Hold every day. The Breakfast Club finish for y'all.
Done morning.
Everybody is DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. Yes, indeed you have Ashley Allison.
Welcome, Welcome. How are you feeling this morning?
I feel really good. I'm excited to be back, happy.
To have you back. That's congratulations on acquiring the route.
Yes, and I have something I want to congratulate you all on as well. Okay, so today we are announcing the Route one hundred the first time I'm announcing this list as the publisher, and the Breakfast Club is on our list. Wow, thank you so much, Thank you for all you all do.
Have the ear of the people.
We have some gifts for the guys from Ourtel, our sponsors and yeah, you know the blue swift.
Okay, thank you very We have one for you.
Envy.
We have your beautiful flowers over there.
Yes, I thought you were going to be here, but we have some flowers waiting for you for when you come back to the office.
Everyone go to the route dot com and see.
Who else is on the one hundred comes out the date today, People to know why we're breaking news here, dope.
Thank you very much.
Well, what made you reacquire the roots?
What was so not reacquired?
Well to acquire the reots because it reacquire from you know, it was it was black owned and then other and now it's back black owned.
What made you say this is something that we need back in our culture.
Well, I started my company, watering Hole Media, back in two thousand and nine and the Route started in two thousand and eight, and Watering Hole really was aspirational to what.
The Route was doing. And so when we relaunched two years ago.
Watering Hole, I knew I wanted to acquire some digital properties and divine timing. Honestly, the route was on the short list and it came available this summer and you know how like you see something, you're like, that's mine.
Yep, it's mine.
That's my assignment. That's what happened with the roote, and so my team hustled. We got it done on the face, but there's a lot of people behind that got it done. And it all so is in a time when we need to have places to tell our stories and tell them our way and through our lens unapologetically black, and I always say Black stories are American stories, and American stories are global stories, and we deserve to have ownership over them.
I'm glad you acquired Rout because the other time I hated the Root and I hated the Route because.
I was I was gonna sayunt you were ahead.
They used to poll so much negative stories about us and just you know, even people that that I actually love and appreciate.
And I remember somebody from the Route reached.
Out to me and literally told me that they tried to run a very positive story about I think it was me and Nick Cannon actually, and they were They were told that whoever it was was like, absolutely not.
It's the work you guys do behind the scenes.
Yes it was.
It was a story about the work me and Nick Cannon do behind the scenes. This was like four or five years ago. And somebody after it was like, absolutely not.
It's a new day. It's a new don And I'm feeling good, right.
How do you feel right now?
Because I saw Vibe merge with Rolling Stone, people were really pissed about that a lot of black people lost their jobs because of that. Team Vote just announced that they're going onto Vogue dot Com. A lot of people of color lost their jobs right now. It feels like there is a like a not targeted attack, but like just we're losing a lot.
Of our places to tell stories.
So there's a lot of focus on the places that are still running, like the route in all these other places. Right, do you feel like there's a pressure to make this work because we're getting taken out everywhere else?
I feel a pressure and a responsibility because of what the route is in our community and can be.
And I think telling.
Black stories requires due diligence and responsibility.
Also that people are losing their jobs.
I mean three hundred thousand black women are out of work right now. So there's a global store a national story right now about unemployment and people struggling. So journalism is just one piece of that big part.
And yes, like I want now, what happened in the past is in the past.
And the second day after we announced the acquisition, I told folks we will not be perfect, because no human is, and so, but we will have a standard of excellence and in telling stories you all know, you all get you know, backlash some times for some of the covers this struggle, but ownership.
If I didn't, I'm like, did they hear me?
But I think we.
Always sit here. I come from politics, right, and we always say black people are not a monolith. So I need to make sure I'm telling multiple.
Stories through multiple lenses. And so you might not.
Always agree with what we cover on the route and our position on the route, but you will think about what we cover and it that is. I just think iron sharpens iron, and black people deserve to have multitudes of opinions.
What does success look like for you?
I want to grow our audience.
We have about ten million people that come to our website monthly, which is massive, so I want to double that within a year. We're going to be moving the video while still respecting the written word.
So we'll do all writing.
We'll to you to do writing, but for most written pieces, we'll also have a video component. Our audience is predominantly black, but it's not all black, and so I want the root again. It is a black publication, but black stories are American stories.
And so when you.
Want to know what's going on in the culture, when you want to know what's going on in politics, when you want to know what's going on in sports, and entertainment. You can go to the Root as a trusted source, just like you may go to a more typical mainstream media applan.
I was going to ask that.
