Fifteen months ago, I did the one thing you’re not supposed to do with a newsletter: I ghosted. No farewell post, no “see you soon,” just… silence. Life got busy — my son was applying to college, I was exploring a career shift — and The Squeeze slipped to the bottom of both our inboxes.

For a while I told myself I’d get back on track. Then the guilt about not writing turned to shame, which turned into… not writing. After months of low-key shame-spiraling, crashing out, then looping back for more (0/10, do not recommend), I finally landed back in reality and realized the answer was clear: it’s time to say goodbye. I’ll leave the archives up, so if revisiting stories about fake podcast internships or flailing public radio stations is your idea of a good time, I’ve got you. And who knows? Podcasts have taught us that nothing really ends; there’s always a bonus episode, a final live show, a surprise drop. So let’s just say that this is goodbye — for now.

It feels right that my final piece is about Heavyweight, the podcast that inspired me to start writing about this industry in the first place. In 2018, the team behind the show began reporting on an unresolved high school trauma of mine (my son Clark, who played a central role within the story’s narrative, left for college this year; what is time?). In the midst of that experience, I started looking for opportunities to get more involved in the world of podcasting myself. As a result, by the time Heavyweight released “Skye” in 2019, I was already writing about the industry at Inside Podcasting.

Of course, 2019 was also the year that Spotify acquired Gimlet for $230 million in cash. Four years later, after realizing he had gravely mistaken the word “podcast” for “easy money,” Daniel Ek told shareholders that he had been “carried away” when he bought the podcast company. The slow, painful process of laying off nearly all former Gimlet employees and shuttering its podcasts took about a year (Science Vs. still remains). By the end of 2023, Gimlet, the buzzy startup that had cleverly chronicled its birth in a podcast, had finally suffered through an even more high-profile death.

However, when it came to ending Heavyweight, Spotify decided to do something unusual: it provided an opportunity for the show’s newly-unemployed staff to negotiate for its IP (why the streamer didn’t offer the same opportunity to the producers of lesser-known shows remains a mystery — but I digress). And so, as Senior Producer Kalila Holt recounts in today’s interview, Heavyweight Host and Executive Producer Jonathan Goldstein hired a lawyer, acquired the IP, and along Kalila and Managing Producer Stevie Lane, found a new place to make the show: Pushkin Industries.

Which brings us to today, and the launch of Heavyweight’s first regular season under the the Pushkin banner (its inaugural episode dropped this morning). A couple of months ago, when I heard the show’s newest installment was on its way, I celebrated the good news by reaching out to Kalila Holt to catch up on what went on behind-the-scenes as the team exited Spotify, searched for a new home, and began its latest chapter at Pushkin. Our conversation touched on the perspective she’s gained since those early and intoxicating days at Gimlet, the “very strange” experience of shopping a show in the midst of an industry meltdown, and what the vibe is like at her new job. I hope you enjoy it!

And if you’re craving more Heavyweight content after reading this piece, be sure to check out Nick Quah’s Vulture interview with Jonathan Goldstein this week, which goes into more detail regarding the season’s plot lines, and if you appreciate deep cuts, check out my vintage Q&A with the intrepid host, which appeared in Bello Collective (RIP) in 2019 — I believe it still holds up!

Finally, thanks to all of you for reading, sending tips, leaving comments, and for sharing your stories with me. Writing The Squeeze for you has been a wonderful and wild ride and I will miss it.

Take care of each other out there,

Skye

Senior Producer Kalila Holt on Leaving Spotify and Heavyweight's New Chapter at Pushkin Industries

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Skye: How did you learn Spotify was letting Heavyweight go?

Kalila: It wasn’t unexpected. We were the third round of layoffs in a year. It actually felt harder to see so many of my friends lose their jobs in earlier rounds — really talented people were so good at their jobs, and suddenly they’re hearing that they are no longer employable. It was painful — especially when I would think back to the early days at Gimlet, when everyone was so excited to make good work. But it also showed me what was happening in the industry — it gave me a bird’s-eye view of what was going on, so that by the time it came for us, I had had more time to process it. I knew the writing was on the wall.

Skye: From the outside, despite the industry shifts, it still felt shocking that Spotify was letting go of such an ostensibly successful podcast. What reason did they give you? I mean, the party line was that it was too expensive, economic headwinds, but…

Kalila: They said the same thing to us — they didn’t want to spend money on reported-out shows that were coming out seasonally. They wanted to invest in podcasts that were “always on,” that were cheaper to make, where lots of people listen.

Skye: How did you get the show rights?

Kalila: When Spotify laid us off, it was explicit that they wanted to negotiate with us on the IP, so Jonathan worked with a lawyer to acquire it.

Skye: That’s great. So what happened next?

Kalila: The three of us — me, Stevie, and Jonathan — knew we wanted to stay together if at all possible. We briefly considered making something new, but given what was happening in the industry, we pretty quickly agreed that it was an advantage to have a show with a built-in audience, a back catalog — an established brand. And it’s not like we had some other brilliant idea, just waiting for this moment.

Skye: Were you worried about money during that period?

Kalila: Not in the beginning. We had nine months of severance, which felt like a crazy amount of time — I remember wondering whether I’d be able to take advantage of all that time! I felt concerned, but in a more existential way — like, would the show find a home at all, or would we be forced to compromise on the quality of the show, or make something we didn’t believe in. And then of course, the process ended up taking much longer than that. I did eventually reach a point where I started to feel nervous about not having any income. [Spotify laid off the Heavyweight team in December 2023; they went back to work in February of this year. — Skye]

Skye: Did you consider producing the show independently?

Kalila: We did talk about going independent, but none of us are all that business minded, so...

Skye: What was it like to shop the show?

Kalila: Those meetings were… very strange? We had a lot of them at all kinds of places — news organizations, corporate-style companies, smaller networks. It felt like another moment when I was seeing the industry more clearly.

Skye: In what way?

Kalila: We would usually meet with people on the editorial side of the business, most of whom knew our show and were very enthusiastic. At the end of these meetings, they would say something like, “this is great, we just need to sell it to the business people.” And each time it just became clear that the business people very much did not see the same value in what we were doing as the editorial side did. We got a lot of low-ball offers, or offers that were not feasible.

Skye: What did an offer that wasn’t feasible look like?

Kalila: For example, it would say that we had to make three times as many episodes for a third of the amount of money that we were making before.

Skye: Good Lord — did the production folks ever seem embarrassed or apologetic about these offers? Like, we realize that the business people don’t get it and this is ridiculous, and we’re sorry?

Kalila: The feedback was less “we’re sorry that the business side doesn’t get it” and more “it’s just a really tough time right now; no one wants to spend money.” It was also clear that companies that had made recent acquisitions — for example, Slate, with Death, Sex & Money and The New Yorker, with In the Dark — were not going to do that with multiple shows.

Kalila: Another thing was that most of the offers were straight licensing deals; we would be working as contractors, not employees. We would have had to form our own LLC, find our own health insurance; I wasn’t wild about that. Other times, we had situations where we would get really close and then it wouldn’t pan out — there was a situation where we all thought we were about to start work, and it ended up falling through at the last minute. Even with Pushkin, things got delayed.

Skye: It sounds exhausting.

Kalila: It was very whiplashy.

Skye: Going back to Pushkin — how did they enter the frame?

Kalila: They approached us quite late in the process, actually. But right off the bat, the tone of their offer was much more positive than the others.

Skye: How so?

Kalila: They seemed more invested in keeping the quality of the show. For example, like the others, they wanted us to make more content than we had at Gimlet, but they were open to working with us on what that would actually look like. We got to have a conversation about it — the shorter episodes and updates that we’ve been releasing in our feed this past summer came from that.

Another big thing was that they were willing to bring us onboard as employees — it’s still a licensing deal because Jonathan owns the IP, but the company hired us as full-time Pushkin staff.

Skye: It must have been a relief to see that in the offer, but were there any concerns about the state of Pushkin’s business, given the financial problems it had in 2023?

Kalila: There were discussions about it — but Pushkin has reoriented its business since then; they seem to be much more focused on having a sustainable business, rather than wringing out the most profit possible. And there really does seem to be an emphasis on things like work/life balance and compensating employees fairly.

Skye: Will Spotify benefit from this deal?

Kalila: Spotify will get a percentage of what we make for the first few years. (Spotify did not respond to an email requesting the details of this arrangement. — Skye)

Skye: Did you celebrate when the deal closed?

Kalila: There was a Pushkin happy hour after we started working there, which was nice. But to be honest, the whole thing had been such a weird process and taken so much longer than anticipated that by the time we actually closed on a deal, I felt more stressed than victorious.

Skye: Why did you feel stressed?

Kalila: It was a combination of feeling fatigued, not knowing exactly what the environment at Pushkin would be like, and then being like, “oh shit, now we have to make a whole season on a compressed timeline.”

Skye: I can understand that! Overall though, are you happy with the deal?

Kalila: Yes — we feel supported, and the workload and pay feel fair.

Skye: So what’s it like to work at Pushkin?

Kalila: Culturally, it feels closer to the early days of Gimlet than working at Spotify, or even late-stage Gimlet. It’s not the same as that, but we have bosses who we like and trust, and who understand production. These are very nice things, which you can’t always find, especially in larger organizations.

Skye: Looking back, how do you feel about the Gimlet and Spotify years?

Kalila: My feelings are complicated. On the whole, I feel lucky to have entered the industry when I did — when it was possible to grow. And I feel fortunate that I found this great team to work with and make something that I feel proud of — the fact that I still get to do that is pretty incredible, especially at this moment. But I also feel sad over how much this industry has changed. I hated seeing so many friends — people who I know are good at their jobs — get laid off and not be able to find work. The energy of those early days at Gimlet has been replaced by something else.

Skye: What do you mean by that?

Kalila: By the time we left Spotify, Heavyweight was profitable. We were not a show that was going to make anyone rich — we weren’t Joe Rogan — but we were delivering financially. Now that our industry is dominated by big companies, there isn’t as much room for that kind of show. We’re in a moment where you’re not safe, even if your show is making money, unless it’s a LOT of money, like millions and millions of dollars.

Skye: Looking back, is there a part of you that wishes Gimlet hadn’t been acquired by Spotify?

Kalila: Well [laughs], I don’t think Gimlet would have survived without the Spotify acquisition. But even when it happened, I was nervous about it. I mean, there were great things about it — we all got to go Sweden, we were well-paid. But I was nervous about it, even back then.

Skye: Do you still feel a sense of joy making the show?

Kalila: I definitely enjoy making the show. Taking time off helped me appreciate the work more, and it’s nice that things feel stable for our team at Pushkin. I actually feel pretty positive about work right now — and that’s not my normal outlook! I can have a pretty pessimistic and complainy attitude, but I’m not bullshitting; I actually do feel that.

That’s a wrap, but before you go:

The Heavyweight team will host a live show in New York City on October 18 at 1:30pm at Caveat, which will include “live storytelling, a meet-and-greet, Q&A, and more.” Tickets are free, but space is limited. They are available via a lottery system.

Hello, Squeeze Nation!

If you’re new around here, welcome!

A few quick notes:

• Great Pods Founder and Wearer of Scarves Imran Ahmed (pictured above) made the brave decision to let me take over the most recent edition of his newsletter and it was a joy to write. (Great Pods curates podcast criticism; it’s kind of like Rotten Tomatoes for fans of audio entertainment.) Click here to pull back the curtain on what I’ve been listening to lately, which TV recap podcasts I’m queueing up this week, and a selfie I took at a very exclusive event. (Subscribe to Imran’s newsletter here.)

• I’m hearing rumblings that podcast shop Paradiso Media is withholding payments owed to a number of its contract workers. If you know anything about this, or if you have been impacted, please hit reply on this email.

• For those not familiar with Descript, which is central to today’s story, it’s an app that allows podcasters and other creators to edit video and audio files in the same way they would edit a Word or Google doc; the first step in the process is transcribing users’ media files. The Descript app is used by more than six million creators, one of which, full disclosure, is me.

• If you enjoy today’s issue of The Squeeze, please like, share, and have me on your podcast to talk about it. And as always, reach out to me with tips at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com; I’m also on Signal and WhatsApp.

Alright, let’s hit it!

We are aiding and abetting our own destruction.

— Jon Stewart, discussing generative AI on The Town with Matthew Belloni

"Fingerprints of the Thief": How a Glitch in Descript Opened My Eyes to the Dangers of OpenAI

Late last year, a podcaster sent me a screenshot of a transcript produced by Descript, in which the phrase “Transcribed by https: otter. ai” had appeared. They wondered if Descript was (secretly? nefariously?) using Otter instead of its own technology, but a contact of mine who works at Otter insisted that that wasn’t the case.

My source’s experience wasn’t unique; multiple users were coming across the same thing.

Around this time, I connected with Descript’s VP of Marketing Whitney Steele, who explained that the company has always used third-party AI software to power transcriptions — a surprise to me and most of my podcaster friends, as we would have had to dig around in the company’s online “reference manual” to discover it — but she said, they hadn’t ever used Otter AI. Over the years, Descript had used Google AI, Rev AI, and since September of 2022, a transcription tool called Whisper, which had been developed by the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI.

According to Steele, the glitches users were seeing were “AI hallucinations,” or put simply, nonsensical or incorrect information generated by an AI model. This phenomenon had a zeitgeisty moment a few weeks ago, when a search result generated by Google AI recommended that people eat “at least one small rock a day.” It turned out that the model had hallucinated the advice because of a satirical article published by The Onion, in which geologists made the same suggestion. When I spoke with Steele last March, she explained the Descript glitches to me in a similar way. “It’s impossible say why specific hallucinations happen,” she told me, but “they usually have to do with the data an AI model is trained on.”

