How to be elite in the age of populism, with the FT’s Roula Khalaf

0:00Max:Ben, do your kids teach you about how to use things? You're actually pretty handy, I feel like. Yeah, they just teach me vocabulary. Like, I find myself using the word yap all the time now. That's good Gen Z. That's quality Gen Z slang. That one is really applicable, especially in our world. Oh, really? I don't even know it. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's what we do here on—we're in the age of yapping. Okay, you guys are teaching me something.

0:28Welcome to another episode of the Mixed Signals podcast from Semaphore, where we are talking to all of the people shaping our new and exciting media age. I am Max Tawney. I'm the co-host of the show, and I'm the media editor here at Semaphore. And with me, of course, as always, from Semaphore's New York office is our editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. How's it going, Ben? Good. I'm excited to be here. Well, we've got a really great and exciting episode to kind of kick off the school year. This week on the show, we are talking to Rula Kalaf. She is the editor-in-chief of the Financial Times. We are going to ask Rula about running the ultimate elite media institution at a time of peak populism.

1:10We'll ask her what she's learned from talking to Sam Altman and Emmanuel Macron this year. and we'll ask her about which of the surprising, slightly older staffers at the FT are managing to build the publication's TikTok presence, which is a bit of a surprise to me. A lot of contradictions in capitalism these days. Well, we'll dig into all of that with Rula right after the break.

1:46So, Ben, as we were preparing to interview the Financial Times Editor-in-Chief Rula Kalaf today on the show, I wanted to read some FT articles, really bone up. I like to do my research before these things, but my problem was I don't really have access to the Financial Times. A subscription is$50 a month just for digital, so we had to have you send me over some articles. Of course, you are a member of the wine-swilling, jet-setting business elite that's reading this thing. I, of course, am the show's populist in everyman. So thank you, obviously, for helping me out on that score and providing me with a way around the paywall.

2:27Yeah, I just consider it a matter of noblesse oblige, really. Yes, exactly. So, Ben, you were really keen on having Rula on the show after Labor Day to really set the table for the fall. You know, it's back to school here in the media world. Things are churning. The deal talks kind of starting up again. People are actually back to doing their jobs. Why did you think that it would be important for us to have Rula on the show this week to kind of

2:51Max:kick things off? Yeah, I mean, you know, when I think of it, the FT, I think of it as being, you know, right in the center of this big global fight, the kind of core fight that we talk about everywhere, really between institutions and populists. In some sense, the FT embodies, You know, a kind of high-end elite sensibility. That is what it sells and, you know, not cheap. But also, you know, is right in the middle of and covers these stories incredibly well. You know, Rula's had a remarkable career. Grew up in Lebanon during the Civil War. Spent some time in the U.S. and then covered North Africa and the Middle East for the FT before eventually becoming editor.

3:24Max:And, you know, she's had a very interesting run this year of interviews with figures like Sam Altman, Emmanuel Macron, Georgia Melanie. And I guess, you know, I'm interested in talking to her from this very particular perspective of the favorite publication of The 1%, about how she sees this very fast-changing, in some ways, threatening world. And how the people that she's talked to, those world leaders, the European leaders, are seeing this moment as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, the other thing that I think I'm interested in here, too, and this is something that I've talked to you about.

3:58This is something that we asked Jessica Lesson about earlier this year, the founder of The Information, is what it means to be doing this really, really high quality work, you know, exceptional, nearly flawless journalism kind of at the highest end. Let's not get carried away here. Well, no, but I mean, it's really good stuff. It's a great newspaper. You're not hearing about the FT retractions and corrections all the time. I don't have, you know, I wish that they were doing that because I would be, it'd be great for me to be able to cover as a media reporter. But, you know, what it means, though, that there is kind of this large class of high-quality journalism for the kind of elites.

4:34Meanwhile, it seems like the movements that are shaping the world are not being driven by the impact of that journalism at all. And journalism is not really made for the masses. And kind of how she squares that and also how you think about what the value is of a product that is simply aimed at informing the elite in a populist world. It's$50 a month, Max. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I don't know any populists other than your friend Steve Bannon, who's paying for that. Bannon actually is a subscriber to the FT quite famously. I believe he was carrying a copy when he was at Semaphore's World Economy Summit earlier this year.

5:09But anyway, we're one minute past our time when Rula was supposed to be here. So she's in the waiting room. Why don't we bring her in?

