Transcript #1 - Forth
"Where news meets a new kind of social media." -Forth
Friends,
For the first few years of my career as a journalist, much of my job was transcribing interviews with timecodes so the anchor, editor, and producer could select the best bites of the conversation for our stories. Now, more than 13 years later, here I am again, writing to you fine people to introduce a new section of my newsletter called transcripts.
Thrilled to share the first of many — I chat with Jared Wiener, Co-Founder of Forth, where news meets a new kind of social media.
NB: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
VLB: Okay, so how did the idea of Forth come together?
JARED WIENER: This was the result of several iterations of various ideas. And so we started to think about it, and I say we because at this time, I had started to reconnect with Xana [Co-Founder / Chief Editorial & Strategy Officer] and she had started coming on board. And ultimately, the thought was, we are a newsfeed for news.
What was missing from the internet was this concept that the vast majority of Americans are getting at least some of their news from social media. And initially, I used to say, they don't trust it. And that was the big problem. But I feel that's now gotten worse, which is that not only do they not trust it, but they're having a harder time finding it.
We wanted to take what was clearly good about social media, which is this is clearly a way they want to consume their news. How do we do that in a way that we can then also add on journalistic integrity and actual reporting and know that what you're looking at isn't misinformation, disinformation, spam, hate speech, misogyny, antisemitism, the general kind of just gumbo of terribleness that we've all kind of come to expect from the internet?
So Forth is, ultimately, our ongoing attempt on trying to solve that problem.
VLB: It's interesting that you use the words ongoing attempt because I’m going to say you're fighting an uphill battle. A recent Gallup poll from 2023 states only 32% of Americans trust the media, and that's a really low number. How do you stay motivated? And how do you parse through it?
JARED WIENER: Yeah, I mean, motivation is tough. So, I guess there is a few parts of that question: How do we handle the trust thing? And that is, again, all of this is really an experiment. There is any number of cliches that we can use on this.
Are we laying the train tracks in front of the train?
Are we building the airplane as we're taking off?
I don't know.
I feel like most journalists really agonize over a lot of decisions – wording – all of that stuff that really shapes how a story can be construed. And I will say, as an industry, we do a terrible job of communicating that side of things to our audience. So, one of the things that we wanted to do was make an editorial policy for the site that is public and can be viewed by anyone. We joke, sometimes internally, that this is the least controversial editorial policy out there.
We have some groundbreaking ideas, like don't make stuff up. It's tough in social media to figure out who to trust. I think there's an exhaustion that comes into this of how do we parse out who can I trust? So, first of all, by limiting who is posting.
On Forth, anyone can sign up, it's free, and only journalists who we have approved can post. So, I think that does create a sense of trust. And we can take away that privilege should we feel that we need to if these rules or standards are violated.
There is a lot of smaller things that we're doing, including logos and bylines, photos of people. These are not AI bots. They're real people who are actually doing this. Also, the other big thing that we're doing, and this may or may not be somewhat controversial, is we're avoiding opinion altogether. We don't want editorialization. We're looking for factual reporting coming from whatever story you're covering. We also publish automatically from the White House press pool.
What we're really searching for is a fairly silent majority of people on the internet who just want to know what's going on in the world. That's really who we're looking for.
VLB: I think there's an appetite for that. People who want the truth. You mentioned your editorial policy. Can you talk a little bit about the merit-based policy for credibility and how that's worked so far for Forth? How do journalists build that rapport?
JARED WIENER: Basically, what we're looking for is a history of quality, objective reporting that we can point to and say: your reporting has echoed our standards.
We want no misinformation or disinformation. Don't publish anything if you know that it's not going to be true. No opinion or editorial. Don't use generative AI without disclosing it. Put out corrections if needed. Don't harass or bully anyone. Just kind of a basic idea of, I think, both decorum on the internet and good reporting.
I should say, we're not employing any of these people. And so, this has put us in a different kind of place where we are not able to assign pieces or tell anyone what they can and can't cover. So that is entirely up to the journalists that we bring on, usually because they're doing the story for another employer, whether it's staff or freelance.
