Episode Transcript
Kristin: Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Channel Mastery Podcast, circa 2023. I am so excited to introduce the first guest of the year to you today, Adam Ruggiero, who is the Editor in Chief of GearJunkie and is the host of the GearJunkie podcast. It's great to have you here. Welcome.
Adam: I had no idea I would be the first guest of the year. It feels a little more pressure than I was signing up for.
Kristin: We booked this in December if that helps.
Adam: That's good. There you go, that's refreshing.
Kristin: It's just time. It's really a fake construct, so don't think about that. I do like putting a time peg in there so people who are listening next December are like oh, look at the news that happened since then.
We're here today to get your take on a lot of awesome topics around media, around AI, around GearJunkie, and what your great publication is evolving into. I would like to start by having you give us your background and also a background on GearJunkie.
Adam: Can I acknowledge that we are so in the future, that you just said this podcast is about AI as seamlessly and a matter of a fact as if we are talking about the weather? We're just going to talk about robots taking over the planet and it's also going to be sunny and 64.
Kristin: I know. It's that cool.
Adam: What is GearJunkie? We are an online digital publication that specializes in outdoor news and outdoor gear reviews. That’s historically the elevator pitch I've given people. Although in the last two-plus years that has really magnified the scope has broadened, and now we're buyer's guides. We used to be really core sports, and now it includes fitness and that it includes knives. It's just been building momentum over the last 15 years or so.
It's started by a man named Stephen Regenold approaching the mid-2010s. He and a good buddy of his from the University of Minnesota—shout out to the University of Minnesota Journalism School where I graduated—[...] that you and I were talking about before recording that was just really about climbing, but Stephen had the GearJunkie as sort of a syndicated column in which he would highlight a piece of gear or an adventure in newspapers, if anybody remembers such a thing.
They were short columns, but he had a lot of foresight in that he just trademarked the GearJunkie thing and as soon as he could, he got himself a website and banked gearjunkie.com. He started publishing online, and Shawn (his college friend) added some octane to the thing, and they just published left and right pretty tirelessly.
As it turned out, Google enjoyed that and it elevated the authority of the site which nowadays with search engine optimization, we understand why that was so important that they were doing that. I tagged along as a freelancer in 2015 and became a news editor in 2016. The three of us, with some business side folks, in editorial really just hammered away and wrote as much as we could.
People started advertising with us and treated us like grown-ups like we belong in the room, even though we all say we were just doing something we liked doing anyway, and that it turned into such a success. I personally think it’s still very much a surprise; shocking to me.
Kristin: You were saying also before we hit the record that Stephen has this way of Kramer kicking in the door, but in a subtle way. He doesn't have fear and I love that about him. It's actually reflected in a LinkedIn post that he put up about 2022 that’s quite lengthy, that includes international trips, taking his kids orienteering in Alpine skiing, getting strong and fit, and racing around the USA.
This is who Stephen is. There is no middle gear, but he's also just approachable and humble. He's a real visionary. I’ve been very blessed to know him since Vertical Jones was launched, actually, which makes me feel a little elderly.
Adam: There is no middle gear, it is a great way, and also, he unintentionally has probably the best poker face on planet earth. If he ever decided to focus his efforts on poker, he would clean up. He is absolutely unreadable and it's kind of intimidating, but also it makes you want to impress him or get a reaction just to see what happens.
I've been on the other side of the table before, but now that I'm sort of in the fold as it were, I love to hear when people talk about their impressions of him. A lot of times, it's did I say something wrong? Did Stephen say anything on whether we had a good meeting or not? It’s like, they’ll always have a good meeting. It's a pretty matter of fact. He knows his business, he cuts to the chase, and I think that all helped GearJunkie to where it is.
Kristin: Absolutely. He's always been a mentor to me, just in terms of the way the media landscape has changed, and you know I'm going to put you in the hot seat for this question. I would be remiss not to do that.
Again, here we are at the beginning of 2023. What a brisk year of news and outdoor media 2022 was, including ChatBot. We're going to get into that in a little bit as it is part of the state of the media. Can you give us your lay of the land? You've been in this for a while, you went to J school. Tell us what you are thinking around all of this. Where are things going with outdoor media?
Adam: It's a cool question because I personally really value my time at J school. I actually felt like I switched on. I think we all have this inner voice that is who we are. That as a whole doesn't change, but there are moments in life where you just demark the adult me versus the kid me. The things I know now and the things I didn't know then.