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It followed that Whisper must have trained on transcriptions and was accidentally “hallucinating” chunks of that data into someone else’s file. But if that were possible, could Whisper also hallucinate pieces of one person’s Descript transcript into another’s by mistake? Steele said there was “zero chance” because “Descript doesn’t use users’ content to train the transcription model” and the company “[doesn’t] share data with OpenAI or anyone else.” (Descript does use users’ project data to train some of their other AI models, but only with consent; and they can opt-out at any time.)

After mentioning this reporting to a few friends, one of them shared that they had witnessed glitches in their Descript transcripts, too — at least twice. The first time, the name of a different transcription service had appeared, but the second time, someone named Muneet had inserted himself mid-transcript to ask that we “hit that subscribe button to continue watching.”

This felt like something altogether different; instead of the relatively innocuous name of a transcription company, the actual words of a creator — probably a YouTuber? — had popped up into my friend’s work. What was going on here?

That was March; then came April, and a major story in the New York Times:

According to the paper’s reporting, in a “desperate” bid to obtain more “training data” — which is necessary to advance AI models — OpenAI and other tech companies had “ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law.” As part of this effort

OpenAI researchers created a speech recognition tool called Whisper. It could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, yielding new conversational text that would make an A.I. system smarter.

The OpenAI team behind the effort, which included the company’s president, knew that they were “wading into a legal gray area,” because

YouTube prohibits people from not only using its videos for “independent” applications, but also accessing its videos by “any automated means (such as robots, botnets or scrapers).”

But, according to sources for the Times’ story, the team convinced themselves that “training A.I. with the videos was ‘fair use,’” and scraped north of a million hours of content from the platform anyway.

Now Muneet’s appearance made a lot more sense: Whisper had probably scarfed down his YouTube show during its raid on the platform, and was now hiccuping up the evidence for others to see.

“Generative AI is just another way to describe wholesale theft of intellectual property,” Jussi Ketonen, a former computer scientist at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab (who, full disclosure, is also my Dad) told me last weekend. “And AI hallucinations are like the fingerprints of the thief. It’s as if I broke into your house and stole your jewelry, and on my way out the door, I told you that I did it for the sake of humanity.”

Many organizations agree with this assessment and have taken legal action against OpenAI and other generative AI companies, including the New York Times, New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, The Authors Guild of America, but lawsuits have also sprung up from independent digital workers. For example, a group of software developers filed a class action suit against OpenAI, Microsoft, and Github, that claims that the companies “vio­lated the legal rights of a vast num­ber of cre­ators who posted code or other work under cer­tain open-source licenses on GitHub.”

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In any event, while “fair use” is litigated by our sluggish court system, it’s probably safe to assume that AI companies will continue their spree, and OpenAI will lead the way. As technology journalist Casey Newton said during a conversation about the company’s scraping of YouTube on Hard Fork a few weeks ago, “it’s a classic case of ask for forgiveness, not permission, and they're going to push this as far as it will go.”

It’s unsettling to think that creators on Descript are using software that was originally designed to gobble up the work of fellow creators, but what are their alternatives? They could switch to another app, but many competing transcription services have had their fair share of problems, too. Creators could lobby Descript to use different software, but that won’t happen. Why? First, despite its hallucination problem (and, I’m told, a few other pesky bugs), the software works pretty well for most users. And second, because of this:

About 18 months ago, Descript landed a $50 million round of funding led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, which is basically a container of money pooled from Microsoft and other OpenAI partners (according to SEC filings, the fund had raised more than $325 million, as of this past March). In a video introducing the launch of the fund in 2021, Sam Altman explained that while OpenAI would not be a direct investor in the fund, the company’s leadership would manage it. [Quick sidenote: earlier this year, Axios reported that Sam Altman actually owned the entire fund, a massive f**k-up, which a spokesperson probably made worse when they explained that “we wanted to get started quickly and the easiest way … was to put it in Sam's name.” The fund removed control from Altman six weeks later. Ask for forgiveness, not permission!]

Up until this reporting, I was unaware of the connection between these companies, and that’s probably because the funding announcement dropped a few weeks before ChatGPT became a worldwide phenomenon, and many months before the number of troubling headlines about OpenAI would pile so high that articles compiling them would become a thing. Even if I did come across a headline about the funding back then, I obviously didn’t make much of it.

But seeing the news now, after so many of us have been unwittingly dragged into an “AI race” between powerful players who seem utterly uninterested in the impact of their decisions on creators, it feels ominous. Descript is a company with access to the exact thing that OpenAI is desperate for and has, in the past, taken potentially illegal action to obtain. What’s to stop the company from pressuring Descript to share their data “for the sake of humanity?”

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I don’t think it’s unreasonable to imagine this scenario. Having worked with many VC-funded startups — and also, just by having a brain — I know that pleasing your investors is high on the list of a startup’s priorities. When Descript ditched RevAI for for OpenAI’s Whisper product less than a month before their funding was announced, it’s a good bet that they were making this calculation. The dynamic between startups and investors is complicated. (When I asked checked back in with Descript, Steele told me that when their team chooses a third-party AI model for transcription “the driving factor is accuracy.”)

Another possibility is that OpenAI could acquire Descript to get access to its data. This is not a product of my wild imagination; the Times’ examination found that back in 2021, in addition to scraping YouTube, the OpenAI team had “considered buying startups that had collected large amounts of digital data.” The OpenAI Startup Fund launched late that same year, and Descript was its second investment. (Interestingly, ten months later, Descript acquired Squadcast, which also houses a boatload of content.) Is it possible that OpenAI’s decision to invest in Descript was the first step within a larger plan?

Steele told me that she hasn’t seen anything from OpenAI that would lead her to worry about these scenarios and I believe her. But I have a harder time accepting that OpenAI — which is being sued by numerous people and entities for copyright infringement (all separate links!); appears to have deliberately hired ScarJo’s vocal twin to voice ChatGPT after the actor declined the job; has lost or fired many high-profile staffers including its chief scientist and members of a now-disbanded risk and safety team; regularly bends the truth, outright lied for over a year about who had financial control over a multimillion dollar fund, is the subject of an FTC investigation, engaged in the (possibly illegal and definitely unethical) scraping of over a million hours of creator-generated YouTube data as well as other stuff — is a company that deserves our trust.

Time will reveal all.

Until then, keep your eyes on the jewelry, kids!

That’s it for me today; thanks for reading. If you enjoyed today’s story, please like, share, and have me on your podcast to talk about it. If you have tips, reach me at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com; I’m also on Signal and WhatsApp.

Take care of each other out there,

Skye

Postscript:

A statement from the developers who filed a class action suit against OpenAI, Microsoft and GitHub:

Today’s agenda:

• More details regarding the layoffs at NPR affiliate KQED. If you missed my first two stories about this last week, you can find them here and here;

• Why I’m freaking out about this (aside from the obvious reasons);

• No she didn’t! Yes she did! A union leader speaks out.

Let’s hit it!

More Details on KQED’s Layoffs

Yesterday at an all-staff meeting KQED CEO Michael Isip shared the following:

• 30 staff members (8% of the station’s 372 full and part-time employees) are leaving the station:

  • 11 staffers are leaving voluntarily (4 early retirements, 7 voluntary buyouts);

  • 19 people are being laid off.

• Four open positions will not be filled.

• The cuts have been spread across almost all departments including radio broadcasting operations, membership, corporate sponsorship development, human resources, digital video and podcasts.

• The station is also ending Rightnowish, an award-winning podcast featuring mostly BIPOC voices; its final episode will drop on July 18th. The station announced one layoff as a result of this decision, while a second employee from the podcast team accepted a buyout.

• All departing employees will receive:

  • Two weeks for each year of service (minimum of eight weeks, max of 24);

  • Payout of unused PTO, as of last day of employment;

  • Three months of health benefits;

  • Unemployment benefits;

  • Outplacement services.

According to a piece reported by KQED yesterday, the station is running an $8 million deficit for fiscal year 2024. Isip said he anticipates that by making these cuts (along with other budget-cutting measures), the station will save $4.5 million annually and have a balanced budget by fiscal 2027.

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The CEO also revealed that “in an effort to drive digital growth,” the station has recently launched the KQED Studios Fund, “a $10 million initiative to grow podcasts and online video production that will focus on ‘stories and programs rooted in the Bay Area.’” (Will the fund actually “grow podcasts”? Very sci-fi of them!) Obviously, I’m bullish on (growing) podcasts but when public media people start talking about making videos for the Internet as part of a growth strategy, I get jittery.

Which is actually the perfect segue into —

Why I’m Freaking Out About This (Aside From the Obvious Reasons)

Sometime last week, a current employee (who requested anonymity) sent me a distressing email. “KQED has been making … ‘strategic investments’ to grow new audiences,” the staffer wrote. “Some of these involve building a new app, developing podcasts, and setting ambitious goals to dramatically grow unique visitors to the website.” (The source added that in an effort to support the latter, the newsroom had recently installed an “express desk” to get breaking news up on the KQED website as fast as possible.)

“All this is well and good but it just hasn’t led to audience or revenue growth,” the employee explained. “It’s not clear to me that KQED knows how to monetize these things as well as they know how to monetize radio.”

Spoiler: they don’t. For one thing, in 2024, no one knows how to monetize digital news. Most of the folks who did know at one time or another, have already failed or are in the process of slowly dying (and thanks to Google, the situation just got worse).

But also, monetizing digital is about scale and speed (thus the need for an “express desk” I guess, ugh — it’s a race to the bottom, people!), while funding public radio is about serving a local audience who is deeply engaged. These are two different business models for two different kinds of audience, and they require almost diametrically opposed strategies and expertise. It’s hard enough to get one of those right, much less both! To be clear, it’s a no-brainer that public radio should leverage technology as a way to deepen relationships with listeners and attract new ones, but please, for the love of God, not at the expense of what stations do best (and audiences are willing to pay for): in-depth, news and investigative audio journalism.

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The other day, I asked a seasoned public radio person for their take on why public radio seemed to be in such a frenzy to buy, merge with, build out their own digital platforms. This person, who led their station’s successful digital implementation, explained that

Executives become enchanted with the aggregate numbers in digital. They see those big numbers and think, we’ll just monetize our digital side. But it doesn’t work that way. I haven’t seen anyone in public media who has been able to show that you can turn your digital audience into paying members of your public radio station. Digital media is a mass audience product. If you turn a public radio station into a mass product, the relationship with your audience changes; it becomes more transactional. Sure, some people might donate after a station sends out a digital email blast, but those people are likely hooked into your brand because of the work you’re doing on the radio and in on-demand audio. And believe me, those stations are not going to make up the difference by selling ads on their website. 

Executives seem to forget that our advantage as a public radio station is hyper-serving a core group of listeners. When you hyperserve your audience, they become loyal members of your brand; they become paying members. Traditional radio fundraising will bring in funds and gifts that are larger and more consistent than anything you'll get from users who click through on an online article or newsletter. And the one thing those donors all love supporting is shoe leather, deep dive, investigative, longform journalism. This message especially resonates right now, when people know that journalism is a shitshow. 

And so, when a station has to make cuts because “the digital audience growth we projected to achieve, to help offset anticipated broadcast audiences, has been slower than needed to develop,” — as it says, right there in KQED’s FAQ about the budget reductions — we shouldn’t be surprised.

In fact, we should expect it.

And try not freak out.

But I am freaking out!

And I will not be stopped!

Speaking of which —

A Union Leader Speaks

Yesterday, I obtained a bulletin sent by NABET Local 51 President Carrie Biggs-Adams, to the union’s KQED members (at least nine of the employees impacted by this week’s layoffs are represented by NABET). The letter is long, so in the interest of space, I’m including just a few snippets. But you’ll get the idea.

I grew up watching KQED, loved it, loved listening to KQED-FM as I drove; but I have long been appalled at how they are treating the public trust that is Public Broadcasting. It will be no surprise to people with whom I discuss the future of media in general and KQED, that I believe your employer has lost their way in producing content for broadcast, serving the public in the Bay Area, and curating the community that should be supporting KQED with the money needed to flourish. 

… KQED has bought into the idea that streaming, podcasts, and digital are the future – this while the major broadcast networks and companies have been losing money hand over fist trying to get people to subscribe to more and more apps that don’t pay for themselves. 

… We must push KQED to understand the value to television and radio – urging them to stop focusing the shiny objects that are digital, podcasts, TikTok, etc. – and do the work to make compelling broadcast products that bring in listeners, viewers, and donors. 

I have to say, it’s thrilling to witness someone besides me freaking speaking out about public radio’s distressing fixation on sparkly digital objects (though, with all due respect, public radio should not give up on podcasts, Carrie!).

I just hope the right people are listening.

That’s it for me today!

Have a great weekend and take care of each other out there.

Skye

Postscript

Thanks to all of you who wrote to me after Tuesday’s issue regarding KQED’s upcoming layoffs. Some of you hinted that layoffs may be on the horizon at other public radio stations. I encourage anyone with information about this to reach out to me at skyepillsatwork@gmail (I’m also available to meet on Signal and WhatsApp). I can’t do this work without your help.

Speaking of which, I’m currently working on a story about a glitch that’s popped up in podcast transcripts produced by the popular editing platform Descript — in fact, I was hoping to publish that piece today but I’m still waiting for a company spokesperson to answer a few final questions. In the meantime, if you’re a Descript user, and you’ve encountered something buggy in your transcript hit reply on this email and let me know.

For today:

• A bit more color behind the reasons for KQED’s upcoming layoffs and steps executives took in an effort to cut expenses;

• A new show I’m really excited to tell you about;

• A video I hope you’ll watch.

First though, I have an update on what’s happening with this newsletter! (In case you’re new here, last fall I put The Squeeze on temporary hold and halted payments from paid subscribers.) The good news is that I can now see a point on the horizon when I should be able to publish more regularly; the bad news is that that point won’t come until mid-September. Between now and then, I will squeeze in writing when I can, but not on a regular cadence. Thank you for bearing with me.

