Alexis Madrigal
Editor-in-chief at Fusion. Previously at The Atlantic and Wired.
Discussion
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
Hi all, Alexis here. For those of you who don't know me yet, I'm the Editor-in-chief for Fusion, an ABC-Univision joint venture. I used to be a senior editor at The Atlantic and a staff writer at Wired. I wrote a book about energy tech called Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology, and I'm a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley's Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society. This year, I'm also an affiliate at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Ask Away! :)
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BENYAM
@benyamtesfai · Director of Marketing, TDJ // FITMENCOOK
Hi @alexismadrigal , congrats on the recent partnership with Medium! Given some of its limitations, how are you approaching the platform from a publisher pov and what type of content can we expect to see?
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@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
@benyamtesfai Can you speak on this partnership? I know nothing.
BENYAM
@benyamtesfai · Director of Marketing, TDJ // FITMENCOOK
@jeffumbro , no problem. Ev WIlliams made an announcement last week that Medium would be partnering with the following publishers, but still unsure how this will all play out: The Awl, Discovery, Fusion, How We Get To Next, Mic, MSNBC, and Travel + Leisure.
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@benyamtesfai We've long had a friendly relationship with Medium. They make a beautiful writing tool and we employ a lot of writers, so it's a natural fit. I can't comment on the whole plan with them, but I'm excited about it. (I know this is a terrible answer!)
Sam Parr
@thesamparr · Roommates
When you hire writers, do you hire on skill and train them to be interested in the topics that work well with your platform, or do you hire people interested in your content and train them to be writers?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@thesamparr Gotta hire on skill. People who know how to put the words in the right order are very hard to force into being. And for some people it comes naturally. BUT THEN, it become the editorial team's responsibility to relentlessly push the writers to develop intellectual density in the areas that they cover, you know? That means not just developing sources and setting up their news diet, but reading widely in the area, going to conferences, etc. (One conference to go to for aspiring writers in the Bay Area, our Future Fair, which is November 6/7 next month: realfuturefair.com)
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@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
Can you speak a bit on how Fusion is going to approach their election coverage?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@jeffumbro The most important things for me are: 1) That we cover actual issues of generational importance (mostly but not limited to climate change, debt, inequality, technological change, immigration). This is the only real way to differentiate from the horse-race coverage that everyone claims not to be doing but basically have to do in order to drive traffic. 2) I want us to track the online election more closely than it has ever been tracked. And we've built a little but fiercely brilliant team to do just that. Expert more and more from us on that digital campaigning front, starting with our candidate image explorer, which is amazing.
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@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
@alexismadrigal Is that a public link yet? The candidate image explorer
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@jeffumbro Not yet! Soon. Like a week. Basically, we've been scraping all the candidates social media posts and finding ways to label and play with them.
neeharika sinha
@neeeharika · Google, Threadchannel
Hello @alexismadrigal thanks for this AMA session.
1) I was wondering what is your must reads on a daily basis (journals/blogs/news resource etc.) ?
2) Are there Any startups in the green technology space that really excite you with their value proposition?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@neeeharika Just because of the nature of my work, I don't visit that many sites on a daily basis anymore. I will say that I find myself going to Tech Review, IEEE Spectrum, The Atlantic, Remezcla, and Vice's Motherboard an awful lot. I also think John Hermann at The Awl is a brilliant and honest media observer who I hope is wrong about everything that's happening in our industry. But I try to read most of what he writes. I also read California Sunday Magazine whenever it comes out and I try to keep up with what Bill Wasik is doing at The New York Times Magazine. And, obviously, I read the shit out of Fusion.net, especially between the hours of 6am-7am and 9:30pm and 11:00pm before my son wakes up and after he goes to bed. :)
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@neeeharika to answer your second question, green technology startups have had a rough go of it. I have a hard time speaking to specific companies at this point, but holy shit, I'd bet on solar PV and the electrification of much of transportation.
