¶ Vanan Murugesan (Sahan Journal) joins the Chuck ToddCast
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get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos dot com slash chuck that is e Thos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and rates may vary well. In I continuing coverage and Yes Local News Day on April ninth, circle your calendar's local news Day in April ninth. One of my goals has been to essentially profile, if you will, a different types
¶ There are both local news deserts, and community news deserts
of local news startups that are out there, and obviously part of the goal of Local News Day in April ninth is to create more awareness out there. And there are a lot of local news startups in your neighborhood that you may have not heard about. Some of them are very community specific, maybe for a smaller community that's a part of your area. Maybe it's geographic, maybe it's ethnic, but these startups are everywhere. And in fact, the profile of the organization I want to showcase today is the
Sahan Journal. It's based in Minnesota, and we have the publisher here with us, Vanan Muru Gayson. He's not the original founder. He actually just he has essentially taken it over and expanded it from its original intent. It is a news organization that has been vital to the immigrant community in Minneapolis in particular. But it's not just about one community. You know, what's been interesting about Minneapolis over
¶ How would you describe the Sahan Journal and its mission?
the last couple of decades and what's given it some amazing cultural features, if you will, that make it even more unique place to visit today than it was thirty years ago when Prince was walking the city the city streets, is that it has a lot of new communities, the Somali community among community, in addition to sort of maybe more familiar immigrant communities that many of you have out there and they're just doing gangbusters. And this is a story of a local news outlet filling the vacuum for
a community that was just completely underserved. We know that there are geographic news deserts, but sometimes there are community news deserts. And I think what the Sohan Journal was able to essentially a gap they were able to fill, is for a community a news organization that doesn't just meet them subject on the subject matters that they care about, but also on the platforms that they use. And I
¶ Minnesota has great local news, but immigrant stories were missed
think this is something a lot of traditional newsrooms don't realize. The various ways immigrant communities get their information. They're in a lot different apps than the apps you see, whether it's WhatsApp being a big one, even telegram, and so the work that the Sahan Journal has done there I think will serve as as something of for some of you out there in this space. There's going to be a lot to learn. So, without further ado, let me
bring Vonon into the conversation. Vonon, Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you Chuck for having me. It's a pleasure to be here today.
Well, before we get started, tell me how did I do In the introduction to the news organization, and please fill in some gaps. What did I miss? How would you if you're in an elevator with me and we're riding up fifteen flights, how are you describing it to somebody?
Oh, fifteen flights? Well that's quite generous.
A few here, yeah, I'm assuming we have five minutes, right.
Well, thank you, Thanks for opportunity.
It's so great that yoursel reading you know, local news stap, but also looking to uplift the different types of news outlets that are working in this space, and in particular, I'm here to talk a little bit about immigrants serving newsrooms, and so I'll try to talk a little bit about SAHAN and so also maybe it gives your audience a little bit of context around how immigrant newsrooms work. So SAHAN was started twenty nineteen. You are right, I am
not the founder. The founder is actually his name is Muktari brought him. He's a traditional journalist, really really good journalists. He worked for the Star Tribune and he worked for the MPR for Minnesota Public Radio News and at that time he noticed something that you know, was not something that he wasn't able to cover. You know, Minnesota has one of the best local news scenes in the country.
As you know, that very true.
Look, it's funny you bring up Minnesota Public Radio, probably one of the strongest affiliates of the NPR system that there is.
Exactly particularly exactly exactly, and and yet he felt working for both of these organizations, he felt there were still important stories that were being missed that was important to be covered, and the stories around the immigrant communities. You know, he was somewhat disappointed at that time where he was packed as the Somali journalist and he would cover Somali
issues and whatnot. And you know, at that time, unfortunately and even in some places in some instances today, issues from immigrants are talked around from a crime perspective or
¶ Immigrant media was created to reflect realities of their audience
things that of negative in nature.
Right, he grew very frustrated. And now this is the man. Mind you. His wife was pregnant with his third maybe fourth child, I think the third child.
He quit his job in the cold month of December because he just couldn't take it anymore. And so he started Sahan Journal because he felt like some of these important stories were not showing up. And that's why newsrooms like SAHAN exist in Minnesota today. And I just want to I think it's important to also mention and this is not a Minnesota thing. It's you know, it exists all around the state, all around the country.
I'm sorry, right, Oh, I mean I could tell I know growing up in so I grew up in Miami, I grew up in South Florida. And one of the hallmarks of the last ten years of local media is how micro and community oriented it is. If you want to talk to the Caribbean communities, there's actually individual you need to talk to, this Instagram influencer, and you need
to talk to this person here. The demand in these immigrant communities for somebody that looks like them, that understands their life telling them today's news is through the roof. I get it, and I think that this is why I think this is. You guys are the best example of I think one that's getting traction and creating a revenue stream and all of this, because I think that's
the more difficult part is how do these become finanially sustainable? Right, And this is all part of what we're working on with Local news Day.
