The Daily Aus & News On Social Media

Sam: The Daily Talk Show.

Josh: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 792.

Tommy: And we've got some special guests, the founders of The Daily Aus, Sam and Zara.

Josh: Welcome, welcome, welcome, guys. Hello. So, you are— are you based in Sydney or where are you based?

Zara: Yeah, we are in Sydney.

Sam: So, we aren't locked down just yet, but we're waiting for it next week, maybe.

Tommy: It looks like that Sydney social distancing from the visual that we can see. Josh and I are 50 metres apart. That's what we have to do around here because of how crazy it's gone. So you guys founded The Daily Aus, which I mentioned, and I mean, you have your fingers on the pulse when it comes to what's going on in the world because it is, you know, daily digestible bite-sized piece of news that you're putting out. I mean, more than one per day. How much are you guys tapped in? Like, I wake up and look at the news every morning, but it must be you guys have got it in an intravenous overnight while you're sleeping. It's just sort of coming into your psyche. How much news are you consuming to then be able to put out news?

Zara: I'll take this one, I think. So firstly, we both work full-time and this is our side hustle, but our work sort of intersects with the Daily Aus and with consuming news. So as a political analyst, I'm made to, you know, read every single news publication that comes out in the morning. So just by virtue of our passions and by virtue of our work, we're probably consuming 8 to 10 different publications before 9 AM. And I mean, we'd probably be doing it even if we weren't doing the Daily Aus because That's the nerds that we are. But that is how we— that's how we get our news sources in the morning. And then from there we start collating and curating what we're going to present to our audience.

Sam: But I'm a hardcore news dude. Like, I still get the hard copy of the paper on the weekends and have grown up reading the news every single day. Yeah. It's a big part of my life.

Josh: Sam, as I—

Sam: It's so funny because—

Josh: Yeah, go on.

Sam: Yeah, go.

Josh: I was just going to say with the, on the being a news junkie, I remember there was an app called Breaking News that would send push notifications every time something basically happened in the world. And I had to, it got shut down, it ended up closing down, but it was horrendous. Do you have notifications on for any of your news sources?

Sam: I think we have them on for all of our news sources, but in my, I live with my 3 best mates and I think I am their physical push notification. So, I'll go around and just push everyone when something happens. It's so funny in this whole COVID era and in 2020 that news conferences are now just part of something that we watch on TV. Like, I've been watching them for years and Zara and I have been watching Question Time for years, just like our kind of really fun Netflix. And now everybody in, especially in Victoria with you guys, like Daniel Andrews pops on the TV at 11 o'clock and the whole city seems to stop. Everyone gets Instagrammed. Yeah.

Zara: It's the coolest thing to be watching.

Sam: Finally, people are getting what we've been going on about for a while.

Tommy: Um, so I guess, I mean, today's July 16th. Uh, can you run us through some— we don't really do that much topical to the exact day, but I feel like this is good because you were so across it. It's more just because Josh and I aren't across the news. Uh, what's happening? What's going on today?

Sam: So we woke up this morning to the news that most, uh, really high-profile Twitter accounts in the US have been hacked by a cryptocurrency scam.

Tommy: Juicy.

Sam: So we're talking Obama, we're talking Elon Musk, Kanye, Bill Gates, Apple, Uber. They really hit the big guns. Um, and it was one of those comments that said, I've bought into this cryptocurrency scheme and you should too. Um, so that was a big concern for Twitter, and Twitter's share price crashed a little bit after that.

Tommy: Really? I mean, I went straight— I went straight to, how are they getting such huge names? Like, a corporation like Apple, which is getting their Twitter— like, if Apple can't fucking keep their thing safe, I've got no idea.

Josh: Tommy's also projecting. Tommy's projecting because he lost access to his Facebook about a month ago.

Tommy: And then this week I clicked on a phishing link and I fucking— you know, I look 30, but I'm basically 85. So did you buy some crypto?

Sam: Oh yeah, I sent a heap of crypto.

Tommy: He's rich now. I'm waiting for my double crypto. So can you just—

Josh: Plus the cash from the Nigerian prince.

Tommy: And the tape of me masturbating, it still hasn't come out yet. I sent the money. I sent the money. So is there any more details on how— because the bit that I didn't see, I saw that in my peripheral this morning. The bit I didn't see is how it got done. Who are these? Is it some sort of syndicate of hackers that are behind this?

Zara: To us, it seems like they're still trying to work that out. Twitter recently published a media release basically just apologising for what had happened. The creator apologised wholeheartedly and said that they were trying to work through everything that was going on. Obviously, with all these high-profile hacks, they first needed to sort of make sure that they were all okay and then go to the heart of it. So from what we've seen, there hasn't been any accountability yet.

Tommy: The conspiracies are going to come out. Yeah.

Sam: And I would love to see the inside of Twitter HQ right now.

Josh: Oh, definitely.

Sam: They're all working from home. And they're all working from home.

Zara: Yeah.

Josh: It'd be a nightmare. The Twitter, uh, publication or a platform, from your perspective, where do they sit?

Sam: It's a really interesting question. We actually aren't on Twitter because people on Twitter are really good at reporting the news really quickly, and, um, we wanted to try and target an audience that wasn't so used to consuming news. Um, but I think you can transform that question and, and apply it to any of the platforms. I mean, Even with our TikTok stuff we're doing now, TikTok, um, it's used as a platform or something else is a really interesting question. Um, I think there's going to be a constant battle. I think this is our generation's big challenge is to work out how much are we willing to read online that we don't like. I'm talking hate speech, but I'm also just talking things that we disagree with for any number of reasons. And how much do we want that censored? So, if we really believe that Instagram is democratic, then you should be able to say whatever you want. But where's the line with the hate speech there and that kind of thing? Obviously, getting your account hacked is a totally different issue. But it's a really interesting question that we're still trying to get our heads around.

