My Conversation with Jason Hirschhorn: “The Internet Will Never Run Out of Fish”
Great interview — curation, RSS, influence, virality and @Media ReDEF
An Eclectic Lunch in which the History of Media ReDEFined, the Manner by Which It Is Produced, and An Oblique Reference to Filipino Social Networks Are Discussed.
Does Jason Hirschhorn read EVERYTHING? Well, possibly. His Media ReDEFined email / newsletter / twitter feed is a must-scan for every executive in media, entertainment and tech, many of whom feel pangs of anxiety (as in “I CAN’T KEEP UP!”) when his list of personally selected 30-40 “must reads” hits their inbox every day.
Jason is omnivoracious. What makes Media ReDEFined work is his insatiable curiosity, joy, and appreciation of the worlds of media and technology. He’s not hawking, not pushing one point or another — he loves the discussion, the ins and outs, the personalities.
This past weekend marked the fifth anniversary of Jason’s newsletter. The first subscriber was Judy McGrath (former Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks). Today, it’s a must-read (sometimes the only read) for thousands of media / tech / culture insiders.
He and I have been friends for decades. I asked him to share the secrets of Media ReDEFined, which he did over a long and amazingly eclectic lunch discussion. Here’s what I learned, in Jason’s own words (and my headlines).
THE FUNNEL AND THE FIRE
I basically put a human funnel and sifter at the end of a huge firehose. I go through 3-4,000 pieces a day. I use Google Reader for my RSS feeds. It’s a list of sources I’ve built up over years and years. I think I do a pretty good job of finding stuff, and while I have no problem with algorithms or personalization technologies, I’ll play against the computer any day of my life. They don’t account for quality, emotion or context. Technology to hunt and gather, humans to pick. That’s a great mix.
Have you ever seen the movie The Polar Express? It was one of the first great CGI movies, I think they used real actors and then they were animated. But one of the criticisms of the movie was that when you looked at the children’s eyes, they were dead. They had no life in them. I like to think, if you matched Media ReDEFined every day against a computer picking the stories, their “eyes” would still be dead.
I really admire the ability of journalists and daily bloggers to put out tremendous amounts of content, and some of the quality is really unbelievable. My job is to go and find it and choose. Listen, I miss stuff. Choosing is more art than science. It’s not everything. I would say that I read a third of what goes into the newsletter before it goes out. I read every summary and I double back at night and read some articles that I chose but didn’t get a chance to fully read. I used to get up at 5 am and I did it all then. Now with mobile technology, I use a combo of my Air, iPad and iPhone. I’m doing it throughout the day, in cabs, between meetings. I’m doing it right now as you eat your salad, actually.
And now it’s available in many different forms for the audience to choose. Twitter, Facebook, Flipboard, Pulse, Paper.li and more. All those things, and the feeds and APIs I use, are a very big part of the ecosystem of how people get Media ReDEFined.
MEDIA REDEFINED IN FLIPBOARD.
I love the Flipboard version of Media ReDEFined. I met Mike McCue (Founder and CEO) through our mutual friends, Quincy Smith and Mike Marquez, the day after it launched. It’s an elegant and simple experience. It just works beautifully. It changes the experience of Media ReDEFined. When I saw it inside Flipboard for the first time, I really started to think to myself “Wow! This could be a publication. This could be a new thing. If I could build the futuristic magazine of my must read, watch and listen tos, the greatest magazine ever, this is what it would look and work like.”