You know, I chucked, I'm going to use this line, and I'm not sure how to resonate with you in your audience. But I've said this before in the past, I feel the impulse behind the creation and the need behind immigrant newsrooms is very much the same impulse that built kind of like Fox News where it is right now. It's basically a community that for the most part has felt either unseen or where traditional media their realities were
¶ Immigrants truly want to understand the place they're living in
not reflected there in traditional legacy media. Now I would say, obviously there is, That's where the point of similarity would end, and how we would use that moment would be different. But I you know, I'm not a journalist, I'm not a I'm not a trained journalist, and I've always.
A mechanical engineer. Yeah, but you certainly are a numbers guy and a mechanical engineer.
I did m my MBA. But I'm also a consumer.
I love business models, and I'm a consumer of news content, and I've always observed news from a not just from a reader. But hey, what's going on over here? And I you know the fact that the first of all, things have changed dramatically and I would say improved quite a bit since since twenty twenty and since Shan has
been since created. But for the most part, people felt their reality was not reflected in how traditional news media portrayed it right, and so it was very important for Sahan when we were when we were founded to make sure that, yes, we are speaking to the facts, but we are also making sure that people's lives are reflected accurately in that space.
Yeah, now I get what you're saying, and I think I can tell you my experience that meet the Press is, particularly with immigrant audiences, is that a lot of I had a lot of first gen viewers for generation viewers, and they and they would tell me and it would frankly, it's the same thing I do when I'm in a
¶ Mainstream outlets are like Target, immigrant outlets are specialty stores
foreign country, even for a week, which is I want to assimilate and understand what's going on locally as quickly as I possibly can. What's the best way to do it? A lot of times it is through the news, and you know, maybe there's a language barrier, and so maybe I'm finding anything that's in my language that still reflects what's going on in the community, or maybe you'll find
your expat community in a specific city. But the thing is is that you know the sort of I think the ignorance sometimes that we portray about like how we behave when we move to a new area, we quickly want to assimilate. Is how anybody behaves when they move to a new area, which is they're constantly looking, but
they want to understand the place they're living in. And so, you know, I know, the first thing I'd be doing if I lived in Malaysia would be to find the Sunday whatever the equivalent of the political programs are, just so I understood the lay of the land, I understood the politics.
Of the area.
Frankly, it's a survival. It's for survival. You're not doing it because you want to know. You're doing it because how do I navigate this new community? Let me learn the politics and economics of the new community exactly exactly.
And yeah, so in a nutshell, that's how that's what SAHAN was was was was created.
You know, since then, you know, I have colleagues and I.
Know the leaders of MP, of minist of public radio and Stout Tribune and whatnot, and things have dramatically changed since then.
But I would say, just the thing though SAHAN, our.
Coverage is one focused on issues that impact immigrants and communities of color, right, And I like to use this analogy, So start Tribune and MPR, they're like, you know your targets you know, or you know, I don't know what's the.
Grocery department store, but you're what you're saying is they have a little bit for everybody, and everybody can find something in a target that is meant for them. But maybe that target doesn't have everything they're looking for, but they have a couple of things they at least acknowledge
¶ How do you decide when a community needs a full time reporter?
my existence exactly exactly.
But if you want something very specific, and I use grocery stores because I cook and eat a lot, But if I want that bock CHOI vegetable, right, and even though target sells it for whatever thing, I'm going to go to that Asian stall two miles away just because I know it's legit for whatever it is.
Right, And then you think that they're more likely to find the smart, the better growers or back choi and they know where to.
Get exactly exactly exactly. They're going to care a little bit more. They care, They care much more. Frankly, for that matter, they care much more. And they could also provide insights that that the target may not have, right, and that's not targets business podul.
They shouldn't care.
They cut care for everything, right, and so that's why Sahan exists. We exist within this ecosphere if you care about immigrants, and if you care about issues that the main papers may not have the resources or time to cover, which it does happen right there on the daily cycle.
That's why you come to Sahan.
Because you come to Sahan because you're curious, you're interested,
¶ Sahan publishes in English to serve all Minnesotans
and you seek to understand issues more than just the surface level.
Well, let's talk about Sohan specifically, because you are doing something that on paper wouldn't be easy to do, because you're basically saying, look, we're going to cover all of these underserved immigrant communities. And then while they have some things in common, they actually don't have a lot in common. Right, a Somali community versus among community versus a first generation Mexican American community, right, like it is? It is not so that actually I wonder how difficult that is. That's
your north star. But you're basically you know that that's a pretty wide breadth of coverage. So, yeah, give me a specific how does it? You know, what when do you decide, Hey, this community needs we need a we need a full time reporter for this community.
Yeah, yeah, well we well, thank you Chuck Fall putting my problems in a nutshell essentially, but thank you for that.
Thank you, and part of our goal here, right, we're trying to figure out how to solve how many of these problems can we solve individually, and how many of these problems are we going to have to build a collective network for. I mean, I know I have a vision of a of a collective network that can where you get to keep your independence, but maybe there is ways to share some expenses, right, and that's you know, to make all of us a little more affordable.