Tommy: Zara, I used to work in radio and would have to source stories. And one thing I picked up on, which I don't think I would have if I wasn't, you know, working inside of a media outlet is that I'm regurgitating storeys that are taken from, you know, someone else who has got them, but then they're coming from sort of this other tier. And so like by the time that a lot of journalists are using a story, it's just come from another journalist or it's come from another publication.

Josh: Or a press release.

Tommy: Where does it come from from the beginning? Like the storeys coming from the start, how does that work from an inside news perspective?

Zara: Well, um, therein lies where we would love The Daily to go long term, which is that we'd love to be, you know, at the forefront and at the actual primary source. So, you know, this morning we saw the Prime Minister announce, uh, new funding for school leavers and for job seekers. So there was $2 billion announced, and we found that in the morning, and the Prime Minister had given that storey overnight to a select number of journalists We then read that piece and we regurgitated it and offered it up to our audience this morning at 9 AM. But long term, if we were able to, you know, get straight to the source, have the Prime Minister giving the Daily Aus as a media company, um, that overnight leak, I mean, that's, that's the goal. Um, that would be incredible. And that's where the very, very organised media companies lie, that they go straight to the source, they go to the Prime Minister for comment. And if we position ourselves as a youth social-led media organisation, hopefully in the future we can be there asking the questions on behalf of young people straight to the source rather than just reporting, as you said, what other journalists are reporting.

Josh: Yeah, it feels like, especially with where we are with COVID-19, obviously we're listening to the government more, you know, all the state government stuff. But then there is the mate of a mate who says that we're going into stage 4.

Zara: I mean, that the world's ending. Yeah.

Josh: I mean, how do we— because sometimes they're right. Sometimes these rumours turn out to be true. As someone who is reporting the news, when do you pick up, you know, sort of a leak or a very loose sort of storey versus wait for the official publication?

Sam: We, we definitely get a little hint of a storey breaking through Twitter. Twitter seems to be the place. And again, I'd have to say that is probably because other journos are on Twitter as well. But where we're at as a media organization, we can't afford to be sued for doing the wrong thing. So we'd always kind of make sure that it's verified by a source that we trust. Or by the person themselves. So we want to hear Scott Morrison saying it if we're going to report it, or we want to read his statement. We've had some really interesting examples though where in the rush to try and be as quick as possible for our readers, there's always going to be a risk that we get things a little wrong. We had a really interesting— we were actually sitting having a meeting when Kim Jong-un went missing a couple of months ago, and people hadn't seen him in 2 weeks and whatever, and we started reading on Twitter.

Josh: I told Tommy that he was definitely dead, so I don't know if I was right on that one.

Sam: Well, the whole of Twitter was saying that he was dead.

Tommy: Yeah.

Sam: So I— it's really stuck with me, but I actually made the graphic of Kim Jong-un has died ready to press send on our Insta before we realised that he's just had a bit of a lie down and he's okay now.

Josh: Nearly dead, but he's not dead.

Zara: Temporarily.

Sam: But it's always a risk of going early, is that kind of thing.

Tommy: I mean, but that's— I become— there's a— I know the sort of fun that can be had in sort of following leads, going down the path. Like, is that something you're— you love doing? I mean, Sammy said you're a news junkie, you love it. Are you following leads? Are you chasing sort of, you know, little nuggets that you're finding?

Sam: We take a little bit of a different approach. Instead of trying to break news that nobody else knows about. For now, what we're trying to do is we're trying to make sure that our audience really properly genuinely understands what they're reading. So we're kind of— we want to be known as the little mate in your pocket that helps you take it all in. You don't have to tell anyone about your mate, we're just here helping you out. So if that means helping you understand what the hell do these COVID-19 statistics actually mean, and what's the difference between an active case and a historical case, and all the tracing terminology. If it, if it helps, then we'll explain to you what an interest rate is and all those kind of key ideas that help you actually understand the news. So our key idea that we always think about is that the news is just one big soapy. So if you watched a random Tuesday night episode of Home and Away, you'd have no idea why this person was hurt in a car crash and this person was breaking up with this person. But if you had like a little way to understand who the main characters are and what the plot is, then you can jump into the news cycle at any point and say, okay, I understand why Trump is the way he is and I understand why Australia has debt and all those—

Zara: No one will understand.

Sam: No one really, yeah. I'll begin to understand why. And that's our key task right now.

Josh: I remember hearing the phrase a few years ago, slow news, and I guess that the idea of consuming stuff more intentionally. I remember subscribing to a magazine that was specifically in that game. Where does slow news fit in the social media cycle, do you think, Zara?

Zara: It's a good question. Slow news, I wouldn't say that we're trying It's a great question.

Tommy: What is slow news? So I'm out of it.

Josh: Well, yeah, I guess. Yeah. How would you just— how would you describe slow news?

