Carrie Sheffield, Bold Founder and CEO, and Steve Oh, The Young Turks CBO, caught up on Radio [itvt] to discuss their organizations and what makes them different from traditional news organizations with [itvt] Editor-in-Chief, Tracy Swedlow.
Carrie told the story of Bold’s evolution from a platform for younger conservatives to a bipartisan conversation trying to “pop the bubble” people surround themselves in. Comparing Bold to a unique blend of light-hearted conservatism and liberal platforms, a “nice” version of Vice–combining The Young Turks’ distribution model with MSNBC’s Morning Joe balanced editorial approach–Carrie’s goal is restarting a productive, bipartisan dialogue that has mostly disappeared from news programming.
While The Young Turks is a proudly progressive platforms, Bold offers a conversation for both progressive and conservative representatives. However, the two platforms have much in common with their goals to build news organizations that generations X, Y, and Z can all trust and engage with. They both take advantage of ever expanding social media networks and the audiences built in with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
More importantly both Steve and Carrie see serious problems with how current news organizations try and connect with young people and see not just an opportunity, but a necessity, in connecting with the young people that outlets like CNN, Fox, and NBC have failed to reach.
The Young Turks and Bold both eagerly embrace live streaming for their social audiences but both are struggling to balance the audience advantages and monetization disadvantages that come with using social networks. We are both grappling with trying to grow large, cohesive audiences without becoming too reliant on social networks.
Regardless of the difficulties, young people need a place to go for news, opinion, and conversation. Bold and The Young Turks have started the process of effectively replacing those mainstream media outlets who now have a lower approval rating than Congress. As Steve puts it, “They are dinosaurs. We are the future.”