Exactly exactly, So let me try to answer a question. So a couple of things. So you know, Sahan is six years old. So some of the things that you bring up, we're still trying to crack the code, right, you're trying to solve it, right, So a few things. I think there was a deliberate, very deliberate decision that was made when we were started. We published in English, and that was deliberate because our mission is not to just serve one pocket of immigrants, right, Like, as you mentioned,
we have a whole host of communities. We primarily suff East Africans, Amongs of Hispanic, but it was also equally
¶ Addressing immigrant issues can uplift the entire community
important for us to show all Minnesotas, so the non immigrants to a more equitable state. And that only works if we have non immigrants of non immigrants reading our work as well. Now, and we don't really bucket our stories into Somali among Hispanic. We we do traditional beats healthcare, education, social justice, you know, uh, police reforms uh sorry uh, and security and crime, criminal justice and stuff like that. And you know, sometimes those stories relate to a Somoli
community modern than among community. As you can imagine, some of the fraud coverage that we were covering right right would would center on a particular community, So we don't necessarily cover them by community. But about topic issues, now, one of the things that we've noticed is that people are not jumping from let's say I'm among person. I'm not necessarily going to jump to the Hispanic main story or a Mong story, sorry, a Somali story. And that's
something that we're trying to work through right now. But for you, for the fact is that's one of the challenges that we have. So we don't we we try to cover things that matter to a particular community regardless of their regardless of their background. Now, this is what I would say though, and this is a little bit of like a business model where you if you serve
¶ Why not publish in multiple languages? Is it a resource issue?
the outlier case, you tend to also serve the general public when it comes to education. Right, we wrote a beautiful story. We've written step one. Our education reporter is absolutely amazing and everywhere I'm blessed that everywhere I go people talk about the reporters more than and the ones that I've inherited from this job, so they're really good.
But when you talk about the education needs of the current community or the Somali community, and it is uplift it and regardless of your background, when you read it and you're trying to improve the school system and you care about the immigrant that particular community, you do uplift
your education system for your own child as well. And so that's one of the things that we've learned that we've seen where you know, the majority non immigrant population in Minnesota still use our news content as their source of not just information, but to advocate for their own
¶ Sahan added a spanish language version
child's education system. I can't tell you the amount of moms that I've bumped into who use our education stories in their mom's chat group, right, because we are at the end of the day, it is a meltic body, is a multi racial society, and what's best for this child is also good for my genile And so it's not as binary as you think as one would think, you know, which is what I walked into. But I you know, I learned quite a number of things as into my new role.
You know, it's interesting you said that, you guys, are you always publish in English? Do you think you're leaving any readers on the it is? I mean, does the effort to publish in multiple languages? I mean, is that a how much of that is a financial decision? And how much of it is Look, I know, like I said,
had grown up in Miami. When I grew up in Miami in the seventies and eighties, I knew many I had many friends whose parents insisted that English bespoke in the house, even though they were Spanish first parents, because
¶ Insisted on using a spanish speaking human for translations
they wanted their kids to assimilate to America. So I know there's a lot of immigrant parents who are here with their kids and they're like, no, no, no, no, you've got to we want you to assimilate into American cultures. So we'll do this. So I understand that five there, but I'm curious if you looking at the numbers, if you've ever contemplated, well maybe we should or I don't know.
It is an ongoing conversation. And let me let me clarify. Yes, we do publish in English, and last year we started Sahan and Espaniels and then you can imagine what that is, right, and so we do have translations in Hispanic, and we chose Hispanic because they are the largest immigrant population within Minnesota.
It is okay, it is, I mean, Somali is very close to second.
But but this is state wide versus city. If you just did this in Minneapolis proper, would it be Somali over Latino.
Yeah?
Yeah, the numbers I mentioned was statewide. Yeah yeah, absolutely right,
¶ Digital tools allow for pretty good translation
yeah yeah. And so here I'm not going to throw anyone under the bus here, but I got to tell you the founder and our editor in chief, they are really picky if they feel like they cannot get the translation right. They were not going to do it at all because they felt like it would insult that population, that community.
That is also true, and they're looking forward to how Ai blows this exactly.
So and if you if you want to think about AI explosion and technology. This we're talking about the last twelve months. But before I, when I came on board, it was that was what I heard, like, we can't do if we can't do this right, which means actually have actually having a human translator translated from a cultural context chunk. Don't forget, I'm not talking about word usage here, but it's a word for a word.
It's crazy. No, no, no, no, that's always much much harder to connect.
Exactly.
So our our editor in chief was man and and founders Somali. They were like, Nope, not going to do it, not going to do it, because it's it's too expensive to have a human translator.
Right now. I've always wondered when I came on board, you know.
And now he's two things that we've that I've I've seen a we've seen a lot of articles where it's published in English and then the comment section is in the native town like someone's yep.
Because it's as server posted on our somewhere.
Yeah, exactly.
And so the the the assumption that we're pulling is that people are just reading it, but then they're communicating to the community about the content in their own language.
