Category: working (page 1 of 2)

A bright yellow poster on a city street pole reads ‘Creators Live Here.’ The background is softly out of focus, showing palm trees, buildings, and passing cars in a sunny urban neighborhood. — Photo by George Pagan III on Unsplash

January 9, 2026 / 0 Comments

Joy is the Signal

Dylan Byers said something on an end-of-2025 episode of The Grill Room that stuck with me (paraphrasing):

The best media story of the year is about people who have created something on their own. I don’t know what their long game is as businesses, but they’re definitely having fun. And it’s joyful. I spend a lot of time in my inbox with people who are very upset at their media organizations. It’s nice to look out and see a younger generation genuinely enjoying themselves.

It crystallized something I’d already been feeling.

I noticed it at Bloomberg ScreenTime in 2024, right after I was laid off from Paramount: the vibes in legacy media were bleak, while the energy around podcasters, independent journalists, and digital studio mini-moguls was fully lit. Those in the Creator Economy were the ones with the glint in their eye, big dreams of making it, and often with impeccable skin.

No one knows the long-term financial viability of going out on your own—or the sustainability of always operating as an individual or a small team—but the joy is unmistakable. The people who leapt look alive.

I remember that feeling from the halcyon days of blogging, when staying up late to post on my little website—or editing LAist back when it was just a city blog—felt more energizing than my very cool TV job. One of the mindfucks of getting older is failing to recognize when those shifts are happening again. Or worse, greeting them with skepticism instead of curiosity.

That might explain why my initial reaction to Evan Shapiro’s rollout of his Attention Economy chart last fall was dismissive. It felt undercooked. Unlike his meticulous maps of legacy media, this one didn’t really show how creator businesses make money. Lumping creators, streamers, influencers, and brands together without distinction doesn’t help those of us trying to navigate what this ecosystem actually is.

Shapiro’s follow-up conversation with his co-host Marion Ranchet was more satisfying. They acknowledged the chart’s limitations and explained why mapping the ecosystem, rather than breaking down the financials, was necessary. Creators aren’t lone wolves. They’re small media companies that rely on platforms, agencies, white-label studios, and contractors to provide their teams.

For legacy media professionals contemplating the jump, that matters. The most abundant opportunities may not be in front of the camera or mic, or even directly with a creator doing those things, but in the infrastructure—joining partner companies or building businesses that serve new creatives in aggregate.

That entrepreneurial leap is the hardest part for those of us raised in corporate systems, where being excellent at a narrow role was enough. Clock in, clock out, collect a paycheck. Creators don’t work that way. They live to work—partly because the competition for attention is ruthless, and also because they love it. They expect collaborators to bring that same energy.

I include myself among those who need to get over themselves—and over our judgments about what “counts” as media in 2026. We’re not going back. I may never fully embrace the pejorative use of “plot-based media,” but I also have to admit: my wife is just as likely to find me watching a reactor video on YouTube as she would find me deeply engaged in a prestige drama on HBO.

What earns my attention is joy. Enthusiasm is infectious. I listen and watch because I can feel that the people making this stuff want to be there.

I still worry about the creator business model—financially and operationally—when you’re the sole proprietor, star, and producer of your own mini-media empire. Not everyone becomes a Joe Rogan, Joe Budden, MrBeast, or Ms. Rachel. But a “Creator Middle Class” is emerging. One that can control its business, build direct relationships with its audience, and sustain a career without celebrity status.

For those of us who love plot-based media and accept how much we’ve grown to enjoy the attention-based kind, the real work is figuring out where we fit in and having the humility to recognize that joy, not legacy, may be the clearest signal of where the future already lies between these two worlds.

October 12, 2025 / 0 Comments

At Braze Forge 2025, AI Isn’t Magic. It’s Infrastructure.

At this year’s Braze Forge conference, AI was more about practical applications than a magic show. The product launches were the most advanced tools imaginable but presented as part of the natural evolution of computational power: exponential, yes, but familiar.