5:18Max:Thank you so much for joining us, Rula. Thanks for having me. And I guess just to kick off, I wonder, you know, when I was coming up, I thought of the FT as a paper for European bankers, basically. And it obviously has a much larger cultural resonance now. And I wonder, just at the biggest picture, what do you see the FT as now? I think we are a business, primarily a business paper. I don't think that that has changed. But I think we do business in a certain way that can also appeal to an audience that's beyond business. business because with the Weekend FT, we do culture very well. We have a blog called Alphaville that does quirky finance.

6:01So people who read the FT, I was just having lunch with a European prime minister. He reads the FT every day. Every CEO that I meet, whether it is, you know, whether somebody's coming from New York or Johannesburg or Singapore, they all read the FT. And most people read the FT because they get a global view of business and economics and geopolitics. So I don't see the FT necessarily as having changed as much as the perception of the FT having changed. Obviously, we're at a moment of kind of global populism. And you see this, obviously, in Europe and, of course, here in the United States and many other places.

6:50The FT, of course, is being read by prime ministers, by the business elites. The Davos man. Yes, the Davos man is the prime example of an FT reader. So how do you feel like the FT fits and what's its role in this kind of populist moment? Is it like the anti-populist publication? I don't think we try to take a stand as being an anti-populist publication or an elite publication. You know, a few years ago, when there was a real campaign kind of against Davos or against anything that appears to be the elitism, I think at the FT, we had a bit of a moment is, you know, what does this mean? And do we want to be the paper of the elite?

7:35And I think the conclusion that we reach is that, one, yes, we are read by the elite, but we're not only read by the elite. There is a lot of what we do that does appeal to a broader audience. So I don't stop that much at that question. And I don't think that it is terribly important, you know, is it elite or is it not elite? I prefer to think of it as, you know, we have expertise and we share these expertise and we inform and we explain. I mean, that is what the world needs, whatever populists tell you.

8:12Max:Yeah, I guess to put it a little differently, it's funny. I was – this is, I guess, gosh, this is a real elite name drop, but I was on Morning Joe this week with your colleague Jillian Tett. We were talking about social media and Trump, and she sort of just turned to the camera and said, this is why we must stand together against populism. And I wonder – I mean, don't you think that – But she's – I mean, you know, Jillian is a columnist, so – Okay. But I think – That's the oldest dodge in the world. You know, if you're asking about the newspaper, you know, I'm not trying to stand against populism.

8:44I am trying to inform and to hold on to the truth and to express the truth. Now, if that helps in fighting populism, well, that's great.

8:56Max:When you talk about capitalism and Davos capitalism, that's changing too, right? And there was a period where the FT, I feel like, really embraced this idea of stakeholder capitalism. You were a business paper with actually a pretty left-wing editorial page in a certain way, pro-regulatory, pro-climate, in ways that aren't necessarily consistent with the most rapacious, untrammeled capitalism. Jillian's column actually is called Moral Money. Do you feel like that era of capitalism is going away? This idea of capitalism as sort of a moderating force? Because here in the U.S. right now, like Trumpist capitalism is definitely kind of untrammeled.

9:32Well, that's state capitalism that's emerging in the U.S. In fact, as Jillian wrote, I think, last week. Let me just sort of step back a little bit to that period. I think the campaign that the FT had, and that was before my time as editor, but the campaign was about responsible capitalism. I never found a contradiction between that and what the paper has always stood for. I mean, it's always, you know, accountability. We write without fear or favor. The mood at the time, I think, was such that, you know, everyone was talking about stakeholder capitalism. I think business started to discover the climate risk.

10:17And I certainly have expanded our climate coverage. And I think that is a very, very important part of what business does have to deal with back then and today. What we've certainly seen, particularly in the U.S., is this attack on anything that is, you know, diversity and inclusion or anything that suggests a softer kind of capitalism. On the other hand, what we are seeing today in the U.S. is actually the government taking stakes in companies, demanding stakes in companies. So we're seeing a form of capitalism that is much more French than it is American. It is very French. So is that a new capitalism now that's going to emerge?

