical idealist. It doesn't take a lot to. Listen to people. I mean, this is where we started as a journalist. Listen, seek out information that goes such a long way. And so whether it's someone like Trump or others saying, I alone can fix this, and I've heard you and those liberals in all the dark blue dots or bright blue as you mentioned, they don't know what you're talking about. Um, it makes you feel seen and heard It, it does, and even if it's not true. It's, it's somebody saying, I hear you. And this push right now to bring manufacturing back to the United States, a lot of what is being promised is frankly not gonna happen. And I think most people realize that. But the fact that we're talking about it, you look at some of the kids I grew up with. Their grandparents made really good living in central Maine, working in manufacturing. It was a good job. My uncle worked in pulp and paper. Paper his entire career. He had no college degree. He made six figures in central Maine. That is huge. That's huge. He had a great union job and now he has a pension. For the rest of his life, that's gone. So if you can tell them, I'm gonna bring that back. You're giving them hope and, and that is. Powerful politically, it is powerful. Even if none of it is real. I, I did a podcast a while ago with a really lovely person, lemon Price, who is a Trump supporter, and I got to know her. She actually was my, was my podcast coach. She's been so enthusiastic. She's like, you can do it. And I'm like, well, show me how She lives in southeast Georgia and was a two time Obama voter got disillusioned and now as a. Big Trump fan and she's lovely and she's bright, and very thoughtful. And what I learned from her, and she speaks to this in the podcast, is she just felt like both political parties were like, wah, wah, wah, wah. W. Whatever the Republicans were saying, they would say, oh, we're really different from the Democrats. And it just felt to her like the same, like I'm, my husband's getting crappy, healthcare at the va and he served his country. My kid's going into a, school system where. Things are being said that really make me uncomfortable. And so change for change's sake is what I want. And Trump was different. He talked differently. He showed up differently. He was audacious. He was shame and blame. Obviously scapegoating, these all or nothing promises, but for Lemon and her family, it was like, we gotta try something. So I might have some thoughts of like, well, you know, why do we have to trade, this for that? But I understood from her how change for change's sake, um, for a lot of people. And, and I, and for me, it just made me want a lot more empathetic. I'm not a Trump supporter. I don't agree with some of her positions, but I respect her. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, right? You might not share the same opinions, but you can respect somebody for. Speaking out and saying, this is why I changed my mind. This is why I, I want this guy in the White House and seeking to understand that. I think that has been a challenge that the media has pretty much failed. Yeah. At I would agree is, is listening to a lot of these folks. A lot of the most powerful media is, is in very, very blue parts of the country and a lot of media, employees are very liberal. That is. Just true in every newsroom I've ever worked in. Yeah. And so it's really hard to go outta your way to find, um, these sources. But I remember when I was at the Business Journal, the first time Trump was running for office, we sent a reporter to Everett to cover a rally there. And she interviewed a number of, uh, Trump supporters who worked for Boeing and some other, pretty major employers in town, and it was eyeopening. They were frustrated and nobody had asked them Why? Nobody thank you. Ask why, and listen, there is a way forward. You started that way. I keep coming back to that, ask questions. Listen. Well, and that's your advice then around how do we bridge divides? That's the way forward. I love that. The platform that you're building now, would you call formidable platform? Sure. Okay. You know, it was really seeking to bring diverse perspectives. And interestingly, part of the reason I founded this podcast was I was so frustrated with the tone and tenor of public discourse, and then I just typed into Google what percentage of podcasters are women Because I was scrolling and it just seemed like so many podcast hosts were men. And then I would open and find their guests were men. And you and I know a lot of amazing men. One named Nick who's in this room with us right now, our editor. But we know amazing men, right? So yay. But like picks like, and so I wanted to have a, Forum like yours where 99% of my guests are women and just, it's just interesting how that changes the perspective. I have one last question for you as we go from understanding your background. So interesting learning about media, where it's shifting to, and then thinking about bridging divides, which is what you've been talking a bit about. I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan. And I love the character of Gandalf who has a staff, and it's kind of a magic wand. And so let's just say you have the Emily Magic wand, what is your wish for listeners as we think about media, where it's going, bridging divides. What, wish would you have for listeners? Well, I want a staff, first of all. Okay. I'm not a magic wand. I want that big imposing staff. That's very impressive. Magic wands go with fairies, right? I want like the big strong staff. There you go. You know, I think it's, it's such an interesting question, Lee. What I want for listeners and for readers of Formidable is for them. To sometimes be challenged by what they're reading and what they're hearing, and to be open to that challenge and to not shut it down immediately. And that is hard to do. I struggle with it all the time. But as a reporter, you're faced with that all the time. It's constant. You're asking people questions and listening to their answers when internally you couldn't disagree with them more. But that's not your job to disagree with them. Your job is to ask them even harder questions and get a better understanding. Approach things a little bit more like a journalist. Seek to understand. So that you can accurately represent what this person's point of view is. Doesn't have to be your point of view, but you should seek enough information to understand and be able to repeat it, even if that makes you uncomfortable. And that's where the power lies. You really want to bridge that divide. You have to do that work. And it's hard work, and it means being vulnerable and being okay, being a little uncomfortable in these places, in these spaces, but. That's where the power is. I love how you link being vulnerable with having power. I, there's so much strength and vulnerability there. There's a lot there. And we women give birth. That's our A capacity, right, to being in that vulnerable situation of life, giving in that way. And it's also a very powerful place. So I think there's some analogy there. And so I'm really grateful for you and all of the team at Formidable for lifting up so many diverse perspectives in the work that you do. You're confident that you're curious and you're strong, and also the humility that you bring. Thank you for sharing that today on the podcast. It's, it's been such a treat to have you here. It's so nice to be here, Lee. Thanks for having me. All right. Thank you. Bye for now. I hope you. Enjoyed this episode of the space in between podcast. If. If you did, please hit the like button and leave a review. Wherever you listen to the show. And check out the space. Space in between.com website, where you can also leave me a message.