Creators on Creators: Cleo Abram x Johnny Harris

0:00The Colin and Samir Show is supported by Microsoft Copilot. This is something I thought I would never say, but can I share with you my favorite prompt? I mean, like when you say something like that, I have to say yes. Were you going to say no? No, but okay. Just let me hear it. So when I'm researching for a guest or I need to know a lot about a subject matter, I say, make me a podcast about. And when you do that, you're going to get a short blurb about that subject. And then in like two minutes, you're going to get a podcast. So check this out. Welcome to Co-Pilot Podcasts. Picture this, a guy working the front desk at a hotel, making lacrosse videos in his spare time, completely unaware that he's about to become one of the most influential voices in the creator economy.

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1:10Try it for your research. Try it for getting variations of your titles, your ideas. It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Back in the day when people paid for news and then the internet came along and we stopped or something like that, that was actually never true. I think something that we talk about, and I think Cleo, you've said this so well, so I'm just going to steal it from you right here in front of your face. Fundamentally, we are little mini media companies. We don't just have complex reporting, but then we have to make beautiful videos.

1:43We know that many more people are getting their news from social media. And the question is, is social media capable of educating people?

1:56Today we're bringing you a conversation between Johnny Harris and Cleo Abram. It's the first of our new Creators on Creators series. And I'm joined here by Nate from the Publish Press. Nate, why are we starting with Johnny Harris and Cleo Abram for this Creators on Creators series? Yeah, so at the beginning of 2024, there was kind of this sentiment that the media industry was facing an apocalypse. You know, digital media sites like BuzzFeed News and Gawker closed down. If you remember, Sports Illustrated was accused of publishing AI-generated stories. And one report even recorded 2 ,681 layoffs in the media industry in 2023.

2:35But there are bright spots, despite all the uncertainty, starting with a pair of video journalists, Cleo Abram and Johnny Harris. and Cleo and Johnny are longtime friends. They met back when they both worked at Vox and they trade ideas and talk on the phone regularly. So in March, we called them up to get their perspective on this media apocalypse narrative. They talked about what it means to go independent as a journalist, the potential of creator-led media businesses and Johnny's love for Moss. Yeah, Johnny, we got to talk about that. What's up with the Moss obsession? You guys will hear that in this episode.

3:13I do find this all to be extremely interesting because the world of YouTube is the modernization of media. And when I look at Johnny and Cleo, I see documentarians or video essayists. And I don't come from a journalism background. So this conversation was really interesting for me to understand the concept of jumping from a Vox to independent journalism. And what does that mean to people like you, Nate, people who went to journalism school? Yeah. And I think too, just Stephen, they clearly think about this a lot. They think about the ethics of journalism. They think about selling ads and the way to go about it.

3:50So, you know, this is something that will, the conversation condensed and edited version will appear in volume two of our published press newspaper. But we thought it'd be really cool to share the entire conversation with you all. Is that the first time we're talking about the published press newspaper? I think so. Volume two? That was like a soft launch. That was soft, Nate. Yeah. I mean, come on. This is a project you've been working on for a long time. I think it's one of the coolest things we do at the Publish Press. Last year, we did our first one. We dropped it at VidCon. This year, our mailbox will be there again.

4:20Big yellow mailbox that says the Publish Press. They'll also be available for sale on presspublish.store on Friday, June 28th. I'm really proud of the team for this newspaper. It is so cool. I'm excited to share the cover with all of you. But without further ado, here's a conversation between Johnny Harris and Cleo Abram. My first prompt for you all is to talk about your work the way you normally do behind closed doors. You know, what are the considerations you think about and ask each other about when labeling yourselves journalists? I think there's a lot of people that think that journalism is a status.