In the meantime, I am releasing my hold on all paid subscribers’ credit cards, and ending my paid subscriber program. I want to thank my paid subscribers for supporting my work financially and apologize for absolutely sucking at providing extra perks.

Finally, sometime this summer, I plan to find a new home for The Squeeze. There are a number of reasons for this (which I may write about in a future newsletter), but for now, Casey Newton’s essay “Why Platformer is Leaving Substack” sums it up.

Alright, let’s hit the agenda.

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More Detail Regarding KQED’s Upcoming Layoffs

On Tuesday, I asked readers to get in touch if they had information about whether KQED leadership had considered alternatives to layoffs. In response, a current employee of the station forwarded me an internal memo from last September in which CEO Michel Isip wrote that the station had experienced “declines in audiences across our distribution platforms,” which had “impacted acquisition of new members as well as membership and corporate sponsorship revenue.” As a result, he explained the the station would

implement three non-staffing related cost-saving measures to keep overall expenses in better alignment with projected FY24 revenue. The following actions will result in approximately $1.8M in expense savings.

1. A decrease of our 403(b) employer match from 5.5% to 3%, which is still in line with other nonprofits;

2. Two office closures for all non-essential staff on select, non-peak work times during the end-of-year 4th of July holiday seasons;

3. Reduction in compensation for the Executive Management Team (EMT)

Of course, $1.8M in not insignificant, but it would be helpful to know what percentage of that number came from reducing executive level salaries, versus the matching program and office closures (both of which have a greater impact on non-executives). Keeping the executive pay reductions a secret strikes me weirdly withholdy, especially when the station’s financial dealings will eventually become public information anyway — and when non-transparency makes the announcement feel a bit hollow? That said, I’m pleased that executives did something in advance of the layoffs; you don’t often see it.

Interestingly, in a FAQ which accompanied the letter, an additional reason for the actions taken by leadership is mentioned (emphasis mine):

Q: Why are these reductions happening?

A: We are taking proactive steps to offset higher than expected budget deficit due to a rapid and steeper than predicted decline in broadcast audiences. Further, the digital audience growth we projected to achieve to help offset anticipated broadcast audiences has been slower than needed to develop.  

Longtime fans of this newsletter know that I’m a bit hung up on public radio’s obsession with “digital audience growth.” (When the newly-minted CNN CEO Mark Thompson emailed his staff that “only legacy media organizations use the word ‘digital,’” he took the words straight out of my mouth.) So if anyone out there has more information about KQED’s digital strategy, I’m all ears.

Anyhoo, when I reached out to KQED for additional context on all of the above, spokesperson Peter Cavagnaro responded in email that the station was “still evaluating the response to the voluntary offers we received and their impact on our budget” and that he would “have more context to offer about cuts we’ll be making and the budget later this month.” Cavagnaro did not address a request for additional detail regarding executive-level salary reductions.

I appreciate the reader who wrote in to say that making a comparison to KQED’s renovation expenses might not be fair, as capital campaigns often leverage entirely separate modes of financing and funding, and I agree with this broadly speaking. However this particular campaign was a bit more nuanced, as it raised a total of $140 million for various efforts including the new HQ (which cost $94 million), but was also put toward hiring additional staff, public programming, new digital tools, educational opportunities, etc. The same reader also pointed out that interest rates were low when the project broke ground, and KQED was not alone in investing in real estate at that time, all of which is true!

As always, I welcome your input.

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A New Podcast I Think You Might Like

I haven’t been this excited to tell you about a podcast since Laura Meyer released the extremely meta Shameless Acquisition Target (read my interview with Laura here). This time, it’s a new project from Yowei Shaw, who was laid off from NPR when the station canceled the popular show she co-hosted, Invisibilia. Now she’s independently launching Proxy, where she’ll connect guests who have had experiences that left them with “big emotional questions,” to “the proxies they need,” i.e. people who are in a unique position to relate, perhaps because they’ve gone through something similar or bring a unique expertise to the table.

But here’s why I’m so specifically interested in it for readers of this newsletter:

Shaw is kicking off her show with a three-part series that dives into her own experience being laid off from NPR and examines why the experience of being let go can have such an emotional impact, even when people know it’s not their fault. Based on the many conversations I’ve had with people in our industry who have lost jobs, I believe this series is sorely needed!

“More than a few people told me not to make this series because I don’t want to be ‘layoff girl,’ as one friend said. But we need to talk about layoffs, the mental health and emotional toll, and the stigma,” Yowei wrote to me in an email. The three-parter follows Shaw’s attempt to heal from her own experience by reporting on her feelings about it, and culminates after she connects a couple dealing with the aftermath of layoffs with an HR rep who answers their burning questions (“Do you get training on how to be human in these conversations?”one of them asks).

Yowei emphasizes that Proxy is “not an advice show and definitely not therapy”; instead, Proxy offers listeners “a space for people to confront, commiserate and even find the comedy (or cringe) through frank conversation.”

All three episodes of Shaw’s series arrive in feeds on May 22nd, but you can listen to the trailer for Proxy right now.

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Please! Watch! This! Video!

I recently made the painful decision to kill a story I had reported on for nearly two months, which suuuuucks — but I can still point you to an excellent AIR Media panel I was planning to link to within the piece, in which two contract producers share what happened when their employers didn’t pay them on time (it’s common AF). The group also explains New York City’s Freelance Isn’t Free Act, which protects the rights of independent contract workers and will become applicable throughout the state of New York on August 28th of this year.

Similar protections have passed — or are on their way to passing — in other U.S. cities and states (including Chicago and the podcast-making hub of L.A., etc.), so if you freelance, or if you hire contract workers, I strongly urge you to watch this. Yes, it’s long, but pop in a pair of earbuds; treat it like a podcast.

And if you are a contract worker who got stiffed by your employer, hit reply on this email and tell me about it; I may try to find another way into this story.

That’s it for me this week — 

Have a great weekend and take of yourselves out there!

Skye

Postscript

If you are looking for opportunities in audio, are you subscribed to Talia Augustidis’s newsletter All Hear (jump to May’s issue here)? Every month Talia links to new opportunities that are worth a look. You can also go straight to The Everything List for Audio Opportunities, a 184-page Google doc where Talia lists just about every opportunity that’s ever been publicly announced. Get after it!

I was working on a different issue of this newsletter (which I still plan to send out in the next couple of days), when a source sent me this disheartening news about my local NPR affiliate station, KQED. Let’s get through it quickly.

Scoop: NPR and PBS Member Station KQED Expects to Lay Off 18-25 Employees

About three weeks ago, SF Gate reported that KQED, the most well-known public broadcaster in the Bay Area, was offering staff buyouts to older employees in order to address a budget deficit (a spokesperson quoted in the story described the program as one that would “empower qualified employees to make their own career decisions.”). The news was delivered to staffers in an email from CEO Michael Isip, and included a warning that layoffs could come next.

And now, that warning has become reality.

In an email sent to all KQED staffers yesterday afternoon and viewed by me, Isip explained that the number of people who had opted to voluntarily leave their job hadn’t been enough to close the budget gap and that the station would now have to make “a range of cuts across the organization, including layoffs.” Isip added that “we don’t know the exact number of staff layoffs, but we expect the range will be between 18-25 people.” He left the timing opaque, writing that “his next update” would be shared at a May 23 all-staff meeting and that “more details” would arrive “by the end of this month.”

Of course, I have questions. For example, KQED laid off 20 people to cover a budget shortfall just four years ago; how did the station arrive at this same place again? How does the station’s $94 million renovation, which was completed in December of 2021 — just before Isip says the station began to work under a “board-approved” budget deficit — play into all of this? Have alternatives to layoffs been considered, such as executive paycuts? How are the unions responding?

If you have insights to share regarding any of this, please hit reply on this email and let me know, or email me at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com (we can also jump over to WhatsApp or Signal from there).

Take care of yourselves out there and I’ll see you again soon.

Skye

Postscript:

Here’s the full statement:

Colorado Public Radio Announces Staff Layoffs

Centennial, Colo. March 7, 2024 - Colorado Public Radio today announced it laid off 8% of its staff members amid a challenging time for the organization and media nationwide. The 15 positions affected include its standalone podcasting unit and staff that supported production in CPR’s on-site performance studio, as well as part-time and full-time music staff. 

“This was a painful and difficult decision to come to, but it is necessary to reset the organization financially and position CPR for future success,” Stewart Vanderwilt, president and CEO, said. “This is a strategic reduction in workforce to clearly focus our efforts to provide free access to Colorado-focused news across the state, and to do so while being sustainable in the face of changing economic realities. And it is also never easy to say goodbye to talented, hard working colleagues.” 

For more than 10 years, CPR’s operating revenue consistently grew, including through 2020 and 2021. In fiscal year 2023, revenue dropped, mirroring the experience of public and commercial media across the country as donors and corporate sponsors anticipated a potential economic downturn. In the current fiscal year, revenue is flat. A strategic reevaluation of priorities and resources is necessary to eliminate the deficit and create a sustainable path forward. 

CPR will move forward with a driving priority to be first and foremost a journalistic organization committed to being Colorado’s long-term home institution for news. In order to build for long-term sustainability and growth, the organization will focus on its original news content and digital growth. In addition, a focus on exploring additional revenue opportunities for CPR’s music services, CPR Classical and Indie 102.3, will become a greater priority. 

CPR’s Audio Innovations Studio was established in 2019 with the goal to create innovative and experimental audio projects. Since then, the Studio produced entertaining, educational and award- winning podcasts and documentaries amid an incredibly volatile podcast landscape. CPR remains committed to this medium of storytelling, and will shift focus to the production of on-demand audio that delivers a repeated and ongoing listening experience and is centered around original news content. Going forward, the Audio Innovations Studio will be closed, and there will be two new podcast producer positions added directly to the CPR newsroom. 

The other eliminated roles include production positions that primarily worked in CPR’s on-site Performance Studio and some on-location projects. In CPR’s music services, one full-time position has been eliminated and three part-time roles will be consolidated into one full-time role. 

“This is a challenging time for media everywhere, but I believe CPR is doing the right thing in focusing on its unique advantage: trustworthy, deeply reported, Colorado news,” Bradley Greenwald, chair of CPR’s board of directors, said. “CPR is Colorado’s largest nonprofit news organization, and we must ensure this valuable public service continues to be freely available well into the future.”

END

I’ve got good news and bad news today: The good news is that I’m working on a few stories and will be publishing more regularly, at least for the next few weeks (though, you probably won’t hear from me every week). The bad news is that Colorado Public Radio has cut 15 positions, which includes most, if not all staffers who work in the station’s podcasting department. In an internal memo to employees which I viewed yesterday, CEO and President Stewart Vanderwilt wrote that

Over the past year we have had several conversations about the financial challenges facing CPR and the greater media landscape. Many of those conversations have focused on efforts to reduce expenses while seeking revenue growth in order to eliminate our ongoing deficit. Unfortunately, to align our expenses with our revenue projections, we need to reassess our priorities and implement more significant measures.

This week, 15 of your colleagues have learned that their positions are being eliminated. It was important that those impacted were personally notified before sharing with the rest of the organization and those notifications are now complete.

These layoffs are not a reflection of the quality of work of our talented colleagues.

We have come to this decision after looking hard at our current revenue and projections for the coming year. We need to be on a path to sustainability, and we must restore some of the resources and benefits that were previously eliminated or frozen.

I’m withholding specific names of laid off employees, with the exception of Brad Turner, the head of the station’s “Audio Innovation Studio,” because CPR has quietly revealed his layoff to the public:

Yesterday, I reached out to the station for comment and was told that the station would provide a “comprehensive statement after we have had the opportunity to speak with our full staff.” I made the (perhaps naive) decision to hold off on this piece until then. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that a half an hour later, the station published an article on their website about the news, which is now appearing in various online articles. (You’re welcome, guys; I’ve never been much of a “scoop” reporter anyways.)

According to CPR’s story, the layoffs will help correct the over-expansion at CPR over the past 5 years. Here’s more:

In recent years revenue has grown but has not kept pace with expenses. CPR lists on its website that expenses had exceeded revenue by $1.3 million in fiscal year 2022 and $2.3 million in fiscal year 2023. Member giving has remained strong, but corporate sponsorship was down. Meanwhile, programming and fundraising expenses - driven in part by employee costs - have risen by millions of dollars.

This chart demonstrates that the aforementioned “employee costs” did indeed rise, particularly between 2019 and 2020, when the CPR grew from 150 to 200 employees.

However, the station made even bigger bets when it took charge of KRCC in Colorado Springs, acquired Denverite, a website about local news, and especially when it spent $8.34 million (provided by “as-yet-undisclosed donors”) on brand new headquarters last year. According to the station’s own reporting, “The building still needs substantial interior construction for studios and offices. CPR projected it would take three years to finish the project.”

Yikes.

More to come on all of this at a later date. In the meantime, if you work/worked at CPR, and have information you think I should know, please reach out. I always honor requests for anonymity. You can find me at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com, and we can jump over to WhatsApp or Signal or the good old-fashioned phone from there.

Psssst! If you enjoyed this newsletter, please hit the like button or share it with a friend. Thanks!

Postscript

Just gonna leave this here.

Have a great day!

Hello Beautiful Audio People!

I miss you! Today I’m popping in quickly to share something that Ian Enright, CEO of Goat Rodeo, the production house behind shows like the The Retreat and Spy Valley, posted to a Slack group I’ve been part of for years. He wrote it while digesting the news that WAMU had laid off 15 staffers, and as he prepared to attend this weekend’s On Air Fest event in New York. Ian has generously agreed to let me share his words here:

Maybe we should be feeling more shame this year as audio employers?

I can’t help but feel an extreme sense of frustration coming into On Air Fest in NYC next week. I’m excited to see so many colleagues and as a team not headquartered in NY or LA it's one of the few times we get to share space with rooms full of people making great audio. But this year it feels off. And it clicked tonight on my walk home. There’s something lacking from all of us in the audio space. Contrition. There isn’t enough shame in the air. That should make us angry or at the very least uncomfortable.