Zara: Well, I mean, we, we have a 24-hour news consumption habit at the moment wherein you get it on Twitter, you get it on the TV, and, and slow news is a more deliberate, um, attempt at consuming news that is more explanatory. It's longer form usually, um, and it's more of that deep dive into an issue rather than just the as you said, the alerts on your phone. So slow news is the more deliberate consumption of news at a deeper level. And I think we're sort of halfway between the two different consumption patterns, because we, we want to be pushing out timely content. We're not reflecting on something a week ago, because we know our audience don't have that attention span. So in that way, we are fast, but we do want to provide an explanation platform. And we want to be able to equip people with the information that they need when they go on a on a date and, you know, they're sort of stuck for something to talk about, they know that they can, you know, rely on the 5 things that happened today that they saw on the daily news to sound informed and to come across as informed. And so that's sort of where we lie in terms of who we're targeting, because I think that the Sort of News would be for a more considered reader who has already understood the basic premise of the storey itself.

Sam: And we really want our readers to get that way, to get to that place.

Tommy: I was just saying, sounds like that's the guy you want to be, Josh, the guy who knows what's behind and can take his time.

Josh: Well, that's the— But I think there is something in, like, I've been watching documentaries on the Great Depression and stuff like that, or like, you know, the stuff that I think that might give us insights into what's happening now, how much Do you think, Sam, are you into history over news?

Sam: That's another really good question. I mean, I think that even in the last 20 years, we have done so much as a planet in terms of the way politics works and the way society works that you don't even have to go back that far to learn really important lessons. An example that comes to mind is we did an explainer the other day about Kanye West's presidential bid, and we kind of looked at, okay, so we, we know the news that Kanye's come out and said he's going to be the pres, but can he actually do that? And if he can, what's the impact going to be on the race? And there's a really good example from 2000 where there was an independent in Florida who was very popular in his state but not popular in the rest of the US. And he won Florida, and he actually took critical votes away from Al Gore, who lost by the very narrowest of margins to George Bush. And so if it wasn't for that independent who probably had the same philosophies as Al Gore, being though they were both left kind of leaning politicians, then Al Gore probably would have won. So the big thing with Kanye that we kind of explained through this historical paradigm is that Kanye could actually take really important votes away from Joe Biden, even if he doesn't mean to, which could really hinder— he does mean to, Kanye means everything he does, which could take really important votes away and, and could see another 4 years of Trump.

Tommy: I struggle to sort of communicate in a caption on my Instagram, let alone, you know, 148 characters delivering something of importance. How do you guys go with crafting small amount of text without coming across like you're trying to be hyperbolic or clickbait-esque?

Zara: Good question. Look, it's a constant battle. We chose very intentionally to market ourselves as social first, and so we accept all the difficulties that come with that. And I think we, we get around that, that if there is a very big issue that, you know, the platform doesn't lend itself to a very nuanced delivery, we can just do it over multiple days. If it's a really big issue that needs to be unpacked, we don't need to do it all at once, because our audience aren't going to be able to consume that level, that density of news. So I think that it's always going to be a challenge. But if there is nuance that we feel our readers need to know about, we can just explore it in longer form. Over a couple of days. And honestly, there aren't that many times where we can't cut out all the noise and just give people the news. Because if you go through a very traditional media story, there is going to be 200 to 300 words of fluff that absolutely nobody needs to read, if we're being honest. And so we just try cut out that noise, give you what you need to know, give you the stats, give you the facts, and off you go. Have a good day.

Josh: You're called The Daily Aus, uh, so obviously there is the, the lean towards an Australian market. How do you balance talking about things that are happening abroad, say within the US, versus covering the things that are at home?

Sam: We try and make decisions on what we think our users need to know, and that will vary every single day. So some days there might not be major issues in Australia at all. That they need to know about. And instead of putting ourselves in a hole of having to report on just Australia and then reverting to looking at some sports scores on a Monday if there's no news from the weekend, then we'd love to do— which I would love to do— um, we've freed ourselves up to be able to look at overseas as well. But we're very conscious about Australia as the focus. Um, our kind of— the thing that we— that Zara and I always say to each other is if we've got our users for a minute a day then let's not waste their time. Let's really give them really what they need to know. And we're in a big globalised world and there's a lot that we need to know that's happening overseas. It also helps just with getting a bit of perspective on the issues as people in the social media echo chamber. When you think something's really, really terrible, it can often just help—

Zara: Always look at America.

Sam: Yeah.

Zara: It's going to be worse.

Sam: Look at America. Yeah. But there's lots of, there's lots of injustices and there's lots of terrible things happening around the world. But by the same token, every single day we also do one storey which is always good. So the fifth storey of our little bulletin in the morning, every single day for the last 3 and a half years, has been good news. And we often go overseas for our good news, and there are people around the world doing unbelievable things that makes our social feeds a little brighter.

Tommy: When you ask somebody to tell us something bad about themselves or good about themselves, I think that people tend to know a bunch of the bad stuff. Here's what I can't do. Here's what I'm not good at versus the good stuff. When it comes to finding the good stories, is that easier or is finding the first 4, the, you know, the bad stuff, is that easier?

Zara: There is an inherent negativity bias. Both in Australian media and world media. So it is absolutely easier to find the first 4 stories. Some days it will take us 30 minutes to find a good news story. And that can be— it's a bit upsetting sometimes because it should be more apparent. We should be celebrating the wins a bit more. But especially, I mean, bushfire season, COVID, it can be difficult to find some bright light. So I think we, we try and flip things a bit on their head. So, you know, COVID has been so awful for a number of reasons, but emissions have been reduced by a substantial amount. And how great is that for our Earth? So we try to find the good in everything, but it can certainly be a lot more difficult than our standard news bulletin.

Josh: What do you think the new— like, uh, the future of news looks like? You see, like, BuzzFeed made an attempt at doing, uh, news. It feels like it's, uh, there's, you know, if you look at what happened with CNN when, when they started, you know, a whole different way of doing the news cycle. Where do you think in 10 years' time we'll be consuming our news from?