4:57And it is in some countries. Like in France, you are given the status of journalists by the government and you get access to certain things. but I think something that we talk about and I think Cleo you've said this so well so I'm just going to steal it from you right here in front of your face you are a journalist if you are doing journalistic things which is actively earnestly inquiring into facts and truth about the world and trying to communicate that truth to an audience and it's like whatever wherever you do that, that is journalism. No, Johnny and I talk about this all the time. And it's fun to hear other people's reactions to how we sort of chat about these things, because it obviously impacts our careers so much.

5:42Journalism is an action. And so I think one of the things that has been tricky to think about over the last couple months, really, is sort of as it's come to a point with a lot of layoffs in journalism and more and more people having a conversation of is journalism dying? Oh my gosh, what's happening to the news? There's sort of a fever pitch that it feels to me like is happening in the conversation right now. Not to be too explainer journalist about this, but in order to consolidate my thoughts on what is happening in news, I created a little document for myself called WTF is happening in the news.

6:20And I tried to consolidate some of the data and answer some of my own questions. And the first question I was trying to answer was, is something happening to the news? And the answer seems like yes. It seems like a simple question, but the United States has been losing traditional news organizations and journalist jobs for a while now. Over the last, I would say years, but a couple months, people have been noticing more and more, there seemed to be an enormous number of layoffs in digital publications as well. So the line that was going up that seems sort of an optimistic story about journalism is now going down.

6:56And that seems really scary for good reason. The next question is, OK, so what does journalism look like right now? And people who are smarter than me have put this really beautifully. I'm thinking of Ezra in The New York Times and Derek Thompson in his podcast both talked about how the media ecosystem right now is, they call it a barbell. So there's the massive media companies that are wildly successful, primarily based on subscriptions. Basically, I'm thinking of the New York Times here. And then there are smaller organizations or individual journalists, either on their own on Substack, in very small newsrooms, or potentially on YouTube in video like us.

7:41And so both of those groups seem to be doing quite well at the moment. All of the chatter about the death of journalism seems to be primarily the hollowing out of journalism. Derek Thompson said, the death of the media seems to be more like the death of the middle, which is a quote that I liked a lot. And that's a tricky spot to be in. Johnny and I find ourselves on one end of that barbell looking at the rest of the barbell and thinking about our place on it. It is easy to look at what we do and put the platform as the main marker of what it is, which is YouTube and YouTuber. And because it's new and because it's associated with a kid in their basement making silly videos and uploading them and getting millions of views or like sort of prank videos or a million different things that were sort of the flavor of the early YouTube experience.

8:37I think a lot of, especially people who feel threatened by this new, by this change, this Halloween out, which is very scary and has major ramifications that are important to address, the way that they react to that is like, oh, YouTube, this sort of flimsy platform is taking over. When you do what we do every day, which is talk to experts and fact check things and and have a team of very skilled reporters and videographers that are making quality journalism, it doesn't look much different than what I was doing at Vox or what I do for the New York Times. It's quite different than what a traditional print reporter maybe does, or what the sort of ethic and norms around journalism has been for recent decades.

9:31But the part of the enterprise is go find factual information, communicate that to an audience who wants that information. And so in that sense, it's not being a YouTube influencer, even though we have some of the trappings of a YouTube influencer. We're on camera. We're on YouTube. And I think that that's an important distinction that we spend a lot of time talking about to our peers in the legacy world, that this is valid. And I think people are waking up to the fact that it's valid. and I hope they do. I hope they do. And I go and speak at journalism schools for that very reason, because they're starting to realize like, oh, this is actually a valid expression of the journalistic craft.

10:11Yeah. And I just want to brag about you a little bit, Johnny. Like, Johnny was extremely early to this. You were the first person I saw really doing this kind of leap from a media company that was doing excellent video journalism on YouTube, which was Vox. Vox at the time and still is doing some of the best visual storytelling in the medium. But Johnny was really the first person, you were the first person that I saw take those exact same skills and that exact same dedication to journalistic norms and beautiful craft and do the same thing on your own. And I thought I watched that for several years and thought, holy shit, if he can do that, maybe I can do that.

