‘THE PIONEER’ Interview with Katie Vanneck-Smith, Tortoise Media
Katie Vanneck-Smith is Co-Founder of Tortoise Media, the pioneering news media brand that is building a different kind of newsroom centered on ‘slow journalism’ and an open and inclusive approach. Fresh off the heels of WEF, she sat down with Mairead for June’s Pioneer Feature for The Wonder Letter. Katie shares what inspired her to start Tortoise Media, her long held passion for building sustainable models for journalism, how the biggest challenges at Tortoise have become the biggest gifts, and the opportunity for solutions-based journalism to play a role in climate and nature recovery.
1. What inspired you to start Tortoise Media, and break the traditional news model?
Two things inspired me to start Tortoise Media. One personal and one industry related. On a personal note, I came into journalism via a graduate programme at The Times and in my very first month I discovered that The Times was not profitable and had never been profitable since its first publication in 1785. That seemed like a challenging way to secure the future of The Times. This inspired me early on in my career to look at how do you build sustainable models for journalism? At The Times we created a paywall in 2010 and became profitable for the first time in The Times’ history in 2013, and it is still profitable today. This was as a direct result of introducing paid for digital media. I then went onto The Wall Street Journal, which had been acquired by News Corp, and had a subscriber base that was stable but had not grown, which we managed to turn around onto a strong growth trajectory by 2018. Having helped fix older news brands, I felt inspired to build a new media brand.
At an industry level, my co-founder James Harding and I could see that there were two problems in the news industry that Tortoise Media could potentially help solve. The first was that news had become noise. The idea behind Tortoise, is to slow down and wise up. Let others be hares and let us be the wise reflective tortoise. We do slow journalism, which is about what’s driving the news, not the breaking news itself. The second issue was a widening of the power gap in news. We saw the opportunity to not only be slow, but also to be open. To open up our newsroom, and invite in and listen to our members and experts before reporting out. That was the background and context that led to Tortoise being founded.
2. What are the benefits of a 'slow news’ approach and a community membership-based model?
The benefit of a slow journalism approach is that by taking more time, we’re not seeking to just understand the facts, we’re seeking to understand better - to ask more questions and to be more reflective. This often gives you a different perspective, as you find yourself looking at longer term trends in an investigative manner.
Our community membership approach is important as it helps to break down the echo chambers of traditional news. Newsrooms are traditionally not the most inclusive and diverse environments. If I look around the newsrooms I’ve grown up in, they’re full of similar people. Whereas the openness of Tortoise, and the way we invite members into our daily news conferences (our ‘Thinkins’) means we’re breaking down those echo chamber because we’re listening to a diverse group of voices that are informing our perspective and point of view. Just as newsrooms have sources, we’ve made that ‘source’ more open source via our community, thereby including a wider range of voices and points of view. Our openness has helped us become an alternative to traditional news, and this is reflected in Tortoise’s membership base which is much younger and representative than traditional news sources. The average age of a paying news customer in Britain is 57 years old, and the average age of a UK citizen is 40. In contrast, the average age of a Tortoise member is 39, and the average age of a Tortoise listener is 29.
3. What has been the greatest gift and challenge on your journey so far since launch?
Interestingly, some of the biggest challenges have become the gifts. Right at the beginning when we set up Tortoise, Emily Bell, a well-known ex-Guardian journalist and now Professor at Colombia journalism school, came out and said we were just another paid for membership proposition for the liberal elite, like the Soho House of news! Whilst we were clear that wasn’t the spirit of what we were creating, it was a really good challenge. It made us take stock within the first 6 months of Tortoise, and we built a 1 for 1 membership model, like Toms Shoes, that meant that for every paying member, we provide a free membership to someone in our community of non-profit, community outreach groups, and under-represented voices in mainstream media. Emily Bell challenged us rightly on something we hadn’t fully thought through, in terms of, how do you get the right representation in the room as a paid for news organisation? We then created something off the back of that early challenge – our 1 for 1 membership model, which is the proudest thing I’ve achieved in my 25 years of journalism.
Another big challenge has of course been Covid. But again, the second gift of Tortoise came out of that. Our ‘Thinkin’, which had always been an in-person newsroom experience, turned into a digital experience 5 days before lockdown! Now all of our Thinkins are a hybrid of in person and digital. The benefit is that its made us more accessible and available to our community, and is a much better gift to our newsroom as it means we can listen to a greater number of geographically diverse voices.
4. What opportunities are there for media to play a more powerful role in tackling the climate and ecological crisis?
It would be fair to say that most news and media is playing quite a traditional role when it comes to the climate crisis and is focused on re-asserting the facts and highlighting the crisis. While there is a role for that and it is important to keep the urgency front and centre, what we see less of, and where opportunity lies is in solutions-based journalism. This is where Tortoise, along with a generation of new media brands is slightly different, in our focus on solutions-based constructive journalism. The power that media has beyond educating and informing people, is the power to convene and bring people together. If you’re a slow newsroom like ourselves, you can take the time, and really think about what role you can play in enabling conversations that are focused on solutions and bringing people together with different experiences and points of view. At Tortoise we care about understanding together, sticking with the story, and fostering constructive conversations. While I wouldn’t say that we’ve completely cracked it, we are focused more on that constructive solutions side, which is critical.
One challenge when looking at how news and media can help to amplify the best climate solutions is the baseline knowledge within the industry. If you look around most newsrooms, people tend to be history and english graduates, rather than science and natural science graduates, and tend to have a broad knowledge base, versus deep sector-based knowledge in climate, ecology and conservation. This means that coverage can sometimes appear quite light touch. To get to a place where you can amplify the best solutions as journalists, you need to understand which those are. That is a challenge within the industry, and one we’re actively working on at Tortoise.
5. Where are you personally focusing your energy right now in the work you do, and what’s the impact you’re hoping to create?
In the space of climate, I am focused on building coalitions and sticking with the stories that matter over time. If you look at most newsrooms they’ll write about COP and write about the crisis, but they don’t stick with the story over time in the same way. We built the ‘Accelerating Net Zero’ coalition of businesses, organisations and non-profits, to make sure that the key stories and solutions are front and centre. We have a weekly newsletter, a monthly Thinkin, regular summits, and an index (The Responsibility 100 Index). The Index measures what matters, in order to hold businesses to account on what they do, versus what they say they do, which is after all what journalism does best.
6. How does nature inspire you?
It’s where I get all my energy from! I grew up in the countryside and I now live in the South Downs where my daily walk is one of my favourite times of the day. The moment that I realised that the natural world is where I get my energy from is when I was living in New York and had no connection to nature unless I looked upwards! Nature is more than an inspiration. It is life - and it gives me all of my energy.
Join Tortoise Media and Wonderoom for a live session in their Newsroom on Wednesday 15th June at 08:30-09:30 BST on “How can Nature-Based Solutions accelerate net zero and nature positive outcomes”. Sign up here with code GUESTWONDEROOM for your free ticket - in person and on zoom.
For more on Katie, you can find her on Linkedin. For more on Tortoise Media visit www.tortoisemedia.com
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