In the AI Decisioning Masterclass, the presenters drew throughlines from the space race of the 1950s and 60s—when calculations were done by hand on chalkboards because the computers couldn’t handle the math—to today, when we carry supercomputers in our pockets. Hidden Figures scenes ran through my head as my definition of Artificial Intelligence both expanded and became more grounded.

Throughout the sessions I attended, the focus was on the practical integration of AI in consumer marketing systems, rather than the more sensational text- and image-generation. This shift in emphasis prompted me to seek examples of what’s possible for a Fortune 500 enterprise compared to a mid-size company or startup.

For nimble corporations, the conversation has already shifted from efficiency to effectiveness: moving from “try AI” to ROI-based experiments tied to real-world operations.

For smaller teams, the challenge is time and capacity, making it even more essential to anchor every experiment to meaningful growth targets and assess whether the benefits outweigh the costs.

You can’t take advantage of these tools if you haven’t tied them to real business goals. And you’ll fail if you don’t empower people—real, live humans—to do the thoughtful, complex groundwork: implementing, monitoring, and adapting as the machines learn. This human touch is integral to the success of AI implementation.

AI isn’t a wand you wave and presto-chango.

It’s the newest and possibly the fanciest tool in the box, but still, just a tool.

A female and a male coworkers are working in an empty open space office

September 1, 2025 / 1 Comment

Labor Day Reflections: Returning to Work in a Changing World

Two weeks ago, I resumed a familiar commute. Catch the bus on Ventura Boulevard (or Riverside Drive) and head to The Pointe in Burbank. The only change was that at the split elevator banks, I turned left instead of right and took the lift to The CW, where I now lead digital research and insights for its free streaming platform.

Although LA is a sprawling metropolis, it’s striking how Hollywood feels like a small town.

When a friend responded to my news of a new job with exuberance, I reined in her enthusiasm. Unless I’m at a stadium watching my favorite teams compete, I find little to cheer about these days. I’m grateful to be employed, but I’m not popping champagne. My reaction to my change in employment status is more like Venus Williams playing tennis in 2025: I’m just happy to have subsidized healthcare. That people want to pay me a living wage and value my skillset, experience, and mind in today’s economy is almost gravy.

Labor Day is a holiday that began when the federal government sent the National Guard to Chicago to suppress a labor strike and boycott that disrupted railroad service across more than half the country. Federal troops shot and killed over two dozen people.

Americans tend to repeat history.

Workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company were striking over layoffs and a reduction in wages (but not with an equivalent decrease in the cost of living). Americans were generally more sympathetic to the cause of the ordinary person at that time. Today, we’re living in a time when people tend to side with business billionaires over the working class. This country has long held the belief that, politically, “corporations are people.” More recently, however, we have culturally leaned into the idea that individuals are corporations and have begun acting accordingly. That is to say, soulless.

I thought about this a lot during my job search, when I was inundated with advice about building my brand. In all honesty, that’s the last thing I want to do. What I lamented more than anything was not having spent the last decade cultivating and maintaining relationships with colleagues from past work lives that I truly enjoyed. Reaching out via LinkedIn during my time of need, but not before, felt like the lamest thing in the world. I don’t even have you in my phone? What kind of desperate ghoul am I?

No personal brand building was as effective as interacting with real people. My work experience was a key factor when my résumé successfully navigated its way through the algorithmic automation of the modern career portal and landed in the inbox of a recruiter or hiring manager. Lunches with friends, former colleagues, and acquaintances motivated, inspired, and fortified my resolve when disappointments and doubt threatened to win the day.

I took the most common advice from those interactions and started writing more frequently. I’m getting paid to do that on occasion now and being solicited to do more. I joined the board of a non-profit. I consult and provide advice on various projects when requested.

And now, I’m working full-time again. No balloon and fireworks emojis, please. No missives about our mission and my lofty goals as we take over the world. This is not that. It’s a good job and that’s enough.

I missed being part of a team. I enjoy thinking strategically, creating, learning, and handling the very human frictions of returning to the office.

What’s more, we can pay our mortgage without tapping our savings and don’t fear a medical bill that could bankrupt us.