11:03And then I did. So Johnny, Johnny's the OG. Well, I think what's what was interesting is at that jumping point, when you jump from an institution to to solo, you start to realize what an institution is good for. And this is what's sad about the decline of a diversity of of journalistic outlets is that there when I jumped into this world, I did. I walked into the creator economy. It was it was influencers. I was getting brand deals from people who give brand deals to influencers. And I didn't have any kind of ethical guardrails that anyone was imposing. I had no editor, like a traditional sort of story editor.

11:48And I did experiment and explore and sort of test where those boundaries are. And I made stuff that maybe today I'd be like, maybe journalistically thin or whatever in that experimentation, which like luckily I feel like with time we found our voice in that way. But what it taught me was like, hey, this is the Wild West. And we have journalistic institutions that instill trust for a reason. And what happens when those institutions become untrusted or they don't have money to exist anymore? And I don't know. I don't ever when I'm talking to journalism students say like, everyone should do what I'm doing because I'm not totally sure that's the best thing for the ecosystem.

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13:09we talk a lot about um how everybody knows that you know viewership of television is declining and viewership of print news is declining and now potentially you know uh websites that publish news themselves are also, I know less about the traffic data there, but generally seem to be these brands of digital publications, VICE's, shutting down vice.com, etc. The thing that I think is less well understood, but unfortunately the data doesn't seem very good on this, is we know that many more people are getting their news from social media. And the question is, is social media capable of educating people in the way that the organizations that are collapsing in viewership used to educate people.

13:59Now, I have all kinds of problems with the story choice and style and all kinds of things about the way that mass media or traditional media might have done those things, but the data shows that the comparison between the information that they got on more traditional news sources versus social media is like pretty bad. So there are studies that show that if you ask people sets of very fact-based questions about what's going on in the world, folks that get their news primarily, say they get their news primarily from social media, won't answer those questions quite as well. So for us, the question is, how do you make sure that in an era where more and more people are getting their news from social media, that social media is still educating people in a way that allows them to vote.

14:51And when people are less well educated, you see an increase of corruption and a decrease in voting. So how do we prevent those things in a world where there is more and more independent journalism, but also just news being gotten from social media? I'm going to ask Cleo a question here, because I'm actually quite curious her response to this in this context, which is, I think the word independent means a lot to us. And we use this word like, yeah, we went independent. We changed into this other costume of journalism. We are now independent. And I'm curious what that means to you versus, and what's the opposite of independent and what's good about being independent?

15:35Why do we like that? I think there are two pretty different answers. One is a career answer about being a journalist and the other is an answer about the work that we make itself? I think the easier one to answer is about us and our careers. Like independent partly means we go tell whatever stories we want. We follow our own curiosity. We are independent of the constraints of the business model of a larger media company. And therefore, you know, if you decide that you want to spend two weeks in Switzerland explaining everything about cheese like you can like whatever or uh conversely um you know really dedicate yourself to a deep dive investigation of mcdonald's you you can do those things because you control your own editorial uh work and fundamentally you are free to do that um and that is awesome it's awesome the experience is awesome.

16:35Like the work that results is joyful, but also deeply obsessive. And that makes for really, really good quality journalism when you personally are just obsessed with something and keep like going for it and picking at it. And for me in my career, that's a lot of what the word independent means. You're free to do that. Then there's the other question of independent from um what exactly um if we talk about us as independent journalists and other media companies as not independent i'm i'm not totally sure that that word makes sense in that context like fundamentally we are little mini media companies are we independent of the incentives of advertising no are we independent of the incentives of platforms that we publish on that by the way every media company publishes on?