We’ve occasionally reached out to some reporters and kind of pushed them back on track and have asked for changes in some of the things that they've written. I like to think of it right now as we're in Mario Kart, and we're very much that guy in the cloud who picks them up with the crane.
VLB: How many journalists do you have registered on Forth right now?
JARED WIENER: That’s a semi-tough question, because we've brought on some services and full-on newsrooms. And so that changes periodically, but I would say we're in the hundreds. We had a very big chicken or egg problem at the beginning and are still kind of fighting it in a way-- which is that it's very tough to build an audience when you have no reporting. And it's very tough to attract reporters when you have no audience. We brought in Reuters and partnered with them, and they are posting things as they're publishing them, and they have a very large bench that they're pulling from.
So, this is an interesting topic, not to go completely tangential on this point. But local news is a very important thing for us because we feel that that has never really worked online. It’s one of the hardest things to find as a user, especially if you're outside of New York or maybe LA. Namely, because almost by definition, it doesn't trend.
So, how do we actually connect local reporters with people in the area? What we've been using has been what I've been affectionately referring to as hot singles in your area technology. We map your IP address, location, or the best we can guess from it to an area, and then we start pulling in what we think is interesting to that area, and it's a layered approach.
We do municipality, metro area, county, and state, and bring all those things in depending on the range of interest for any individual item. You, of course, can override this, if you want to type in a zip code for another area. You can actually follow any area like it's in any other topic and follow along to multiple locations if you really want to. But by default, you're really coming from that area of— do we have reporting in your area? And we don't for large swathes of the country right now. So I will say that that is a somewhat skewed view for people who are visiting, which is that we can have some really great reporting, but it can completely not apply to you. And so that's something that we're also working on as well.
How do we build up our national bench with different verticals and other things of national interest so that when you first go to that site, it does feel like what you're seeing is rich and vibrant?
Image Description: “Hurricane Shark” is a fake image of a shark swimming on highway during a hurricane. This image likely originated on Reddit, according to the Washington Post, and was shared during breaking news in the mid-2010s during storm seasons.
VLB: So something that was interesting to me, when I looked at top stories [in the Forth app], which you sort of just touched on this, I noticed that it was very specific to just the journalists that are registered. So, in order to get a more complete picture of the news, as Forth is building itself up, where do you get your news? What else are you reading?
JARED WIENER: I'm a news junkie; I don't even want to know how many newspapers I subscribe to. The big ones: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, LA Times. Then, you know, there's all sorts of magazines. I read a lot of tech journalism as well. Then, of course, television. You know, as a former ABCer, TV still has a big part of my heart. And so I do watch both local and national television news as well.
One of the great things about Forth is that there have been some really interesting outlets or beats that have come to us that I never would have known about. We have a reporter right now who works for a trade publication that is strictly based on the business of chemistry. That’s a really fascinating niche that I don't think I would have explored on my own.
I've gotten kind of involved in local stories in localities that I've never lived in or, in some cases, have never been to, which I think are relatively interesting as well. I don’t have a great answer for where I get my news other than: Yes, which has been kind of my feeling right now.
VLB: Yeah, I don't want to know how many things I subscribe to. I get my credit card statement, and it's: subscription, subscription, subscription. I really am going for it.
JARED WIENER: Yeah, exactly. But at the same time, I realize that we are probably the exceptions. You asked earlier about what drives or what keeps me focused. And that is a big thing, too, which is that for all of the nerds like us out there, there are a tremendous number of people who are not doing that. And it becomes an issue of how is this going to be sustainable?
You know, it's heartbreaking every time I see layoffs, and newsroom closures. And it becomes really tough to look at. One of the things that I'm hoping for and excited about is seeing if there is a way on here to really be able to make journalism and news work in a financial sense.
I use this analogy a lot, but back in the early 2000s, I felt like music was undergoing a very similar issue. People were downloading music. I mean, for those of you who may not remember the early 2000s, people were downloading music illegally through apps like Napster, KaZaA, BearShare and LimeWire, and all these other great names that I haven't thought about in a long time. And the record industry thought this was apocalyptic. That no one was ever going to pay for music again, it really wasn't until Apple came along and said, well, wait a minute, people want to pay for music; they don't want to pay for CDs.