Happy Labor Day! Let’s not forget what we’re really celebrating: the dignity of work and the protection of those who do it.

Dino T.Rex looks over the rooftops of Hollywood

October 14, 2024 / 1 Comment

Entertainment Industry Vibe Check at Bloomberg Screentime 2024

I attended Bloomberg Screentime in search of vibes. I’ve got time to think about what I want to be doing next. Part of that calculus is whether the entertainment industry—television and streaming, specifically—is still the most desirable place for me to work. Evan Shapiro doesn’t mince words:

“No, you do NOT have to leave Media if you don’t want to. But if you want to keep working in Media, you HAVE TO redefine what Media means.”

That’s precisely what was on display at nya Studios last week. While traditional LA production folks were underworked, bored, and anxious about all the AI talk and enthusiasm, Creators—the podcasters, social media content producers, and influencers—had that Hollywood glow. Whether it was mega-successful Sean Evans and his Hot Ones crew holding court in one of the outdoor lounges, up-and-coming podcast producers just happy to be there, or Taylor Lorenz excitedly roaming from place to place looking for exciting stories and a phone charger that worked, they were the ones with the glint in their eye, big dreams of making it (or taking it to the next level), and often with impeccable skin.

The most confident conversation I attended was with the OnlyFans CEO and Whitney Cummings. There wasn’t any shame in being a website for “adults.” Instead, there was certainty in their strategy, their approach to growth, and their sense of what consumers and creators want today. And, there was money—so much money.

Clara Wu Tsai exuded similar confidence about the trajectory of the WNBA and the business of women’s sports more generally as she spoke to us the night before her New York Liberty would lose an instant classic overtime game against the Minnesota Lynx in game one of the WNBA Finals.

Everyone looking to the future talked and walked like they were happily strapped onto a rocket ship.

I also paid attention to who was present at the event and who wasn’t. While they didn’t appear on stage, Disney Entertainment was a presenting sponsor. Brian Roberts of Comcast/NBCU sounded like the one legacy Media boss who is sure of his approach. Matt Hopkins of Amazon Prime Video and Bela Bajaria of Netflix sounded like winners, breaking news about major deals and announcing new shows.

The other legacy media companies only appeared in “media apocalypse” style headlines on-screen or as the butt of jokes.

Hollywood veterans like Snoop Dogg, Kerry Washington, and even Jason Blum, as he suffered through the wings of death, were enthusiastic about creating music, television, and movies in this environment, though they acknowledged the challenges.

Despite all the doom and gloom, you don’t get into the entertainment industry unless your well of hope springs eternal. How else do you have the nerve to try to make popular art?

Like Evan said, though, I left the event realizing I had to open the aperture. Popular entertainment, who makes it, who distributes it, and how we want to experience it are as varied as they are personalized for each consumer.

Accept that.

Get enthusiastic about the possibilities it brings.

Or, get out.

Header image by Franz Hajak on Unsplash

October 1, 2024 / 0 Comments

Thank You, Paramount

A bit of a stream-of-consciousness gratitude list.

Shana Krochmal DM’ed me on Twitter. She was hiring for a managing editor position for ETonline, and though we had never met before, we had mutual friends, and she found my takes on pop culture thoughtful. I told her that while I could do that job, I had become enamored with data in digital media and thought I might be better suited for Audience Development. She walked me down to meet JD Crowley, and four months later, I started doing precisely that with CBS Television Distribution.

Being in New York or LA with Nina Mehta and Brian Moreno and feeling like co-conspirators as we plotted how to bring brands like Inside Edition, Dr. Phil, and The Rachael Ray Show even further into the digital age.

Cash Me Outside. The Royal Wedding. Backpack Kid.

So. Many. YouTube. Shows.

Relaunching StarTrek.com.

Going up to San Francisco to meet with Ladan Nafissi and the CNET Business Intelligence team for the first time. I joined them at an offsite where I worked with a group of analysts I didn’t know to develop data-driven pitches for the strategic direction of TVGuide.com, which we presented to Matt McMahon, the GM of that property at the time. I was shocked when my team’s pitch won.