In college, in Journalism school (in particular) really helped me understand how much I did not know and how many things I wasn't questioning and was just taking for granted. While I personally believe that a journalism education is invaluable, it's worth it's weight in gold, maybe not worth its weight in tuition, I don't know that a formal journalism education is going to continue to be the trend moving forward because there's just so much about digital publishing that you can pickup on the fly.
I remember two things (in particular) that my professors told me when I was graduating, and they were both pretty discouraging. The first one was hey, we're teaching you everything we knew how to do when there were newspapers. Just so you are aware, there aren't going to be newspapers so you're going to have to learn a lot of these stuff on your own on the fly. And number two, a lot of publications will want to hire somebody that knows how to do a thing and then teach them about writing.
If we are an outdoor publication, we want people that get rad on skis or that can hot jump on a mountain bike or that free solo. People that do things that nobody does that they can speak knowledgeably about.
Kristin: Nerd out. [...]
Adam: Exactly. More than we are asking them, do you know how to use a semicolon? Spoiler alert, just don't use a semicolon. Assume that you don't need a semicolon.
To circle back to your question, I think the state of the media is still fluxing and evolving. We talked about increasing SEO is this term that I think even most everyday non-publishing people are at least aware of. It's just part of our lexicon now.
It is this moving target that we want to understand without sacrificing, at least those of us in the old school journalism, the tenets of good journalism, good writing, and keeping the reader at the forefront. SEO doesn't necessarily always overlap those goals. So we're in flux. We are trying to do our best to satisfy these two things—making the reader happy but also making Google happy so we can reach the reader in the first place. That was my short-winded answer.
Kristin: I think it gives us a start, but I want to go a little bit deeper. Let's just talk about relationships. You've been at this going on 10 years, and I'm sure you made a lot of friends along the way on media trips and going through COVID together bonds you in a new way. We had to deal with a lot of changes and we are still coming out of that. Thank God we trained during COVID because we now have PhDs and hopefully change management, I like to think.
At the same time, I really would like to spend a little more time talking about the ethics that were imprinted on you in J school and how you think those are still not only salvageable but something you can really push and champion.
I've interviewed Stephen multiple times in the podcast, and in every conversation I've had with him, even though he's expanding how GearJunkie was covering the outdoor rec markets, whether it was categorically, whether it was some paid content, he's a journalist, and that has to be infused in everything that you do. I think that's important because a lot of people, a lot of our brands at Verde, every single one of my employees (myself included), where are the ethics of journalism going as we are looking at all these changes?
I think one of the biggest canon balls in the deep end of outdoor media has been the acquisition of a lot of the titles by outside incorporated; we don't have to spend a lot of time there. But at the same time, that really changed the media landscape, and I think has put a little bit of a fast forward or drop the clutch on change. Everybody has their opinion on the direction of that.
What I am looking at more about is the wake of that, and the people who will come out of that who have integrity and want to continue to use their voice, and publish, and bring value. Where do you think we are from an ethics standpoint right now? As you are considering your audience, can they really trust what's out there? That leads us perfectly through where we are going next. Tell me your take on that as a J school graduate and somebody who grew up under the mentorship of Stephen Regenold.
Adam: I don't think any reader should ever give full trust to any publication. I would love to have their trust, but I also want them to read other things besides just GearJunkie. We all need to triangulate an opinion. I do think some of the fundamentals of journalism are immutable.
My job right now as editor in chief is to be a stick in the mud. That's how I view my role anyway, is to be something of a stick in the mud of progress, because we can make a lot of money and get a lot of views if we sacrificed some of the things you and Stephen have talked about. It's easy to be quick and to chase clicks. It's easy because we are all talented writers. If we get decent pictures, we can make a fun headline. We can get clicks and that turns into money; that's great.
I do wonder where that's going in the future because I have a shared experience with Stephen and Shawn, and that's how it is passed down. It went from Stephen, then Stephen handed it down to Shawn, Shawn was editor-in-chief for a few years, then it was handed off to me.
I was handed the editor-in-chief role after we were acquired ourselves in 2020, and that has (thankfully) been mostly hands-off. It's been a lot of resources. It hasn't been without its growing pains, but it has mostly been resources, how do we grow, show us how this outfit works. How did you guys get so big organically? What should we do as we acquire more publications? What can publications learn from you? What can you learn from other publications?