There were an avalanche of layoffs in the audio industry. It hit public and private distributors alike. Sony Music, Gimlet, The Athletic, Vox, PRX, Vice, Stitcher, Pandora, Pushkin, iHeart, NPR, WNYC, and countless others all decimated their staffs and tanked their strategic visions. Thousands of jobs were lost. Some weeks I get more emails a week from individuals looking for opportunities than I get from my team. It has been awful to watch this unfold, but even deeper than that it has been disheartening to see what is being allowed to slip through the cracks. To me that is accountability. The real accountability for the choices we’ve made over the past 10 years.

At Goat Rodeo, we’ve been profitable. We’ve made other companies' productions profitable. We didn’t lay anyone off. We didn’t raise money underpinned by unrealistic projections and big ideas. We didn’t take large salaries. We didn’t chase pivots, “the rise of whatever,” micropods, smart speakers, whatever the hell live audio was supposed to be, exclusives, and whatever else. Those choices often came at a price. The biggest of which was stigma. We must not be doing those things because we can’t do those things. We spent years of feeling like the smallest dog at the bowl. We were seen as naive for not jumping on the rush. As a company we felt like we were going crazy. Now, it seems like every other audio studio just had to obliterate their strategies, and with it, the jobs of the people who believed them.

A refrain I’ve heard a lot in the last 12 months, “well we knew this day was coming.” That’s not what people said when interest rates were zero. That’s not what people said to the producers and staff that were convinced to develop in this career path. That’s not what people said when they were announcing layoffs at all hands.

Businesses are hard. The math isn’t. You sell a product. That product is sold for more than it costs to make it. For a good while people all over the industry tried extremely hard to sell us on the idea that wasn’t true. We can pretend that gravity doesn’t exist but eventually everything falls back to earth. The reality is we work in an industry that is still deeply unserious and deeply immature at its executive level.

They didn’t recognize or they didn’t care enough about solving the real problems. How do we make shows sustainably? How do audiences discover our work? How do we build closer relationships with audiences and not ad platforms?

This On Air Fest, I think we should be quiet and maybe listen a little more before we start allowing the same individuals that cited “unforeseen market downturns” suddenly hopping back on stage six months later to tell us they’ve figured it all out. Maybe they should ask the ones that build their strategy on resilience and process and not big ideas and hunches.

I’m excited to see everyone at On Air. I hope it's cathartic just as much as it is a collaborative celebration of great work in audio still on the horizon. But I think we should be wise to remind ourselves and others of the failures that got us here and urgent lessons being shouted from them.

That bit about putting the same people onstage hit me hard. That’s not just a knock on On Air Fest; it’s something I’ve observed since I began writing about the audio and podcast industry 5+ years ago.

— But since we’re talking about it (lol), why is On Air honoring Malcolm Gladwell with an “Audio Vanguard” award? Pushkin went through three painful rounds of layoffs last year! A third of the company was gutted and yet Gladwell took little responsibility, reportedly telling staffers that despite his position as co-founder and president, “I’m not an employee and I’m never going to be involved in the day-to-day decision making.”

This is who we’re honoring, above all others?

According to the website, Gretta Cohn, Pushkin’s CEO, will be interviewing him about his “creative career” onstage. It’s hard to imagine that this will be anything but a softball interview (who made the choice to let Malcolm take questions from his own colleague?), but if the conversation takes any unexpected turns, please do let me know. And if you return from On Air Fest with any tips or story ideas, you know where to find me.

Skye

Post Script: If you enjoyed this newsletter, please hit the like button or share it with a friend. Thanks!

About a month and a half ago, I published an interview with Dear Alana creator Simon Kent Fung, in which he discussed the experience of pitching his show to podcast production and distribution partners. After receiving offers from a number of well-known industry players, Simon chose to work with Tenderfoot TV, and when the show launched this past August, it hit number one on Apple Podcasts in the U.S. and Canada in its first week.

After speaking with Simon, I arranged a second interview with Tenderfoot TV CEO Donald Albright, who was intimately involved with the making of Dear Alana, and the company’s operations and partnerships lead Tracy Leeds Kaplan, who had been a co-worker of Simon’s at Patreon and played a pivotal role in bringing his project to the attention of her employer. I was especially interested to learn why Tenderfoot TV, a company that made its name with podcasts about serial killers and mysterious disappearances, had taken on a show with a decidedly different vibe, but we also discussed how they find new projects, what’s important to them in creative partnerships, and more.

While this is not a review of Dear Alana, I highly recommend the show. Over the course of eight episodes, Simon traces the brief life of a young woman grappling with issues of faith, sexual identity, and belonging — a struggle familiar to Simon. The nuance found in Simon’s storytelling and the note-perfect way in which he weaves his own story into its narrative, make Dear Alana exceptional.

Okay, let’s hit it!

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Skye: Tracy, you were one of the first people Simon reached out to for guidance, since you had worked together at Patreon. He told me you went over to his place to discuss the podcast industry. What was that like?

Tracy: It was November of 2021, so there was definitely that awkwardness about being in someone’s apartment, but I was excited to have a reason to leave my house! When I got there, Simon had a whiteboard set up for us and was ready to work. I mapped out how everything fits together; the relationship between publishers and monetization and distribution channels, that kind of stuff. He was soaking it up like a sponge.

Skye: What was the moment you knew you wanted to explore partnering with Simon on the show?

Tracy: In early March of 2022, Simon and I spent some time catching up. It had been a while and he’d made great progress on the pilot. When I heard it, I knew that it would be a great fit for Tenderfoot. I was actually a little jealous of what he had put together!

Skye: Why?

Tracy: Simon already had such a strong and compelling voice in that first episode, but he was also vulnerable in a way that I knew would connect with audiences. It’s not easy for a first time podcaster to create something so powerful and engaging right off the bat.

Skye: Were you aware that Simon had pursued conversion therapy?

Tracy: No, but as soon as he started sharing it, I was drawn to how much he still loved his religion, even after all he had been through. He blew away some of my preconceived notions about conversion therapy. You hear stories about family members forcing people into conversion therapy, yet here were two cases where that wasn’t the situation at all; Simon and Alana’s families loved them for who they were.

Skye: Why did you think that Tenderfoot would be the right fit for this particular show?

Tracy: We have the right team for stories are complicated and not easy to tell. I also saw the opportunity to speak to new audiences that we hadn’t connected with yet and bring listeners into a story that had many layers.

Skye: I never would have predicted that Dear Alana would land at Tenderfoot, as I’ve always associated the company with more traditional true crime shows like Up and Vanished and Monster.

Donald: I’m aware that creators who are looking at us from the outside might think that Tenderfoot is not the right place for their project if it’s not a true crime story, but we’ve expanded beyond that in a few directions now. They don’t know what we’re working on today that will come out in the second half of next year, right? We’re the only ones who know our trajectory as a studio.

Skye: Given that true crime is still extremely popular, what is the business reason for expanding in new directions?

Donald: It’s part of a conscious effort to not get too comfortable just because we have an established true crime audience. We don’t want to keep making true crime shows just because that’s what we think our audience wants; we want to tell stories that we think are important. The truth is that Tenderfoot was never about true crime. It was about story, it was about characters — and it was about the mystery, intrigue, and suspense that could be part of any show. A podcast in our portfolio doesn’t have to be a whodunit murder case, or a show about a serial killer or a disappearance. Sometimes it's a who's responsible. That’s what it was with the first two seasons of Culpable for example, and that's what it is with Dear Alana. The show has true crime elements, but many factors played into why it was a good fit for us, including its potential to impact different audiences and the fact that Simon was the perfect storyteller for it.

Skye: Was the fact that Simon was new to podcasting a concern?

Donald: Almost all our hosts and creators were first-timers when they started working with us, so that was not an issue at all. This was a situation where everything aligned perfectly; we wanted to tell this story, and we knew we could tell it in the right way. That’s one of the reasons we independently financed it, starting from when Simon brought it to us all the way to release.

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Skye: What does independently financing a show actually mean?

Donald: It can mean different things, but for Dear Alana it means that all creative fees, indie contractors, music licensing, legal, travel, ad buys, every dollar spent was financed out of pocket by Tenderfoot. For a company like ours, who has never taken investment, that is a true independent project release. We did not take a production advance or an MG [minimum guarantee] on ad sales. We took on one hundred percent of the cost and one hundred percent of the risk with no guarantees. We're grateful that iHeart came on board to rep ad sales and they provided in-kind marketing, which added to our marketing efforts. 

Skye: Simon told me that one of the reasons he went with Tenderfoot is that he knew his day-to-day team would be smaller and allow for more intimacy, and he felt that was important for this particular project. Is working in small teams typical for Tenderfoot?

Donald: It depends on the show, but outside of post-production work, our teams do tend to be on the smaller side, maybe three people. With Dear Alana, the day-in, day-out work was mostly Simon, Laurie [Polisky, Dear Alana’s producer, composer, editor, and story editor], and me. We brought in other team members as needed, but when we were in the trenches of making the show, it felt comfortable to be working with a small group who really understood one another. In the process, I became friends with Simon and with Laurie. We had a lot of fun making the show. There were laughs, tears — the full range of emotions, which the audience will also experience when they listen to the show.

Skye: Does forming connections with a new team that quickly happen often?

Donald: The experience of making every show is different, but I always want new podcasters — or any podcaster, for that matter — to feel like they can’t wait to do their next project with us. I don’t care how big the show is, or if gets to number one; if someone we’ve worked with doesn’t feel like like it was a positive experience, then we’ve failed. That includes the families and communities who are involved in the making of a show, too.

Skye: You flew to Colorado for a Dear Alana listening session with Laurie and Simon before the deal with them was signed. Did that feel like a risky move? [Typically part of the development process, a listening session provides an opportunity for podcast creators to get feedback on what they’ve created so far. — SP]

Donald: Getting a deal done can take a while, but at a certain point, I just knew we were going to work with Simon on this project. And when we want a project, the paperwork is not going to hold us back.

Tracy: I think the fact that Donald, Matt [Pusti of the EDM band Makeup and Vanity Set, who oversees sound design and music production at Tenderfoot], and myself hopped on a plane for the listening session showed that we were committed to the project and didn’t want to miss any part of development. The trip also gave us a chance to get to know Laurie and hear her vision for the project.

Skye: What’s most important to you when you are considering working with a creator on a new project?

Donald: I always look at how collaborative they are. If a creator is too married to what they think is right, it can be difficult. I’ve spoken with creators who have been living with their project for six months, and all they can talk about is how great it is. I’d rather they come to us and say, I have a good story, but how can we make it even better? When Simon came to us, he was confident but humble. He knew what he brought to the project, but was eager to collaborate with our team.

Tracy: Simon had the right balance of knowing where he wanted to take the story but also being very open to feedback.

Donald: Flexibility is important. For example, with Dear Alana, we made some big structural changes, even after we had all the content and knew what each episode was going to be about.

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Skye: Can you tell me about a structural change you made?

Donald: When making a show like Dear Alana, you have to think about easing an audience into a subject that they may not have signed up for. A good example of this is S-Town [a podcast from Serial and This American Life], where you thought you were in for a murder investigation but it ended up being a character piece, right? You have to figure out how you’re going to get the audience to stick around after they realize that the show has taken a turn. With Dear Alana, I thought we should stay the course of Alana and Simon’s story a bit longer before getting into the causes and history behind conversion therapy. That was a bit of a curveball for the team, but it ended up being the right choice.

Skye: You encountered Dear Alana because of Simon’s prior relationship with Tracy, but how do you ordinarily find projects?

Donald: Lots of different ways. There have been times we’ve responded to cold emails from creators who think Tenderfoot is the right fit for their project — that’s what happened with the MLK Tapes and Le Monstre, for example. Other times we’ve developed a concept internally and then figured out who should be the right voice or storyteller for it. When the host is the reason that a story can be told — as it was with Dear Alana — those projects have to find us. Dear Alana could only be told by Simon because of the parallels between his and Alana’s experience. Sometimes those opportunities come from the creator directly, others times we hear about them from agents or friends or partners. There is no blueprint to finding the right story.

Skye: Tracy, you played a pivotal role in bringing Dear Alana to Tenderfoot. Now that it’s been such a success, how do you feel?

Tracy: I’m grateful that I was in a position to help Simon tell this story in a way that could have impact, and I’m proud that I’ve developed a relationship with Donald where he trusts me and understood what I saw in the project. When Simon reached out to me in 2021, I definitely didn’t know we’d end up here, but I’m so glad he did.

That’s all for me this week! If you enjoyed this piece, please consider hitting the heart button at the bottom of the page.

Take care of each other out there,

Skye

Postscript:

1. While some organizations are laying off employees and shutting down hit podcasts, Tenderfoot is acquiring them; read about their purchase of Resonate Originals here.

2. Also, big thanks to Simon, who generously shared these notes from the listening session mentioned in today’s interview. Enjoy!

Hello.

Emerging from my topsy-turvy life to bring you a belated piece regarding New York Public Radio’s recent layoffs. Despite my tardiness, the issues within this newsletter are still very much at play. If you find value in this piece, and happen to know NYPR CEO LaFontaine Oliver, please forward it to him. While you’re at it, try asking if he’d be open to having an off the record chat with me? I can be reached at 415-377-7591 or skyepillsatwork@gmail.com.

Over the last seven months, I’ve interviewed upwards of 35 current and former NYPR/WNYC employees (NYPR owns WNYC, Gothamist, WQXR, NJPR and a few other things). Over a dozen current and former employees spoke to me in service of today’s story. With one exception, every person I interviewed asked to remain anonymous, for fear of retaliation by the company and its leadership. In an effort to protect sources, I’ve used minimal quotes and where necessary, “they/them” pronouns regardless of a person’s gender identity.

