Why Nobody Trusts the News — And How to Fix It

0:00Support for the show comes from engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard, but if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spent platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes. Earned up to 10% back on hotels and in 2025, engine customers save more than 300 million on travel, with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join engine every month, join them, and get $500 from your business sign up and start traveling at engine.com slash founders. Welcome to the Prof.G. Markets Founder Series. I'm Adelson. The media industry has been reinventing itself for decades. In the 90s, the internet fundamentally changed how news was distributed, which reshaped the economics of journalism. Fast forward to today, AI is forcing the industry through another transformation, and this one may be even more consequential.

1:06Newsrooms everywhere are grappling with how AI is changing the way people discover and consume information. At the same time, the technology has made trust more valuable than ever, perhaps creating a renewed appreciation for reporting done by real journalists. Our next guest has been at the center of these shifts for more than two decades. He helped pioneer digital journalism, and today he leads one of the most influential news organizations in the world. So we wanted to get his take on some of the most existential questions that media organizations are contending with today, such as How Can Organizations Respond to Declines and Search Traffic, How Should Newsrooms Use AI Without Compromising Trust. And what will the next generation of digital media companies actually look like? This is my conversation with Jim Van De Haai, co-founder and CEO of Axios. Jim, great to see you and thank you for joining me. I want to start at the beginning, because actually you've co-founded two very successful media organizations.

2:13The one before Axios was Politico. Can you take us back to that year when you started that company and then take us through to today? I think the origin of Politico is in some ways a poetic in some ways kind of the beginning of the end of an era. So if you go back to 20 years ago, it's early 2007 is when Politico launched. Before that, I had been a political writer and White House correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, never fancied myself an entrepreneur. We had this idea. We kind of saw that the web was changing the world. We wanted to be part of the change and not be part of the institution. So we launched Politico. Almost to the day that we launched Politico, the iPhone comes out. Facebook starts to take off. Twitter starts to take off. Google's surging. Streaming takes off. So like 2007 is a really important year in history now looking back. And so we were able to ride what was a massive technological shift, a massive consumer shift.

3:24We probably pioneered kind of speed and voice in journalism. Politico was a rocket ship. I mean, I think at four months after we launched the company, I was on stage, co moderating a presidential debate that we co-sponsored unheard of for a new media company. We, you know, was the Obama Clinton race. So there was a lot of national international interest in it. And the company never stopped growing. It did to this day does quite well. In the time we were journalists with an idea. And then we were entrepreneurs that made it happen. And then you have to actually run a company. And that's where I learned to be a CEO learned to lead. Eventually we started axiots. We had a great 10 year run that company grew. We learned how to run a business. We proved that the digital model could work. I think we created a model that others, not long after would would try to copy in other areas, the information in technology, punchable up on Capitol Hill. I think most of the successful publications of the last decade kind of took that model. And a lot of those folks worked for us. So it's very gratifying to see the family tree extend. And then, you know, we did that 10 years and we had a great run.

4:39I say after 10 years, the issue that we had with information consumption was like, wow, politics is important. It's not everything. And if you're a smart person. Our observation was you're going to suddenly need to know a lot more across more topics when more stuff's getting pumped into your head. And we wanted to solve for that. And that's where we came up with the idea of axiots and came up with this idea of smart brevity. Which is what is the most efficient way to deliver smart content to busy professional readers. The architecture was smart brevity. This idea of what is new. Why does it matter? Put your most important information in bullets. Make sure it's in hierarchical order. Make sure it's reader first. It's all about the consumer, not what the journalist wants. And that model for that moment really worked in axiosis now almost 10 years old. Interestingly, almost in the exact same day and January of next year, political return 20 axiots up to 10. And so I'm sure there'll be a lot of reflection on what that means, intentional media in DC.

5:44But it really has been a tour of the wild west in terms of just the changing nature of the information ecosystem. Remember, before that, when I met the Washington Post, these papers are dominant. A couple TV stations are dominant. Most people trusted media. And now, like I don't even know how I would describe the media ecosystem media matters, but that doesn't matter more than podcast. Does it matter more than influencers? Does it matter more than what's on your social media feed? Does it matter more of what you're watching on YouTube? Does it matter more than what you're hearing from people in your household? Like the way that our brains absorb information is so radically different today than 20 years ago that it might as well be a 200 year gap. That 2007 year, it was so important. And it's interesting that you went out and you started your new company that seemed to be there was a thesis about how digital media would change the world essentially. And that certainly happened.

6:47Was that discussed by other more traditional news outlets like were you an outlier in believing that media was taking a different direction to what extent did traditional media institutions like the post which you work for before. To what extent did they understand what was about to happen? I think they understood that something big was happening because you could see it. You had websites and you could look at your traffic and you could tell more people were coming to you online and they were coming to the newspaper. But they weren't adjusting. The Washington Post was still a newspaper reporters cared what was on the front page of the physical newspaper. I remember when I at the time Washington Post website and newspaper were two separate companies one in Virginia one in DC. When I went to the digital version in Virginia, they're like you're the first person from the mother ship, who's ever come to our foreign land. And I'm like, are you kidding me? It looks like I get more people reading me on your site than I do in the newspaper. They're like, yes, we've been telling people that for a year, no one's listening.