It has been messy because you are learning some stuff on the fly, but I haven’t made any very very tough choices. I have been teaching other people, hey, you don't get to pay for a review. If you pay us money, it's never ever going to be reviewed because that is a conflict of interest. A review needs to have editorial integrity. Not everybody knows that. Those are things I kind of take for granted, but I have those conversations.
The state of the media, there are two ways I can answer. There's what I know from my position with my organization, and then me as a consumer of media like everybody else. From my organization, I am hopeful and happy with how things are going. There are challenges with growth. You don't get to grow as fast as maybe we could otherwise, but I think that's good. It keeps guardrails in everything we do.
As a consumer of media, I don’t know, Kristin. What do you think? I hope things go in the right direction. I have outlets that I trust for just general news. We talked about this before we recorded. A lot of what I trust is more new media like podcasting. I find podcasts where I identify with hosts, and the way the conversations develop gives me a dimension of understanding and helps foster my trust in whether or not the information I'm getting is good.
Plus, there's just so many of them and there's never a paywall, so you just get to consume information from different people and perspectives. For me personally, I think that helps me understand better where I fall, whether we are talking about politics, or gear, or math, or anything that I don't understand. Hearing more of it helps me out. I also understand how Google works better than I used to and it's kind of a casino, it's a bit like a game.
Kristin: It is for sure. I know that if there's one thing that will continue, it's the pace of change will continue to get faster. I think even three months from now, we can look back on this and have some big headlines to discuss which I hope we can continue to do on these conversations. I'd love to continue having GearJunkie on, formerly Stephen, and now you.
You ask me where my head's at with it as a consumer of media, I think I became just a bionic consumer of media through COVID. I couldn't get enough content, and my YouTube algorithm is funny. It's embarrassing. It's baking, cycling, and trucks. I've rediscovered I'm definitely a truck fan. I love TFL. Believe it or not, I'm probably the only female who is a huge mega fan.
Adam: What is TFL? I’m out of the loop.
Kristin: It's The Fast Lane. TFL Truck is what I like. Grant Davis who used to be in Outside Magazine—[...] husband, Grant—is their marketing director. Honestly, sometimes there's a little bit of way too much. They're starting things with advertising, but you can fast forward through that.
What I love about it, as a former gear journalist myself, is I love the testing they do. They literally buy the vehicle and test it for 5–6 months to a year. They bring you along on that journey. I fell into it when I started watching the new Tundra videos with the hybrid engine.
I also just got so much out of it because I felt really empowered at how granular, I started to understand trucks. I have the last VA Tundra, is what I have. I was like I love my truck. I know I need to change because it's not responsible to have this one, so I was super obsessed with that.
Now I started watching all of this stuff. My son and I, he is 20 and loves trucks, too. We watch it and talk about it together. That is one example of a channel that I find value, and it empowers me. It's entertaining. It's very surprising that I like it because it's literally all just white dudes.
The reciprocity I feel towards it, which I think is part of audience engagement, is that I feel empowered to take care of my truck or understand the vehicle better. I also know that they are actually testing something they own. Then they talk with you about acquiring and selling.
It's just a different model than you and I have grown up with gear testing. It's a huge dollar investment, and from what I understand from Grant, the owner of the company, wants to see it as Petersen Publishing on YouTube. That Petersen Publishing is a very old school goal and this guy I think is a little older, but that was amazing.
I was like, I totally get it. It's just been fun to watch Grant's journey there and that's a fun one. Literally when I pull up YouTube, it’s either cycling, baking, or trucks. That's interesting for us to talk about because look at Google working there and look at the interest that it's serving up to me.
We're going to take it one step further here into terrifying standing-in-a-canoe territory and talk about the ChatBot and the article you all wrote, because that is basically a weird digital personification of what we are talking about on the other side of it. It's the reporter, it's the voice. That definitely had a lot of shockwaves. We played around with it since we saw your article tremendously at Verde.
Adam: It's addictive, isn't it?
Kristin: Oh yeah. Give me your take on YouTube, and then let's talk about the ChatBot and how that came to be. I'm so grateful you covered it because it was entertaining and super eye-opening which is a great piece of journalism.
Adam: I think I weighed into YouTube intentionally and because Google owns YouTube. I call myself a stick in the mud. When I Google something and the first three results are videos, I will scroll past the videos just to find something written that I can go at my pace.