Please note that throughout the piece, I mention statements I heard while reviewing a recording of a two-hour all-staff meeting held by New York Public Radio. After the first instance in which I mention the meeting, I’ll be referring to it as simply “the all-staff.” Quotes from the all-staff included in the prologue have been edited for clarity and length.

If you didn’t read my first piece about the layoffs, I would recommend checking it out before digging into this one.

Finally, I don’t have an editor and I’m very tired so I regret any typos! (Mom, this apology is mostly for you.)

Alright, let’s hit it —

Prologue

During a recording of an all-staff meeting at New York Public Radio, a WNYC-FM newsroom reporter can be heard expressing confusion over CEO LaFontaine Oliver’s decision to lay off many of the station's most experienced audio journalists. The reporter begins by saying that while she writes for Gothamist and produces stories for WNYC, she’s aware that more people encounter her work on the radio than online. “That’s just a larger audience,” she says. “I think that that's why a lot of us were confused by the decision to let go of so many people who knew audio so well. There aren't that many people who know radio and can mentor me.”

Oliver seems perplexed by her comment.

“So if I’m understanding you, you’re in the newsroom and you’re talking about people that were affected in Studios,” he says, drawing out his words for emphasis. “[Studios] had more, in your opinion, experience in audio — so even though they weren’t in your department…?”

“It just it feels like a really big loss that is confusing … it is still disheartening to lose so many of those skills and not feel like we could have maybe gained them in the newsroom —” she tries again.

“So I guess … why didn’t we trade some of those folks for people in the newsroom —”

“No, that’s not what — I think it’s just that we want to understand that decision,” she continues. “I don't know that it’s getting across that — maybe you or other leadership don’t understand what a loss this is....”

Eventually, the CEO comes up with an answer. “Uhm, what I would say to that is, I am happy to take up a broader conversation with Audrey and Kenya and others to make sure that we understand that we do have, or we can identify those audio skills.”

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New York Public Radio's Layoffs Are Worse Than You Think, Part 2

Over the past couple of weeks, New York Public Radio CEO LaFontaine Oliver has positioned the termination of its podcast-first shows, and the people who made them, as a necessary step in bringing the organization back to financially sustainability. Publicly, Oliver has highlighted four new areas of focus for his organization — local news, multiplatform audio, classical music, and partnerships — but the fundamental strategy appears to be a return to radio-first programming. In conversation with Hot Pod, the CEO said that his decisions were driven by “the numbers” and the fact that NYPR is “still having material success in reaching people from traditional media broadcasting.” (At some point, it would probably be worth interrogating why leadership wasn’t able to monetize its top-notch podcast portfolio but for our purposes today, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that Oliver looked at the financials and made his cuts accordingly.)

On paper, the pivot made sense. If WNYC Studios wasn’t making money, it followed that Oliver had to cut its programs. However, when Oliver decided to cut the people who were making those programs, he (unknowingly?) cut many of the people who would have been most qualified to help him achieve his stated goals.

“I get that something had to be done to make the organization more financially sustainable,” a current employeee told me a couple of weeks ago. “But if the goal was to focus on live radio and audio journalism, why are we cutting the people who came out of the newsroom and live radio programs and leaving the jobs in the newsroom that involve people who don’t know the first thing about radio?”

My source wasn’t being hyperbolic. As I’ve reported before, under the direction of Editor in Chief Chief Audrey Cooper, dozens of talented and award-winning newsroom journalists at the station have been systematically replaced with staffers who have little to zero radio experience. This has all been done in service of Cooper’s mission to transform the public radio newsroom into a “digital-first” organization. However, due to Cooper’s poor implementation of this strategy, the number of in-depth audio features appearing on the air has plummeted and ironically traffic to Gothamist has dropped significantly as well.

This week, with the help of Gothamist’s staff list, LinkedIn, and other marvels of the Internet, I took a deeper dive into how Cooper’s leadership has impacted the newsroom. A few caveats: I did not count internships, fellowships, or similar programs as “work experience.” I did not include the experience of the visuals editor in my calculations, as I imagine that person isn’t expected to edit radio. In cases where someone’s exact levels of experience were unclear, I rounded up. Finally, LinkedIn pages and staff lists are not always 100% up-to-date. With that said, here’s what I found:

REPORTERS

Cooper has hired 15 of the 24 reporters currently working in the WNYC-FM newsroom (she’s actually hired more, but not all have stayed). Of those 15:

• 11 (or 73%) had zero experience working in radio prior to being hired by the radio station.

• 6 (or 40%) have been employed by NYPR for approximately one year or less.

Of the 24 total reporters in the newsroom:

• 5 (or 20%) currently have less than 1 year of total experience reporting for radio.

• 11 (or 45%) currently have less than 2 years of total experience reporting for radio. (This includes time spent working at NYPR.)

EDITORS

Cooper has hired 14 of the 19 editors currently working in the WNYC-FM newsroom (she’s actually hired more, but not all have stayed). Of those 14:

• 12 (or 85%) had zero experience working in radio prior to being hired by the radio station.

• 13 (or 92%) have been employed by NYPR for two years or less.

Of the 19 total editors in the newsroom:

• 11 (or 58%) have had 2 years or less of total experience working in radio.

LEADERSHIP

Cooper has hired 2 of the 4 people currently working in newsroom leadership: the deputy editor, and the director of digital news and audience. Of those:

• 2 (or 100%) had zero experience working in radio prior to being hired by the radio station.

And finally, 100% of Audrey Cooper arrived at NYPR with zero experience working in radio.

These numbers are bananas, but the reality on the ground is even more bananas. According to multiple sources, Cooper requires reporters to write at least two, sometimes three 500 to 750-word stories for Gothamist each week, leaving even the most seasoned reporters with barely enough time to file their own radio stories, much less produce in-depth features or mentor new recruits. (According to multiple sources, Cooper is careful not to call this writing requirement a “quota” — a journalistic no-no — but multiple employees shared that those who don’t meet this standard are often dinged for it performance reviews.)

Current and former employees describe what’s happened to the newsroom as “crisis,” a “catastrophe,” a “disgrace.” They’ve said that the impact of public radio resources “being poured into non-radio work” (and non-radio people) for over three years has put the New York institution in a perilous situation. “We’re at a tipping point,” a current staffer said to me the other day, urgency in their voice. “We have editors assigning radio stories when they have no idea what it takes to make one. Everything is being edited on paper instead of by the ear. We have print reporters arriving who are not getting the benefit of institutional knowledge and training. A million paper cuts are eroding our ability to make quality radio.” (Loads of current and former employees have also told me that in the midst of the chaos, Cooper has turned what used to be a collegial atmosphere into one ruled by fear, paranoia, and mistrust1 and according to my reporting, since 2021, upwards of seven employees have gone on mental health leave. When reached for comment, VP of Communications Jennifer Houlihan Roussel said that “New York Public Radio does not comment on confidential personnel matters or the personal circumstances of our employees, but I can confirm we offer mental health benefits and staff are encouraged to access them as needed.”)

Over the years, the station has hired plenty of print journalists who have become talented radio reporters, but — as many of the people reading this know — mastering the craft of high-quality audio journalism takes time — as in, years. In April of 2022, the station hired accomplished editor George Bodarky to train new recruits, but only a leader who doesn’t understand how to make radio would think one person would be enough to transform a room full of green print reporters into radio experts. As one employee said during the all-staff, “George is amazing … but George is one person and it doesn't replace being surrounded by people who know radio.” Regardless, Cooper — who likes to tout the fact that her newsroom is “on track to become our region’s largest local news-gathering force” — is still hiring reporters, despite a hiring freeze.

So what does this have to do with the layoffs?

Welllllll, many of the folks Oliver laid off, including the biggest names within that group, started their WNYC careers reporting in the newsroom or producing other radio-first programming such as The Brian Lehrer Show and On the Media. The people on that list are a who’s who of podcasting: Alana Casanova-Burgess, Tracie Hunte, Amy Pearl, Joe Plourde, Julia Longoria, and Anna Sale.2 These folks had proved their radio chops by the time they started at Studios and could have hit the ground running in the newsroom, had Oliver offered them the opportunity to return to their stomping grounds rather than showing them the door.

“I admired them so much,” a young and still-employed staffer told me recently. “They started out as producers, they produced high-quality work that won awards and got recognition, and eventually they were hosting their own shows and getting more accolades for that — and this is how the station responds? If those people were disposable, why would anyone aspire to that? It does not make me want to stay here for long.”

Another troubling aspect of the layoffs came into view during the all-staff when an employee stated that 57% of the people who were laid off are people of color. When asked what that said about how NYPR values racial inclusion, Oliver responded that it “does not speak to where I, as a leader or our senior leadership team place our values,” but sources told me that these statements felt hollow, when weighed against the CEO’s actions.

“I'm shocked that the station didn't offer to redeploy Julia Longoria, Tracie Hunte, and Alana Casanova-Burgess,” Beth Fertig, a 26-year veteran of the WNYC newsroom wrote in a text to me the other day. “These are three very talented, very experienced women of color who are also still young enough to play major roles in shaping the sound of the station for the next generation of talent and listeners. The station could have kept their jobs by moving them to the newsroom to form a very powerful narrative unit, paid for by cutting some recent hires who are not going to contribute much to the radio side of WNYC News.”

Oliver’s words regarding this matter are also complicated by the fact that after arriving at WNYC earlier this year, he allowed former Chief Content Officer Andrew Golis (who, I’m told, departed the organization without a goodbye party) to lay off the majority-POC team making The Takeaway. (If The Takeaway was still around, technically it would have fit with Oliver’s new radio-first programming strategy. Hmm.)

There are other contradictions in what Oliver has said he values moving forward. For example, during the all-staff, Oliver was bullish on the idea of NYPR becoming “multiplatform,” explaining that the station should “meet our audience on whatever platform they may roam on.” However, Oliver laid off two (of the very few) staffers who have significant multiplatform experience, Amy Pearl and Kousha Navidar. “It’s not like we had a big digital or multiplatform team here,” a current employee pointed out. “Now we have to start from scratch during a hiring freeze.”

Another head-scratcher — especially given Oliver’s focus on financial sustainability — is his decision to let go of the person responsible for creating a new revenue stream for Radiolab via the Patreon platform. According to my reporting, the station had planned to replicate the successful program with other shows due to its strong results. When a staffer asked how the already-stretched Radiolab team would now “deliver on the content promises we have made to thousands of paying Radiolab subscribers” during the all-staff, Oliver said he’d have to check with someone else “to be able to answer that question.”

But perhaps most infuriating baffling to staffers who attended the all-staff, was a comment the CEO made without any prompting:

As an organization, we absolutely must make a shift to becoming more audience focused. And I know that's probably hard for some of you all to hear because you think that we've been audience focused, but we have not. We have been much more internally focused and we have to put the audience at the center of what we are doing and part of what I am thinking about…is how do we prioritize and put the audience first because that is going to be the key to our success going forward.

Multiple current and former employees told me they felt outraged at the notion that their work was not focused on the needs and interests of the station’s audience. Many pointed out that much of the programming Oliver cancelled was explicitly externally focused. For example, Casanova-Burgess’s dual-language hit show La Brega was one of the first projects made by WNYC that was aimed at a non-white audience. And More Perfect, a recently rebooted show about the Supreme Court, was on track to launch its second season at a time when Americans — and definitely New Yorkers — are paying more attention to judicial decisions than they have in decades.

If however, Oliver was referring to a decline in audience engagement in the newsroom, I would point him toward a previous piece, in which I explain — in even greater detail — how the misguided decisions of his editor in chief have provided audiences with way less in-depth radio journalism and far fewer personality-driven digital news pieces over the past three years. Perhaps after he finishes reading that issue of The Squeeze, he’ll have someone other than staffers to scold.

That’s all from me for now. Thanks for reading. Check out a few final things in the postscript and a couple of footnotes down below.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Take care of each other out there.

Skye

Postscript: A Few Final Things

• Notes from the all-staff:

  • Regarding the possibility of more layoffs, Oliver said “it would be irresponsible for me to say, but there are no plans for that at this moment.”

  • Regarding the future of NYPR’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space venue, Oliver said “we've reduced the number of events in that space and I know that at some point fairly soon some of the foundational support that had been there for the Greene space comes to an end. That is all I can say at this point.”

  • Regarding whether Oliver would be willing to do a postmortem on the negotiations with the union because, as a staffer put it, “there were inexplicable actions and a lack of real transparency on the part of the company that would be helpful to talk out,” Oliver agreed.

• I’ve heard rumblings from multiple sources that the board may want to dispense with the WNYC Studios brand, but this is not confirmed.

• For those of you keeping a tally, I’ve recently learned that a New Yorker Radio Hour producer quit the month before the layoffs and that person will not be replaced. So essentially, that team lost two members, not one.

It’s been a brutal couple of weeks (in many respects) and I hope you are all hanging in there.

To paid subscribers: Don’t forget to meet me on Zoom TODAY, Tuesday October 17th at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET / 8:30 pm GMT+1 where we will discuss future story ideas for this newsletter. If you can’t find the info, hit reply on this email and I’ll send you the link.

To everyone: I’m working on a more in-depth piece regarding NYPR’s layoffs, but in today’s short newsletter, we’re going behind my reporting on the status of Death, Sex & Money. Please chime in with reactions or questions in the comments and if you have a sec, hit the like button. Thanks!

Death, Sex & Money: Behind the Reporting

Last Monday, I reported that New York Public Radio had made the decision to cut podcast heavyweight Death, Sex & Money from its portfolio and lay off its four-member team, though production would continue through the end of the year. Meanwhile, the organization’s executives have positioned this news differently. During a recording of an all-staff meeting which I reviewed last week, CEO LaFontaine Oliver can be heard saying that if NYPR can “pull a deal together” with a partner “in a significant way,” then it could keep the show under the WNYC banner. “If we are unable to do that by the end of the calendar year, the show will be sunset,” says Oliver.