7:48So when we launched back then people didn't know everybody starts a media company or starts a sub stack back then nobody did. So everyone assumed we were on drugs and that it would fail. And so it was not an environment where people were cheering for us. I think people thought we'd fail. And just it was such an exotic concept to be honest, I kind of thought we'd fail. I just don't care because I was a pretty good journalist. I figured someone would hire me. But now it's not that it took years before other people sort of had the confidence to do the same, but now it's very commonplace to happen. And again, there's pros and cons of all this. I think that I actually think that the information ecosystem is much better today than it was 20 years ago. I just think it's a really hard information ecosystem to navigate. It's this great paradox. There's more good high quality information available to any of us than ever before. There's also more crap misinformation, manipulative information available to all of us than ever before. So it puts a huge burden on us, the individual news consumer, to know what we're getting, what we're sharing, what we're taking serious and what we're not.

8:58And I think that's too much for probably 95% of the population. I think that's probably the big concern for most people about media today. I mean, I'm sure there are plenty of concerns across the political spectrum. But the rise of social media has meant that that is how a lot of people are now getting their news. In fact, when we look at the numbers among adults under 30, 76% of young people adults under 30 are now getting their news on social media. And the question is, should we really be trusting the news that we're getting on social media? Should we be trusting the stuff that comes out from clips, from influencers? I mean, how do you think about all of that? I'm very sympathetic to the consumer because the answer is most likely you shouldn't be trusting most of what's popping up in your algorithm unless you're very carefully curating your algorithm, unless you're really making sure you're following smart people. And really following people that are on the level that there are even people to begin with, like half the people who are on quote out there are bots, very dangerous atmosphere. And so the way I look at it is, and I'm a beneficiary of this. And again, I think I'm in a small minority.

10:11I feel exponentially smarter today than I did five years ago. I feel like I have almost a bionic brain because I know what inputs to put in and what to filter out. So I know who to follow on X. I know what videos to watch. I know what podcast are loaded with smart people. I know how to track down the smartest people across science, energy, technology when they're on shows and listen to them unfiltered. I know what news sources because I've been in the news. I know which reporters to follow and usually get it right. I know which ones kind of our commodity petlers. And so I feel great. But I'm also in the news. I get paid to know the news. I've hired a fired a lot of these people over the years. So like I have 100 advantages. So for most people, you don't have that. So I think most people end up in the state that they probably would express, which is they feel overwhelmed, uncertain, deeply confused, and often a little demoralized. And just the simple fact that the thing that even five years ago, it would be very unusual for a smart person to send you something and say, this is great. If it's real, like no one would have said that. And now it happens every day.

11:18I fall for it all the time, where I'll see something and like I have like a dopamine, jolt, the most interesting and I have to pause. Like, wow, it's not even real. And that's just a wild place to be in. And that's even before we really start to grapple with AI, which will be a lot of things. I think that's the way I think about the AI, which we'll get to. But it's just an interesting time to be alive. Because I think about this all the time. Because people are usually critical of the modern information ecosystem. But then I think about it, like 20 years ago, like I went to this phase and I'm kind of gotten over it of being obsessed with longevity and the science around it. And just a go, if I opened the New York Times or the Washington Post or watched CBS, I might get a health story once every two weeks. Like I could be very hard for me to learn. And I didn't, I might have to go to the library to get a medical journal. And now I can listen to the smartest people on earth who are studying these topics unfiltered on YouTube or on a podcast and have unfettered access to them that I wouldn't even had as a reporter.

12:26So I can access the brightest minds and the most interesting information. And so that's great. But it just requires time and it requires a filter and it requires a pretty good BS sniffer. And that's a lot to ask of the average person who has a life. What does it leave a media organization like Axios? Because if everyone's if the media ecosystem has been sort of disaggregated to all of these different places to substalk to YouTube to podcasts influences commentators, etc. Media has lost a lot of ground in that race in a lot of ways. So what does this leave a company like Axios? I mean, Axios is killing it as a business and and obviously that's good because I run the business. But there's a part of it. Not that it's not good, but it speaks to a real problem. And it's a problem. I don't think people pay enough attention to, which is we get obsessed with income inequality, which is real and understandable.

13:27Why people get worked up about it? I worry a lot more about information inequality. Like Axios does so well because we serve the most powerful people in media, business, technology, politics. They read us voraciously so we can charge a massive cushion on our advertising because there are a hard audience to reach. And so as a business, we're doing really well. And that space of writing for people who have a need for high-end information to do their job is a very good space right now. That is a very good space to be in. So if you're a Bloomberg or you're an us or you're a punch bowl, even individual podcasts in your family of podcasts, we're all doing great. It's a really good time to be a media operator this year that doesn't necessarily solve the economics of informing everybody else. Like a lot of people can get our content free. So in theory, you could get it on Instagram or you could get it in your Facebook feed.