I think I may be an exception to the rule. I've never heard of the word algorithm and partly because I went to journalism school so I didn't have to take math. It's taken me a while, but my understanding of algorithms is entirely tied to people's personal algorithms as they relate to their online habits. Is it a good thing or a bad thing that you're seeing more truck videos and baking videos?
That's what I love about newspapers. You have to flip by a bunch of stuff you weren't necessarily going to investigate on your own. It made you aware of so many other things happening passively. It doesn't mean you engage with it, but it was there.
YouTube, I hope it's good. It's not so much my medium. Honestly, oddly enough I use it intentionally for truck repair. I have a 2001 Mazda, but it’s a Ford Ranger chassis;they are basically identical vehicles. It just hit 100,000 miles. I've babied it, but now I either have to fork up a lot of cash and not understand what a mechanic is telling me or expand my vehicular vocabulary and maybe tackle some of these on my own. I go there for that.
I always watch multiple videos so I can just pick out on the Venn diagram the thing all the videos agree on because the rest are just people's opinions, and I'm not going to break my truck because some guy likes to do it this way rather than that way.
Kristin: That is a very good point. You have to have a screen when you look at that content, that's for sure.
Adam: Yes. As it relates to ChatGPT, let me just say I for one welcome our robot overlords. It's going to happen. What's interesting, what I have learned, because I have continued to hear and investigate more about this ChatBot since we wrote that article, so I have a little bit more understanding than I did at that time. It was co-authored. Stephen, Shawn, and I each did our own little research investigation that came back together. It was a fun project and I think that shined through in the product.
Kristin: It sure did. It was a great article.
Adam: I've learned that it's in this beta phase. Right now, the creators of ChatGPT are just collecting information on how people use it. I think I wrongly assumed that this bot-indexed Google, like if you asked it a question, index Google, to find answers, that's not quite my understanding, not quite it does.
It's more predicting what its response ought to be based on what other responses are, which is important because it doesn't mean it's giving you the right answer. It's just giving you the answer from what it understands—the volumes, the reams of information it has on human questions and answers—the information it thinks it's supposed to string together to satisfy your query. It's a subtle difference, but it is an important difference.
Kristin: I love that you had ChatGPT write about the MSR PocketRocket. That's one of our revered clients (as you know) at Verde Brand Communications. I very much also love the PocketRocket was the first review of GearJunkie back in 2022. That's fantastic.
Adam: I didn't even know that. Stephen surprised me with that one.
Kristin: It's pretty cool. Anyway, we'll put all the links in here. I will say at this point, looking at it from Verde standpoint, we see it as an incredible tool and something that is really interesting to play with and is very smart to pay attention to. Obviously, we are all very much paying attention to it.
I just want to hear from an editorial integrity standpoint, when you go home and talk to your girlfriend or a family member and they are asking a little bit about this, how do you explain this to them when they are like what does it mean for the future of your career, Adam?
Adam: It's funny because I think a lot of people have had that hypothetical conversation of things are just going to continue to automate. Starting with the assembly line, it's just going to continue to build and build. Mentally, you do this calculus of what positions will be the last one automated. Who is safe for the longest?
I guess I thought writing and editing would have been one of the last ones, and I'm less confident in that assessment now. To your question, I actually had those conversations with people, and what I’ve told them is—the link will be in our coverage—the PocketRocket review, totally serviceable. A little bit surface level, but otherwise, passable as humans. The problem was we did a similar experiment with a pair of hunting boots.
One of the lines generated by a hunting boot review cited how the boots felt and performed after an eight-mile hike. The issue was Shawn, who was testing the hunting boots and put this query in, never mentioned anything about how far or long he hiked in these boots or how comfortable they were. It fabricated that part. That's outright fiction. It did not happen.
It goes to my previous statement about how the bot right now is generating what it thinks it should say. It understands from what it knows that eight miles is a long hike and that's a good test of a boot. It tells you that even though nobody hiked in them for eight miles.
Your question is how do I have these conversations of, is my job safe? For now, yes. For now I know what questions to ask of an author to vet the veracity of what they are saying, to test them like did you actually test this or are you saying this because you like having this thing that the brand sent you?
Also, it's fair to say—Shawn came up with this—most freelancers who want to write for GearJunkie—which is totally possible, shoot us an email and we can start that conversation—use Grammarly. Install Grammarly because if you are well-versed in grammar, it never hurts to have a check. You'll miss something. It's just a cleaner copy and faster edit for us if you have that.