Right, So that's perfectly normal. Yeah, perfectly normal.
And I've seen that in my own life. But then now I'm seeing now news from like, huh, that's interesting.
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¶ What works about the nonprofit model? Could you see going for-profit?
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Yeah, right, exactly, and that's probably the second generation immigrant population that we're referring to. And now the third thing is this AI thing. It is ridiculous how you can press a button here and people, there's two options. We can provide the button to be pressed so that the language is translated, but you could also just click on a page and google whoever it is your your provider is going to say translated yourself. Right, So we are at a crossroads right now. My one of my team member,
¶ Sustainability is the ultimate goal regardless of profit model
my growth person, brought this idea to me and say, hey, do you just want to have three buttons up there, English, Somali, mong up the top and so people can just click And I would say, at this point we could explore it. It's a slightly lower list I have my my it's a it's a lower lift and what it was twelve months ago, that's for sure, right. And my curiosity around audience growth is not necessarily around language, but it's around
the needs, the information needs of a particular generation. So I hope that answers your question, because it wasn't curiosity that excid that I was curious.
I was thinking about, Well.
It's one of those things where you know, newsrooms make the mistakes sometimes where they think, we know we have to do this, let's not use an outside tool, let's not assume, and sometimes your own readers will do it. So go ahead and embrace what their tools may be, and then you just offer them all right. You know, it's almost like you let your readers some of you want to translate this, how do you want it done? You know, do you have a favorite. Most people might
have their own way. You know what, I use my own translator. I don't need you. Maybe you guys can come up with a better one. But you're reinventing the wheel here, and you know what, it turns out none of us have the resources to reinvent wheels. In the local news space, We've got to save every dollar that's possible here. So you know where you can share a resource? Well, great, Hey, here's Google. Here's the button for Google Translate. Here's the
button for Apple's version. Here's the button for open Ais and Clauds or whatever. Right, and I buy that. Let's talk about your business model. Yeah, do you imagine that you're always going to be a nonprofit or do you see the do you see a vision here? Because you know,
¶ Generating revenue from subscribers + donors is the ideal model
being when you're serving an underserved community, your opportunity to have a classified ad system, I think is probably higher than a more general news local news outlet. The opportunity that you have specific businesses that want to target, you know, your community that you're serving because they provide services that over index with immigrant populations. Right, So I imagine there is some interesting business opportunities that you have. What's working?
What do you think is underutilized that you're hoping to experiment with, and do you think this can move from nonprofit to for profuit?
You know, I as part of my homework, I did hear the interview that you did with John and there was a line that he said that I think resonates with a lot of people. The nonprofit for profit that's essentially a tax status right at the end of the day.
Yep.
And the key here is sustainability. That's all what we that's all we want. We want to have enough money.
Whatever the whatever, the your whatever your tax is, are you sustainable or unsustainable?
Exactly?
I think one big difference is if you are a nonprofit and you have a banner year, you are reinvesting those dollars into the community and into the work as opposed to going to a shareholder or whatnot. Right, So
¶ Washington Post has become beholden to Jeff Bezos
the goal here is so let me try to talk about it from a sustainability perspective.
Chuck, that's a great way, perfect, perfect is that?
Okay? Yeah?
Yeah, if we move the for profit, so be it that. I'm guessing I'm going to have to pay lawyers a bunch of money to make that happen. But this is what we really want.
So he's either way.
Lawyers, either way, because you gotta pay a smart account and a lawyer and the not for profit and nonprofit all of it, right, like, no matter what. So that's why everybody tells tells their kids a go to law school because there's always a job.
Yeah, go ahead, Yeah.
So let me talk about sustainability here and you I'm not I'm sure you are familiar with this, but let me share out this story for your audience if they're not so familiar, but local for a nonprofit entity, it's usually the national funders who come in to catalyze a news room, right, and so they see a need, right, hey in Minnesota, great news ecosystem, but man, that's the huge segment of the population that's been neglected.
Boom, let's invest in sahanj you know, Okay.
And then from a national foundation perspective, they like that, you know, they they catalyze they whatever you want to call it, the shiny object kind of thing. But eventually they belief and I agree with them that the work needs to be sustained from a from the local foundation perspective, from the local readers perspective, and whatnot, right and that's the journey where Sahana is in this midpoint. We still have national funders, but the conversation is that, hey, we
need a little bit more time. But we are slowly moving into local foundations, in local readers. Right if eventually we end up becoming like a public like the NPR model, where I think you're I don't know what's the number, but anywhere between sixty to seventy percent funded by your audience, right, and then the remaining to other maybe it's foundations, a couple of foundations here there, but other business ventures. I think that is where we need to be, whether we
¶ Ideally, 50-70% reader funded is the business model
are for profit.
So for profit is going to be like a paywall system.
I guess if you want to call it but nonprofit then people are paying twenty bucks a month. They pay twenty bucks for Netflix. Now they're paying some twenty dollars a month. And that's the key piece here because when we have a lot of majority, if our revenue comes from individual donors, then we are not beholden to some of this.