ET Live was launching, and I felt out of my depth. I requested a meeting with Nathalie Bordes that lasted only ten minutes, but I could sense that she might change the trajectory of my career.

She did.

Hiring Joaquin Delgado. And then Jennifer Park. Eventually, I took over the CBS All Access BI team and grew a team of six analysts to over thirty at our largest. Kristen Silvestre, Naren Duraisaimy, Ashish Birajdar, and Nick Denaro would come together to be one of the most talented groups of managers I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

Working with Nat, Grace Mclean, Keric Donnelly, and Mitch Zayas in Ft. Lauderdale or NYC planning sessions to determine the direction of the Data and Insights Group.

Launch day of Paramount+ on March 4th, 2021. Returning to the office hadn’t happened yet, and, for the first time, I was participating in a major product launch from my at-home desk, looking out into the dark, waiting for the sun to come up and those SpongeBob SquarePants marquees to go live.

Why Women Kill. Disco. Lower Decks. Mayor of Kingstown. 1883. Strange New Worlds. Two Super Bowls.

The Subscription Analytics Continuum, SLAM, SLAM 2.0, SLAM 3.0, DVAAs (now DVoS), Audience Segmentation, PEARL, LTV, the product KPI Framework, and the Pricing and Marketing Offer Scenario Framework.

Amazon QBRs. 10 All Access Monthlies. Quarterly Performance. Weekly Highlights.

Dashboards. Dashboards. Dashboards.

Grateful for the memories. The experiences. The lessons learned. And, of course, the people.

Thank you.

February 11, 2018 / 0 Comments

Plans are Like a Dream U Organise

“Another life again we almost lived. Another list of things we almost did.”

— The Go Team

Meditation: See the Big Picture, 19 minutes

I’m part of a team. I’m part of many teams, but this past week, I spent time in San Francisco with my formal org-charted group. It was the first time I’ve spent focused time with everyone all at once since a re-organization early in 2017.

Things clicked. Day after day, my notebook filled with “A-ha!” thoughts and ideas. In today’s meditation, the guide prodded me to see the whole canvas. That is how I felt when I returned to LA and the normal rhythms of work on Friday. My nose had been too close to things. I could see the craftsmanship and the flaws, while having little sense of how it was all working (or not working) in concert.

That picture is clarifying. In the course of day-to-day routines and expectations and habits, the sense of what’s the most valuable thing you do or could often be doing gets lost. Those seven days were a map.

I’m grateful for these incredibly talented people to which I get to collaborate. They are smart and passionate and curious and competitive and quirky and clever. They challenge me. They push me to be better at what I do. And we’ve got a great leader—thoughtful, candid, and compassionate—who believes in us, celebrates and advocates for our work, and sees us as the people we are.

I’m grateful for her, for them, and the experience.

I’m also grateful for my team of friends. One of them came to the Golden State this week and brought us together across two cities. We met up, she and I, once in SF where we spent some time reconnecting, revealing our hearts and humor in equal measure. Then in Los Angeles with a larger group. The drinks flowed, the conversations got loud, the smiles grew full, and the hugs were long.

I’m grateful for her, for them, and the experience.

SEMICIRCLE by The Go! Team

January 2, 2017 / 0 Comments

The Questions: 2017 Work Edition

“Whenever things go wrong, whenever things go left, you can be in charge” – Maxwell, Listen Hear

Will we continue to invest and experiment in bringing our brands to digital spaces (and in new and interesting ways) even though the money might not be there yet?

The vast majority of the budgets in the entertainment industry are focused on declining traditional platforms like linear television and cable. That wealth of creative expression needs to be redeployed to digital networks, where creative people can connect more closely with massive audiences and where it is possible to directly serve more diverse audiences as well as for people to share media with those who matter in their lives. Social platforms are reaching more people and having a bigger impact, but they are still not taken seriously by the biggest media companies with the most resources to invest, and this is limiting our collective creative culture. — Jonah Peretti, Founder and CEO of BuzzFeed

Others are.