I was going to say, you know, one time the Route was I feel like at the forefront of everything, Yes, and it slowed down a lot and became behind the scenes.
How do you get it back to the forefront?
And with the world of fake news and nobody knowing who to trust, and people are trusting people that are putting out random stories, how do people can come to the Route and say, I know this is my trusted source, I know that these stories are real. I know that this is a place where I can actually trust and loves my community.
Well, I think you have to be true to yourself too, right, You can't be all things to everybody. So I have to know who I want to be as a publisher, and that is telling unapologetic black stories.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that we think there's a place for journalism and fact checking, but at.
A speed that allows people.
The reason why I think folks are so susceptible to missing disinformation is the speed at which it comes in.
So we're gonna have to scale our team.
We have a great set of journalists right now, but it's still a very small team, So looking at growing our footprint just even in a new a digital newsroom.
And then we also want to have commentary, right so.
We're in a world where everybody's opinion appears to be fact and that's just not the case. And so we have a do no harm approach. So again, I don't have to agree with everything you say, but you cannot cause harm to black people and have a home at the route.
I also say, you know, you don't really me personally. I don't really care about something to tell who's attached to it.
So that's right now.
I found out that you was the owner, I was like, oh, so I looked under the hood. I had no idea Root was found out by doctor Henry Lewis Gate.
Yes, yes, yes, And I called him a couple days before the announcement and he was just over the top elated. He's like, oh my gosh, it's like you have my child, and I'm like, and I will take great care of it. And it's like they're in college now, and so we're like college roommates almost, and so I hope to grow with it. It's been around for seventeen years. The responsibility I feel is that if in seventeen years it's not stronger and more dominant, then I have not met my all.
I would love to know what was his original vision for the Root.
Henry Lewis Cage is a very serious person.
Maybe you could go to the Root dot com pretty soon and find that story. I definitely, because I think the other thing is I'm not a student of history, but I like to study history, and it's really.
Important to understand why was it founded?
Think about when that was two thousand and eight, Barack Obama is just reelected. It's what people could say was like a watershed moment in our political history. Will someonet argue right now, that's where we're at in this moment, and what is the intervention we need to start to set the course and turn the course. And so it was founded in an important time, it was reclaimed back to black ownership in an important time, and so I
want to study what he did. I want to understand what he did while also thinking about what's tomorrow.
What tomorrow it needs to deliver for.
People who on this list. And you mentioned the breakfast level.
To go to the Army on the list, so it's one hundred people.
So one of the things I actually decided to do was remove the rankings.
I always look at the list.
Yeah, well I just want to say I was never on the list.
I just got.
So I would look and the route.
Actually the list has been very aspirational for me because I learned about a job that I eventually had at the White House from the roote one hundred. You know, they don't like post those jobs on the website. So I've really built my career from interventions from that publication. So it really does have a special part in my story.
But we decided as a team to remove the rankings because in a moment that we are in right now, everybody on the list is exceptional in what they do and it doesn't matter if you're one or one hundred, you're doing it. And so so why be like, well, where was I on the list and where why wasn't I higher than this person? It's a collective and the only way we get out of this moment is if we do it together. So you're a part of a community of one hundred people in journalism, people in the courtroom,
people with microphones themselves, people making films, scientists, CEOs. I'm really proud of the list. I think it really reflects the diversity of it.
And you know what, you might see some people on the list and.
Be like, I don't really like them, and I don't care because guess what, they're still doing great work that they're doing, and we need.
To acknowledge them as well. As you said black people, that's right, Yeah, that's right.
And then on the other side of the business side of it, right, the funding, like I heard Oprah talk about her own was like the hardest thing she's ever done. The same thing with Revolt, because it's just hard to get advertised to give money to black media spaces.
What's going to be your plan in the fight for that?
Yeah, I mean it's definitely something that I wake up thinking about and go to bed thinking about.
But I think the product has to speak for itself.
Ten million visits unique visits every month is nothing to sneeze. That is, that is that is one of the most trafficed news sites, but particularly black news sites in our country. So it is a profitable business and I see a vision on how we could grow. But again, it's also on the product and the content. So you said, what
am I going to do next with it? Video is one thing, but we have some offline activations that we want to do because like it's one thing that you know, I heard you all covering the AI piece, right, It's like it's one thing to see something, but to actually be in relationship proximate to the person is important. So we think our products, the things that we're going to be rolling out soon, the voices that we're going to be having at the root, will sell itself.
Well. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Congratulations, thank you, thank you.
It's Ashley Allison. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, every day.
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