11:07I'm not sure. There's no doubt that since the pandemic, the role of the state in economies has expanded. Because, you know, everyone suddenly relied on the states. You know, a lot of people were getting checks from the government so that they stay at home. The furlough schemes. And I think after the pandemic, there was almost a reluctance on the part of many in societies, whether it's in Europe and possibly in the U.S., to give that up. So the state started this intervention in the economy, I would say, since the pandemic. I think Donald Trump is taking it to a whole new level that we haven't seen in a very long time.

11:54It's much more alien to the U.S., by the way, than it is to Europe. So I think this is something that we have to watch. I suspect that the Trump administration wants to continue this, that this isn't a one-off. How far it goes, which sectors it goes into, that's what we are definitely watching very closely. To go back to the media side of things a little bit, one of the interesting dynamics, and I think challenging dynamics that we've seen in recent years as a part of the kind of digital transformation is the emergence and the success of a lot of media publications that are largely aimed at the highest earners, the decision makers.

12:37I mean, Semaphore is a part of this to a degree as well. You know, you talked about how one of the things that you're trying to do is just broadly inform people. It's not just for the elite. It's for other people. Obviously, an FT subscription is, you know, is one of the pricier ones out there on the market. Do you see it as a challenge for like kind of global information and information in, you know, kind of the Western world that like the best publications are all really just servicing the people who can essentially afford that information? and the rest of the world and the rest of, at least in the United States, is just kind of consuming information in tidbit form that they get from TikTok, or maybe they see an Instagram reel that maybe has something.

13:19Do you think that that's a problem? Absolutely. I think that's a huge problem, and it's something that I've spoken about in the past. I think that our industry has narrowed, and journalism is expensive. Quality journalism is very expensive to produce. You know, I run a newsroom. I know. I feel the responsibility. And I think we should all collectively feel the responsibility that at the end of the day, people have to pay for journalists. That's the only quality journalism that survives. And they have to pay. And it's expensive. I think that is a very big problem. And, you know, we all have to think about it.

14:00And at a time when local journalism has been so decimated, it makes it even more urgent for us not to be satisfied with simply running, you know, big organizations that can cater to a limited number of people, which is why we, you know, we do a lot on social media. We do a lot on YouTube. we do end up reaching a lot more people. We could make the discovery of FT, of the free part of the FT better. And I think that's something that we should work on.

14:35Max:When you think about what's going to, like what is the journalism, you know, when you sort of look to this kind of dystopian future where the elites have great information and everybody else is sort of swimming in this sea of just like talking heads on TikTok. Like basically, you know, what we're talking about is journalists as influencers or influencers as journalists, people getting their information from an individual in a very direct way. And honestly, when I'm, as you may know, when I am mostly unsuccessfully, but with occasional successes, trying to poach your employees, you know, one of my pitches is like, you know, in the FT, you're just part of this big institution and, you know, we're going to put your name and face on things.

15:11Max:And we're currently trying to figure out, as I'm sure you are, what is the voice of the journalist versus an institution in a new social media world? And can you, I don't know, can you keep the authority and the consistency of the FT while taking your star journalists and putting them out as individuals on TikTok? How do you think about that? It's an interesting question. And, you know, it is something that we have thought about. What I find interesting is at the FT, particularly, if you look particularly at our columnists, they have a very direct relationship with their readers. And the FT as such is often when I meet people who tell me that, you know, they are readers, they'll just say, well, I love the FT.

15:57Like there's this attachment, there's something emotional that's stirred. So I think that with our major columnists being on social media, doing podcasts, I think that that is the right thing to do because they have such an established authority. And I think it does translate. One thing that we have noticed on both Instagram and TikTok is if you think that social media is for younger people and therefore I'm going to get a young person who may not know very much, but he's going to tell you, you know, what this FT story is, that doesn't work. What people want is the authority itself. If the authority happens to be, you know, much, much older, that is perfectly fine.

16:43That's been our experience.

16:45Max:Yeah, my TikTok is all Martin Wolf, in fact. But you know, Martin does brilliantly on podcasts and on social media. He's always the example that I use. Speaking of the kind of ways in which these social platforms have changed, what you guys are doing, one thing that's really interesting about the Financial Times, you guys are printing a newspaper every day. Are you guys going to continue to print a newspaper and for how long? The answer is yes, for as long as I can now see. And there are many reasons for it. First of all, print sales are going up. I mean, our print sales have gone, we have deliberately reduced print sales, but they go up year after year.