Will programmatic ad buyers be shamed into paying for quality?

“Honestly, the long tail is to advertising what subprime was to mortgages. No one knows what’s in it, but it helps people believe that there is a mysterious tonnage of impressions that are really low cost. But low-cost impressions would mean low-cost human attention. How can any publisher of quality content survive on low-cost impressions?” —Joe Marchese, President of advertising products for the Fox Networks Group

Will we embrace the idea that audience whims can change every day, every hour, every moment?

Will we reconsider the role and responsibilities of content recommendations engines on our pages? We trade our most valuable click real estate for dollars and maybe a bit of our souls.

Will we come up with good reasons (and good ideas) to be on even more platforms?

Will we talk more about voice?

Will we take the time to be more thoughtful in our decision-making? Will we give ourselves the space and time to sit with data, to ask the right questions, to seek the right answers, to be creative, and to do right by those that read and watch what we make?

In 2017, I hope the industry stops chasing it’s tail or the holy grail of scale and pursues something more meaningful: earning trust, respect, and an emotional connection with the real people that make up the elusive “audience.”

I know it’s what I’m going to be advocating for at every opportunity come Tuesday.

September 12, 2015 / 0 Comments

The Audacity of Dumb

“You say that you care. I was unaware.” – Allen Stone, Unaware

During last night’s live performance of Reply All during XOXO’s Story track, PJ Vogt said something to the effect of:

This room is filled with people working on a dumb idea with friends that they are hopeful about.

We might quibble over what’s “dumb”—he included his own podcast in that list and I had just laughed heartily for nearly an hour over the, okay, dumb yet brilliant Hello, From the Magic Tavern live show—but it’s the “they are hopeful” line that got me.

Does your work fill you with hope? I don’t mean, necessarily, that for which you get paid. Is there a thing that you’re doing on the regular that ignites you? Does it fill you with possibility even if it’s stupid?

If you’re working on it rather than just thinking about it, you’re living the dream, right? It may not pay the bills (but it might). You may suck at it (but if you keep doing it?). It may never stop being dumb (but what if it’s so ridiculous it’s actually genius?). It may fail. Hell, it probably will fail but…

But if you’re doing it, if you’re making time for it, if you’re working at it, I’d bet you’re happier. You’d know what joy looks like even if you only glimpse it on occasion when you’re trying to make this dumb idea happen ideally with people you like.

You’d know more about what you look like inside.

And by you, I mean me.

Try to make good shit. Every day. You might get it right once in awhile.

XOXO.

February 6, 2015 / 0 Comments

That Evening with Norman Lear

“Took a whole lot of tryin’ just to get up that hill.” – Janet Du’Bois, Movin’ On Up

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1

Kenya Barris, creator of Black-ish, and Baratunde Thurston, author of How to Be Black and probably the internet’s favorite negro, were on stage with Touré and the incomparable Norman Lear when Kenya asked a question. “How do you do this?” The this being putting out a comedic show that’s about something while Lear, during the height of his run, had six top shows on the air, all doing exactly that. It takes a while to get there but Touré eventually gets back to this question. Norman, with the cheer, clarity, humanity, and thoughtfulness he had shown all night, immediately responded (and I’m paraphrasing), “Oh, there was stress but I think there’s a kind of joyful stress…You work incredibly hard but at the end there’s great joy. You’ve made something that you can be proud of. You’ve made something that matters.”

It’s been a little over a week since I had the pleasure of being in the audience for the Television Academy’s An Evening with Norman Lear (thanks, Catherine!) and that’s the part that’s stuck with me. Well, that and Marla Gibbs still being the best thing in the room whenever and wherever she appears.

My mantra for 2015 is to make good shit. Every day. And this, while I doubt I will ever make work as compelling as Lear’s incredible run of TV series and movies that matter, is what has been motivating me this year. What am I doing on a daily basis that helps me tell the kinds of stories I want to tell? Can I highlight people and ideas and issues that matter? Can I entertain you while I do it? This is the work I like. This is my desired contribution to the people’s history of this planet.