Sam: So I think in terms of revenue, as kind of the key question of how the news organisations actually run, I don't think we can rely on subscriptions ever again for news because people— the chain's been broken. People can get their news for free, and it's going to be really tricky to get people to pay for it again every day. You might get people to pay for, um, considered longer form content, but I just don't see young people paying for their news every day. So that's out. Then you've got advertising, and advertising is the next best thing, and we even think that that might be out because news is all about trust, and there's so much mistrust online. If you muddle up news with ads, then how do you know that what you're reading isn't being paid for? So that's out. So that doesn't leave very many options for news organisations to get up and running. So whether that means that there's just like a bunch of philanthropists who want to see good information out there, whether it's on a donation model, there's a lot of questions around how news organisations are going to make money. In terms of how it looks, I, I think that social-first news is the future of news. And what that means is that not news that you have to go to a website for. So we don't really have a website. We've got a landing page that directs you to our social channels.

Zara: But don't go there at the moment.

Sam: Yeah, not those Wix, the little tools are tricky. That's, that's the future of news, is actually social first and embracing social first as a news methodology.

Josh: So if the social pla— if they're able to control the algorithm, it feels like— I feel like a dumb news consumer if I'm relying on the algorithm to— so as a user, I'm relying on Instagram to show the Daily Aus every single day. How do we do it so we make sure that we've actually curated and separated, uh, what our auntie is saying on Instagram versus what is a news source.

Sam: So you have to find users that you know will be there at the same times every day, and that way you can look at their content knowing that they're not being played by the algorithm in the same way that somebody who posts once or twice a week will. And then on a very practical level, I mean, you can turn on notifications for the pages that you really trust. So I get a little, little kind of notification whenever The Guardian posts on Instagram, because that's a publication I really trust.

Zara: I think at a broader level, though, platforms— and we've seen this recently— are making more of an effort to stamp out misinformation and hate speech and a number of different other things that have come up as news does begin to enter these new avenues. So I think that that will be platform-led, and while that does open up a whole range of new questions, there's certainly a concerted effort on behalf of the platforms to deliver more truthful, more reliable, and more authentic news for users. So I think it will be a dual platform-led and sort of media company-led approach moving forward.

Josh: So does that mean you have trust in Facebook doing the right thing?

Sam: Well, shit, man, we, we don't have a choice. We have to work with the platforms, um, because it's not like the World Wide Web where you make a website and you own that domain and there's no kind of, um, authority that's checking everything you're putting online and making decisions about what's good and what's not good. So we have to play by their rules for now. But I think that they're not evil. And I think that they're not trying to give us misinformation, and they're not trying to harm our news habits. They're actually evolving with their user base. So if they know that more young people are getting their news from the platforms, and the rates now are about 50% of millennials in Australia get their news purely from social media. If they know that that number is growing, they aren't going to sit on their hands. They're actually going to take action to make sure that their platform is useful. Otherwise, there'll be a new one. Yeah, there'll be a new one that will pop up, or good creators will stop using them.

Tommy: Do you think it's— do you think it's harder to, uh, create or build trust with an audience through things like social media versus the old mediums— newspaper, television?

Zara: I think traditionally, if you got the Sydney Morning Herald or The Age delivered, that was a very conscious thing that you were doing. You signed up for a subscription, you paid money, and that came to you. So there was a very concerted effort there on behalf of the reader to connect with the news. And what we're trying to do is, because that very much cuts out an entire demographic of young people who don't access information that way, we're trying to put the news in front of them and basically go to where they're at. And so whether or not that hampers one's trust in, in the organisation or the news that they're getting, I don't know, because look, we, we poll our, our readers. They seem to trust us. We get a bunch of DMs every day asking for further elaboration. Our, um, our user base is growing daily, um, but until we have that longevity of, you know, a decade-long sustained effort, we won't know what that looks like.

Sam: And we're happy to earn that trust. We're happy to kind of keep chipping away at it. It's not going to happen overnight.

Josh: And so TikTok has been in the news around, uh, privacy and, um, you know, what they're doing with users' data. Uh, have you thought about where TikTok fits within what you're doing?

Sam: We, yeah, we've, we've done a lot of thinking because in the same way that a media platform will look at how their users are behaving, if we want to talk to young Aussies, um, all the research says that they're mostly on TikTok. My 16-year-old brother doesn't have Facebook and Instagram, um, he's got TikTok and Snapchat. So there's no other players in Australia who are giving the news every day on TikTok. So we jumped on there, we've been on there for about 3 months doing the same kind of, um, key bits of information you know. The really interesting thing with TikTok is that we were doing pretty crap doing a 60-second what you need to know, and then we broke it down to 5 10-second what you need to knows, and that's doing much better. So the—

Tommy: but you've lost all hope. You lost all hope in young people moving forward.

Sam: Legit, the attention span is, is, is literally about, you know, 5 seconds, double as long as our jingle. Um, so, but that's, but that's cool. I mean, that's— I would much rather somebody get 10 seconds on a new government policy than nothing at all. Yeah. And I think TikTok is, is fantastic. We, we don't— there's a lot of questions that are being put to the organisation around what they do with their data and that kind of thing. But if a foreign government wants to take the Daily Aus, then I hope they enjoy it. And they can't really do much with us. So I think if you're putting up kind of really revealing identity information, then that's something to think about. Um, all power to them.

