Crawford Media Podcast

Zara Seidler has taken The Daily Aus in a different direction from most youth news publishers: it’s straight-down-the-line, objective news. Zara, as co-founder, has seen her Instagram-based service grow to more than 400k followers, receive substantial investment and begin considering expansion beyond Australia. Subscribe to the Crawford Media podcast for this 1:1 discussion.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Spotify’s Head of Studios ANZ Ben Watts has always been fixated on audio, whether music or spoken word, and now he’s bringing the two together at the global streaming giant. In this conversation Ben traces his moves through the digital platform and publishing industry and how his thinking has evolved around the use of metrics. Along the way there are a few valuable pointers for successful podcasts and how the world’s dominant podcast platform, Spotify, is thinking about “talk”.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Lucy Blakiston might be young (24), but she’s been publishing to big audiences for the best part of a decade. The force behind youth news brand S**t You Should Care About is a one-person social media phenomenon: 3.6 million Instagram followers and tens of thousands of newsletter subscribers want to hear what she has to say about world affairs, Formula 1 and Harry Styles. In this Crawford Media conversation, Lucy shares her thoughts on corrections (good), TikTok (so-so) and cancelling people (bad).

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Tim Griggs is the force behind Blue Engine Collaborative, a company that has run accelerator programs all over the world helping businesses make digital news pay. One of the first things he tells program participants is that there is no magic bullet. As the guy behind The New York Times’ early foray into news subscriptions, Tim is well-qualified to give advice. He prefers not to, instead encouraging people to break their problems down into manageable pieces.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Genevieve Jacobs believes she and her company, Region Media, have cracked the secret to doing local publishing profitably. If so, why are so many other outfits struggling to stay open? In this Crawford Media podcast, the Canberra-based publisher describes a business model that leans heavily on search traffic and local business reviews, along with integrated sponsored content. Genevieve is not short on confidence: as she says, “I talk a good game, Hal”.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Dan Stinton is the Managing Director of The Guardian in Australia and New Zealand and is forthright in this podcast about the main thing holding growth back: "half the country hasn't heard of us". To that end, The Guardian is launching a new marketing campaign with a new tagline around "the fight for progress". Stinton also dives into the need for top-of-the-funnel focus and his optimism about news' continuing role in digital advertising.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Hello everybody,

Here is the much-anticipated second part of my journey into AI-land with OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model. In addition to continuing my conversation with The Open University’s Mike Sharples, I spoke to another education scholar: Stephen Marshall, Director of the Centre for Academic Development at Victoria University in Wellington.

In this part, I ask Stephen and Mike how universities are going to deal with students using AIs to generate plausible essays with a single mouse click. The answer: stop thinking you can just assign an essay and mark it at the end. Wake up teachers!

Hope you enjoy this one,

Hal

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Hello everyone,

This week is the first part of a two-part podcast on AI language transformers in general and GPT-3 in particular. First up, I am dealing with general impacts and impressions and next week I’ll go deeper into the effects of text generators on education. All of this is a follow-up to The Machines Have Acquired Language, which I wrote two weeks ago. It also touches on an article I wrote for The Spinoff, AI Writing Has Entered A New Dimension.

I have to make this succinct, because last time I published a podcast, Substack decided to use the text of my newsletter as the blurb for my podcast episode. That was new - usually it takes the post summary - and unwelcome.

Have a listen to the podcast, it’s in a new style for me, using a lot more of my voice rather than just a recording of an interview. Let me know if you like it!

Here is the link to Mike Sharples’ new book, Story Machines.

Have a great week,

Hal

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Kia ora koutou,

In this week’s podcast I am speaking with journalist, entrepreneur and author Tim Duggan. Today just happens to be the day he is launching his new book, Killer Thinking.

I won’t summarise the book’s thesis, but I will let you know that I enjoyed reading it, and that it is full of information to challenge you and help take your idea (which he defines as a solution to some problem) from ok to awesome. Or in Tim’s parlance, KILLER.

As an experiment, I am cutting and pasting below the questions that I planned out for Tim before the interview. I always make a list of questions, both for myself and to give the interviewee time to prepare themselves, and I never stick to it. It’s there for when I need to get the conversation back on track, or to remind myself of something I really wanted to know.