Kristin: Which means you may get more articles, everyone. That was my… when I was a freelancer.
Adam: One hundred percent, that's absolutely right. I'm happy to go into that; I love talking about that. That's the first step. Right there, you are augmenting human writing with artificial intelligence of some sort even if it's rudimentary.
This ChatBot, there are freelancers I've worked with that are experts in what they do. They have also, more or less, topped out on how good they can get at writing at this point.
Unless they sacrifice the time they invest in the outdoors doing what it is they do to really learn how to be a better writer, they probably are not going to get much better. I can tell you that ChatBot might be a little better at this point. I do see a future in which this has a very promising use.
This thing makes a 250- or 350-word review in 5 seconds. If you go out and test something, you give it all the inputs, everything you want to say, and it can string those nouns, verbs, and adjectives better than you could and faster than you could, you make more money and my edits are easier—this is all in a big assumption that this is all accurate, which is my job security—then that works for everybody. Even if it feels a little bit less romantic from a reader’s standpoint, it is a business. If we can all be good stewards of honest journalism, we can use this as a tool.
Kristin: Absolutely, you can humanize moreso and use it for foundation. I totally agree with you. Even just looking at a conversation I had with Blister around how they do their reviews and get to know who the person is, their size, height, and weight, this is their preference for gear, that is all stuff that I think is going to remain very valuable for people to see themselves in the story and to also fit in a brand. That's the other thing. I don't think, yet we're seeing brand nuances and brand positions be brought in by our ChatGPT.
Adam: Also just a little idiomatic expressions, little imperfections in syntax, in the way you speak, I think ChatGPT will close the gap more and more. It just sounds a little bit like a bot. It doesn't sound like a bot so if you're not paying attention, it will pass.
If you really pay attention right now, it's just a little bit boxy and not quite there, short sentences, but it will close that gap fast. There’s a word for it, wabi-sabi, is that the right word for it? It's a Japanese word that means sort of the beautiful perfection and imperfection. Something is immaculate without any flaw, it's not nearly as beautiful as if it has just a little bit of flaw to it that makes it truly unique.
Bots aren't going to be good at that. That will be the last thing when it comes to artificial writing that it perfects. If you read a review by Shawn McCoy, it will always have the phrase darn or darn’t. It's his favorite.
It humanizes, like you were saying, the text and really makes you understand that somebody took us out and gave a damn about whether it was good or not and thought about that. They thought about you, the reader, before they started writing. It feels like you are listening to a human and not a bot. That won't be perfected yet and I encourage that in my writers.
Kristin: I also think we can look at a few things to see at the horizon line like Stitch Fix and a number of style resources that have come and gone. That one had more longevity because it paired a digital resource with a human being who was able to put into context what your style should be. There was a way to round out the base work that they were providing with breaching out of the process and making it easier from a time standpoint with the solution it provided.
It still had a very high end human touch to it in terms of stylist that's affordable because it is paired with this digital resource. I think that it's not new that we've had this pairing of person and digital. I just think it's now kicked in the door of journalism in a big way,
Adam: Yeah, that's absolutely true. It's a little bit scary, but honestly at least with GearJunkie, there is a really delightful informality to the whole affair. It's more professional, it's more refined, we have better systems than we did before, but there's still plenty of duct tape and cardboard that hold it together, which is inefficient. If I'm getting the word wrong, I'm so sorry, somebody fact check me.
I should pull up ChatGPT just in the back here. I think it is wabi-sabi. GearJunkie is still imperfect enough that it is what you want it to be. When we first got our hands on it, everybody was obviously oh no, we’re thinking of Terminator. Immediately following that was how can this be good? We should expect how we can help guide where this is going to go at least in the near future.
Kristin: I love that. Here's the other thing I just wanted to say and it can be completely wrong, so hopefully someone will edit me. We are here for outdoor recreation. We are not selling vacuums. We are not in tech. We are here because we love what we do. We love when other people get out and enjoy what we do. We take care of what we do, we love the community around what we do.
That's something I think GearJunkie always had. That's a little bit of duct tape and cardboard. We want to see that because that's who we are. That's what we see in our garage, in our gear closet, on our kids, on our partners, etc. That's our community.
Where I am going with this is back to the state of the media. When I was a journalist, Stanwood & Partner was bought by a big firm, this was long before your time and Carson Standwood started one of the founding PR agencies in our space. A bunch of people spawned off great agencies from that.