Josh: What about the, the sense of, uh, say if it is, you know, heavily influenced by a government, that potentially once they build the audience, that they can then start controlling the message? So they'll say, okay, the Daily Aus, put that down, put this other stuff. And from a user perspective users have become comfortable or accustomed to understand this as their media source. Um, have you thought about how you extend the relationship beyond social media so if things do change you've got your own sort of nest egg?

Sam: We really want to meet our readers, um, so whether that means doing live events and saying come to the pub and let's talk for 60 minutes about Black Lives Matter and break down some of the key ideas, answer some of your questions, and let's do that together. Obviously not in the next couple of months, but that's definitely in our vision as well, is to make them and become really a source of debate and information and knowledge that isn't intimidating. And that isn't, you know, we wouldn't want people there who think they know everything because we don't.

Tommy: Yeah.

Zara: And we also have been throwing around the idea of wanting to go into schools. But because where we meet people at currently, they're 25 to 30, you're already pretty established in either your political views or your, your views of the world more generally, and your understanding of our political systems and foundations. So we have been considering the idea of potentially starting up a programme to go into high schools and basically just teach people basic media and political literacy. Because I, for one, as a very political person, think that that might be missing in our higher education. The fact that most people don't know what colour the Senate is or the House of Representatives is a very basic fact that, you know, then informs their views of the world moving forward. So it would be great to sort of interrupt that chain a bit earlier in the future and not just rely on the social media output later down the road.

Tommy: Josh and I have spoken a bunch about whether it's our age that we're becoming more aware of left and right and, you know, the different political landscape, or it's a thing of the time. Maybe it's social media, maybe it's people talking more about left and right. What do you think from people in the news game?

Sam: We've, we've had an interesting battle with this idea of left and right because we kind of set out to be this apolitical page. So we're just telling you what you need to know and you can make your own decisions from there. What we've discovered is that some issues are, in our opinions as young Australians, beyond the left and right debate. So we've decided that that's just kind of a fact. So climate change is a good example. We're past debating if that's a left or a right issue. It's not, it's a thing. Anti-vax is another one. Gun control. I mean, all of these issues, we really consider them whether we should be tackling them. But, you know, talking back to our good news point, if we say the good news, that's putting our opinion on something. So if we do the good news, Finland have introduced same-sex marriage, that's us saying we agree with same-sex marriage. And we've kind of come to the point where we say, yeah, we do. So I think because we're young, we're progressive, and progressive normally leans a little to the left. But it's a really interesting debate.

Zara: Going back to your question, I don't know, look, I mean, we are in the middle of a global pandemic, so nothing is normal. But I think that everyone underestimates our— and I'm categorising us all in the same age group here. That underestimate our age group and our political awareness. There's often this attempt to sort of subdue the millennial as this really, you know, uninformed, lazy demographic, when in actuality we're just getting started. And news traditionally hasn't been tailored towards our age. So whether or not you're getting more political with age or just having greater access to resources out there as they begin to pivot towards providing something that's actually for you and not for your mum or your dad. So I don't know whether— I mean, I'd love to say that people are getting more informed, but we do know from the stats that people are trusting news less and are trusting politicians less. So I think it's more just that we're finally getting access to the information and we can make those opinions and those decisions ourselves.

Josh: Where does personal brand fit in all of this? You see people talking about Andrew Bolt or Pete, these, you know, names that seem to have a lot of cut-through. You even see, I feel like conservative media seem to do a really good job from a production value perspective, like Ben Shapiro. Like, it seems, I don't know what it is, um, they're making money. Yeah, where does Where does personal brand fit with you when it comes to reporting the news?

Zara: Not very high for us. We've never— I mean, this will literally be the first time that we have our faces associated with our brand. So nobody knows who we are. As I said, we both work day jobs that, that still continue to this day. And We have considered it because we do wonder whether a personal brand will increase our audience's trust in us and whether if they know more about who we are, they will trust us more. But at this stage, we're trying to provide a really apolitical, objective, digestible, punchy news. And we don't really see a role for ourselves in there in its current manifestation.

Josh: I wonder if that's the secret. I wonder if the secret weapon though is getting yourselves out there. Like I think about the, what does have cut through. I remember Christian Hull, who's a comedian, he said to me one day, he said, people follow people.

Zara: People.

Josh: And I think that there's a lot to that. How much of it do you think is your comfortability around getting out there versus a strategic decision?

Sam: Well, I think up until this point when we've gotten, because we've had such a great 2020, I mean, we've triplled our following since the beginning of the year, which is just awesome. Um, unfortunately, it's probably because there's been so much trauma in the world. Um, but up until that point, it really was back to that thing about, okay, we have our users for 60 seconds. Do we want to spend that 60 seconds talking about us, or, or are we really just trying to get them exactly what they need? Um, so now that we've built a stronger audience and a really, I gotta say, a really engaged and loyal following. It's definitely time for us to think about taking that next step. What Zara and I would love to be evolving into is a voice for young people in the news cycle. I'm 25 and I think I'm still—

Zara: Did you just forget my age?

Sam: No, no, I just didn't want to talk for you.

Zara: Okay, thanks.

Sam: Zara's 20.

Tommy: I'm 16.

Sam: Oh, um, 20. I'm 45.

Zara: Zara's 23.

Sam: I'm 25. And I know, because what I'm going to say, I didn't want to speak for you. So what I was going to say was that I don't want to, uh, I think I'm still young enough to be considered a young person for another few years. Um, you guys, not so sure.

Tommy: But as a 16-year-old, you're old as fuck.