14:31But most of those people are consuming passively. So unless they've decided that follow us and we get sort of tucked into their feed, they're not necessarily benefiting from what I think is exceptionally high quality, thoughtful journalism to still in a way that would make sense to almost anybody. So I think about this question a lot because obviously I want to run a successful media company. I think media is the coolest industry to be in. We get paid to learn and to talk to most interesting people about the most interesting topics. But if you don't fundamentally have, you don't have to have highly informed, but you have to have an informed in somewhat rusting population for capitalism and markets and democracy to work long term. And if you end up with information and our key, you probably end up with some form of anarchy, or if not anarchy, maybe you end up with information apathy and then you end up with a population wide apathy.

15:32I always tell people who are dogging the media. I have the same reaction when you dog capitalism or free markets or democracy. Like whatever we did, whatever our forefathers did 250 years ago, those guys were wizards, man, wizards. They have set in motion the most powerful economic force known to man. And there's something about free markets or something about capitalism that creates almost a sensational desire to create, which then leads you to things like drug discovery in the internet. But I also think media, like this idea of embedding into the Constitution, this freedom of press, freedom of information is also somewhat unique to the US. And I think really helps the system work because it allows for this sort of level of transparency and accountability that you obviously lose in other systems. And so it's the mixture of those. You stir those things together and you get what I consider to be like true American magic.

16:32People don't always feel it these days. They're kind of down on things. I think that's nuts. I actually think it's a great time to be alive. I think it's an amazing time to be an American. I think that the system for all the crappy leadership that we often have, it's somehow resilient and powerful. And it's bigger than us. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from engine. The company's winning right now aren't cutting travel. They're booking smarter. Here's the reality. The average business travelersman's 45 minutes booking a single trip on a legacy platform with engine that booking time drops to as little as two and a half minutes. And it's AI powered personalization gets faster the more you use it. Multiply that across your team every trip every year. That's not a perk. That's a competitive advantage. Last year engine customers saved more than $300 million on travel. And with the engine X card get up to 10% back on any hotel booking.

17:3633,000 businesses have joined now. It's your turn get $500 in your business signs up and start traveling at engine.com slash founders engine X visa commercial cards are issued by fifth third bank and a member FDIC earn up to 10% back and points on eligible engine travel purchases actual rewards. It's buried by purchase category and made change points of no cash value and are redeemable for rewards through our program see full rewards terms for details got engine.com slash X slash rewards dash terms. We're back with Jim Van der Haay. What do you make of the shift in in Americans view of the media. I mean, there is just certainly over the last several years lot less trust in media in media organizations. How do you what do you make of all of that and was that in your head in the founding of Axios to what extent did distrust in media have a role in starting this company.

18:41Huge huge I mean because I can listen like it's big like I can. We can spend hours debating like who's to blame for it but it's real like I'm just such a like a brutalist when it comes to like it's just like real like I like whatever I can change it I want to look at every poll people don't trust us so they don't trust us. And I do think that there's a lot of culpability in the way that the media carried itself over the last 15 years that I wish others in the media would take more responsibility for I also think there's been a very organized movement particularly on the right to discredit mainstream media and it's been very very successful so by the time we started Axios that was that full boil like distrust was boiling it was raging and so we did a couple of things not that we're going to cure the problem but at least for our specific audience wanted to. And we said we're not going to have an opinion page. Enough noise out there we probably could have driven a lot of traffic and made some money off of it but like I don't think the world needs more opinion it feels like we have a sufficient amount of that these days and then we did a harder thing which is we asked everybody who works here to not talk about their political views in any public setting even if you're not a reporter and the reason that we've asked people to do that is like we're trying to be clinical with our reporting we're trying to do that.

19:58We're trying to persuade the persuadables that were on the level and that they can trust us so we have a almost a moral obligation to try to go the extra mile to see if we can win their trust by not doing things that undermine that trust and I don't think the average person differentiates between an Axios reporter and an Axios marketer or an Axios salesperson popping off on Twitter or popping off on LinkedIn and so people have been very anxious and I think that's a very bad rumble in living up to that and so it was it was very much in our minds it's always is like I don't I hate it that people don't trust the media I love good journalism and I think there's like I think there's some great media companies out there that I wish people did more fully trust and that doesn't mean we don't get stuff wrong Axios has gotten things wrong when you get it wrong you gotta like admit it and be transparent about it be humble enough to admit you're not always going to get it right if you're wrong like say it and people are very understanding if you if you're not trying to BS them that I think it's definitely true and so I think I think I think media behaves a little bit better now than it did 10 years ago you know I think when the history of media unpopularity is written I think Twitter is going to play a huge role in it it was the first time that I is somebody who worked in a lot of these newsrooms and knows a lot of these people there's something about Twitter that

