Exciting news, our team of world class leaders is growing and we're emerging from stealth mode
Giants in the News and Media Industry are joining the effort to revolutionize news and information journalism
Last week, we dropped our first press release announcing us to the world. Yay! As of the end of February, our website is up, and our mobile app will hit the app stores in the next few weeks. Super exciting! Come and join us by getting on the waiting list. You can sign up at https://www.unpress.com/signup
I’m not going to reproduce the press release, but you can read it here: Introducing-UNPRESS
I do want to take some time to give a warm public welcome to the phenomenal individuals who have joined us to help move this forward. It’s a list of veritable titans. I won’t reproduce their bios here; you can read those in the press release linked above, but I have linked to their LinkedIn profiles if you want to investigate further.
The Industry is Ripe for Disruption
This press release landed smack amid a challenging time in the news media industry. Thousands of incredibly talented people have lost their jobs in the last few months. It’s projected that this sector could lose up to 10,000 jobs this year, with major layoffs across the industry, from Sports Illustrated, NBC, Time magazine, to The Wall Street Journal and CNN. BuzzFeed shuttered its entire news division last year. Vice will stop publishing on their website and will lay off hundreds. The Messenger shut down entirely after burning through $50 million in investment.1
Sounds like the industry is headed for extinction. That’s certainly the sentiment in The New Yorker article titled “Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?” Honestly, it sounds horrific, but the article's subtitle reads, “The future will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience.”
That’s exactly what we have done at UNPRESS. We recognize that the core of this problem is fundamentally a titanic shift in people’s viewing habits and social values, particularly in younger generations.2
For a long time, media companies have assumed that millennials and Gen-Z would grow up, buy a big-screen TV, get a cable subscription, and adopt the viewing habits of their parents. It hasn’t happened. Even my 70-year-old neighbors have cut the cord. As Michael Rosenblum is fond of saying, “The ADs on the nightly news are for Depends and Cialis, that tells you all you need to know.”
I’ve heard adults 40+, time and time again, characterize younger generations as essentially vapid. That’s dangerous for many reasons, but mostly because it’s not true. Those who grew up with an iPhone in their pocket and an iPad under their arm have grown up with the ability to access staggering amounts of information on demand, on the go. Some of them have never known a world without Social Media. As a result, they are extremely media and tech-savvy, which has left many highly suspicious of traditional media. They know that the narrative is controlled and shaped by major corporate interests and partisan editorial boards. This flies in the face of one of their most fundamental values. Authenticity.
They can tell at a glance what is Authentic and what is not. As a result, they trust personalities, not organizations.
“Young people in particular are tuning in to influencers and peers for current affairs. Creators Dylan Page, aka News Daddy, and V Spehar, of UnderTheDeskNews, draw 10.4 million and 3 million followers on TikTok, respectively. The New York Times: 595,600.” - Bloomberg Businessweek “Social Media Platforms Are Done With News, But Gen Z Still Treats Them as a Go-To Source”3
This hits on a couple other interesting points about these generations. They prefer to watch vs read. They expect services and content to revolve around their schedule. They are highly mobile - requiring information to be easily available on their mobile device, and they want to engage with their interests in a participatory environment where they can engage, discuss, and explore.
That sums up the fundamentals of the UNPRESS platform. A video-centric, mobile, social media-style participatory environment that prioritizes authentic stories and interactions. In addition, we have built our platform to responsibly support non-fiction content without leading to the toxicity inherent in other platforms.
While it’s still early days for us, not only will UNPRESS help storytellers make a living, but we will also provide a clearly delineated path to success. Whether you’re a professional with a journalism degree or a passionate individual, UNPRESS will provide the tools and training you need.
Traditional Media will continue to decline.
This will be true not just because of what I wrote above but because their business model has not adapted, and the industry seems intent on continuing to shoot itself in the foot.
Attempts, via lawsuits and legislation, to force companies like Meta (Facebook / Instagram), ByteDance (TikTok), and Google to pay them for news articles they link to was a boneheaded move, to say the least. Many digital news media organizations have long relied on siphoning traffic off of social media platforms to their own website advertisers.
They perhaps failed to realize that modern major tech platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Google (particularly YouTube) are highly tuned to keep users on their platforms and engaged. They are formidable advertising platforms. When their users click links that take them off the platform (like to a news website), that’s detrimental to their business. Yet, Australia and Canada4 passed legislation forcing them to pay media companies they host links to.
Deals were made, but it’s a pyrrhic victory, and they are now realizing it. Meta, who still has not come to an agreement in Canada, changed its algorithm globally to prioritize posts from friends and family over posts from publishers and brands.5 This visibility reduction has compounded, leading to deteriorating Google search engine rankings. And it will only worsen as AI fundamentally changes the nature of search altogether.
The changes at Meta have already resulted in significant revenue declines and the failure of news media organizations like BuzzFeed and Vice.6
Despite what the leadership at these traditional media organizations might believe, Facebook and Google don’t need them.
UNPRESS is the Future
UNPRESS sidesteps many of the issues noted above. Our revenue streams are not fundamentally based on advertising and the resulting negative social effects. We succeed when you succeed.
UNPRESS is the future of authentic news and information. Come build it with us.
What’s your Story?
https://www.fastcompany.com/91035879/news-media-layoffs-2024-list-growing-worst-year-financial-crisis
This has been driven largely by the technical innovations of the last twenty years, but also cultural and political changes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-09/youtube-tiktok-instagram-news-consumption-grows-as-traditional-media-shrinks?embedded-checkout=true
A single Joe Rogan podcast has, on average, over 11 million listeners per episode. The podcast has over 50 million social media followers. In comparison, CNN draws a viewership of only around 800,000 in their prime time news slot.
Bill C-18 - The Online News Act
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2021/how-facebook-algorithm-works/
According to a report by Parse.ly, a web analytics company, Facebook referrals to news websites declined by 50% between January 2017 and January 2018. Another report by Chartbeat, another web analytics company, showed that Facebook referrals to news websites dropped by 26% between January 2017 and May 2018. These declines have been even more severe for smaller and niche publishers who lack the resources and reputation to compete with larger and more established ones. Last year, further changes to their algorithms all but shut the door, leading to a further decline of an additional 50% over the previous year.