Josh: No. And so what is it? Yeah, I mean, what is it? Because I even think about like AM or like talkback. There's a bunch of research around as you get older, you like listening to spoken voice more like part of spoken voice. Is that what you say? Spoken word.

Zara: Spoken word.

Josh: And like I think around podcasting, what I'm excited about is the Australian population is getting older. So based on that, more people are going to be listening What do you think? Like, do you think that you're going to stay in a moment of time which is this sort of age group, or do you think it's based on your age right now?

Zara: Oh, good question. I— Yeah, look, we've got like a solid 10 years before we are— We're in the next age group. But I do think that this age group is the one that's particularly underserviced. I think that the sort of 35 to 45 is serviced by The Project and by any number of TV shows, because we know that that's where they get their news predominantly from. Then, you know, the age group above that is getting it from radio. So I think that our age group is probably the most underserviced. So we'd love to stay in this space for now, but we will definitely have to evolve as as the demographic evolves and as the demographic understands more about how they want to get their news and what that consumption looks like. We can't stay static, it will be irrelevant. Um, and just going back to your earlier question about personalities, I do think that the space is very crowded with people and commentators and opinions, and we sort of want to stand away from that a bit and just position ourselves as the sort of truth-telling, really just objective, opinion-free model. Because I mean, we really just don't need another person giving their opinions, to be frank. There are so many of them out there.

Tommy: You touched on it lightly. What is actually going on in the DMs of a page that isn't fronted by a human? You know, we can get people saying stuff about us or the content we're speaking. What are they— what are they offering up?

Sam: Our DMs are mostly people looking for more information, which is a really great way that we can help people go a little further. So we're constantly replying to people with deeper news links and that kind of thing. Our comments section is a little more concerning. Oh, wow. So, I mean—

Tommy: Sorry.

Sam: Oh, that'll work. We actually have had an interesting relationship because of this. I mean, we talked about it right at the beginning. What's our role here? I mean, are we meant to be sitting there on our phones all day?

Zara: Moderating.

Sam: Swiping on and deleting comments that we think are really harmful. I mean, I have to say, it does constantly remind us that our friendship is a little bit of an echo chamber of we think the world's really tolerant and fantastic. The amount of people who say stupid shit is really, really alarming.

Zara: Just offensive and— Really.

Sam: Dark stuff.

Zara: The fact that they've found the post, they've obviously read the post and then have decided to say whatever they're saying about whether it be Indigenous Australians or, you know, people at risk. It's just, yeah, it can be quite appalling.

Sam: I would much rather them rip into Zara and I. Yeah, any day. That feels a lot more kind of useful for their time than making big calls about the state of racial affairs on the planet.

Zara: Yeah.

Sam: And, um, yeah, really, really harmful stuff.

Zara: We had, um, we put up a post that went quite viral recently about Indigenous incarceration rates in Australia, uh, at which then obviously, because Australia, um, created a whole host of sort of racial discourse that was really concerning at parts. And then last week we had someone comment, go through every single comment and respond to them. This was an Indigenous person trying to stick up for themselves, which they shouldn't have to do, and go through something like 300 comments and respond to every single one trying to, you know, just educate these people. So it's definitely, it's, that sort of stuff is deeply unsettling. But it's something we're going to have to manage moving forward and have big discussions about, because when we had 100 followers, this wasn't a problem. But we're now at 26,000, and unfortunately with that brings, yeah, new issues and new voices, even if we don't want to hear them.

Josh: So talking about the echo chamber, uh, what does that mean for mainstream media? What do you think the future of mainstream media is?

Sam: Um, I think they're gonna really struggle to make money in the way that they are making money now. So we were talking the other day about, um, the way that you found out what time a movie was on. And the way that you'd find out what time a movie was on, you'd flick through Spectrum in the Saturday paper and you'd look to see the ads. That's never going to happen again. The car sales are never going to happen again. The house listings are going down. So all of those key pillars of money for a newspaper and traditional media is going down. I think TV and broadcast news is doing pretty well, and it's alive and well, and they're all making transitions to social and online at different speeds. So I'm constantly watching ABC iview on my computer. We don't have a TV that's even got an antenna, we just use our Chromecast, so I think that as we see more players adapt to, you know, you being able to flick it up on the TV quickly and that kind of stuff, I think they're going to be okay.

Zara: I think that it's not necessarily a bad thing if we see the demise of these huge conglomerates. I think that as we've seen the sort of media landscape shift, we've also seen really new and diverse voices pop up that traditionally couldn't do and didn't have a platform. And so that's another value that's been brought in by these platforms is that anyone with a phone can tell their story, anyone with a computer can tell their story. So I think that we'll see a lot of value derived from having the, the voices that we've never heard before, the ones that didn't get a say in it at News Corp or Fairfax. So I think there can be a lot of, a lot of really good things to come out of this in terms of sort of decentralising the power of our mainstream media, which has for however many years been in a, um, of white voices.

Sam: And let's keep hearing from young people. I mean, like, that's— young people are sick, so let's hear as much as they want to say.

Tommy: Yeah, I— echo chambers obviously can be a negative thing. I wonder if, um, you know, years ago when we only had limited echo chambers or media outlets to source from there was less confusion in our minds. Maybe it doesn't solve the problem of what it means.

Josh: There's probably a lot more inequality, right, too. So, the thing is that there was just the— you could go on your merry way without really considering the injustice that's happening. And I guess as we move towards having a more sort of fragmented media, we're starting to see more representation. What does representation mean to you at The Daily Aus?

Zara: Do you want to answer this one?