I mean, it does happen. We are not beholden to lunch lunch. You know, big.
Donors and and and and and and big onus, right, the.
Right you don't want to have, right, No, I know, I know what you mean, meaning like you're you're you either have shareholders. That's one thing and they demand and it really is look they they demand. It's a judiciary
¶ Audience size isn't the ultimate panacea
responsibility that that word means something for a reason. Right, It is about maximizing your profits hard stocks, actly right. There is not a there is not a character test on that, right, it is just maximizing profits an individual. I always say, you know, you can have a benevolent billionaire or a malevolent billionaire, or you could have a billionaire who's both malevola some years and benevolent other exactly right, exactly,
and relying on the whim of one. That means you're always going to be defined by that one, for better or for worse. I mean, you know, look at the Washington Post, They're being defined by their individual owner. I never thought the Washington Post would ever put itself in that situation, right, it was like, you know, most people can't tell you the name of who owns the New York Times. That should be how the Washington Post works,
even the Wall Street Journal. I think a lot of people don't fully a lot of you know, I'm guessing if you're in the business, you know who owns it. But I bet you it isn't easily known, right, because
¶ Who the audience is can matter as much as the size of it
the murdocks are so afraid of the Wall Steret Journal losing its prestige, they kind.
Of back off, back off.
They don't want it. They don't want to be the defining image and brand of that. So I totally understand what I'm curious about, because this is what happened to the successful black press news organizations of the thirties, forties, and fifties in sixties, where it was incredibly necessary until
mainstream media finally acknowledge the existence of these communities. Then over time, the resources of those large news organizations suddenly finally covering Black America made it harder for the black press to to you know, survive in that in that instance, I mean, look, this would be a good problem for your communities to have Suddenly the start tribune had the resources to cover it all. Is that something or do
you think we're you know, we're in it. This is a generational shift in how the information ecosystem on a local level is going to work.
Yeah, I mean, if you work I came from a nonprofit background before this right, And if at the end of the day your job is to kind of work yourself out of the job at the end of the day, that means, like some point.
If you're doing it well, if you're using nonprofit, well, that's exactly right, that whatever you're doing, you should eventually not have to be doing that because exactly your investment was so smart and targeted that it got it thrives.
On its own exactly. So. But let me go back to what you were saying. Here's so, here's my theory. I do think.
Fundamentally we do need to be reader funded by a readers, like a big portion, more than fifty percent, sixty maybe even seventy percent. And I don't know what the exact number is, and and that's something that we have to work it through. I have also I also have a theory. Again,
¶ Craigslist destroyed the business model for local newspapers
I'm saying this again because I'm not a journalist, so I might be saying things that might make me look dumb or whatnot. But I I'm not convinced. I'm not convinced that audience size is our is it panacea? That's the word panacee. Yeah, we do. We need to do a good job. We need to have a sizeable audio. It's not just from an impact perspective, right you guys talk about here, you write the best article in the.
One than five people read it? Who cares? Right?
Right? So okay, So if it's not five, how about five thousand volient? How about fifty thousand? What maybe is half a million dollars but half a million. But here's the thing, Chuck. If our reader right now, if our readers we have let's say about two hundred thousand a month, it goes up to three hundred thousand a month or four hundred thousand a month, does that mean our revenue says double? No, it's not right. I don't think so, because it's not. It's not a one for one thing,
right we. Part of it feels that we talk about readers size because it's still tied to the old way.
Of making money, which was advertising. Right. And the way I look.
At audience size is that it is important for legitimacy, It is important for impact. Even if ten people read that, and those ten people happened to be state legislatures.
Good for good for saha. Oh absolutely right.
Yeah, Look, my NBAC, I can tell you the business model for CNBC is not ratings they've never had. There's not a lot of people that watch the stocks every day. But you know it's the NBC cells. They have CEOs who keep their TV on, So it's the it's they're selling who's watching, They're not selling how many are watching. And what you're saying is the quality of your reader is as important to yours.
As important exactly, and so yes, we you know, is that what the girl audience? Yes, I think if we have time to talk about in the future, we'll talk about where we want to grow next.
But I I.
We we do need an excizeable audience, but we need to leverage that audience.
How do I say.
The understanding of what SAHAN means the brand right, and how can we make money from that? We've talked about. I mean you've already seen events. They've talked about creating events, right.
John fest like that.
I mean I could see all sorts of that, you know, a quarterly festival of some sort of cultural might be news, might be you know whatever, right exactly.
You know I've talked to out. I think the future
¶ Newsrooms tend to be conservative and cautious trying new models
generation people are yearning for a sense of community and what can SAHAN do to create that sense of community? Right, and when they have this thing from us, I'm sure they will continue to support Sahan. So I don't have a full answer yet, but I've told this to my team before. It's become a broken record to the point
where I actually need to do it. But if I find out that, hey, a laundromat that has a net profit margin of thirty percent, maybe Sahan should just own laundromets and turn the profit margins to fund for newsroom. Because I don't care as long as it's clean, legit money, obviously, but at the end of the day, if we can transfer some of our net earnings from one unrelated business model to support our newsroom, that's a win for me.