21:28prompted otherwise like serious journalists to start to really reveal their personal views in a way that I think discredited them with a lot of readers and I didn't think that that was very healthy I was very critical of it at the time I remain quite critical of it and and again like it is what what people miss the critics of journalism like I said again like I said the journal I was at the post at political here like the number of times at a serious reporter shows overt signs of bias in my experience as somebody who's kind of a tune to it I don't see it very often most of the bias that I would see in newsrooms came from ignorance of of their background right like most of the journalists came from Ivy Leagues bigger cities you know kind of lefty families and so that they weren't church goers they weren't hunters they weren't from the Midwest like I happen to be a you know Midwest you know what I want to church and Hudson so I had a little bit maybe a different perspective coming in other than others but that's usually where I saw it most reporters I think most people if they watch most reporters in action would be they'd be pretty proud of how hard they do try to get to the closest approximation of the truth imperfectly for sure but I think they do a better job than I think our brand media would suggest how do you distinguish between as you say bias and also as you said

22:57opinion because this seems to be one of the the rifts that is emerging in the new media ecosystem today and something that I think a lot about is you know there was a lot of pushback against journalists because they had opinions or they had these biases and so that became this new ecosystem of podcasts and YouTube and people decided okay I'm gonna listen to Scott Galilee and Ed Elson's podcast or I'm gonna listen to Ben Shapiro's podcast or whatever it is but we're full of opinions and it seems like the only difference is that we just don't call ourselves journalists but at the same time we're disseminating information people and other podcasts are disseminating their information we're still contributing to the news ecosystem so how do you think about that difference and what is the difference where is the line between journalism and commentary and discussion I agree with you that it's been blurred

23:59considerably I do personally have a big distinction in my mind I think there's one thing for someone like Scott Galilee to be a hyper informed person who has multiple platforms does talk to some people but like obviously has a point of view and he's very very clear about his point of view and I think that that's great I know exactly where he's coming from I listened to him for that very reason and I can kind of filter that his opinion through that that's different that if you sign up to be a reporter right like when we're hiring a reporter what I'm not saying you don't have biases we're all humans you have biases but what we ask people to do is to say listen you're coming here you got to check whatever biases you have kind of at the door the best that you can and you have to cover these things like a doctor clinically and not you're not here to make an argument you're here to illuminate and that's just different it's different and both are both sort of a great value they'd be very hard for Scott to be Scott if there wasn't a lot of reporting that he could draw from so I think both

25:00are really important and I think as long as you're clear about what you are and then I think for people who've consciously made the decision to come to you they understand that they know if they come to Axios and they're reading Sarah Fisher they're getting something distinct from the experience of watching Scott or watching Cara like two very different things to companies with different different business models that have very clearly defined brands and those brands stand for something in the mind of that person so I think as long as you you you you're clear with the consumer the consumers cool with it I do think you need both like I this idea I got into this weird whatever pissing match with Elon Musk for a day or two maybe a couple of years ago about I did the speech that I didn't it wasn't meant to leak but it leaked right basically said like Elon Musk who says like we are the news we are the like we are the news and I said well

26:01that bullshit you're not the news you're a platform where people are expressing themselves in small bursts of information and you're a great platform you're killing it like you should be very proud of it but you're not a reporter don't pretend that that are that there's that set of standards that you're applying to it and there is a difference and I think there's a huge difference which is I do think there's I think this idea of saying I'm going to try to get to the closest approximation of the truth you trying to talk to people on every side of an issue you writing it through that lens it then going through an editing process is imperfect for sure but I still think it is the best process that I know of for trying to get to a clinical truth that people can then make decisions or have arguments about right so it's not again it is flawed but everything's flawed is there a concern on your and I know you say axiosis crushing it and and you know you guys

27:02are and Politico sold for a billion dollars in Axios and I'm selling for more than half a billion dollars like it's working but I think journalism and journalists as an entity they seem to be on the decline if we look at the number of local journalists per capita it's just been decimated over the past 20 years down 75% and I wonder if in the world of journalism that there is a concern that the world of having an opinion is a more profitable world or the world of running a social media platform where anyone can say whatever it is that they want to say that makes more money because it's more it taps into the senses it there's rage bait there are all of these things that we know about for us but ultimately we can get kind of addicted to and so how do you think about that this possibility that doing the the clinical work might not be as good of a business model that's why I was very clear when I was saying that we're killing it I'm not saying that in a boastful way I'm

28:06saying it that like I'm trying to show you that it is working really well in a very kind of elite audience environment that's not necessarily a great mass population environment and what you said is totally true empirically there are far fewer journalists exponentially far fewer journalists in local media than there were 10 years ago or there were 20 years ago so it is much harder to get a job in most facets of journalism than it was a decade or 20 years ago I think that's bad I think that having a more journalist particularly outside of Washington DC particularly outside of covering business or technology would be a great gift to humanity because I believe in the power of journalism I started in local journalism in in a small town in Wisconsin so I believe powerfully in it do I think that it can be revived I do I do think that in real time we're seeing maybe a re appreciation of reporting and a re appreciation of human verified truth not by