These two narratives are in conflict.

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Oliver’s narrative is based on his words. Those words soften the impact of this news and they allow New York Public Radio to evade —or at least delay — accountability for the full scope of its actions.

My narrative is based on a legal document. I published the news about Death Sex & Money — along with very specific details regarding NYPR’s other cuts in personnel — after obtaining the information from this document over a week ago. The document includes a list of job titles, responsibilities, and ages of all NYPR employees who have been selected for “involuntary termination as a result of a reduction-in-force.” The four Death Sex & Money staffers — its “Managing Editor & Host,” “Executive Producer,” “Producer I,” and “Broadcast Engineer,” — appear on this list, about six rows from the top, right below an executive assistant from WQXR and above the host of WNYC’s More Perfect. There is no differentiation between DS&M staffers and anyone else on that list.

The night before I published the information I sent New York Public Radio VP of Communications Jennifer Houlihan Roussel a copy of what I was planning to run in The Squeeze as a courtesy. At the time, I did not necessarily expect to hear back from Roussel, as I was reporting facts pulled from a primary source; the facts spoke for themselves (also, about a month and a half ago the VP started ignoring my press requests again).

In the wake of this news becoming public, DS&M host Anna Sale asked me to share a statement, which I published on Twitter last week.

This was the first public acknowledgement from anyone at New York Public Radio that DS&M was in transition. But then, two days later, Hot Pod published a story about WNYC’s layoffs, which echoed Oliver’s narrative around the show and included quotes from Roussel. (Interestingly though, no one has challenged any other facts I published in last week’s newsletter.)

The next day, I reached back out to the VP again, requesting that she clarify the discrepancies between NYPR executives’ words and the organization’s legal documentation regarding the layoffs. “I don’t care one way or the other,” I said in email. “I just want the truth.”

Later that morning, someone with knowledge shared that there had been movement on the issue; Roussel was “checking with legal” on the “exact language” to use in a response to me. This seemed promising; if landing on an answer required legal assistance, it must mean Roussel was taking my question seriously.

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Oh, what a naive reporter I was back then!

It’s now been more than four days and “checking with legal” is the closest I’ve come to an acknowledgement of the actual facts from New York Public Radio. It appears that the organization has decided it’s better to say nothing.

If NYPR’s lawyers got over their skis with the paperwork, why not say so?

If Oliver was too optimistic in his positioning around all of this, why not say so?

People and organizations make mistakes! Why is transparency so hard for New York Public Radio?

This is something I’ve thought about a lot as I’ve reported on the organization over the course of the last seven months. Public relations, and even crisis PR, is often grueling work, but it’s not rocket science. (Like Roussel, I was a PR executive for many years.) You make a mistake —> you admit it —> you take full responsibility for it —> you do better on the next round. Over time, these simple steps buy your organization trust and credibility. Dodging questions and acting shady accomplish the opposite.

Speaking of transparency, here a few more details regarding the layoffs:

— According to legal documentation, the person who was let go from the organization’s marketing department was their “Director of Research & Audience Data.”

— According to legal documentation, the person who was let go from the organization’s development department was a “Senior Associate” in legacy giving.

— According to the recording of an all-staff meeting, the person who was laid off from the Radiolab team was leading its “hugely successful” Patreon business model.

— As part of the organization’s recent restructuring, On the Media lost a producer to another team, and Radiolab and New Yorker Radio Hour, have open positions that will now not not be filled.

I’m hustling to get you another piece on NYPR’s layoffs by the end of this week. Until then, take care of yourselves out there, and if you’re looking for a new job, Podnews has a good list of the latest opportunities.

Skye

Postscript:

If you have information about New York Public Radio that you think I should know, please reach out:

skyepillsatwork@gmail.com * 415-377-7591 * Signal * WhatsApp

Hey Squeeze Peeps — 

Very brief newsletter, just to clarify something I’m seeing people talk about online.

As some of you already know, New York Public Radio laid off 20 staffers, or 6% of its workforce last week. If you followed the news, you might have read this WNYC/Gothamist story, in which an outside freelancer hired by the station to cover the story reported that in addition to reducing its staff, NYPR “cut podcasts More Perfect and La Brega as part of a broader cost-cutting effort.”

This narrative — 20 people and 2 seasonal shows — is nice and tidy but it doesn’t convey the full impact of the layoffs. Because according to my reporting, Death, Sex & Money, a juggernaut show that helped establish WNYC as a force within podcasting, was also cut (production ends in January), and many of WNYC’s other podcasts and teams were also impacted.

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So in the spirit of transparency, here’s what I’m hearing about the layoffs:

• Death, Sex & Money: four people laid off (show canceled, production ends in January);

• More Perfect: six people laid off (show canceled);

• Notes from America: one person laid off;

• Radiolab: one person laid off;

• New Yorker Radio Hour: two people laid off;

• WNYC Studios “core staff”: four people laid off; this number includes staffers who work on multiple shows, including but not limited to La Brega;

• The WNYC/Gothamist newsroom: one person laid off (exec assistant);

• Marketing and Planned Giving/Development departments: one person laid off from each;

• NYPR-owned classical music station WQXR: two people laid off.

These are wide and deep cuts that fan out across almost all shows in WNYC’s portfolio. And I can’t shake the feeling that taken together, they feel like more than the sum of their parts; that it’s possible that we’re witnessing the last days of WNYC Studios. What do you think? Am I being overly dramatic? Let me know in the comments!

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I have a lot more to say about all of this, but also more reporting to do. If you have information or insights abut NYPR, please reach out to me at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com, or Signal 415-377-7591 (I do regular texts, too). And yes, I’m still technically on a break, but I can’t seem to quit this story, no matter what else is going on in my life!

More soon. In the meantime, take care of each other out there.

Skye

Postscript: For more, check out Hell Gate’s story on the NYPR all-staff last week:

Hello, Squeeze People!

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to pitch your show to some of the leading podcast production studios, today’s interview with Dear Alana creator Simon Kent Fung is for you. Simon chose to work with Tenderfoot TV for production and distribution and when the show launched this past August, it hit number one on Apple Podcasts in the U.S. and Canada in its first week. A spokesperson for Tenderfoot TV says that the show “is closing in” on two million downloads.

Before we get to that, a few quick notes:

• By now, you’re probably aware that I’ve paused payments from paid subscribers while I deal with a family situation. I hope to return to more regular programming in about a month, but it depends on factors that are out of my control. In the meantime, I’m squeezing work in when and where I can (see what I did there?).

• I’m hosting an inaugural feedback session for paid members of The Squeeze on Tuesday, October 10th at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET / 8:30 pm GMT+1 on Zoom. I will bring a list of story ideas for the group to consider. Because I’m not accepting any new paid subscribers right now, if you desperately want to attend this Zoom, hit reply on this email and we’ll work it out.

• You may have heard that New York Public Radio has announced that the company will lay off 12% (40 members) of its workforce. I wasn’t shocked by this news, as NYPR CEO Oliver LaFontaine warned of cost-cutting back in June, but union leaders are doing whatever they can to fight it. This week organization’s members made a presentation to leadership suggesting alternatives, and launched a public petition. Godspeed.

• I’ve heard rumblings for months now about trouble at Sweet Fish, a business-to-business podcast production company. Those rumblings seem to be growing louder lately. If you have any information about this company that you think I should know, please do reach out.

• Finally, given all the layoffs, I’m considering adding a jobs section to this newsletter. If you’ve got an open position to share, send it my way and please include compensation and benefits. To kick things off, check out this description for a lead producer position that’s just come up at The Podglomerate.

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Moving on to today’s main event:

The Inside Story Behind Simon Kent Fung and Tenderfoot TV's Now-Hit Podcast Dear Alana

I met first-time podcaster Simon Kent Fung at an industry mixer in June of 2022. In between bites of hummus and falafel, Simon revealed that he was on the brink of choosing between several offers from well known podcast production and distribution companies for a narrative podcast he’d been developing for nearly a year. Intrigued — both by what he told me about the show and the position he was now in — I asked him to get in touch if he ever felt ready to dish about the experience of pitching his show, and he said he would. 

Lucky for me, he made good on his promise this past June. “Dear Skye,” his email began. “We met at the KQED podcast mingle last summer, and you asked me to follow up with you. I was the independent making a show on my experiences in conversion therapy… Well here I am, a year late! I went with Tenderfoot and the show is leading their slate this year…”

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Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with Simon more than once and am excited to present an edited version of our conversations today. As a special bonus, in my next issue, I’ll publish excerpts of a conversation I had with Tenderfoot TV’s CEO Donald Albright, who was intimately involved with the making of Dear Alana, and Tenderfoot’s lead on operations and partnerships, Tracy Leeds Kaplan, who played a pivotal role in bringing Simon’s show to the attention of her employer.

To be clear, today’s interview is focused on Simon’s process of finding a studio partner for Dear Alana — but I also recommend that you check out the actual show! Over the course of eight episodes, Simon traces the brief life of a young woman grappling with issues of faith, sexual identity, and belonging — a struggle that is familiar to Simon. The nuance found in Simon’s storytelling and the note-perfect way in which he weaves his own story into its narrative, make Dear Alana exceptional (and not necessarily a show I would have expected from Tenderfoot TV —but we’ll get to that).

This has been edited for clarity and length.

Skye: What was the driving force behind partnering with a studio for this show?

Simon: I was prepared to make the show independently because I felt very protective over Alana’s story; telling it required a certain level of nuance and sensitivity. So I wasn’t going to work with someone who didn’t respect that part of it. At the same time, I wanted to set the show up to reach as wide an audience as possible — people who were part of this unique subculture of Catholicism that Alana and I were part of, but also people who were not religious at all; people who just wanted to hear a human story. I was under no illusions that I could do that singularly.

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Skye: How did you start?

Simon: After my first trip to Denver to visit Alana’s mom, I collected enough tape to make a fairly polished pilot episode. I had worked briefly in film production and I am a designer by trade, so those things helped. From there, I made a pitch deck that included imagery I had collected in Colorado, show art, episode art, a sort of mind map of the different themes the show would explore, some target demos, that sort of thing. And then I just started reaching out to anyone who would give me the time of day.

Skye: What did that mean in practice?

Simon: It meant messaging my old coworkers on LinkedIn, and making a list of anyone who I thought might be potentially adjacent to the industry. One of the earliest people I spoke with was a former colleague of mine from my days at Patreon, Tracy Leeds Kaplan, who was now at Tenderfoot TV. We were both living in San Francisco, so she came over to my apartment and helped me sort through the podcast ecosystem. Her advice was to start figuring out where the gaps were in what I was doing. I had been prepared to keep making the show myself but she prompted me to realize that bringing on more help made sense. I started thinking about finding some people to help with editing or producing, and maybe someone who wasn’t religious and could provide an “outsider’s” perspective on the story.

I found all of those things in Laurie Polisky, who was introduced to me through another former colleague from my days at Patreon, podcast producer Emily Shaw. We connected right away and I actually ended up formally asking her to be part of the project before we even had a production or distribution deal. She took the risk with me.

Skye: Who else were you pitching at that point?

Simon: I went to Podcast Movement Evolutions in February of 2022 and I pitched people I met in the hallways, people I met in elevators. I was pitching anyone who made time for me. That was great because you can get a lot of subtle feedback from people’s reactions — when their eyes light up, that’s data that can inform you about what’s resonating with the listener and what’s not, how you might need to tweak things.

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Skye: Tell me more about that.

Simon: I was very ambivalent about the degree to which my personal life would be a part of the story. Initially, I set out to tell Alana's story in a way that was sort of detached, where I wouldn't necessarily implicate myself. But as I was pitching, people were saying they wanted to understand my connection to the story — they were like, “we want to know more about you, because you are the one who’s alive to reflect on the themes of the show.” So it was through this process of pitching that it became clear to me that the story needed to be told in a way that was a slight departure from how I originally envisioned it. It was just a constant iteration, even as we started getting meetings with bigger entities.

Skye: What was the hardest thing about pitching all these various people and production companies?

Simon: There was so much that I wanted to get across, but I had to choose the most impactful things to say. You have to be really clear on like, the three main bullet points that this person needs to know. It was a lot of trial and error. My early pitches were very chronological, but it was taking too long, so I started jumping forward in the story and then going back a bit. It depended on someone’s time — I had a pitch for a situation where I had 30 seconds, and then I had pitches for hour-long meetings. You just start figuring it out.

Skye: Were you rejected?

Simon: I got many rejections. Sometimes it was just “your show doesn’t fit into our editorial vision for our upcoming slate of shows,” but other times it was more specific. One person told me that the story felt too depressing and would not reach a wide audience for that reason. I was like, okay, noted. I mean, that’s a very legitimate note. 

Skye: I’m surprised you saw that as a legitimate note. Sad things happen in Alana’s story, but the show is about so much more than the sum of those things.

Simon: I guess what I mean by legitimate is that that person felt depressed by the story. I can’t argue with that. Their feelings are valid.

Skye: What else did you hear?

Simon: I was in a situation where someone suggested I pitch the story as a single episode of a larger show. 

Skye: Did you consider that?

Simon: I didn’t, actually. I felt that Alana’s story needed the spaciousness of a number of episodes to be told in the right way. And there were enough other people saying that they also envisioned it as an entire show, that I felt my instincts were right about that. There were also people who didn’t move forward with me because their approach was focused on just monetization, and while that was certainly a factor for me, making a compelling story was much higher on my list.

Skye: When did things really start heating up? 

Simon: We started getting serious interest from studios around April or May of 2022.

Skye: Can you talk some of the deal elements that came up in your discussions with these studios that didn’t appeal to you? 

