YouSaid · the spoken record

David Chavern

lines on the record: 98
first: 2019-03-02
most recent: 2019-03-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Have nothing else. But it also produces almost no money. For a whole bunch of there's technical advertising and they take cuts. They're not in the advertising. And they only allow certain ad units or whatever. So the common refrain is drives a lot of traffic. And by the way, it doesn't even pay for the coffee. So, okay. My one serious complaint with the current Apple News product is it doesn't have local news in it.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let me talk about the current product, current Apple News product. First of all, it drives lots of traffic. You'll just see people's traffic numbers are off the charts from Apple News”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. And so then the third would be Apple News would be there. So this is just the distribution part. I want to get to the advertising in a minute. And that there would be Apple News, which is how do you look at that?”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like him. There was that one piece in there about Facebook's engineering enterprise. But there's this thin layer of sort of communications and legal and other things on the outside. That most people interact with. So most people talking to Facebook, you're not talking to people who can change the machine. Change the product. Right, absolutely. Mark can change the product. But if you're, and it's very hard.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mm-hmm. I think they could care less. That's what I would say. I don't think it's anything. Negative or positive. I think they care less about a lot of things. They don't think about it at all. They don't have any Interest in it”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Journalism is and the importance of it to society from them. It's been a more difficult relationship. And I think you'll hear that commonly from a lot of news publishers. They seem less receptive to comments and complaints. But that can improve. That can get better. And you'd understand their internal culture better than they could.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I wrestle with why that is. I think Google is getting a better sense of the importance of news and the news business. They do control discovery. And they control what gets surfaced at the top and what doesn't. So for example, if you do a breaking news story, it pops up at the top of the search results. But guess how long it stays there? It's your story, by the way. It usually stays there for about six minutes before it's been copied and screwed over and people pay priorities over top of it. So they make a huge number of decisions in the discovery process that impact what you get to see and what you don't get to see. But I'd be happy to compare and contrast more, but I think Google seems to be wrestling with these at a deeper level, at least currently.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why they do that? I think they want you to be attached to their brands and they want you to stick around and sticking around may mean reading whatever. Whatever keeps you. Interested, whatever's viral. And if it is stuff that doesn't, you know, may not catch your attention for a minute. There's all the sort of automated disincentives to that. So I think it is kind of the end point of what we're probably rational decisions on their part of keeping people engaged. Now, the two are”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you increase the brand, the problem is your relationship then isn't necessarily with Facebook, right? When people say, I got my news on Facebook, I think Facebook likes that. Whereas, oh, I read the New York Times or the Des Moines Register on Facebook, that's a brand interfering with that relationship. So they suppress our brands and that's bad for us in the trust business and that's bad for the public.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we were younger, there's always been crazy conspiracy theories. We were younger, it was your crazy uncle over the dining room table, right? That source was different from what was on TV, Walter Cronkite or whatever, and the paper that landed. And those were clearly different sources. And the internet blender, all that stuff is delivered to you exactly the same way. And in every way you can imagine, suppress the origin of the information so that you don't, it's very hard. It puts a big onus on the public to figure out where, is this crazy Uncle Joe? Is this the New York Times? So the brand suppression thing, particularly in a business where trust is a key part of what we're delivering, is a huge business problem for us.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what I mean? No, exactly. And, you know, here's what I ask of them. First of all, it's always good to talk about money. Money is a good thing. You know, and they license other kinds of content, they license music. They pay the music. If Brittany Spears is paying in the back of grandma's video on Facebook, Facebook's paying for a license for that, you know, share of ad revenue. But the algorithm's hugely important. You know, they could reward original quality journalism from sources who actually pay reporters over Macedonian teenagers, right? Just serve more of our stuff. Brand suppression is a huge challenge for us, which is”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they allow just any old crap to flow over it really, pretty much, and don't regulate it very much or think about regulating or provide tools for people to do that. And they essentially leave it to the listener or the reader or the audience to determine what's crap and what's not. It's just the most, they take the best juiciest parts of the steak and then leave the shit behind. You know what I mean? No, exactly.