29:12everybody and again these things are these good and flow but I do think that it particularly in a world that's dominated by artificial intelligence which it will be it's it's going to be an AI world this idea of human verified human vetted intelligence delivered by a person is going to rise in value and the reason that I think it rises in value is that at some point soon we're all going to have some freaky device on us that's going to give us Einstein level intelligence across every single topic but all of us are going to have Einstein level intelligence so it's going to be human nature to want something differentiated from what everyone else has and I think that's where people in journalism human connection around topics is going to matter profoundly I do not believe that AI is ever going to get a source to tell them something that a human could get them to tell you I don't think AI is going to be able to pick up when you tell me something but you got a weird

30:15look on your face I could tell you're bullshitting right like there's going to be these things that only people can do and then there's going to be the connectivity of wanting to talk to a person here from a person know that not just a machine was verifying something but that a person spent the time and hopefully a person you've developed some level of trust with is spent the time to verify this so I feel like there is a re appreciation of human reporting going on I think that that will rise in value I'd say I'm more bullish on our business today particularly this year than I've probably been about media as a business in 15 years like I feel like there's some variables that are really working in our favor now I think artificial intelligence once media companies realize how to use it to take out some of the cost that is a non differentiated areas right at the end of the day if you're a media company my product is high quality content you can't get anywhere

31:15else everything else is just a commodity to help you produce it well that commodity in producing it in the past cost a lot of money so if you can take that cost and you can shift a lot of that cost into hiring a lot more journalists then I think that I do you start to have a better product it probably runs at better margins that's producing the differentiated content which is the human verified and validated layer I think that that will have real value and so that's my hope I don't think it's delusional again like I get paid to run a business it's my day job and I think try to think deeply about how do we make this work because it is a neat thing it's an important thing and I do think that there's some some variables that are now looking more attractive for media we'll be right back support for the show comes from engine the company's winning right now aren't cutting travel

32:16they're booking smarter here's the reality the average business traveler spends 45 minutes booking a single trip on a legacy platform with engine that booking time drops for as little as two and a half minutes and its AI powered personalization gets faster the more you use it multiply that across your team every trip every year that's not a perk that's a competitive advantage last year engine customers save more than three hundred million dollars on travel and with the engine x card get up to 10% back on any hotel booking 33,000 businesses have joined now it's your turn get five hundred dollars in your business signs up and start traveling at engine.com slash founders engine x visa commercial cards are issued by fifth third bank and a member FDIC earned up to 10% back and points on eligible engine travel purchases actual rewards rates vary by purchase category and make change points of no cash value and are redeemable for rewards through our program see full rewards terms for details go to engine.com slash x slash rewards dash terms we're back with Jim Van der Ho

33:23at a sort of practical level what role would artificial intelligence play in a media organization like Axios because I mean kind of hearing you describe what you're describing part of me thinks that the what's going right for media is that maybe it's not really disruptable by AI because it's so obvious to us what the value is in human-centred reporting in journalism that is done by people and I can't quite understand exactly what role AI would actually play so how you thinking about AI in terms of integrating it or not integrating it into your business. Well let me give you a super specific example because I think this will give you a good lens into what I think will happen over the next three to five years take local news the local news is an almost impossible business pre AI. Why did all those reporters you talk about lose their jobs because the economics of local news went to crap well we'll go back in time local news used to be

34:27I have reporters in a building I'm paying for printing words on the paper that's produced by a printing press I either own or lease I'm then taking that paper paying people to roll that paper into a ball paying to put a rubber band around it then I'm paying a boy or a girl to put it in the back of their basket and throw it at your house all of that to get the product is just the word the word on that paper all of that money to get that word to you then along comes the internet takes away the newspaper so you take away some of the cost still the expectation of like I'm working for a big company I'm sitting in a big office building you still have a lot of cost COVID comes along now people are used to not working from home okay now we don't necessarily have to have an office we don't have to have a printing press we don't have to have a paper you still have all of the things that it takes to assemble news like when you we underneath the reporter is all kinds of

35:31activity right we've got to be able to produce that content that content has to go to an editing process then someone has to match that to a visual maybe that visual has to be created then it has to be put on a website then someone's taking that and they're putting it into an Instagram format a LinkedIn format what if you could use artificial intelligence to do everything other than the reporting so a reporter is building the content they're doing their job they're doing the reporting but underneath that you've created an AI that helps you do the copy editing it's reading it it's knowing that it needs a visual or a data visualization it creates it for you it puts all of that together you then hit the button and it gets distributed to your website and you use artificial intelligence to break that into an Instagram version a LinkedIn version a Facebook version a whatever comes next version now you've got mass distribution for your reporters at a very light cost that's