The GRAMMYs are this weekend. I’m grateful that much of my 2015 so far has been spent in trying to tell interesting and entertaining stories about what it takes to put on the series of events that make up GRAMMY week and why they matter. The stories are for a small audience, at least for now, but I got to interview amazing people that are leading teams doing the hard behind-the-scenes work of putting on these epic concerts and ceremonies. I got to talk to the president of the Academy about Bob Dylan and Jimmy Carter and how MusiCares helps musicians. I got to talk to the people who do the surprisingly hard work of setting up the red carpet for this kind of event. I got to talk to the executive chef behind the food that people will eat in the suites and parties happening at STAPLES Center. I even got to interview my mom about GRAMMY fashion and LA style.

We turned these conversations into stories. Entertaining ones, I hope. And there was hard work and stress but also, joy. Joy in the making. Joy in the delivering. Joy in the complications and negotiations and consternation. It might not have looked like it at the time. At the time, there was sweat and furrowed brows and even cross words on occasion but at the end of those hard days, I was smiling.

More days like this. More days like Norman’s.

And more evening conversations that remind you what life and your role in it can be.

Those are the good times.

December 2, 2013 / 0 Comments

Ephemera

“Now she’s long…long gone.” – The Black Keys, She’s Long Gone

When there are events in the world, the event and the conversation surrounding it unfold on Twitter, the entirety of the experience of that event can be much more rich and engaging and deep on Twitter…The challenge when you try to put these event experiences on Twitter in front of people is they need to both capture all the best tweets, you really want the best tweets so you don’t miss those, and yet if you only show the best tweets, you lose the roar of the crowd that really makes Twitter awesome.

–Dick Costolo

I’m at my mother-in-law’s house in Greensboro, North Carolina. We arrived last Monday after a red eye flight from Los Angeles. My internal clock was still adjusting. So, when 8pm rolled around—or whenever it is that Sleepy Hollow comes on, I DVR it at home so I really don’t know—I wasn’t watching. My twitter friends were, though. The running commentary in that moment was more frustrating than entertaining as I wasn’t sharing the experience at the same time.

I watched the episode a few days later via FOX’s iPad app. It would’ve been nice to be able to replay what my friends were saying when they had watched it. But twitter isn’t built like that. Neither is facebook or most of our social web, for that matter.

Most tweets have a lifespan of less than 30 minutes. A facebook post maybe an hour. Instagram limits how far back you can scroll into the past. So, if you’re not on those services right now and someone is writing/posting about something you care about, you’ve missed it. I’m sure this seems mostly okay in this digital world that we’ve been playing in over the last ten years.

This is a world where people willingly, perhaps gleefully, dump their history as they jump from service to service or account to account. But, I wonder. Maybe we go with this because we haven’t been given other options.

Maybe this is why a service like Pinterest is performing so well. Pinterest provides the “river of news” but that’s not why people use it. People use it because its boards are memory books. You know what you post there will be easy to find later. It will be categorized. And everyone else is doing the same thing. Pinterest collects ideas, wants, and desires and stores them. You could use Tumblr in a similar fashion by searching tags or exploring an individual tumblog.

But who is collecting and collating thoughts or images around a topic in an easily searchable, inherently social way? How do I relive the Jessie Ware concert I went to two weeks ago via all the pictures, videos, and tweets that I know were posted because I saw them getting created? I’ve tried to do this several times over the last 6 months and have always felt unsatisfied with the attempt.

What about an important news event that happens while I’m sleeping or in a meeting? Why can’t I timeshift the social web like I can my favorite tv shows?

We’ve made the modern web ephemeral and, in doing so, I think we’ve robbed ourselves of turning shared digital experiences into true memories that have meaning beyond those brief instances when we’re all tapping away at the same time. I hope the next wave of big digital ideas tackles this.

It’s the kind of stuff I get excited about it in my own work conversations.

Projects like Thinkup make me think I’m not the only one.