Our kind of big hope for Forth has been, how do we take the hard part that exists right now – which is the reporting and the being there and covering the stories – How do we take that and just make it fit into the way that our consumers and our audience actually want to consume it? And how do we do that in a way that we can ultimately support it.
Our end goal, we're absolutely not there yet – but our end goal is then to revenue share or almost like a Spotify model where we can pay the people and the outlets that are supplying their journalism to our platform based on the income that we're getting.
Momentum begets momentum, right? We'll be able to get more journalists and newsrooms on. We'll be able to bring on sponsors to expand and try out new things. That’s how we become economically viable. And that's how we can start to support others as well.
VLB: And so, shifting the focus entirely also on the journalists, because any journalist can switch platforms. They could go from local to national; they could go from ABC to NBC. And so, building their reputation that this is a journalist who is making this report, they stand by it, no matter what platform they're reporting for. I'm curious -- not how you arrived at that place, but that's so different than what was available. It's like, you know, trust ABC, trust NBC, and trust these news organizations, and those seem to have fallen in the last 10 years.
JARED WIENER: So, I think there are two things that we're looking at here, which is, we also wanted to avoid what we saw as really a kind of weakness on the Substack front, which is that it's very difficult to build up an audience if you're not already famous. And that's especially hard to do when you're reporting hard news, especially if it's local news, for example.
How can we actually surface these people doing great work who are absolutely not famous right now? But at the same time, help people build a rapport with individuals, rather than maybe the organizations.
We allow you to follow three types of things on Forth, which is news organizations, individual reporters, and topics. And the topics is important because that is in many ways, how we think about things as just people and consumers. How do we think about news? And so if I'm interested in politics, health, business, whatever that ends up being, I don't have to know who's working on what I can just follow the topic, and I can see what's coming in for me.
VLB: Do you have any tips for the average social media user or maybe people from our parent's generation [Boomers] on how to spot misinformation or a fake news source? I mean, you and I know that it spreads like wildfire. How do you look out for that?
JARED WIENER: Well, first, I would say come Forth, because we've pre-vetted everyone who's posting, and so you're less likely to find it there. But it’s tough. And I think it's getting tougher with the creation of deepfakes and AI.
Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer, I'm probably butchering this, but as a paraphrase, put very bluntly— extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. This is something that we've talked about a lot when we look at reporting, even through the lens of Forth, which is, is it possible that some name that you've never heard of, working for some publication that you've never heard of is going to break open a story that takes down a presidency? It’s possible. Is it likely? I don’t know.
How do we maybe look at this with a critical lens? You know, where's the evidence for this? Is it too good to be true? Do you want this to be true? Or does it seem like it is true? — is a big one. And I think we see that, too, on a lot of really small things.
You know, who would benefit from this being accepted as truth? Yes, there are political and business cases where it's very obvious that you can discredit someone, or you can pump a stock or something like that. But also, it can be something as simple as: I want this to go viral. And I want a lot of shares on this.
There's a photo that will forever haunt me back from when I was in the TV world, where every single major storm, someone posted this photo of a shark swimming on a highway. It was never real to begin with. And somehow, it ended up being shared as a breaking photo from essentially every single storm for a span of about four or five years.
VLB: Oh, I think I know what you’re talking about!
JARED WIENER: I have no idea what the motivation. But again, I think this is the Sagan principle of, do you see anyone that you trust right now reporting it? Have you seen it from any other angles? Because if not, that's a pretty extraordinary claim. And I've just not seen the evidence there.
VLB: I think that relies a little bit on the responsibility of the consumer -- do your due diligence. I don't want to give anybody the benefit of the doubt who is propagating misinformation, but I think that there is a big educational disconnect between the time that we were given the gift of social media and the way that it started to be used for news platforms and information, and then the way people understood how to use those tools. Do you think that there is a space for education around media literacy to help the people out?
JARED WIENER: I do. I don't know what it is about it being on a screen that we're more susceptible to believe. You know, it's strange to me, but if you see someone just screaming things on a street corner, I don't know that we would necessarily believe them. But somehow, if you put that same person behind the keyboard, all of a sudden, they're making some really interesting points. And I think that's a big part of it.