Sam: So it's really about making sure that we take a step back when we need to and amplify the news that assists. I mean, Zara and I are not diverse in our appearances and backgrounds, so we need to make sure that we're giving enough oxygen time and enough respect to as many different perspectives as we can from people who really deserve it. In terms of hiring, we definitely would want to make sure that we had a really, really diverse staff. I mean, that obviously requires us to have a bit of money, so we'll cross that bridge later, but that's a really important part if we're really going to be the voice of young people and we're really going to be a new media company. Company, we have to do that right. Yeah.

Tommy: I think it was easier to be ignorant many years ago. It's harder now if ignorance is just like blocking stuff out. It's like you walk into a shop, you're seeing shit pop up, you're seeing it on your phone, just trying to contact your mate or trying to, you know, hook up with somebody, getting pushed some news in between. It's some strange times at the moment. How are you guys viewing the world? As you said, 2020, it's a year of growth for you. It's also a year of really being thrusted into understanding everything that's going on. Where do you sit with 2020?

Zara: Um, I think that it has made us honestly cheque our own privilege a bit. Um, we, we, in an effort to make a meaningful contribution to, for example, the Black Lives Matter sort of discussion, were quick to write our own piece and then took a step back and were like, well, actually, what do we know about this? As you said earlier, we're just regurgitating what other media journalists are saying. So we, in that effort, reached out to a number of Indigenous writers, academics, and tried to get some new perspectives so that we aren't just having this superficial relationship with issues anymore. And so I think 2020 has really distilled that for us. Call-out culture is very strong at the moment. So we need to be doing better. We need to be doing well and we need to— pardon me— just be presenting facts and not letting opinions get in the way of that.

Sam: And I think for our readers, 2020 has been the year that they realised how important the news is.

Zara: Yeah, because it matters to them now.

Sam: It really matters to them. I mean, for you guys in Melbourne, you're checking the Daily Aus to work out what the latest rules are. I mean, that's really hitting home for a lot of our readers at the moment. And we get DMs saying, I don't quite understand the rules. Am I allowed to see my partner if I've only been dating for 2 weeks rather than the guideline says X? So it's really hitting home, the Black Lives Matter movement has awoken a beast on social media of us thinking about how we consume social media. That really, really wasn't explicitly talked about before. The other note I want to make about 2020 is that it fucking sucks. Like, it's a really tough year, and I think that the other really interesting thing that I've been seeing is more people being aware of how the news affects them mentally. So we really try hard to remind our readers that these are the ways that you can get help if it's all becoming a little bit too dark. Because, you know, we report on some pretty bad stuff. We report on death tolls from COVID from graphic videos, from protests. Like, there's a lot of stuff, and we need to look after ourselves, um, and we need to make sure that we're not just absent-mindedly consuming this stuff, but we're actually considering it.

Josh: I read that the Daily Aus is sort of like your entrée when it comes to your consumption of media. What is dessert to you?

Zara: Dessert would, for me, be the Saturday paper. Like, dessert is the really considered long-form, um, news. Where the entree—

Josh: I go the other way. I reckon it's junk, right? Like, the dessert is just like the trash. That's what I was gonna say.

Sam: That's my favourite part.

Zara: I was gonna say, I misconstrue that. I like dessert.

Sam: My dessert—

Zara: I'll take it away.

Sam: My dessert is 100% the Batuta Advocate. That is one big bowl of ice cream that I could eat all day.

Josh: Okay. And so do you like, Zara, are you someone like, do you get into the celebrity stuff? Like where does the Daily Mail fit in the consumption?

Zara: No way, literally no way. I love celebrity culture and I love, for example, what the Shameless Girls have done. They are absolute geniuses. So I'm a very avid light news consumer as well as heavy news. But we, we did make a conscious decision at the beginning that we weren't going to just give people Bachelor recaps because that's what traditional media thinks young people want. And young people want to know about tax returns, not Bachelor recap. I mean, both, but not at the exclusion of, of the other more intentional hard news.

Josh: I mean, the— I mean, Kanye, Donald Trump, this is all in some ways it's, it's popular culture that's becoming the thing that's then controlling our our world. How do you approach something like, say, Kanye saying he's going to run for presidency? When is that, uh, gossip column stuff versus actually world-changing news?

Sam: Well, the way that we approached that article, we knew that people needed to know about it because it's big. As I was saying before, I mean, it could really substantially change the course of human history. If Kanye takes a few thousand votes away from Joe Biden, which means that Trump wins. But the way that we approached it as a Daily Aus publication is by saying, all right, ignoring the celebrity behind it, what are the rules about like how the hell in July before a November election can you just throw your hand up and say, I'm also in the race? How does that— is that— can that be a thing? Does that work? Have we seen success in the past? So we know that other people are gonna cover really well the celebrity reactions and all that kind of stuff. It's our job to say, okay, how does this shit actually work?

Zara: And I also think that celebrity culture, and as we've seen it intersect with politics, which is insane, I mean, it all just comes down to power. These people are powerful in one domain and they're just transferring that power to a new domain. So I think we're gonna see it happen far more often into the future. And where we, yeah, where we sit in that intersection is explaining like the mechanisms of that decision and what actually happens from there, not necessarily the fluffy context of it all, I guess.

Sam: But we'd love to take this opportunity to announce our bid for president. You've got a choice.