36:33what we're doing with Axios locals we're now in 43 cities we're building what we call the super system we've been working with open AI and others to build out all of the stuff underneath it I can tell you that each passing week the stuff we're able to build is kind of blow your mind stuff and the model that I just described will happen a big part of it will be launched by the end of this year but I think over the coming years other people will see this and they'll be able to do variations of so even the work that you guys do you have this you guys view your kind of podcast and content kingdom but you have all of this you still have a team of people that are spending a lot of time to try to get more derivative value out of that content all of that is going to be done by machines you're going to be able to do that if you haven't already done this you might be able to get a bigger audience might be able to find more ad slots for advertisers and you might not need as many people to do that and so I think that that is like how it's going to work right don't think AI

37:36is useful or very useful for 99.9% of people is like it's not going to write your story it's not going to replace human journalists it's excellent at research it can be helpful with with some of the writing it's definitely good at challenging and helping you see some blind spots potentially in a story but what I have found and where I would put Axios in the not just media companies that's who were probably in the upper two to five percent of non-silicon valley companies in terms of using AI so we're I think I've I think I've got to word lab rats but I've watched journalists like most of them find it at most modestly useful right now I personally find it exceptionally useful but I use it a lot and I've been I've put a lot of deep thought into it over the last couple of years but most of my reporters don't do it again it's okay it helps a little bit with research and that's fine because I want the reporters reporting I want them talking to people I want them breaking news I want them applying analytical judgment that a machine can't apply often drawn from understanding the people understanding the historical context understanding the piece of

38:39news as it sits in in the broader context of today you mentioned that you think that AI doesn't really have a role in in writing in doing the writing itself maybe it has a little bit of a role in terms of research I mean right now we're at a place where AI is pretty powerful at conducting in-depth research collecting the research putting it together also helping with writing but we also know that a lot of the time that AI is wrong it says things very confidently that it seems accurate because of the way that it's presented but sometimes it's factually incorrect and then you say hey I think you're wrong and then it suddenly reverses course and tells you a different thing do you are you concerned about that at all when it comes to just the way that we consume information the idea that AI might be telling us things and we're just going along for the right assuming that it's correct and in that vein would you ever think about putting some policies in place around

39:40the usage of AI when it comes to your reporting we already have policies like we don't discourage people from utilizing it but everything has to every line in any story has to be completely owned by a reporter and the editor and has to be human verified invented and what you're saying is true not to be in defense of AI because what you're talking about is real it does confidently say stuff that's stupid occasionally to be honest sources occasionally confidently say things that are stupid editors confidently say things that are stupid does AI do that more often than people debatable depending on the person and depending on how much you refine your AI and so I think the trick is understanding that it has real limitations right now it has amazing like amazing capabilities like I find it astronomically helpful to my day to day work I find it to be a phenomenal researcher now I've got all kinds of multi layered fact checking and stuff that I built into my system and stuff but but even then it's still it'll it'll it'll it'll it'll it can still be flawed

40:45but people don't understand is to really get the reason I think only one to 1.5 percent of people are getting exponential value out of AI right now is people haven't fully grappled with how much work you have to put in on the front end to get AI to be truly magical you just have to feed it not just a ton of information about yourself and a ton of information about what you care about you have to be ruthless and brutal in correcting it and saying like when something's wrong and telling it to commit to its memory in in in helping refine it and perfect it over time I will say if you do that I find parts of it to truly already be at superhuman levels but I again I also put a ton a ton of work into it I find this to be the most intellectually electrifying period by far I have never seen the world more interesting more scary but more interesting my god this technology what we've built turning sand into superhuman intelligence this idea that it's not absurd to

41:48think that we might build a data center in the sky the idea that a tiny nation like Ukraine might potentially defeat the Russians because of a $35,000 drone or just living in the future or living in a world I did not think would come this quick and I just find it endlessly fascinating endlessly fascinating in the fact that we have access to so much information to try to understand this moment I just I still feel like a little kid like I can't sleep some nights because I just want to get up and learn and understand and write and and try to help people understand this moment and you know again like I'm in the media and I have the time maybe because I run a media company to do this but I encourage young people to think that way like this thing I I'm very down on what young people are being told about this country and about artificial intelligence like there's no doubt you shouldn't cheat with it and if you got to use Chatsheypt to write you probably have bigger

42:52functional problems that you need to deal with but this idea that like oh man it's scary and and you're screwed I don't know what they're talking about like the unemployment rate is like 4.4% when I was taking economic classes I was told it wasn't even structurally possible to have unemployment this low I'm watching kids come into Axios who are 22 23 24 25 who have natural proficiency and ability to use artificial intelligence beginning to do things that it would have taken me 15 20 years of career work to be able to do it's a great time to be getting into the workforce if you're spending the time to like think about what's happening if you spend the time to figure out how do I use these technologies as a force multiplier for the work that I do if you come at it with some level of optimism and I'm not a doey I don't like I know that there's problems in the country I know that things are better for some people than other people but I think things

43:53are a lot better today than most people think they are and I think there's a lot more opportunity particularly for young people and I'd spend less time worrying and whining and more time doing and I think you're going to find that you can really do some pretty exceptional things I think this probably ties into your story of starting several companies and I think something that's kind of interesting is you transition from reporter to guy who manages reporters into someone who actually started a business and now you're more of a founder owner operator tell us a little bit about that transition from going from writing stuff to then starting companies it was wild right like we just had this idea to start political we did it like it wasn't a lot of thought I was like okay one day I'm going to have to be a founder one day I'm going to be an entrepreneur one day I'm going to be a CEO so I'm a journalist man like let's go do this it sounds fun and I think we can do it well once you do it you realize oh this is like a real living breathing company it

44:57it has needs it needs management it needs leadership and so I had to learn to become a leader and I had to learn about all hiring firing all these things it's not like you can't read about it in a book and do it you just have to do it and I had never fancied myself I was never an editor I never managed anybody I've said many times like until I had to help run political the only management I ever did was the night shift at little Caesars when I was in high school right and that's like I don't know if that gets you ready to run a media company um and but you learn you put those reporting skills to work you pay attention I think I have the humility to know what I'm not good at and to pick up the phone and call people who are a lot smarter than me a lot of people have been very generous over the years and helping me understand the things that I don't understand I'm a relatively quick learner so I was able to pick things up I a very hard worker I've always worked a ton of hours and so I do the work that it takes and it's kind of intoxicating and to be

45:59honest maybe a little addictive like I I love it like I love starting companies I love running companies I love stories I could just as excited when we break a story today is I did at brilliant news or a roll call and and that that's invigorating um and so you know now yes say us we is our second we also have xshqc's maybe third company and you know you know but I'm still running it I still write all the time I don't feel that different than I did 20 years ago other than I know a lot more and I probably have more capabilities than I did 20 years ago but I tell any young person I would tell any old person if you can be part of a startup if you can take an idea especially an idea that people say it's crazy and you can will it into existence it is the one of the greatest things you can do that's legal and that you can pay for it's crazy you learn so much about yourself and you learn so much about humanity I know more about people the good the bad and the ugly because of starting companies and watching people

47:05in the good in the gory and the glory like you you just see things and you become almost like a student you're an anthropologist you're like watching like this weird species of a human and like how do they behave what motivates them why do weird people do weird stuff all the time I mean that's the funny thing about being a CEO by the time you hear about something happening with people it's the weirdest shit you could possibly imagine it's just wild the stuff that like wait like someone did what and it gets so weird that like by the time you're 55 and you're running your second company almost nothing surprises me I'm okay that happened but it's a neat thing it's a neat thing to do and I think by the way I think that's gonna be another advantage of AI and I'm not I'm not a AI optimist I'm kind of an AI realist there's definitely days where I'm quite dark about what AI could do to society so I just want to talk about some of the good parts which are I do think it's is and will be a lot easier to start a company I think it is and will be a lot easier to be one

48:06or two or three person company and not necessarily you're trying to create a new chip to sell to the video it'll be easier for my brother to run his construction company in Oshkosh it'll be easier for our two plumbers to turn that into a franchise or or maybe get rid of the stuff that most of the most of these guys don't want to do anyways they hate doing bids they hate doing the paperwork it's just gonna be easier I think that could be really cool I think that's a really neat thing and I think given the that it's kind of in the blood of Americans to start stuff I think that that could be a very positive dimension to this and so you can just talk to founders all the time I'm sure you you pick up a similar pattern of it like it's just it's a it's a neat thing to do and and I think a lot of people think you can't it like there's like you've got to be special to do it if you can work hard you have an idea and you have passion around it there's no IQ test there's no you went to a certain university you don't have to work at Goldman Sachs or due to years at McKinsey none of that stuff matters none of it none your GPA who gives it shit right like it's like do you have a

49:08good idea can you will it into existence do you have the grit that's the stuff that matters you mentioned how you've kind of seen all the facets of humanity really from running a company because I think you're running a company it's like you're managing people you're just dealing with people I think that's sort of what you explain there what have you learned about people from managing companies what about humans has surprised you disappointed you delighted you from running these companies and from managing all of these people the effect that you can have of a leader is a hundred X more than people realize almost instantaneously how I carry myself is contagious if I'm an activator the people around me are activators if I'm not a Yeller they don't yell if I don't talk crap about other people they don't talk crap about other people the opposite of all that's true the minute that I'm yelling the minute that I act like it's okay to be a jerk to your

50:12colleagues the minute that I'm a clock puncher the minute that I'm passive all of that stuff trickles down you see this every time you have a new president in office how instantaneously the body language the actual language changes so I think that's been really really interesting I think people need to be led like most people require constant intervention to get them focused on like how can I be better how can I do more not necessarily work more hours but like how can I make sure that I'm doing the right things in the right order you we've got a book coming out September called simplify and the whole reason that we wrote that book is that we've seen this magic if you just sit down with an employee and simplify their job tell me the three things you need to do in order to crush your job are those the right things are they the right order now tell me the three things that you do that you think are stupid or that you think someone else could do better let's have a discussion about whether we can kill them and then let's figure out one of the three things that maybe could be automated I'm