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this isn't impossible. Well, there's two parts to this. There's one is they control the means of distribution or the current way people get a lot of their news. I forget, you know, Facebook is 97% of news in Philippines, for example. They control the pipes, essentially. But then they also want to own the digital advertising market, which is the lifeblood of how you make the stuff that goes over the pipes, right? But they don't want to be a media company that makes the stuff.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And what I tried to say is, listen, I know this is messy. And you're not going to have perfect solutions, but we can help. We produce good stuff. We actually pay people to go out and do journalism. And if we can thrive with you. And you can increase the sweet sour ratio of good information to bad. That's good for you too. Right. And this isn't impossible.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, news and journalism and the human world is difficult, complicated, messy place, right? And they don't really want to touch it if they can help it. But they're kind of okay if they roll over it and crush it.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I wrestle with that all the time. As you know better than I, dealing with tech firms for a long time getting their head wrapped around what could be a socially positive thing that's hard to do technically. Again, they're the hammer people in the rest of the world's a nail. And if it's not an algorithm answer, they have a real problem with it. For companies that talk all the time about the amazing things they've done for the world, amazing things they can do, mostly what they tell me is they can't do stuff. It's amazing. Yes, they become stupid. It's like, that's impossible. I can't do it. You guys just said you can change the world in all these possible ways.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They determine which of our gets delivered to who in what priority, how it's monetized, whether we exist on their platforms or not. They stand between us and our audience and determine everything about that relationship. And that power is a threat, certainly, and it has been because we have not had a good interaction with them. But one of the things I always try to tell them is, you know, it could be an opportunity. We need better technical solutions for the news business. And they could be a way to deliver great, high-quality content to people. If they have a fake news problem, guess what? We're in the real news business.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had a pretty tough time. There are regulators. The government can't regulate the news business First Amendment, but these guys can. And what I mean.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're here with David Chavern, the president and CEO of the news media alliance. He represents newspapers, digital news organizations, and others. And we're just talking about the strength of Google and Facebook. Talk about them and how you all look at them, because you've been pretty tough on them, and they've had a pretty tough year. So talk a little bit about how you see them in the atmosphere, what they're doing to the atmosphere.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, in the traditional newspaper sense, we had the most direct relationship you could have with a customer, right? We made a physical product. And we walked it up your driveway and handed it to you while you're in your bathrobe, right? But in the digital space, first of all, there are two companies that now sit between us and our customers in terms of delivery of content, determining everything about that delivery. But who also then absorb an increasing and accelerating proportion of the digital ad revenue? And by the way, you're reaching into localities. Google didn't used to have advertising products for your local florist, who was an advertiser in the local paper. Now they do. And so the advertising monopoly is expanding. At the same time, we actually count on these folks as a delivery and distribution mechanism. It's a challenge.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll get to that. But Right. All right. So when you set it up to where it's going, the big challenge for all these things, besides figuring out their new business plans, is the ascendance of Google and Facebook essentially in the digital advertising market because that's where they're heading into, which is big headwinds.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do I assess it financially? Financially is very stressed. Because again, these declining print dollars aren't being replaced by sufficient digital revenue. Interestingly, At the same time, though, we're more central to the public conversation. People are talking about journalism. More than they were even three or four years ago. And our president plays a role in that, but we'll get to that. But there's an understanding of the importance of journalism society that just people are more aware of. So in a strange way, while we're financially stressed, we're also more central and more relevant than we've been.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, exactly. So, how would you assess? And then in the next section, I'd like to talk about the big Google and Facebook essentially, which dominates everything and how you look at them. How would you assess the market right now that you represent?”