17:25No. So I'm sorry for that non-answer in the second category, but like, I have no idea. No, it's, it's, I wanted to get at that because I think there isn't a real answer. Like, I think, I think it's more that first one actually, which is being independent means that the audience gives you permission to say like, you want to be into McDonald's ice cream machines? Go for it. I'm, I will follow you because you're this indie journalist who does, you know, this and that. And then like, for my personality, that is awesome because I'm all over the place and I might, my craft is the thing that stays the same.

18:02My interests do not. Okay. Wait. So what happens, what happens as you grow? Yeah. That's the question. That's what I'm wondering. Yeah. So I'd love to hear you talk about, um, the aspirations of by Harris and what you're building and how that fits into like what is the cost of that what's the potential of that if there is an ecosystem that you're creating of independent journalists that all have some underlying root system and flower in their own different ways on top of that what do we get from that ecosystem and what does it what does it cost to grow for you wow i loved the root system thing and and i will expound on that analogy and push it toward breaking point in just a second because I'm super into roots and fungi communicating with roots.

18:52Moss. Johnny loves moss. Ask Johnny about moss. It's the best. That's my one obsession that I have not shared with the internet and maybe I never will. Sorry. You heard it here first, folks. um so so by harris is this concept that is totally um new and growing and like in this startup be flexible thing and i'm and i'm sort of expressing it in for the first time and recently it it roots from this love of independence and the freedom that i've found in being an independent journalist but with the desire to grow and have a bigger impact and so the the the middle ground of that is to what if we build a company that just has a bunch of smaller teams that are run by one individual independent journalist that is then we are building up support around them to go pursue their own fascinations and interests and craft and style.

19:47So what is the roots in this analogy? What do they share? They share, first and foremost, process. What we do is very process-intensive. Reporting and then all of the post-production. You know, we don't just have complex reporting, but then we have to make beautiful videos. And a lot of that comes down to really solid process and planning, which sounds really boring, but like that is the lifeblood of our business. It's project management, institutional knowledge that allows us to do it in a smart way. And then business, as we grow as a collective, we are able to be like, hey, we are not just one YouTube channel.

20:29We are like a group. We are a group. We can command a bigger place in the market. And then it's brain trust, brain trust and sharing and knowledge. And that thing that you miss when you leave the big institution called having an editor, wiser journalist that guide you and teach you, you now have in this sort of collective. We've already sort of started this with our new channel, Search Party. That's like the pilot of the By Harris model, which is like Sam Ellis, who is a Vox journalist, has now come under our umbrella. he owns the channel in the sense that he owns it editorially but it is a by harris channel we take all the risk on we you know sam's an employee of the company but we support him and help him in a million different ways that allows him to be on the front lines of being a creator without having to take the massive risk and that's to the j school student i would say you probably shouldn't take the massive risk to go try to start a youtube channel it's a cutthroat business.

21:26And if you're not obsessed with it and in love with it and willing to put a couple years into grinding, you know, what Cleo has been doing for the last like year and a half, then like you probably shouldn't do that. And yet is there a middle ground where someone can be a creator, have that ownership, but not have to go be an entrepreneur at the same time? Yeah. And I think crucially, it is a middle ground in the sense that, yes, there is a baseline level of you take the risk and I take a salary and healthcare, but also, or the person doing this. I, I, um, but I think the, the important differentiation that makes it different from like, you know, a media company, just starting another channel and hiring a face for it is, um, genuine editorial control but also making sure that people share in the financial upside of that yeah and I think that combo is pretty different than what at least when we were in the throes of these kinds of negotiations and going back and forth with media companies before we each launched our own channels that wasn't what was really on the table no maybe some folks will do that at media companies.

22:45The funny thing is that like, they could, but I just don't think it fits with the general ethos and the business of a lot of larger media companies. And so the wonderful thing is there's a white space here. There's a middle ground that By Harris is filling and is really making a lot of different kinds of storytelling possible. If anyone hasn't seen Search Party already, you should go check it out. It's a wonderful example of this. Like, there is nothing else like it. And that's facilitated by the root system that Johnny and Iz have built. Yeah. And it's been, it's been really cool to see what it looks like in, in, you know, or in our pilot, it's been a lot of like work to get it up and going.

23:26And yet now we have a template of like, what if we had five of these, you know, and they all shared in this, in this ethos, which the thing that does connect us all in addition to the support and the business relationships and the rev share and all of that is a dedication like a spiritual dedication to like high quality premium journalism um and that's creator driven like it can't be a faceless brand like sam even though it's search party sam is a character he's a part of the experience i think of the world in six years and i think of how much content is going to be simulators is going to be synthetic it's going to be fake it's going to be not fake it's going to be real, but it's going to be created by a metal brain that maybe a human brain at some point influenced.

24:11But like, we are moving into a world where humans will not know how something was created and who created it. And we're betting on the fact that building personal relationships with audiences as like, hey, I'm a human, I have flesh and blood, I'm here, is going to actually be more and more valuable in an AI generated world that we are moving into.

24:45I'm pretty hardcore on that point about like AI is going to take over. We need to be like the humans in the midst of all the robots. How do you feel about that as a tech optimist? Like think it's a case of slightly convergent evolution here where we both have ended up in a place where the being a proxy for the audience and being kind of a character going on a journey learning something much like any audience member can kind of imagine themselves coming to the Large Hadron Collider with me or going to Japan with you or like learning these things in real time.

25:26We're just kind of empty vessels. Like I put a lot of myself into the show. One of the episodes that come to mind for me is an episode that I did about artificial wombs that I never could have done at a media company. It's half a like deep dive explainer into the science of artificial wombs and the sort of innovation in, when I say artificial wombs, I mean a set of technologies that make it easier to have kids, whether that's, you know, IVF or saving premature babies earlier and earlier, sort of we're like working our way toward technologies in the middle there, and interviewing some of the world leading experts, especially in artificial wombs and animals.

26:09There's a deep dive into that journalism. But then there's also, I am, at the same time as I was reporting that out, I needed to get a surgery on my ovary in order to protect my ability to have kids. And that was complicated and emotionally fraught. And there's a bunch of that in the video, which ends up being there, not like just the share. It's not a vlog necessarily. It's a reason why I care about the innovation in fertility tech that I'm covering. And that mix is part opinion journalism, part explainer, and I'm really clear about where I'm coming from, and I'm really proud of that piece. But I think the ability to be a character in your own story is important.

26:58When I said convergent evolution, what I meant was, like, I think that's important because people want to connect with the person telling the story. And it's a way to relate to your audience and have them feel like they know you and to your point, develop trust. For me, that comes less out of an idea that AI is going to replace everything else anytime soon and more just because that's what I think makes for the best, most compelling story that educates people the best. Like, I think that I was able to kind of cut through a conversation about artificial wombs that was very like, oh, this is going to be the matrix.

27:36And instead, because I was just a person talking about my experience, my perspective, and then the enormous amount of research that I had done on the science here, that combo resulted in a better story, better educated people. Which is a thing, a gripe that a lot of traditional journalism has with. That's why they, I think that's another reason why it's go be an influencer. Because me running off to Japan with my camera and flying my drone looks a lot like a travel vlogger running off to Japan with his camera and his drone. And in fact, I mean, that's what I did that for a while. And like, you know, I sort of adopt a lot of those, of that sort of first person driven, informal reactions.

28:26And yet I think something that Cleo and I both share, and she just expressed it really well about her artificial room story, is like that's a very powerful mechanism for engaging somebody about a story, about a topic that maybe is really cerebral and hard to access. Now, what it doesn't account for, and this is another one of these complicated moments, is a lot of my work, and Cleo, I imagine you say the same, is founded on amazing primary source reporting. For me, I study conflict. I study conflict in geopolitics. I read the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and a foreign policy magazine and a million other things where there are journalists in a country at a bureau going out to the thing and writing down the first time it's been documented.