17:28We also happen to have the Weekend FT, which is a very unique product and a very special product where people buy it on the newsstands. And they like to be in a cafe or in their homes and different parts of the family where we're different sections. But I think that print is important. And I spend time, you know, like at four o 'clock in my news conference, everything at the FT is digital, except for the 4 p.m. news conference where we will discuss the front page. It is, I think, the best branding for us, the newspaper. It's still very important for our brand. It still speaks to us. It's pink.

18:15That's who we are. And I see a lot of value, a lot of marketing and promotional and brand value in print.

18:24Max:And just to be clear, you're saying you're going to keep printing seven days a week or six days a week, not just the weekend. Yes. I mean, we have, well, what I can tell you is that we have no plans to stop printing seven days a week. So just to kind of clarify that too, did you see kind of a decline in print and then it started to kind of go back up? Ten years ago, when we started our digital transformation, well, more than ten years ago now, print started going down and digital started going up. But at some point, it stabilized, right? Print wasn't going down, wasn't declining anymore. And since then, we see an uptick every year.

19:02Well, we have to take a short break right here, but we'll be right back with Rula right after this.

19:18you've covered the business world for a long time you've seen different generations of silicon valley leaders and leaders in technology i'm really curious if you noticed how this cohort this generation of tech leaders how are they different than the last generation i think they They all have something in common, and that is this conviction that everything they are doing is beneficial for humanity. This goes through whether it's Sam, Demis, you know, perhaps, you know, Musk is a bit less. But they all have this, they are convinced that they have the truth. and that is very different from other business leaders because other business leaders are, yes, they're thinking about the future, but they've got a P &L and they've got most often shareholders and they're thinking about their earnings.

20:18And I think that the type of technologists or tech leader that we have today, they're all visionaries. They all have big ideas. they need to raise money. So they're very good at promotion, but they don't have to worry so much about, you know, how much money they're actually making. In fact, you know, often they're not making any money. I think that is different. So if you interview someone, if you're interviewing, say, Sundar from Google, he wouldn't, you know, he's running Google. But if you interview all the tech scientists, the scientists. They're thinking about the future and they think, they believe firmly that they are building a future that is good for all of us.

21:04And my question always to all of them is, who appointed you to decide our future? What if that's not something that society wants? Ultimately, they are running massive, massive companies, empires, really. Some of these companies are bigger than some countries, and they are deciding what the future is.

21:30Max:Should people be frightened of that kind of evangelical spirit? You need that a little bit if you want to be a visionary and if you want to really create things and to go beyond what any of us can do. What I think society needs to do is to make sure that there is some guardrail around all this. You know, I'm not an AI skeptic at all. I love using AI. I think, you know, we're doing all sorts of experiments with AI at the FT. It's advancing our journalism in many areas. But of course, yes, it represents a threat to our industry at the same time. And someone needs to be managing that risk. We can't manage that risk on our own, whether it's open AI or anthropic or, you know, we can't also only rely on them to decide for us where, you know, where the limit is.

22:29I think that is dangerous for society. What are some of the experiments that you're running with AI in the newsroom? So the one that I'm most excited about is we set up a team of two investigative journalists with a couple of engineers. And what they do is they sift through data sets and very unstructured data sets. It's what AI allows them to do, what machine learning allows them to do is to organize data in a certain way, to find patterns in data and to find stories. And, you know, we have run quite a few stories that they have written.

23:14Max:What's your favorite? So there was one a few weeks ago. I don't know if you saw it. They looked at the growth or the expansion of defense companies in Europe. Defense companies are very secretive. They weren't sharing with us how much they had expanded. And we did that. We used radar technology as well. And, you know, that was a splash. It did extremely well. And it was something that nobody else had done. And we would not have been able to do it in the past. Some of the stories that we've done on crypto investments and the Trump family as well have come through that team. And now suddenly you have an engineer that has a byline on a story, along with Chris Cook runs that team.

24:03So that's one. We've also done experiments with make suggestions for headlines, limited editing tools. And what we do is we experiment and then what we like, we will integrate into our CMS. Are there any memorable headlines that AI has generated for you that maybe a human wouldn't have thought of? No, no, no. I mean, I like to tease the news editors and say, can you run this one? This one is really bad. Can you run it through AI and see if they give us something better? I mean, what we have found also is training the AI and the prompting needs to be so precise. And sometimes the whole experiment is too laborious and it takes more time.