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
Hi @alexismadrigal thanks so much for joining us today. Would love to hear what the most effective platform is for you with regards to marketing new content? Is it FB, Twitter, Newsletters etc? Would love to hear your recommendations!
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@harrystebbings The reality is that Facebook is where the mass audience is. It's where things can go from being small to being enormous. But things have to be shaped precisely to fit into the way Facebook posts work. And that means brand dilution. For media makers, I'm a huge believer in building a subscription following of some kind, whether that's a newsletter, YouTube, or a paid product of some kind *in addition to* playing a Facebook game. I can speak more on this in a bit.
Corley
@corleyh · COO @ Product Hunt
Thank you for taking the time today @alexismadrigal. When you think about the future, what do you think one of the unintended consequences of the increased rate of technological change might be?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@corleyh This is a really good question. One thing: I would say that the law and the civic infrastructure of our communities has a really really tough time keeping up. Take driverless cars. How can any government agency be expected to properly inspect Google's driving algorithm (or the set of algorithms and sensors that form the software "driver")? I have no idea. Think about the recent VW emissions scandal. That was fucking child's play relative to the task of regulating the innards of self-driving car software. And maybe you don't worry about Google, per se, but you end up worrying about the jailbroken Google or the jailbroken Tesla or the legacy car company that's playing catchup and rushing things out the door. And how can our regulators deal with that? I have no idea!
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@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
@alexismadrigal @corleyh I wonder if @jerry_kaplan has any insight here
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Hi Alexis thanks for joining us today! What has been your proudest moment during your career to date? What made that particular achievement stand out from the rest?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@ems_hodge I'm still incredibly proud of the story that I wrote about California's water crisis: http://www.theatlantic.com/techn... It was an incredibly unusual story that I feel illuminated the state's water issues in new and unexpected ways. I also worked like crazy at the craft level (really working over each sentence). And, of course, shortly thereafter I got sucked up into management at The Atlantic and now at Fusion. I will say this, though: when our TV show debuts in January, that will be a pretty proud moment because of all that we'll have accomplished in a single year. A TV show, tons of great digital stories, establishing an office in Oakland, and putting on 3 major live events, including the Real Future Fair, which is coming up in November: realfuturefair.com
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@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
What are you reading nowadays?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@jeffumbro I've been diving deep into the technocratic machine that built both the actual houses and financial infrastructure that led to the suburbanization and continuing segregation of America. In part, that's because I'm interviewing Ta-Nehisi Coates at the end of the month, who has written great things on this, but also because I'm fascinated by how little I knew about how the cities we live in were built. In my first book, I dealt with energy in a similar way: really going deep on how we built the systems that undergird the country. There's really nothing like this kind of deep dive.
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@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
@alexismadrigal Love this - Ask Ta-Nehisi to do a LIVE when you speak to him.
Hash_tag_jeff
@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
I love Fusion, but it seems to me that they initially promised a new media experience and I'm not entirely sure that's been delivered yet. What does the future look like?
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Alexis C. Madrigal
@alexismadrigal · Editor in Chief, Fusion
@jeffumbro That's an interesting question. When I look at Fusion, I see a company where 60%+ of the staff is not white and that's delivering a mix of media that doesn't exist anywhere else. We've done tons of "formal" experimentation and built lots of neat things in VR and elsewhere, but ultimately, what defines the brand can't be the newness of its formats, but its execution against its mission of championing a more diverse and inclusive America. And we're getting better and better at that. I also think, for a variety of reasons, that expectations of the company were absurd. 14 months ago, we had 5 staffers who knew how to use a CMS, you know? This month, we'll reach 9/10 million uniques and we've built an entire infrastructure for dozens of people to work in. That's pretty fucking good.
Hash_tag_jeff
@jeffumbro · Book Marketing and PR - get in touch
@alexismadrigal I love what you all are doing and I do think you're on the right path. You're right, though, I drank the kool aid and Fusion probably was put on a pedestal of expectations before it was ready.