Showing your hand

Interestingly, when I wrote daily news years ago I rarely prepared questions, and certainly never shared them with interviewees beforehand. To do so would have forewarned and forearmed the subjects, a breach of news protocol. Like showing your copy to people before publishing, god forbid.

I have greater distance from that news culture now, and I recognise that treating people as “sacks of information” to be plundered is a limited and damaging worldview. Naturally, there are situations where you cannot show your hand. But a lot of times you can. You just have to remember that almost no one likes hearing their voice on tape, or seeing their spoken words as text. I think that’s because truth makes people vulnerable.

I empathise now. I always feel like I am walking a tightrope when I am interviewed by someone else.

Apologies for the delay between postings, I’ve been doing some fascinating work for a number of organisations. I’ll ask you to take that on trust for now!

Hal

Questions for Tim

* Tim - could you say your name and introduce yourself?

* You started with Cult Status, and now you've written Killer Thinking - how do the books differ? Are you advancing ideas?

* Was this book easier to write or was it like your second album?

* The book is about KILLER ideas - which means Kind, impactful, loved (the cult status part), lasting, easy, and repeatable.

* I was particularly taken by the easy bit - you stress a couple of times that ideas should be simple and able to be explained to a kid. Why is it that good solutions are simple solutions?

* I'd like to apply your eight-step framework to some of the problems that news faces globally and in Australia and NZ.

* Say we are talking about the inability of commercial markets to meet the needs of public interest journalism in regional areas.

* Your first step is to be your problem's therapist. I think my problem might be the worst client ever .... someone I don't want to treat ... where should I start?

* Do you think "launching into a rising tide" might be the hardest thing with news? The tide seems to have been out for a long time. Is it every coming back in?

* You're a very positive person - the book is energetic and useful. You've made it as useful as possible. There is one bit where you take down an idea - the idea of using brainstorm sessions at work. I came across the HIPPO idea - can you explain that?

* Have you been a HIPPO? (I know I have)

* I have noticed that ideas are thick on the ground, but well-executed ideas working in real life less so. Why is this?

* What is is the number 1 mistake people make in trying to bring their ideas to life?

* You recommend becoming bored. Tell me more about that.

* Your background is as an entrepreneur, you co-founded, built up and then sold Junkee, and you started as a music journalist writing for Rolling Stone. In the book you mention that you had to write very short music reviews - what did that teach you?

* You wrote the book in a campervan with Ben travelling around Australia - during COVID? (And made a beautiful 42 second video!)

* So where are you heading? What's next for you? More ideas about ideas? Are you building a new business?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com

Happy Friday all,

Gideon Haigh is in the Crawford Media spotlight today.

If you’re any kind of Australian cricket fan at all, you will be familiar with Haigh’s writing. He’s been covering the game for more than three decades, but that’s far from his only area of activity. Haigh has become a specialist in the longest form of journalism available: books.

He’s very good at it, and he seems to be able to turn his hand to any subject.

The trick is to do things that you're really interested in, things that you're really curious about. And the things that you don't know anything about.

Take one of Haigh’s most recent books, The Brilliant Boy. I knew nothing about 1930s High Court judge Doc Evatt before I began reading and had no particular interest in finding out more. I am halfway through - yes, I am a slow reader - and I am totally into this strange, small world of judges, politicians, artists and activists. These characters quote poetry, keep houses in the Blue Mountains, believe in stuff and run the country.

Everything is about journalism. I use journalistic methods. I pick and choose stories where I can be tested and really stimulated and learn stuff and learn how to do things better. It’s a pretty simple ambition, really: to be better at my job a year hence than I am now.

Haigh is currently working on a piece about the birth of marine archeology in 1950s Western Australia following the invention of scuba. Dutch shipwrecks were discovered up and down the coast. He still doesn’t know where it’s heading exactly, or if it might become a whole book, but I’m looking forward to reading it. Of course. I’m from Perth.

Have a listen to the podcast. Haigh has carved out a space that allows him to do great work at great length.

Enjoy the weekend,

Hal

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit halcrawford.substack.com