You know. I find it so unfortunate that.
But that's exactly how media has always been funded. You know. It's interesting take. You know, I sort of joke that a man named Craig decided classified how to be free, YadA, YadA, YadA, we destroyed the entire local news ecosystem, right, Well, it turned out for a lot of news organizations, you know,
and this was true of some newspaper publishers. They believe they were running an advertising business and whatever space they couldn't fill an ad they had to have a news article, you know, And and I think that that is how some news publishers felt it was simply a vehicle for advertisement and and you know, and so you know, there is that there there there is that line there that I that I think is that that there was probably
some truth to that. But you're not wrong. It's like whatever, you know, you may stumble on, like I've got this theory that there's a lot of money to be made in youth.
Sports exactly yep, and that youth.
Sports can be a way to become the new classified advertising for local journalism. So youth sports is something that families of all shapes and sizes care about. Everybody is you know what, and there's always a there's we have our kids participating in It is a glue for a community. It they are always you know, it is very niche. But at the same time, it's also something everybody has in common. No matter how wealthy you are or how poor you are, you may have a kid who's playing
in participating in youth sports. So you may stumble upon a way to showcase youth sports games that make a ton of money that finances the journalism so I totally see where you're going.
Yeah, I thank you for you know, Amazon was not really profitable until they stumbled on I'm not going to use stumble because the person will be insulted, but Amazon Web Service isn't this right finally to quantify.
That they're the profit engine, And that's right. I don't know exactly, I don't know if Amazon has ever made money as a retail outlet. It acquired audience, right, it was a loss leader, and you know they just wanted it quickly. I mean, look at how they've suckered us all in on streaming services. Right. It turns out we all got addicted at three and four dollars a month, Like, okay, great, now it's nineteen ninety nine a month. Whoa, whoa? What am I all of a sudden, I'm spaying what up
out of the cable bundle? Right, Like, we're all going, exactly where did that go?
So?
I think that's where we're that's that's where we're looking, that's the that's the moment we're looking for. Like, so I found this is one of my surprising things. And you are probably going to say, yeah, what if you didn't know that? But newsrooms can be conservative at times in terms of what they're willing to try out from a business model perspective. I'm fortunate that I'm not that
¶ Immigrant newsrooms due well to not follow national media practices
in that space. You know, I work with I'm in a coalition with other newsrooms, like like newsrooms documented in New York, el Tim Bunnel in the Bay Area and then connect to Arizona, and we are working. You know,
it's funded by Press Forward Press Forward Foundation. Yeap, you're familiar with that, and we are trying to identify new revenue, new revenue streams for not just newsrooms, but in the immigrants serving newsrooms, and so we are you know, we're piloting a few things with testing thing mouth, but the spirit of being an immigrant and where you're not tied to sit in traditional legacy media practices allows us to
push things out in the boundaries. And hey, if we have some good news to share, I love to be coming back to your show with my colleagues to talk about how we are making money to support the work.
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¶ Media is fracturing, but the barrier to entry is getting lower
slash podcast, or simply use the promo code podcast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace, so use that code. So have you networked with other immigrant focused news organizations around the country, and if so, tell me about that network. How how much of you how how much of it is it? How loose is it or how specific does it?
Get? Sure?
Yes, So on my first day, on my first week, I even before going to the office, I met with this this group. So we call ourselves in I n C Immigrant Newsroom Coalition. Right now, it's just it's it's document. Like I'm going to say it, names again, documented in New York, SAHAN in Minneapolis, out Timpano in the Bay Area, and connect to Arizona. Each of us have very different,
you know, slightly different for sure, different audiences, different business models. Uh. And they've just taken me on board to just not just to educate me about the industry, to welcome me, to tell me, hey, yeah, this is how it is in the in in the space that we're operating in. And and we we meet weekly. This is a very dedicated group of leaders and news rooms.
Very so this is national. You do like a weekly zoom or something.
We do a weekly zoom.
We we meet quarterly for a retreat to strategize, and you know, we we have a few we're.
Working through a few things.
I mentioned a little bit about our revenue, the different pilots we're testing out to bring in new revenue streams. But we feel but one of the and we're working through a few initiatives right now. I think one big part is to continue to to to impress upon important stakeholders like you know, Chuck, you you got you get the message, and you got the message pretty loud and clear early on in your life. And the same fact is not everyone is in that space, you know, And
¶ Able to overindex audience by using video & social media
so we do feel like we do need to champion we do need to champion the needs of immigrant serving newsrooms. You know, we have some really good newsrooms out there around the country that that's still.
Something about them. Tell me a couple of partners that you think people ought to be aware of that you look to as where you've learned something, you've taken something. Obviously you guys share best practices. So yeah, i'd love I'd love a couple of shout outs.