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Issue. I mean, mostly because of the Rupert Murdoch, if I recall. It was And by the way, have monopoly power and things like advertising, which now is ridiculous. Right,”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was a long time issue. I mean, mostly because of Murdoch, if I recall. It was based around the idea of too much influence in a city, in a big city, that they would own the local news and the local paper.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, listen, we're neat as an industry, we're neither dead nor monopolists, but we definitely can't be both. So like, you know, the idea that they could combine.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Enjoying seeing my story. Yeah. And so as we're all kind of converging in this digital space, I think one of the challenges for local broadcasting is like where they, if there's been cutbacks in the local newspaper newsroom, where those stories coming from supportive, by the way, there used to be rules that the local broadcaster couldn't own the local newspaper. It doesn't matter.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now, the one thing about TV stations, and first of all, we're all converging into this digital space. But local TV historically, yeah, they did some reporting, but a lot of the reporting they did was out of the local newspaper. That's right, they did, yes. Okay, so being the right thing.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I do not. You do not. That's another whole organization. But they're news organizations. They're seeing Yeah, and it's all going online. I mean, if you actually talk to a lot of my members about their primary online competition is often the local TV stations website.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll talk about that When you have that, you don't represent broadcasters. I do not. You do not. That's another whole organization. But they're news organizations. They're seeing a very big shift in ownership and everything else. So all means of news delivery is shifting really dramatically.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, there's going to be a lot of it this year potentially. I mean, there's a between what's happening with Gannett and Tribune and all the rest. There's a lot at play currently. Consolidation in and of itself doesn't scare me so much because there's two things. There's consolidation on the business side. Right. And then do you still have reporters and journalists in these communities? And if consolidation on the business side can help sustain the journalism, then great. Okay. If it's just a means to cut everybody and cut more, then I think that's going to end up being a losing strategy over the long run. And also consolidation now doesn't mean what it did in the 80s or 90s where we'll talk about that. Yeah, it is not like these legacy news publishers have monopoly voices or monopoly power in any circumstance. There are folks who pay reporters and trying to do great journalism and trying to make”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you'll find the people who are doing better. Have actually invested in the journalism. And obviously, people always talk about the New York Times. And yeah, got that. They're doing great. But Minneapolis Star Tribune or what's happening at LA Times and stuff, they're reinvesting in the newsrooms. Because it turns out that's what people want to consume. And the folks who just cut, cut, cut is a circle the drain kind of strategy. Right, absolutely. And it is not building for the future.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, let's talk about the consolidation because just hedge fund companies buying newspaper organizations is not a good formula for success, especially when those hedge funds organizations are known for cutting in order to squeeze out either real estate or whatever they're looking for, often real estate, actually.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there's a lot of consolidation going on where we've lost is super local community newspapers. And there's a statistic that 1,300 local and community newspapers have gone away. You have not seen broad-based failures, particularly at regional or major newspapers, but that doesn't mean it's pretty. And if you look at the financials of the public companies, it's rough. It's rough out there. So we haven't yet lost a lot of major publishers. There's a lot of consolidation, a lot of cutting going on trying to make it to the consolidation.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We haven't had that many declines in actual membership, you know, despite what the president says there haven't been all that many failures in the news business. What you have is for legacy publishers a declining print business, which by the way is still quite lucrative.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And frankly, I was also used to businesses who said, you know, we're not joiners. And we're new and we're different and we have a different perspective. The bottom line, what's become clear is that you have some folks who have a print business, a declining print business, by the way, and some folks who don't, but otherwise we're all in the mix together and trying to build a digital future for this business. And there are very few business model or other distinctions between the two sets.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Yeah, I mean, if you looked at the legacy publishers, they start out like having a separate digital division, right?”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. In the association. Right. And that's been like the news media that's online. It's sort of been just the way the tech people have been fractured. There was an internet association and then it didn't have, you know, it was just went back. These people didn't like to associate necessarily. Now they've hired like crazy. We'll talk about Google and Facebook's lobbying power, which was negligible and now is massive, essentially, in Washington. But they didn't organize. The online news business people didn't. It was sort of an adjunct to news from what I mean from my experience. Yeah.