On one hand, it's great that everyone can post and make their voice heard. The bad side is that everyone can post and make their voice heard. And, you know, it really comes down to what are you ultimately looking for, and what is your end goal in this? Which is, if you want to be entertained, if you want to even hear opinions, though, I will caution that a lot of those opinions are not actual people's opinions. If you don't know the person who's posting, it could very well be a bot farm, or some other creation of someone else.
Not to bring this back to Forth, but the problem that we're trying to solve — and look, I see why you want to go to social media — but how can you do it in a way that you can trust? I think there are different ways to do that. Forth is obviously a great one — creating lists or following reporters that you know that you trust.
But I would caution generally that if you don't know the name, if you don't know the outlet… We've seen fake outlets pop up, we've seen fake reporters, before it was co-opted, this is really where the phrase ‘fake news’ came from. And, you know, just because it says News7 or whatever, what is that? Where's News7? Is that actually a TV station? Do a little bit of due diligence if you don't know where this is coming from.
VLB: Is Forth free?
JARED WIENER: Yes.
VLB: Will it always be free? I have a strong feeling about paywalls, especially during an election year that's very limiting to certain audiences.
JARED WIENER: It is, and I have mixed feelings about that as well, which is, I understand the frustration around paywalls. And at the same time, I understand that real journalism is expensive.
VLB: Absolutely.
JARED WIENER: You know, the money has to come from somewhere. It is free right now. I believe we will probably always have a free option and tier. Not even from an ideological perspective or anything, but I know how the Internet views paywalls, and if we're going to succeed, I think we need to figure that one out. But at the same time, I would love to get to a subscription place as well. I think we need to be able to offer something that's worth a subscription. If you think back to like all of the things that you're paying for that's not news -- for music, for streaming video. Potentially subscribing to a bike. A few dollars here or there, I don't know why that has become the psychological barrier that we have.
As I said earlier, to be able to share that money back with the people who are doing the reporting. I think one of our biggest frustrations is it's just a very parasitic relationship. You know, and I think it's getting accelerated to now with some of these AI companies that are scraping and stealing the reporting.
From a straight business perspective, I think this is incredibly short-sighted because you're essentially starving your supplier. If your entire business relies on other people to give you these headlines for free, but you are draining them of their ability to support themselves, it really doesn't take a whole lot of brain power to realize that they can go out of business.
VLB: Sounds very similar to what the writer’s strike just went through last year.
JARED WIENER: Yeah.
VLB: When I look at Forth, the font, the colors, the branding, it's all very serious, which for me, when I'm reading the news, I take it very seriously, I think you and I both can appreciate that. Can you talk about the decisions that you made to structure it the way that you do and how you made those choices?
JARED WIENER: It’s very much a work in progress. As I said earlier, I am the sole developer and designer of the website and the app right now. So please, you can direct all hate mail directly to me. And this is a big area that I'd love to spend more time in trying to figure out how we're going to improve.
The Feed is the main place where we have everything that you’re following. Top Stories is an editor-driven place where we pull things out. That also works for people who have not signed in. We do a wrap-up email every evening, and it will actually feed into a thing like Threads. So all of that is built in as well, being local and to that area. Then, we have some verticals on the sidebar. We’re trying to make it feel easy to read and somewhat serious but not oppressive. We don't want to be exclusionary.
What we're trying to fight is how do we make this feel like this is for you. We're trying to bring in entertainment. We're trying to bring in sports, we're trying to bring in good news and other things, too. So we don't want to be doom and gloom, and, you know, politics and economy all the time. We're trying to make this a place that you want to go and can be customized for everyone to make them feel like this is actually their world and their perspective.
VLB: So, expansion on the horizon?
JARED WIENER: We're constantly looking to expand. So I mean, my not-so-subtle call is if you're a newsroom leader or individual journalist, please reach out.
We'd love to talk. We have some tools to make the lift, like pulling in posts from other places that are already publishing, or we can help you cross-post to other social networks as well. All of these things are things that we're working on. And we would love to have you on board.