That same exact thing is happening right now. We're in really interesting creative content. This is the magic moment where I think we are able to see and procure brand new voices that might have a ton of experience but who are free to create their own editorial slanting brand right now. Who knows if they're going to survive because it's hard to do, but at the same time it's about caring about people.
We aren't here to riffle through content quickly. We don't need to have everything in one dashboard. We want to actually slum a little bit or go state, be in the camp site and not be neat and tidy and make the effort to start our own fire. We don't need all this stuff done for us.
That to me feels like it will never go away. It's who we are. Sure, we love tech, we love gear, but there's also just a part of it that helps me get out and have more fun when I don't really want to be perfect, and I don't have to think and show up. I am just enjoying who I am with people I really enjoy.
I think that media entities that capture that and who we can see ourselves in will always live. If something like this can enable us to put some of the foundation in place and then put the true person all around that, I think it can actually help, I really do.
Adam: Do you have an explicit rating in your podcast? Am I allowed to swear?
Kristin: Go ahead. Drop it.
Adam: I'm glad you brought that up because I was thinking about it as our conversation moved forward. I dig gear, but I don't give a shit about gear nearly as much as I care about the people I have met. I have made a ton of friends. This is my community now. Anytime you are acquired by a business, it's always scary because you're a person, your coworker is a team, you care about one another.
You also realize that there are bigger bottom lines now. There's more accountability. Profit has to be met. All that stuff that's out of your control and it's terrifying. Being laid off from a company sucks full stop. It's not fair, it's not okay, and it happens when you talk about outside inc, and that sucks. It totally sucks.
I'm not trying to shine a turd. I'm just being straightforward. I also think all these talented people that are now free agents, all these people out there are a little bit pissed off. They are a little bit more skeptical about how this whole system works, but they are still writers. They are still storytellers. They still have unmatched experience and they are out there.
I point to the Mountain Gazette. I met Mike Rogge at the Outdoor Media Summit in November, and this publication has ebbed, flow, risen, and fallen. Mike has it now. Mike is old school and it is cool to see. I think there are folks out there now that are dying to tell their stories and are a little bit pissed off, which is kind of cool.
From a writer standpoint, that's that edge. Again, it sucks to be laid off, full stop. There are people, GearJunkie is one of them, this isn't just self promotion and there are other publications, but we want kickass storytellers. We want people that are passionate and ready to tell stories, be edgy and be different.
If there is any hope in the horizon, I remember when I was growing up, I wondered what generation I was because you heard about Baby Boomers and Gen X was kind of a thing. By the way, I just turned 40.
Kristin: Congrats. [...].
Adam: That's what they say every year previous. I think now I am an old millennial, but I think that's the accepted term right now—millennial. I remember when I was growing up, I don't know what generation I'm going to be because it doesn't get its identity until some unforeseen point in the future.
I think right now the state of the media, we're not going to fully know what we are and how things are until a little bit in the future. The negatives that have occurred that have transpired are creating opportunities that might actually shape what this generation of media is in a good way as far as the people are concerned because we're not all going to be under the funnel. A lot of us are going to learn how to swim on the deep end on our own.
I had a job for X number of years. I was let go and that fucking sucks. Now I want to write more. I want to tell my stories. I've got piss, vinegar, and whatever. This can lead to some really cool storytelling. That's my hope. I want to hear from people that want to write for me because they kick ass in what it is they do.
I want to lead people that are writing for somebody else that are just excited to write, that want to tell people stories, that want to break out of the mold that we fall into. We do the same thing long enough, that spark and energy might fade just a little bit. It sucks but it's also just a part of it. You have to keep mixing things up for it to stay fresh.
I think right now, things have been mixed up and we're going to see some cool stuff. That is my hope and I hope that will shape what it is that the media landscape is now when we look back.
Kristin: I totally agree and I also know that it is a pretty tight community. It's one that's always open for new passionate people. There is a really easy way to see passion in journalism. I don't care what the channel is, what medium you are writing in or creating for, you can see it. There are those craptastic YouTube videos that you know are bot-generated around something you love. You can tell in two seconds and you're out of there.
It's the same with any kind of storytelling. I really believe that to be true. Because we've been wired to have this in our DNA since the dawn of time, that's not going anywhere. I think exceptional storytelling is going to be what shapes this phoenix rising as what you are talking about here. I'm really excited about it. We're all used to change.