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“2,000 publishers from legacy newspapers to now we have some digital only news organizations. And one thing about newspaper is it was really whenever you said newspaper people heard thunk. Was the thing that hit the driveway, right? And really, I wanted to have a conversation about the future, the news publishing business in the future. And as part of a whole range of changes we were making at the association, I said, listen, we're news media. Our connective tissue is we hire and pay reporters. That's a good thing. And everybody who does that should be eligible to be in the association.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Multiples of That's a good thing to build a bridge from. Right, absolutely. And so it's called the newspaper association. Now it's not. Explain the shift in tone for what it's supposed to, who does it represent? Sure.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When people consume the news product way more than ever, multiples of peak print era. So I was like, well, this is something, this is intellectual challenge. It's important. It matters to our civic society. So let's try to figure out the bridge to that future, understanding that we have an audience and that's a good thing to build a bridge from.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, they're not the coal business, right? The coal business people, nice people, by the way. I know a lot of people in the coal business. Not a great business. People don't want what they make as much.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tremendously and was in some trouble, frankly. And they asked me whether I'd be interested. And I'm like, well, listen, I'm a big consumer of the product. The fact of industries being in transition didn't really scare me very much. I dealt with everybody. I spent two years of my life talking to domestic manufacturers. I mean, those guys have been disrupted. Absolutely. And what I saw was an industry where, oddly, even though they've been disrupted, the audience for the product is bigger than ever.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. Just realize that. And so as part of that, I think you and I had met. I was spending a lot of time in Silicon Valley dealing with those folks. And then I got a call about what was then the newspaper association of America. And it was immediately a...”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of the industrial companies, historic industrial companies and businesses that everybody would think of as being in a chamber of commerce, right? And one of my tasks was to really reach out to the tech industry and try to find ways to bring them into the fold of that conversation. One of the surprising things was how much everybody had in common. You know, like the tech guys like to talk about how different they are than traditional businesses, how different perspectives. Actually, if you look at whether things they care about taxes, right? The best thing, by the way, was on Vermeer Jillia Lou, Dreyfus Meets at Mark Zuckerberg character. And he said, we're post-tax, you know, for me, crystallize everything about dealing with the tech business in that they may not have identified with the chamber, but their issues refer to.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. Again, for those of you who don't know, the U.S. Chamber is the 800-pound gorilla lobbying organizations in town, a long base of the many.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. I was a lawyer for a long time and represent a lot of strange and unusual people, including I spent a lot of time at the export-import bank, which was actually a really fun thing to do when nobody knew what it was. Actually, going around the world working on infrastructure projects of all things. Right. And then I decided to switch careers and I got to connect at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and got into this whole world of, as they say, advocacy here in DC, jumping into the swamp, lobbying and communications. And I really love that. And I was the CEO at the U.S. Chamber for almost 10 years. And the great thing there was dealing with every different kind of business you can imagine. Every industry out there. And I sort of reached the end there. I'd done that long enough.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm Kara Swisher, editor at large of Recode. You may know me as someone who can't stand cow impersonators, it's all fake moves, but in my spare time I talk tech and you're listening to Recode Decode from the Vox Media Podcast Network today in the red chair is David Chavern, the president and CEO of news media alliance. It's a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. that advocates on behalf of hundreds of print and digital news organizations from around the country. Previously, he spent more than 10 years at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. David, welcome to Rico Tico. Excellent. Thank you very much. So we have a lot to talk about. News. We have to talk about all kinds of things. But let's talk a little bit about your background because I knew you from when you were at the Chamber of Commerce and we were talking about all kinds of things like retail and things. So talk a little bit about your background.”
2019-03-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: News Media Alliance CEO David Chavern · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT