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Channels with Peter Kafka

Information doesn't have to be free (Jessica Lessin, CEO, The Information)

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Tv & Film, Business News, News

4.4585 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2017

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Information CEO Jessica Lessin talks with Recode's Peter Kafka about why her news site, which reports on tech and business, puts its content behind a $400-per-year pay wall. Lessin says the default assumption should be that news is paid for because it provides value to people's lives. She also talks about why she left the Wall Street Journal in 2013, what most people get wrong about Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg and why sexual harassment at companies like Uber is the toughest story in tech to crack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Today's show is sponsored by Mac Weldon. They make the most comfortable hoodie, sweatpants, underwear, and socks you'll ever wear. I'm wearing the socks right now because I paid for them with my own money. It's the best endorsement I can ever give you. What else can I tell you about them? They look good. They smell good. I'm justica. I'm not going to ask you to smell them. What do you think of the hue though? Love the blue. It's color recording. It's a deep blue.

0:22.2

Deep, is it turquoise?

0:23.5

I don't know.

0:23.8

I defer to smell them. What do you think of the hue, though? Love the blue. It's color recording. It's a deep blue. Deep, is it turquoise? I don't know. I defer to your color judgment here. They're easy to buy. You go to macwellden.com. You get 20% off your order with a promo code recode. If for some reason you don't like them, and you will, you will like them. You get to hang on to them. Mac Weldon will send you your money back. That's how venture capital works,

0:39.2

apparently. Go to macwellden.com. Use the promo code recode. You get 20% off. That's macwellden.com promo code recode. Jessica Lesson, you were not in the advertising business, so you do not have to read ads. How do you feel about that? I feel pretty great about it, although you did an excellent job.

0:55.0

Thank you. I'd buy them. I appreciate it. This is Recode Media with Peter Kafka. That's me. I'm speaking with Jessica Lesson from the information normally when I have a guest on. Not normally. Oftentimes I have a guest on. I say, what do you do? Explain what your business is. There's this uncomfortable back and forth. They try to explain that they're not really a newsletter company. There are something else. You guys are really simple to explain. Can I take a crack at it? Go for it. You guys are a tech business publication, subscription-only business. A main business is $400 a year. And you've recently said you've got 10,000 subscribers. More than 10. More than 10,000 subscribers. What did I miss? I think that's it. That's the end of the interview. We're done. We solved the riddle. We're, you know, three years in, I think publishing some really great in-depth journalism at the tech industry. I concur. You guys are doing great. And the kind of things I'm really excited about right now, we actually have the second

1:45.7

largest tech reporting team in Silicon Valley, which people don't realize. If you look at the number of unique reporters we have covering technology. Unique reporters? Or number of reporters. I like unique reporters. I'm so techie. People who publish once in one. I know. Well, if you think that I, that's obviously a unique visitor slip over from my days as a tech reporter.

2:04.4

But on the ground, second only to Bloomberg, we have.

2:08.1

So you got a couple dozen people, I think, all in?

2:09.8

Yeah, a couple dozen all in, 13 full-time reporters.

2:13.6

And why that's important, right, is because we're doing original journalism. And that's what we're excited about, what's driven our business, and what we think is an awesome business for the future. So you're three years into this. Prior to that, you had a long, impressive run at the Wall Street Journal. And prior to that, you were in college. That's correct. So you shot right out of school and said, I know what I wanted to do. I wanted to do technology journalism. And then you said, I want to start my own technology journalism company. Boom. That was it. Twice in a row. And, you know, I was lucky. I joined the journal at a time when technology was this new, fancy, shiny object that a publication like the Wall Street Journal was still figuring out how to cover.

2:51.6

So there was a lot of opportunity to be the first to important things like online video.

2:57.9

You know, I remember interviewing Zay Frank when he was a vlogger.

3:00.7

That, you know, is the term we used.

3:03.0

So I really enjoyed the chance to cover the industry at a place that wasn't paying a ton of attention, but was paying more over time.

3:12.3

And then actually began to cover the ways that these tech companies I was writing about were changing my industry.

3:19.3

And so came up with the idea for the information.

3:21.5

So you've got more than 10,000 subscribers paying $400 a

3:24.9

year. You introduced a student rate and there's a super high premium rate for 10 grand, but I assume

3:30.2

most of them are paying $400 a year. Yeah, that's our focus. What do your readers want to read about

3:34.9

besides awesome technology journalism? What drives, what flips the, what's the metaphor? Tips the scale. Tips the scale, something with a needle.

3:43.6

Sure. It's Monday morning. All of the above. What are people most interested in reading?

...

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