This Is What the Future of Media Looks Like | Hamish Mckenzie | TED

We're living through the most significant media disruption

since the printing press.

It's a transformation that explains everything from political polarization

to why algorithms now do the jobs of editors,

and it's creating a hell of a mess.

But I secretly think that we're on our way

to something greater than we've ever seen in human history.

This is a massive deal, of course,

because media systems don't just convey information,

they shape how we think and how we behave.

They shape our culture.

I've spent my career navigating these shifts.

As one of the founders of Substack.

I helped writers and creators make money directly from their audiences.

Before Substack, I was the lead writer for Tesla.

I wrote a book

about the electric car revolution,

and I covered media start-ups as a reporter.

So I've witnessed firsthand how media systems evolve

and how they collapse.

The arrival of the internet promised to democratize media,

but so far, I think,

it has broken more than it's fixed.

Yes, social media has given everyone a voice,

but it has still concentrated power in the hands of a few.

But I see a new system starting to flourish,

and I call it “the garden.”

And by the way, there's an illustrator at Substack,

her name is Joro Chan, and she did all the artwork for this talk,

and I just want to make sure she gets credits.

(Applause)

Joro is amazing.

And this slide in particular gives me so much hope.

Anyway, this garden includes a new generation of media platforms

that give more power to creators and consumers.

It's coming from places like Patreon and Twitch, Supercast.

And then the company I started with Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi, Substack.

It's an ecosystem that gives economic autonomy to independent voices,

and it fosters direct relationships that are built on trust.

Instead of just putting everyone at the mercy

of algorithms that maximize engagement and advertising revenue.

For decades,

we all lived in a media world that was kind of like a temple.

It was top-down, centralized and controlled by gatekeepers.

We had the city newspaper over breakfast,

radio for the morning commutes,

TV news just before dinner.

And it was a relatively stable system,

but it was also rigid.

It could represent only a few perspectives,

and new voices had to be let in by favor.

Well the internet companies came along, and they sacked this temple.

Craigslist took the classifieds,

Google and Facebook captured the ad markets,

streaming services are dismantling television.

And now, with the rise of social networks,

we're in the age of chaos media

where anyone can have a voice,

but the power still flows primarily to the platforms.

We've gone from catechism

to cacophony.

And our political culture mirrors this chaos.

Opponents are to be humiliated.

Followers are expected to show fealty to specific doctrines.

And attention of any kind,

whether it's positive or negative, wins the day.

So we’ve gone from: “Ask not what your country can do for you --

[ask] what you can do for your country”

to dunk tweets and goading salutes.

Not going to do one of those.

(Laughter)

But when you look closely,

it is possible to see something new emerging.

And when I look closely,

I see the green shoots of a garden.

This garden, to put it in somewhat inorganic terms,

is a distributed system of independent voices

who enjoy economic autonomy.

Unlike Instagram or TikTok,

where the power mostly goes to Mark Zuckerberg

or the Chinese Communist Party,

the garden model connects creators directly with their communities.

We've seen in history how revolutions like this

can take quite a long time to fully unfold.

Thomas Edison demonstrated the first practical light bulb in 1879,

but it wasn't until the 1920s

when electricity started to become common in people's homes.

The missing piece was the electric grid.

And if we look today at our current media revolution,

we can see that the missing piece has been a different kind of power.

Economic power.

Economic autonomy gives creators freedom.

Instead of answering to bosses or an advertiser or an algorithm,

they can focus on deeply serving their communities.

Instead of chasing virality,

they can spend all their energy on doing their best work.

And in this way,

the garden can bring a sense of order

to social media's bedlam,

distributing the power among the many

instead of the few.

Let's take a look at some examples

of how the garden is already starting to flourish.

Take Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti.

They're the hosts of a non-partisan news show called "Breaking Points."

It used to be produced by The Hill, and it had the name “Rising.”

But then Krystal is from the left,

Saagar, who's from the right, decided to go independent.

They moved it to Supercast and YouTube, and then to Rumble.

And now they make more money from subscriptions

and cover a broader range of political viewpoints

for an audience of more than a million viewers.

Or take Caroline Chambers.

When publishers spurned her proposal for a cookbook deal,

she took matters into her own hands.

She set up a Substack --

because she's a genius --

(Laughter)

She called it "What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking."

And she grew a community there to about half a million people

that are all based around practical,

accessible recipes.

So when she did eventually publish that cookbook,

it became an instant “New York Times” bestseller,

not because a publisher anointed her,

but because of the genuine relationships she had cultivated with her readers.

Consider Matt Yglesias.

In 2020, Matt left Vox,

the company he cofounded,

to start a newsletter, which he called “Slow Boring.”

Matt had been a blogger since the early 2000s,

he went on and wrote for "The Atlantic."

Then he started Vox during the social media boom.

But it's with "Slow Boring" that he's found true independence.

Today, he writes about what he wants to write

for an audience of more than 200,000 subscribers,

and he makes more than a million dollars a year.

What these creators share in common is independence

from traditional gatekeepers and aggregators.

They succeed by cultivating trust,

not by gaming algorithms or knowing the right people.

So when you subscribe to "Breaking Points"

or you support Caroline's Substack,

you're not just paying for content,

you're entering into a relationship.

The creator knows you're there, they value your support,

and they can often engage with you directly

in ways that just weren't possible in the old systems.

This garden is about ownership and sustainability and resilience.

When the creators own their relationships with their audiences directly,

no platform or algorithm can suddenly cut them off from their community.

That sense of ownership translates into a sustainable income

that doesn't depend on algorithmic whims or viral trends.

And the whole system is more resilient

because it's not vulnerable to a single point of failure.

If TikTok or Facebook changed their policies overnight,

the independent creator can continue to live

off the value of their relationships with subscribers.

This shift has profound implications.

In the garden, the media can become less about capturing attention

and more about nurturing relationships.

There can be more space for nuance and complexity

in a world that increasingly resists both.

And in the garden, biodiversity can flourish.

There can be many more winners.

There can be much better coverage of a vast multitude of niches.

And everyone can play a role in shaping the culture they live in.

Of course, there are going to be some people who will say,

well, this is all just going to lead to more echo chambers.

But I think the opposite can be true,

because when you network cultural connections,

people can move freely between communities

and be exposed to new ways of thinking

in more moderate environments.

The chaos of our current media moment cannot last.

But then no one's quite sure

what the new landscape is going to ultimately bring.

And that's why our choices today matter so much.

Every subscription, every share

and every minute of our attention is a vote

for the culture we want to flourish.

And now we can invest in a system that values deep relationships.

We can reclaim our attention from the doomscroll feeds

and pour it, like water, onto the seedlings of a better future.

And when we do this,

it's not just about getting better content.

It's about cultivating a richer and more thoughtful culture,

a culture that can face up to the complex challenges of our time.

A culture worth subscribing to.

Thank you.

(Applause)