51:15going to help you automate them this idea of just staying on people I think I'm testing right now and Axios is this idea of a monthly mentality I'm writing about this for this weekend I just had a board meeting and I had like this aha moment because it's been sitting it's been just sitting there in the in the back of my mind someone said oh we're going to do this we have a four-month plan or six-month plan and I thought to myself that is pure fantasy how could anybody in this world know what the world's going to look like even six weeks from now and I and that was basically what the conclusion I came to is like me operating in a media environment my line of sight is now six weeks that anything beyond that I have I have shaky confidence and that's how fast things are changing and so it just requires if things are changing that fast that means you've got to really simplify what you're focusing on simplify the work that you're actually doing even simplify the words that you're using to describe it so that people can understand it quicker and move

52:19quicker I think we're headed into this wild wild era of things moving faster both information and capabilities than any institution or any individual could possibly keep up with it's going to require a total rethinking about how we structure our companies and how us as individual structure our day and that's we ended up writing this we started in a little bit before AI really really took off but it's going to hit just when people are going to need a bible for an operating system for man how do I do this and I think the I think that simplified book will help people do it and and it's sort of simplifying things is a big thing that I learned for others and then the power of communications like I always knew about the power of it as a writer like to be able to move things if I put the right words in the right order right but how much how I articulate things or a manager articulate things matter you've got to be so crisp so consistent you have to say

53:21things over and over only when you've annoyed the living hell out of yourself as the other person started to hear you because you have to realize the environment you're operating in where people are getting 150 emails a day 110 20 ticks tender alerts phone calls oh my god think about all that brain strain so the only way you can get through is repetition and repetition hopefully of like very strong memorable words so you're penetrating it's just such a it's a different way to think about things but so the power of communication has been good there's some people you can't change right that that took me the longest that was probably the that my biggest flaw held the longest was I definitely can get a little too swept up in somebody who's like super productive or super smart and I would overlook that there were a real asshole and when we started this company I said no

54:21we're never doing that again I know if you're the most talented person in the world if you're a jerk and I've confronted you about being a jerk and you're an unreformed jerk you're going to be a fire jerk and we've done it a bunch a bunch of times and that was the best thing I ever did because now we might have been hurt because there's a couple people who are driving a lot of revenue is so it's suck to do it but it's the best thing we ever did because now we've got this atmosphere where people are super ambitious but everyone likes each other and not that they're they're kind and in kind like so okay you can't be kind you can actually be kind and really ambitious and really productive like I don't I can't remember if I don't think I've ever raised my voice in 15 years I certainly did the early days of Politico but you learn right I don't raise my voice so I don't blame other people I take the blame like all these like little things and now I'm surrounded by people that do that and it's it's kind of beautiful and fun and like I don't I had this goal 10 12 years ago I was like I just want to do interesting things with people who

55:23give me like positive energy and I want to like purge like crappy people and and and and I think that's a very menor I don't think most people are bad I think that there's definitely people who are damaged from their childhood beyond my repair and that like I just can't right if like I often it'd be illegal to do but if I could do one thing in job interviews that is illegal would be to really explore people's childhoods because in almost always you can kind of reverse engineer like things that I just can't fix like we can my culture can't fix it um but once you do that like then you can have a lot of fun with really smart people so as we wrap here for any young people listening to the show who want to create a successful company you started to very successful media companies what would be your number one piece of advice to a young person if you have a really good idea and you have authentic passion for it and use the and and this is a very important and there's a very plausible way you can make money from that idea

56:24you should do it right you you you probably will fail like most do and that that is okay it really is okay because especially when you're young and you don't have to care for kids or you don't have to care for a partner you don't have to care for parents it's your risk time that's your risk years take take the risks if you can uh and you'll learn so much about yourself you'll learn so much about other people and it's just a beautiful thing it's a neat thing uh it's a neat thing to go through and and and and be more thoughtful about your career like I'm especially if you're young listening to this sorry but like 70% of your waking hours between now and 65 or 70 are going to be spent at work going to work or bitching about work so why don't you have the novel idea of doing everything in your power to make that as enjoyable satisfying and rewarding as humanly possible be much more maniacal about that we spend so much time obsessing about these things where we get

57:25to spend an hour a week if we're lucky why don't we get the work part right and that will flow into your personal life and probably liberate you to do more uh and you're in the fun part of your life so uh and we get at that too in the book about really helping people to simplify what do you want out of life and how can you get rid of all the dumb stuff you're doing out of habit that's keeping you from doing that and if you don't have a system you're not going to do it you're just going to drift like a piece of wood on a raging river Jim Vanda Hi is the co-founder and CEO of Axios Jim this was fascinating we really appreciate your time I appreciate you and thank you for your interest this episode was produced by Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer our research associates Odin Shalan and Cristina Donahue and our senior producer is Claire Miller thank you for listening to the Prof2Markets founder series we will see you next month with another founder story

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