Simon: There were situations where I was offered a whole team of people to write the show for me, which felt really intimidating, especially as I was probably going to be mining a lot of personal material. I also had to think logistically about how I would build trust with a room full of people. So that didn’t end up being a fit, but it gave me insights into the mechanics of how a schedule works with some of these organizations. Other entities that didn’t feel right for the show were driven by a subscription or paywalled approach and as I’ve mentioned, I really wanted this to be accessible to a large audience. 

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Skye: How did you decide to work with Tenderfoot TV?

Simon: Tracy had seen some of the material I was developing along the way. She felt it was compelling and spoke about it with Tenderfoot’s CEO Donald Albright. Shortly after that, Donald called me directly to say that he hoped Tenderfoot would be included in the mix when I started figuring out who to work with. He was persistent and that ultimately made a real difference to me.

Skye: What was your first meeting with Donald like?

Simon: I could immediately tell that he trusted me as a storyteller. Part of that was our mutual connection to Tracy, but I also think he trusted my voice based on listening to the materials I had sent them. He got the importance of approaching the story from multiple dimensions — growing up as a teenager, or wrestling with one’s faith or sense of belonging. The team at Tenderfoot understood the show’s themes on a level where I actually didn't have to pitch that hard. Whereas in other cases, I felt like I was going to have to fight for my vision. 

It was also clear that he understood the value of bringing Dear Alana to a wider audience. He recognized the show’s potential for bringing more diverse audiences to the medium as a whole, not just for Tenderfoot’s channel. It was a good sign to me that they were thinking about the show as a longer-term bet for the industry.

Tenderfoot’s small company size also felt very much in line with what I wanted [Tenderfoot TV tells me that they employ “about 20” people — SP]. I think my intuition that we didn’t need a big group of people to work on this show really panned out. Donald himself was intimately involved in the story editing and the marketing of the show. He was very hands-on. He, Laurie, and I would meet several times a week on Zoom and stay up really late talking through cuts. That’s basically how the show was made. 

Skye: Did Tenderfoot’s reputation in the industry as a maker of true crime shows give you any pause during the decision-making process? 

Simon: Initially, I was unsure of how the show would fit, given Tenderfoot's prior dominance in the true crime space. But the more I talked with Donald and Tracy, the more I could see that they trusted me to define the vision for the show, including its genre. Our alignment on doing absolutely everything the story required, along with their broad expertise in serialized storytelling, made me feel confident in my decision.

Skye: Do you own your IP?

Simon: I can’t talk about the terms of the deal but there were things that I had to make sacrifices on in order to gain the things that I felt were most important for the show. Unless you’re a mega celebrity, you're gonna have to make some trade-offs. It's about weighing what your objectives are for your show and deciding if they’re worth it.

Skye: Do you stand to make more money because the show is doing so well?

Simon: I do get a percentage of ad revenue but it’s too early to do that math. 

Skye: How are you feeling about the level of response?

Simon: I’m almost in disbelief. The fact that it's reached people at this pace is incredible. I hoped people would find the show, but it’s spreading very quickly. I’m hearing from youth ministers, college students, school teachers, therapists, counselors, parents, clergy, former classmates of Alana's, LGBTQ folks, agnostics, atheists, nuns who've connected to the story and found it immensely cathartic and resonant. I've been most speechless after hearing from those who've been through similar experiences and never knew anyone else who could relate. They somehow found the show and felt seen in it. Those conversations have been really special.

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That’s it for this week!

Next time: Donald Albright and Tracy Leeds Kaplan.

Postscript: Always read the credits!

And here’s another bit of news: according to NYPR’s just-released tax forms, Golis did indeed make over a half million dollars in salary and bonuses in 2021. (I’ll have more to say about all this soon!)

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Note: If you are new around here, I encourage you to read my previous reporting on New York Public Radio and its flagship station WNYC:

WNYC Part I: Why Did New York Public Radio Hire Andrew Golis?

WNYC Part II: What Has Chief Content Officer Andrew Golis Accomplished?

More on WNYC Studios

WNYC Part III: Audrey Cooper’s Digital First Strategy Has Failed

Alright, let’s hit it:

Internal Memo From LaFontaine Oliver

Internal Memo From Andrew Golis

Last night I had a dream that everyone who showed up on tonight’s Zoom was wearing ridiculous hats, wigs, costume jewelry, and make-up. The conversation was jolly but also intellectual, but like, not in a pretentious way? (I say this despite not remembering anything anyone actually said — it was just the VIBE.) You know where this is going, right?

SQUEEZE NATION, PLEASE HELP ME MAKE THIS DREAM COME TRUE!

Tonight please don your most ridiculous hat, wig, costume, makeup, jewelry or WHATEVER! And if dressing up for strangers is not your jam (understandable), or you’re trapped in a cubicle at work, no sweat — your beautiful presence will be enough.

Please note: I’m inviting 4,300 people to a Zoom with a 100 person limit. Honestly, if 100 people show up tonight I will be floored, but if people do end up getting shut out, I’ll do a separate zoom party for them on a different date. And regardless of that, if the crowd is sizable, I will create breakout rooms for better discussion (I’ve never done that before, so if I knock you off the zoom, click back in!).

FINAL NOTE: as part of a sort-of epilogue thingie to my series about WNYC/Gothamist, I’m looking for sources who have knowledge of how “digital first” strategies are working for other public radio stations. If this is you, please reach out to me to discuss, even off the record. Thank you!

PARTY DETAILS

• Monday, August 14th

• 5pm PST / 8pm EST

• https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89440071593?pwd=bkZrZlZBMTNnUnhvRlRkMFhPLy9IZz09

• Meeting ID: 894 4007 1593

• Passcode: 461645

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE!

Skye

Postscript:

The past couple of weeks have been a bit agonizing, as I came to grips with the fact that I need to put The Squeeze on pause for at least two months, perhaps a bit more. This was a hard decision to make, but it’s clear that this is the only path forward right now.

During this period, I will publish at least one more free issue — I’m working on it now — and will continue benefits for paid subscribers (I am pausing monthly payments, though). As always, you are free to unsubscribe whenever you like, but I hope you hang in there with me, as I intend to return to more regular writing as soon as I am able.

Please note: I am not disappearing off the face of the earth! Your leads, story ideas, questions, and feedback are always welcome. I’ve also decided to host a Zoom gathering for ALL subscribers this coming Monday. After rapid-fire intros, let’s discuss how we balance our creative work with the realities of LIFE (and the occasional crisis 🥴), and if time permits, I’d love to hear your thoughts on previous reporting from The Squeeze and/or future story ideas.

Details:

• Monday, August 14th

• 5pm PST / 8pm EST

• https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89440071593?pwd=bkZrZlZBMTNnUnhvRlRkMFhPLy9IZz09

• Meeting ID: 894 4007 1593

• Passcode: 461645

See you soon!

Skye

First, welcome to a slew of new paid subscribers who have come onboard over the last few weeks! I’m thrilled you’re here and grateful for your support. Please reach out with questions or comments any time.

Second, I have a quick question: how would you feel if I opened up our monthly Zoom gatherings to all subscribers (free and paid)? While I enj…

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Hello, everyone!

If you’re new here — welcome! This issue of The Squeeze is the third part in a series of pieces I’m writing on New York Public Radio’s flagship station, WNYC. If you haven’t done so already, I recommend reading part one and two before reading this installment.

This is a long one, so let’s jump right to it.

WNYC Part III: Audrey Cooper's Digital First Strategy Has Failed

In part one of this series, I made the case that New York Public Radio’s decision to hire Andrew Golis, a “digital media executive” with zero experience working in radio, as the organization’s Chief Content Officer, was driven by industry-wide anxiety that digital platforms would “eat public radio’s lunch.” I made the case that Golis was unqualified for his job, where he earns over half a million dollars per year.

In part two, I showed that under Golis’s watch, WNYC Studios, the station’s podcast subsidiary, had entered a period of creative stagnation, marked by high profile departures, show losses, and a decline in audience and download numbers.

Today we’ll take a look at the other major content arm for which Golis is responsible: the WNYC newsroom, which includes the station’s radio operations and the digital website it purchased in 2018, Gothamist. It’s important to note that while Andrew Golis oversees basically everything at WNYC, he doesn’t run its newsroom (in fact, according many sources, he barely steps foot in it). That’s the job of Audrey Cooper, the station’s editor in chief. She makes all the decisions related the station’s news operations, and according to my reporting, Golis backs her up 99 times out of 100. One of Cooper’s most impactful decisions has been to fully merge WNYC’s radio and digital newsrooms. Today all newsroom reporters are expected develop the ability to write stories for the website and produce audio journalism. As readers of this newsletter probably know, those are two very different disciplines, and it’s clear from my reporting that this “digital first” strategy has worked out badly for the station.

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Before I go any further, I want to walk you through a few of the events that led up to the hiring of Audrey Cooper:

• Andrew Golis started work at WNYC in February of 2019. Seven months later, New York Public Radio hired Goli Sheikholeslami as its new CEO. The press release announcing the news praised Sheikholeslami for leading “the historic integration of the [Washington] Post’s digital and print operations” as a senior executive at the newspaper, and for “launching digital properties” at Chicago Public Media, where she had served as CEO.

• Sheikholeslami was eager to integrate WNYC’s radio and digital operations, which were still operating relatively independently when she arrived. The new CEO appeared to think that the task would be straightforward, telling then-Gothamist reporter Christopher Robbins that creating content for digital properties and producing stories for the radio are “eighty percent” the same. (Sheikholeslami hasn’t responded to my repeated requests for an interview.)

• In late 2019 and the first part of 2020, Sheikholeslami and Golis conducted a nationwide search for an editor in chief for the newsroom. As the New York Times reported in a story titled “WNYC Employees Demanded Diversity. They Got Another White Boss,” despite feedback from staffers that “a person of color, someone who deeply understood New York and who had experience in public radio” should fill the role, the search concluded with the hire of San Francisco Chronicle’s white editor in chief Audrey Cooper, a person with no experience in radio or knowledge of New York, but who had been lauded for pushing a legacy newspaper into the digital age.

• In the span of less than 18 months, the three most powerful roles at a celebrated New York radio institution had now been filled by people who had little to zero combined experience working in public radio.

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Now, a lot of shit has gone down at WNYC during the three years Cooper has been in charge of the station’s newsroom (different elements of all the shit have been covered over the past few years by various publications; if you’re interested, you can read up on it here, here, and here). In a future issue, I may get into some of that, but today my focus is on results.

Our story begins last March. A handful of sources told me that WNYC’s editor in chief Audrey Cooper had made staffers prioritize writing for the newsroom’s website over producing radio stories. Multiple staffers said they were expected to write two to three 500-750 word stories each week, hindering their ability to produce the kind of in-depth news and investigative audio journalism that had made the station one of the most respected public radio organizations in the country. Meanwhile, they told me, Gothamist’s traffic numbers were “garbage.”

This was not actually earthshaking news. In March of 2022, Savannah Jacobson had written a profile of Cooper titled “WNYC sought change. It got turmoil,” for Columbia Journalism Review, in which she reported that under Cooper’s watch, “slower, more thoughtfully produced radio is disappearing in favor of cheaper and quicker stories” and Gothamist traffic had fallen “to pre-pandemic levels.” Cooper, unfazed, told Jacobson that she believed the combined force of WNYC’s radio and digital operations could eventually become “New York City’s ‘newsroom of record.’”

But my sources said things had gotten worse.

I reached out to WNYC communications VP Jennifer Houlihan Roussel and asked if I could schedule a chat with Andrew Golis. I wanted to discuss how the station’s digital evolution was going, and understand how executives were measuring its progress. After a week of nothing burger responses, I downgraded my request. Anyone at the station who could answer my questions would do. A few days later, the verdict was in: “We're not going to make anyone available for interview,” Roussel wrote. “But this letter from our Editor in Chief announcing the Gothamist site refresh last fall does a great job describing where we've been and where we are going.”

In the letter, which appeared on Gothamist last October, Audrey Cooper wrote that the website redesign marked an “important moment” for the newsroom and “for local journalism in New York City.” In an effort to “save local news,” the station had been “working to integrate the formidable WNYC and Gothamist teams” to form a “robust news organization” that was “now on track to become our region’s largest local news-gathering force.”

Indeed, it seemed that to Cooper, becoming a “newsroom of record” meant hiring a lot of people. Though the editor in chief had fired, “laid off,” or simply lost dozens of talented and award-winning reporters over the course of her relatively short tenure, my sources confirmed that she was replacing them as quickly as they exited, and then adding even more — mostly younger, less experienced reporters and editors with little to no radio experience.

With so many new hires from non-radio backgrounds, I wondered what the station’s radio reporting sounded like these days. So I starting listening to it (I live in California, so WNYC-FM programming had not previously been a part of my audio routine).

Here’s what I found:

In-depth news and investigative work was still appearing on the airwaves, but far less frequently than in the years prior to Cooper’s arrival (and largely produced by the handful of veteran reporters still on staff who cut their teeth in audio long ago). I heard a lot of the “acts and tracks” style of audio reporting, in which tape is pulled from a staged news event and combined with a reporter’s tracking; as well as many two-ways between reporters and hosts. I also heard non-narrated man-on-the-street audio segments, pre-planned interviews, and headline news segments.

All in all, I heard a handful of stories each week, in which a reporter obviously had the time to take their mic in the field and really get behind the headlines. However, I heard many more stories in which “the news” appeared to be whatever the people in power were saying it was — because that’s what you get with stuff like “acts and tracks.” (This is not a knock on reporters; I’m aware that leadership has directed resources away from in-depth audio journalism!)

In any event, this didn’t feel like “saving local news.” It sounded like a station that was doing it’s best under tough circumstances.

I also began reading Gothamist on the regular.

Here’s what I found:

A previously irreverent and popular New York news website, ostensibly purchased by NYPR to help the organization reach a younger, more digitally savvy audience (or, in the revisionist history of Audrey Cooper, to “save local news”), stripped of its personality. It was lifeless. (This is not a knock on the editorial teams; I’m aware that the directive to write personality-free articles is coming from leadership!)