Yeah, sure, sure, let me So I'm going to use God, you're putting me in a spot where I feel like I'm picking favorites here, then I'm.
Going to get on exactly.
So one of my favorite So, I think one one key thing that that is in common with all immigrant serving news rooms that I've observed is the lack of adherence to certain practices that traditional media tends to follow. And so I would one of my favorite stories is from Connector a Reason, So the founders Marizza Felix and
¶ Are you able to syndicate any of your work to other outlets?
I'm going to butcher her origin story, but it's pretty cool for what it's worth. During COVID pandemic, you know, her mom who lives on the other side of the border with she would be on the phone with her mother talking about COVID precautionary stuff and all this stuff, and her mom was receiving incorrect information, and so she would spend a lot of time just speaking to her
mother over the phone. She said, And Mariita is a journalist herself, and that phone call became in my mind, it became like an audio newsletter because right now she does. If you go to journal dot com, you're going to see something that looks like a traditional website, and Mariza's connected result does not have that because her primary content is still through WhatsApp channels. Right, So someone could say I have five hundred newsletter subscribers, she will say I
have five hundred. I don't know what terminology she uses, like WhatsApp subscribers, right.
But I'm so glad you brought up WhatsApp in general, because I don't think people realize how global and how it's such an important lifeline to so many immigrant communities in America because it's global exactly.
So I.
Can'd of remember when but I was walking past her, she was just filming a WhatsApp, she was reading a script, she was basically reading her content, and she said she was going to send push to all of her subscribers, right, So.
¶ Finding stories they can collaborate on with other outlets
Isn't that I mean, that's.
Really cool, Chuck how many legacy news rooms would say they would do that to connect primarily with the audience, because there is a deep understanding that my audience are auditory audience as opposed to they would prefer things over right.
So I think this is what you know. It's funny if you look at the history of media, and one of the things I like to remind people is that, like, actually, disruption is a feature, not about meaning. It starts with when we figured out how to reproduce photographs, then people launched a bunch of magazines because we could now reprint photographs. When we figured out how to transmit audio, we had
radio stations everywhere. When we figured out how to do moving pictures, then we got television right like, and so what we're in now is this fragmenting stage and the specialization stage where there is no barrier to entry to create news and information anymore. There's no you know, look at the organization. I used to work at NBC. We
¶ Local service journalism isn't always sexy but is incredibly useful
used to have a feature called where in the world is you know, filling the anchor blanks? You know that name, because we're going to go live from the Gobi Desert. We're going to go live from Antarctica, and it was such a marvel ten fifteen years ago that we could take you lot. Anybody can go live from Antarctica. You've got to get there, okay, But you could have an ant correspondent today. You could find somebody that lives there and they could real time transmit information back and forth.
The point being is, I think the future of news delivery is going to be personal. It is going to come through trusted curators. The person that conveys the information maybe part of a larger network that aggregates information collectively. Right, we may all work in some of these same newsrooms together. We may bundle like I could see, you know, I bet you in the future, I'm gonna, hey, I want I want to subscribe to all Minnesota publications for one
¶ What type of service journalism do you produce?
hundred dollars a month and I'll get a bundled fee or I want you know, you know, and everybody will get a piece of that, and maybe that's how I'll roll there. But I just think we're going to the way people come into a news organization is going to be personal, not based on a brand, but based on an individual. I just think that, and you just described the individual way that suddenly half a million people showed up.
In exactly Yep.
It's one individual way and that's just it's with WhatsApp, right, and there's a lot of information that's been shared over SMS. Now Sahans started from it and it's still predominantly like a very traditional outlet right now. We do really good work with social media, with TikTok and with our video content, and that's why we over index with not just immigrant population, but young immigrant population, something that I'm really proud of.
But the.
I think what I said earlier, what was it? The lack of adherence to legacy practices binds us together not just from a content creation, content distribution, but also from a revenue generation perspective. So we are willing to take a risk. We take a risk coming to this country. We believe in the ideals supports in this country. We're
¶ The joyful part of the immigrant experience needs to be better covered
willing to take a risk, and it shows up in the way we run our organizations.
Well, look, I anyway, it's very exciting. I think these possibilities. Let me ask this, what kind of of are you syndicating your work yet? Meaning you know it's the Star Tribute said, you know what, we want to improve our coverage and it may be I'm curious if you would do this or would you see this is too close, too competitive?
No, no, we actually do that already. So we have you know, I walked into a Kumba.
Kumbay.
Kumbay is what I'm learning here and Kumbaya, I got you situation.
Yep.
So you know Sahan was incubated Minnesota.
Nice. Please, it's Minnesota nice. You guys are all too cooperative, right.
Hey, I that's some friendly competition.
But you know, Sahan was incubated at Minnesota Public Radio, like Mukar had a desk in there. They they funded the first million dollars. They was far and so I think I look, first of all, I look about Sahan listening Minnesota Public Radio.
So we do have content already collaborating. We are already
¶ Trying to balance what the audience wants with what they need
collaborating the Start Tribune.