Tommy: Who are you gonna take votes away from? It's interesting, the Kanye thing, The angles are interesting that you've taken, the taking away voters like what happened with Al Gore. I mean, it's a Trump out at all costs at this point. What's interesting is I don't have any fucking idea of Joe Biden. I don't. I heard he's done some bad shit in the past and he's very boring from a news cycle perspective. But yeah, I mean, the things I end up hearing about him paint him as a bit of a monster as well, but not a bigger monster than Trump. And so at that point it's like, I know we're worried about Kanye taking votes from Joe Biden, but then no one even fucking realises what Joe Biden is or is about. I don't know, I haven't consumed anything really. Isn't that weird though? It's like, that's—

Zara: yeah, I mean, anyone is going to pale in comparison to Trump. I don't know that the Democrats perhaps made the wisest choice in their nomination of Joe Biden.

Sam: But look, it's going to be our job to try and help you understand Joe Biden. We would never say— I mean, our audience can't vote in the US anyway, but we'd never say this is who you should vote for. But it's definitely our job to say these are his key ideas.

Zara: Here's how he voted on, you know, Black schools in the past. That's problematic. His sexual assault allegations, that's problematic, but it's presenting a full picture. It's understanding that these things don't exist in isolation, as you know, Trump's allegations and Trump's— whatever you want to call his policymaking— that doesn't exist in a vacuum. We're trying to give the whole picture so that you could be an informed voter. And that's what Australians— we're trying to make Australians informed voters because we're the next generation of voters. We're going to be the prime ministers, the ministers, we're the decision makers in future.

Josh: How have you both changed since starting The Daily Aus?

Zara: Well, we became mates.

Sam: Yeah, we actually— That's the biggest thing. We became best mates through The Daily Aus.

Josh: Yeah.

Sam: The Daily Aus has taught us to work really hard at something with delayed gratification. So, we've been doing this for 3 and a half years. Um, every single day, um, Monday to Friday. So that's, you know, well over 1,500, I reckon, editions of the Daily Aus.

Josh: And was there even carousels when it started? When did— how long has carousels been around for?

Zara: It was just, it was just stories.

Sam: We started before stories.

Josh: Yeah.

Sam: So yeah, we've really grown with the platform, but it's— for our first kind of 18 months, we had a couple of hundred of our friends who were following us. And it was bloody hard work, and we have very busy jobs that we also want to give a lot to. And so there's not much sleep, and it's really just about, you know, that we've never been paid. And so it's really taught me about hard work for something good down the line, and that's really starting to come to the surface this year. And I think that is so exciting for Zara and I, is to kind of see our little creation now getting picked up by more people and appreciated. And we can welcome people to the idea that we know works, 'cause we've been doing it for so long.

Josh: Is it harder being objective when you have employers? Like, who are you employed by?

Sam: So, I work for a law firm. That knows about the Daily Aus, and most of my colleagues follow it. And I think it would become a conflict of interest if I wrote about the firm in the news. I haven't had to do that yet. And I mean, yeah, it hasn't come.

Zara: No, there's like a clear separation. I mean, I work as a political analyst, but it's entirely different stuff. I work with like the mechanisms of government, not with What does a political analyst do?

Josh: What does that look like?

Zara: Like, if you think of what a management consultant does for companies— So, we don't know. Let me think of another thing. We basically connect private sector companies to government. So, it's a whole host of people that have worked in and around government before. I worked for an independent member of parliament in my last job, and so, I've taken that experience and I now assist in helping companies, you know, any, any sort of company, um, with connecting to government. And whether that be lobbying for changes in regulation, legislation, anything. But that is again very separate from the day-to-day news cycle, and there's, there's really no overlap other than the fact that I have to consume news for both and just understand what's happening in the world. But I Everyone should know what's happening in the world.

Josh: I mean, I feel like lobbying is one of those things, especially on Netflix. You see all these documentaries around how politics is fucked based on all of the lobbying. Can you give us some insights on what the reality is specifically in Australia and what it looks like?

Zara: Yeah, yeah. I mean, those, those movies are all glorified. Lobbying, lobbying can do a whole heap of good. I mean, we've seen unions lobbying for better conditions for employees, um, employees rather, um, through COVID. And it's meant that employees now have protections, um, and we can see just lobbying on behalf of the small guy. And so we try to really give a voice to the small guy, um, whereas big corporations will always have a seat at a table and don't need us. Um, so lobbying can do a lot of good in terms of protection, workplace protections, but also just you know, having a say in our decision-making in our country. I think it's a really valuable democratic mechanism that is very much misunderstood.

Sam: And the same stigma exists around corporate law as well, which is my domain. I mean, I said before that my favourite thing to consume as dessert is Batuta Advocate. I mean, some of the shit they say about corporate lawyers makes me feel like I want to crawl into a little hole and go to sleep forever. Um, but it's again about balancing— we're learning heaps, and, um, how can we look out for the small guys? How can we make sure that even the biggest of businesses that we would work with, how can we make sure that they're following the rules as much as possible? So, um, yeah, there's a lot of stigma around some of these professions, and I think as many young people who can keep, keep humble and keep hard working and keep good-hearted, the better.

Tommy: Sam and Zara, thank you for joining us.

Josh: And, uh, yeah, definitely, um, the Daily Aus, I, I love it just because it's— you feel like you're getting an overview without getting sort of slammed by— you go on to news.com.au and before you know it, you're like, how many paedophile storeys do I need in a day?

Zara: Yeah.

Josh: And so I feel like you guys have the, the good balance there. Thanks for coming on.

Zara: Thank you for having us.

Sam: Thanks, guys.

Zara: See ya.

Josh: It's a daily talk show. See you tomorrow, guys. Have a good one. See you guys.