Again, this seemed counter-intuitive to attracting readers to local news.

But perhaps I was wrong, and audiences were responding to the website’s more straight-forward copy. The only way to find out was to get my hands on traffic numbers. (In a “public media mergers playbook” that Cooper had handed out to newsroom staffers, its authors had written plainly that “if a post-acquisition merger process is going well, digital audience growth and loyalty should be increasing.”)

Jacobson had already reported that Gothamist’s traffic had “peaked in April 2020 at 4.5 million unique visitors,” then dropped to 2 million by December of 2021. So 2 million was my baseline. After doing some digging, I found that this past spring, Gothamist traffic teetered between 1.7 and 1.9 monthly unique visitors. (WNYC confirmed that March came in at 1.8 and April came in at 1.9, but claimed that a drop to 1.7 in May was the fault of a “disruption caused by a bug.”)

Those numbers definitely aren’t great, and if you weigh them against the size of the Gothamist newsroom, they’re even worse — much worse. Let’s break it down:

• A team of 7-9 staffers re-launched Gothamist as part of WNYC in 2018. (Obviously, at launch, traffic was zero.)

• By early 2020, the work of the Gothamist team (by then, 8-10 staffers, plus a handful of outside contributors) was bringing in 2.5 million unique monthly visitors. As we know from Jacobson’s article, that number grew to 4.5 million monthly uniques in April of 2020.

• Audrey Cooper joined WNYC in July of 2020.

• A year and a half after that — by which time, Cooper’s digital first strategy was in full swing — Gothamist’s numbers had sunk to 2 million monthly uniques.

• And today’s version of Gothamist, which is now staffed by 23 reporters, is bringing in (barely) 2 million monthly uniques.

In summary:

Under the leadership of Audrey Cooper and her boss Andrew Golis, Gothamist’s reporting staff has more than doubled, while its traffic has declined to below pre-pandemic levels — which is also less than half of what the website’s numbers were at its peak! (If you include the 22 editors listed on Gothamist’s website, you could fairly say that leadership has quadrupled its editorial staff during that decline.)

However you measure it, this is BANANAS.

The other day, a former staffer told me that Cooper predicted that she’d get Gothamist traffic up to ten million monthly unique visitors within three years. Well, guess what? I can guarantee that she didn’t accomplish that goal because today is Audrey Cooper’s three year anniversary of her first day at WNYC, and she’s still 8 million monthly uniques short.

But instead of dwelling on that, let’s review what Audrey Cooper has accomplished over the past three years:

• decreasing digital traffic, while doubling/quadrupling her staff;

• eradicating the Gothamist brand;

• damaging and possibly ruining the legacy of the WNYC newsroom, a New York Institution;

• firing, “laying off,” or simply losing countless talented and award-winning reporters;

• and more (some of which, I’ll report on later).

That’s all for me this week!

If you appreciate the work I put into my reporting, please support it with a paid sub. And if you can’t do that, tell a friend about The Squeeze, or post about it on social media. Thank you!

Skye

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Postscript:

It’s Skye here — back from travels but still battling the time difference — with a quick announcement: Eve Batey, who wrote today’s piece, will be joining me on today’s Zoom with paid members! I invited her to join us in case any of you would like to ask her questions about her reporting and of course, I’d also like to hear any perspectives that you might have on the issues surrounding speaking up and demanding action from those who hold power in podcasting. (Btw, huge congrats to Eve, who just landed a job as Vanity Fair’s Weekend Editor — woot woot!)

There is still time to join the Zoom! Sign up for a paid membership today and email me at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com anytime before 4pm PT / 7pm ET TODAY for the Zoom link.

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Alright, Let’s hit it!

Can Open Letters Change The Podcast Business?

by Eve Batey

When George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, the U.S. podcast industry — like most American businesses — reacted to the slaying and subsequent social justice uprising with promises of a new focus on diversity, inclusion, and equity. Sometimes, the assurance was telegraphed by a simple black square from a spoken word brand’s Instagram account, while others issued press releases and statements announcing an intention to look past podcasting’s dominant voices and amplify those from historically and systemically marginalized groups. It was quite a time, wasn’t it? 

But about once a year since — in 2021, and twice so far this year — open letters by insiders in the business have either demanded that those same brands prove that they’ve followed through on those claims, or say that those promise-filled days in 2020 never came to fruition. Every year, those letters make headlines in trade publications and are widely discussed across Podcast Twitter…and then, the industry seems to move on. Today we’re taking a look at three of those widely discussed open letters; we also spoke with two of the people behind them to see what, if anything, has changed as a result. Here’s what we figured out.

January, 2021

Seven months after Floyd was killed, former public media host Celeste Headlee penned “An Anti-Racist Future: A Vision and Plan for the Transformation of Public Media.” Posted to Medium about a year after the platform launched its metered paywall, its possible that its status as a “member-only story” somewhat inhibited its spread. But still, Headlee’s piece holding National Public Radio and other publicly funded audio outlets to task for “their past and present racism — in terms of coverage, relationships to communities of color, and how they have treated BIPOC employees” garnered coverage on NPR and public media trade pub Current, as well as podcast-specific outlets like Discover Pods.

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Though The Squeeze reached out to Headlee for this story, we didn’t receive a response. However, anyone who would assume, based on that lack of response, that her views have changed would be incorrect, as the journalist has since published a book called ​​Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism—and How to Do It. In addition, her Twitter account — still active even in the new era of Threads — retains the same tone and leanings that her ambitious and far-reaching letter did. 

Based on reporting from the time, Headlee was moved to write the letter — which she did with fellow members of what was then called the "Public Radio Anti-Racist Partnership,” — after an at-capacity Zoom during which she heard “alarmingly similar” accounts of workplace bias and aggressions micro and macro from public media employees of color from around the country.

“A number of people talked about patterns of abuse that led to the departure of journalists of color,” Headlee told Current at the time. “They all said that there was very little concern when JOCs left, even if they were only the most recent in a line of people to leave an organization. What’s more, there were many stories about managers setting up listening sessions to hear complaints about inequality and racist behavior but then taking no action in response to what was said during those meetings.”

Reading over the letter, which was signed by over 200 audio professionals from across the globe, it’s a challenge to determine which recommendations, if any, have been adopted by the higher-profile podcast producers within public media. (Headlee would likely have greater insight into this, so, Celeste, if you’re reading this, we’d love to do a follow-up with you! Please do respond to my email, email Skye directly at skyepillsatwork@gmail.com, or send Skye a DM on Twitter.) If you have any observations on its impact, please do share them in the comments.

Late 2022-February, 2023

Formed in 2016, podcast studio Parcast was acquired by audio giant Spotify in 2019 for an estimated $100 million, scoring the streamer 18 podcasts at the time of acquisition (and a reported 20 shows more in the pipeline). Workers at Parcast unionized the following year with the Writers Guild of America, East (disclosure: this reporter is also a member of the WGAE). The reason for the unionization (as reported by The Verge)? “It wants to see Spotify commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” reporter Ashley Carman wrote at the time, “as well as maintain a reasonable workload and overtime compensation.” 

Parcast wasn’t the only Spotify-owned vertical to unionize in the name of DEI, as The Ringer’s guild (which was formed before that studio was purchased by Spotify) also said at the time that it “reached a tentative agreement with management to make hiring practices at The Ringer more diverse.”

Two years later, in 2022, Parcast’s union and Spotify management agreed on a contract that included “diversity promises” such as that — per The Verge — “half of all job candidates who progress past a phone interview be from an underrepresented group” and that the union receive a $100,000 annual diversity committee budget from Spotify. 

That job candidate bit was expected to be reached by the end of the three-year union contract, but by late 2022, the union was already concerned that that promise might be empty. In a letter released in February 2023, the union said that of the $100K promised for, as PodPod put it, “to help fund more diversity and inclusion within recruitment, selection, retention, mentorship, advancement, and editorial coverage,” only $5000 had been made available. It also said that Spotify had failed to provide “guidelines and rules that will help clarify the funding process.”

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Following the release of the letter, a Spotify spokesperson said that “it remains a priority to thoughtfully utilise the allocated fund in accordance with the committee’s goals.” But four months later, Parcast was gone, a casualty of Spotify’s latest round of layoffs.

According to a former Parcast employee, to whom The Squeeze granted anonymity due to the workers’ fear of retaliation, prior to the layoffs they believed the open letter did indeed make waves within the company.

“We actually wound up making some headway internally after the letter,” the former Parcast worker said, though “it was still weird and they never mentioned our letter or demands.”

“But suddenly we got two meetings and a project approved,” they said, 

It’s possible, the former employee said, that internal pressure to diversify had increased as a result of a Bloomberg article, also written by Carman, which dropped a month after the union’s letter. “Spotify Has Spent Less Than 10% of Its $100 Million Diversity Fund,” detailed how the Creator Equity Fund (CEF) “for licensing, development, and marketing of music … and audio content from historically marginalized groups” — which had been announced by Spotify in the wake of incendiary statements made by flagship podcaster Joe Rogan — had been spinning its wheels. (Variety published a solid aggregation of Carman’s report, if you don’t have a Bloomberg subscription.)

According to the former Parcast worker to whom we spoke, Carman’s report “really rocked the company.” The staffer recalled that in response, Spotify’s communications team posted a message to the company Slack touting a recent event at HBCU Spelman College that they claimed was an example of CEF in action, and accusing Carman of opting “to exclude many of our points” as “CEF’s ongoing work continues to shine.”

The Squeeze reached out to Spotify regarding the current state of CEF, but has not received a response as of send time. Two days after our outreach — and I’m not noting this in a way that suggests we had anything to do with it; just that the timing felt like kismet — Spotify announced its latest Making Space studio in Atlanta, a studio intended to help “build a more diverse ecosystem of podcast creators.”

May 2023

While the U.S. was gearing up for Memorial Day weekend, in London Content is Queen founder Imriel Morgan was preparing to press publish on yet another open letter, this one entitled “Time to Turn Words into Action.” In a letter signed by a global list of podcasters and audio creators, Morgan called out “the persistent lack of support for marginalised creators in the audio industry,” and called for “an honest and critical examination of the industry’s funding practices.” 

According to Morgan, who spoke with The Squeeze last week, the letter was a reaction to her decision to cancel her company’s annual Women’s Podcast Festival, a global event that was “created so attendees from every background can see themselves represented – including people of colour, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, young professionals/newcomers, parents and older attendees.” But after years of support from some of the biggest names in audio, this year, the funding dried up.

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“Audio partnerships and sponsorships that we've been quite successful at achieving in previous years were just getting harder and harder,” Morgan said. “Conversations were dragging out for months and months, [and] people were then telling me that they had committed their funding to other events.” Events, it appears, that catered less to marginalized people and more toward podcasting’s core demographic (on both sides of the mic) of cis, white, straight males.

Morgan admits that the current economy is likely a factor, but she maintains that that can’t be the only reason that a funder who leapt at the chance to support a diversity effort in 2021 was slower to do so now. “Yes, there were all of these talks and headlines about constriction and reduction in staff and budgets are being slashed left, right and center … So I knew that there was a general atmosphere of reduction in spending. But I didn't think people would also think that a women's podcast event” would be an impossible financial burden. After speaking with other organizers of podcast events pitched to people of color and other outside-the-podcast-margins groups, she realized she wasn’t alone. To fund these events would be “a drop in the bucket for some of these companies,” she said. “So that made me angry.”

And then, Carman’s Bloomberg story — the same one that so riled Spotify inside and out — dropped. “I've been in conversations with Spotify about this bloody festival,” as had the other festival organizers who’d also been unable to find funding. “But there's apparently $100 million allocated to this work, and we haven't seen any of it. So where's the money going?”

Morgan worries that the further we get from the summer of 2020, the bleaker this picture will look. A few days after she posted her letter, she took to Twitter to look at the “black square pledges” made following George Floyd’s slaying, concluding that “We've observed fewer resources distributed among grassroots organisations supporting the audio industry and developing its talent. If funds exist, we'd like to know their impact and how groups can access these resources.”

Besides the inevitable fade of good intentions, there is the challenge of a potential recession to contend with. “In recessions — especially in tech processions — diversity hires tend to be the first to go. And it's not just DEI leaders or people that are hired into those positions. But when a company is already  late to the game when it comes to making hires of women, people of color, people of different sexualities … those hires go first, because it's last in, first out.”

While Morgan says this is true for all industries, not just podcasting, she says that in a relatively small business like audio, the issue becomes more acute. “The people who are deciding the stories that are going to be told and what gets funded are almost exclusively white males. And occasionally a white woman enters. But then, when it comes to pitching or getting commissions or getting funding for stories, the response is ‘oh, that doesn't have broad enough appeal. That's probably not gonna work. I can't see how that's interesting.’ And it's like, that’s because it's not interesting to that white male gatekeeper.”

According to Morgan, since she published the letter she’s received outreach from a few longtime partners, and that conversations are ongoing. In other cases, as with Amazon Music’s podcasting arm, an email from a representative said that “senior leadership would be in touch.” However, “I'm still waiting for the response from senior leadership, who were all CCD on this email. So it's not like they didn't see the exchange.”

Morgan knows that senior managers of podcast companies must all be aware that there’s a diversity problem within their companies, so the answer isn’t bombarding them with stats or data. “They keep saying ‘we need to do better’ or ‘we will do better,’ well, then do better. Just stop talking about the fact that you're going to do better and do it, or just shut up, and just do the all white thing that you've been doing. And then we will just know what's up.”

That it for The Squeeze this week!

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Postscript: I agree with John — can we all just pick a place and go?

I’m excited to chat with those of you who can make our inaugural Zoom gathering this Monday, June 10th at 4pm PST / 7pm EST / midnight GMT+1.

This is a low-pressure gathering. We’ll get to know each other a little bit and share some of the industry issues that matter most to us right now. Here’s a general agend…

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