I believe every Sunday chooses one article that we run, that we've published, and then they put it into their circulation and say this is an article. You know, they because they realize that of the value, our value the ecosystem, and we also realized that they have the reach that we don't. We will never get. Well, I wouldn't say we will never get because my team will slaughter be. We're not We're not there yet, right, yeah, So we are cooperating around along those lines. I'm really excited that
we are also collaborating. We are finding stories that we can collaborate on, you know, because frankly, if you I'm sure you are aware of what happened in the first quarter of the year in Minneapolis.
And this was a case where the story is so big it doesn't matter. You kind of needed each other as resources and.
Exactly so we found some some we found some opportunities to collaborate editorially, and I'm extremely curious to see how that plays out.
Let me close with this, you know, I'm I look at I look at local news into two ways, and I think the mistake, the reason national news never has the trust that local news has, I believe is simply national news is news. You you should know. It's it's civics class, okay. And I say that not as a way to knock it. It's what it should be at its best. It is because you know, but local news sometimes is civics and sometimes it's just very personal. It's
¶ Celebrating Local News Day on April 9th
service journalism, meaning it ain't the greatest, it ain't the sexiest story. Oh you know. But if you're helping your readers save money, save time, live their lives, you're just helping them live their life a little better.
It does.
It isn't always telling them who's corrupt. Sometimes it is letting them know where to find more affordable chicken, right like you know? And I used to say, the reason that the local newspaper has such a nostalgic field for some of us is because it was they had had something for everybody, right if the news junkie, the puzzle junkie, the sports junkie, the coupon clipper, the whatever you want
to look, the person looking for a job. Right, there were there was a It was one entity that provided service to eight to ten different parts of the community. How would you describe at the Shan Journal? What are there's? There's there's the news that we'd all traditionally sense. What are type of this?
What?
What tell me your service oriented type of journalism? And how much culture? How much you know youth coverage, sports, food, entertainment?
You know?
Are you are you? I know those are luxury items as you row, right, it's a news organization. But where are you on that? And and what do your readers want. I mean, obviously, ultimately you should be only providing what your readers actually correct, what.
What would consume correct.
We it's it's a let me trying to unpack this question a little bit here, but uh, we we do a really good job when it comes to hard hitting news that impact immigrants, and so we don't we will we will never run away from that.
We will not stay away from it, right.
We We also strongly believe that if it was if there was something that that that was hot to be covered from an from an immigrant community perspective, we are the best ones to do it because we we bring a lot of perspective that that that that.
Matter to the reader.
Now along the lines of like what you just said, it's also very my dog just walked in. Sorry, there are a lot of there are a lot of parts about being an immigrant that that needs to be celebrated, that needs to be looked at from a from a joyful perspective that oftentimes is missing in coverage. And that's a piece that we that we also seek to highlight because it shows the whole, the whole, the whole picture
of what it means to be an immigrant within in Minnesota. Right, so yeah, we cover we cover you can cover your restaurant openings, but we cover the holidays that are being celebrated by these different communities.
Right.
We just did a beautiful story about Ramadan and also eat. I have so many I'm not going to share these stories, but I have so many. We have stories about the passing of a father from a Mong father, Monk farmer father, and how it was celebrated by the community that was you know, Mong, but also uh also white in the suburbs. So I we we don't. We don't cover sports, and that's that's okay, that's okay.
But you will, I promise you at some point you might.
Yeah.
Yeah, and a bit of art arts are being celebrated, but uh, and and and and and we feel like that's a good opportunity for the population to understand the immigrants space within.
The art space. And so yeah, we we do.
I call it the candy broccoli analogy. I think you guys used news that people need to have versus what they want. So it's the candy broccoli thing. And so that's a fair mix of that.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, I I've enjoyed this conversation and I know everything I've heard about and and been reading about Sahan Journal has been I mean, you guys seem to be a bright a bright spot here and in these and this growing local entrepreneur space.
And thank you, thank you so much.
No, I think a lot of Like I said, the barrier entry has never been lower, but you know you still got to jump.
Yeah, thank you, thank you.
I I appreciate you highlight think the importance of local news.
I completely agree with you.
There's a very very strong there's some study that has shown that local news is also less divisive.
Right.
We tend to look at news outlets and there's always someone yelling at someone else, and you know, you say, oh, this restaurant opened, this treat me. That's less divisive, but it's helpful, right, And studies have shown when people in the act with the local news, they are most civically engaged and civic minded and stuff like that, and as.
Well, and then there's the other stories that, uh, local news. Deserts pay more than taxes, so you know, you know, there's a there's a fiscal Uh, there's a there's a there's fiscal health for people's personal bank accounts at Staycare anyway, yes, uh but it was a.
Pleasure, Oh pleasures all mind, Chuck, I if I had this day with you, so thank.
Well, let's celebrate Local News Day and I imagine most people in Minneapolis are very very well read city and community, but hopefully those that aren't aware will be more aware of coming all night.
Thank you so much, Thanks for all right starting h m hmmm mm hmm