<\/p>\n
BRIAN KENNY: Welcome to Cold Call, the podcast where we dive deep into the groundbreaking case studies used in the classroom at Harvard Business School. In an era where artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how information is created, distributed and consumed, few industries feel the tension more acutely than journalism.<\/p>\n
In today\u2019s case, we explore a landmark partnership between a storied media organization and one of the world\u2019s leading AI companies. The deal promises new revenue, expanded reach, and a chance to help shape the future of AI. But it also raises difficult questions about intellectual property, newsroom independence, and the long-term value of human creativity. Inside the organization, leaders see a pragmatic response to industry-wide economic pressure. Many journalists, however, see an existential threat as AI systems trained on their work begin to compete for the same audiences.<\/p>\n
Beyond this single partnership lies a broader debate about fair use, innovation, and whether the economic foundations of the internet are being fundamentally rewritten. This is not just a story about one company. It\u2019s a window into the future of knowledge, creativity, and trust in the digital age.<\/p>\n
Today, we\u2019re joined by Professor Caroline Elkins to discuss her case, \u201cThe Atlantic and OpenAI.\u201d I\u2019m your host, Brian Kenny, and you\u2019re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network. That was a one-take right there. Carrie Elkins\u2019 research focuses on empire, violence, liberalism, and insecurity with a particular focus on Africa and various regions of the former British Empire. And you are a repeat guest on Cold Call. Welcome back, Carrie.<\/p>\n
CAROLINE ELKINS: Thanks so much for having me, Brian. What a thrill.<\/p>\n
BRIAN KENNY: It\u2019s great to have you here. Now, this case has nothing to do with any of those things that I just read.<\/p>\n
CAROLINE ELKINS: Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n
BRIAN KENNY: You\u2019ve moved into some new areas.<\/p>\n
CAROLINE ELKINS: I have. And in some ways, Brian, it was a little bit of a journey of self-understanding. In other words, I write a lot in trade presses and try to connect with audiences, and my world was changing. And this is what I call the business of ideas and was changing. And what do I mean by this business of ideas because it situates our case today? It\u2019s the business of creating ways of thinking, right? Spreading them and capturing value from them, and capturing the value and the intention and the influence from them.<\/p>\n
And so how do we start thinking about that? And once I started getting into it, I was hooked. I mean, it is a massive business. I mean, we think about the relationship between idea and meaning and scale and value. And if you think of the ideas as the raw material, right? And then the business is everything that\u2019s built around them. And the one person, as I started really getting into this, who gets it, who really gets it, is Laurene Powell Jobs, the owner of The Atlantic<\/em>.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: How did you hear about this? What made you want to write a case about it?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: I began sort of thinking about some of this about three or four years ago. And as we know, and if you wait a nanosecond, the AI field is changing. And so at that time, and certainly this has snowballed, many of the major legacy media organizations are suing AI. OpenAI, Anthropic, and the rest, and New York Times<\/em> is a famous case. The Authors Guild, John Grisham, and the rest, and they\u2019re suing them for IP violation.<\/p>\n Basically, they\u2019re saying, \u201cThis is not fair use. You need to pay us. We need to talk about some of that.\u201d But Laurene Powell Jobs says she comes at this from both somebody who has a deep appreciation for literature. She formed something called the Emerson Collective named after Ralph Waldo Emerson. And it\u2019s an LLC, it\u2019s not a nonprofit, and she\u2019s buying up various aspects, including The Atlantic<\/em>, one of the most storied magazines, literary magazines in the history of the United States. But she\u2019s also somebody who clearly embraces technology.<\/p>\n And when she buys this from Bradley, she says to him, \u201cThis is both a literary magazine, but it\u2019s going to be a technology company.\u201d And she looks at this and says, \u201cIf we think about those classics from the strategy playbook, S-curves,\u201d right? We think about things like Kodak and Blackberry and all of those who failed to get on the next S-curve. Laurene Powell Jobs looks at legacy media and says, \u201cI\u2019m going to look to the next S-curve.\u201d And that\u2019s precisely what she does with this magazine.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. So, that\u2019s the motivation, that\u2019s sort of driving her to make this decision. How should we think about the tension between the short-term revenue opportunities that come along with this and the longer term existential threats that I sort of teed up in the introduction?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: Yeah. I mean, look, short term is obviously the revenue she partners with OpenAI. It\u2019s an undisclosed deal, but she\u2019s obviously getting money, obviously funds from this, and capacity to build potentially some of their own internal language models, and then OpenAI is obviously getting the material.<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s step back for a minute in terms of the short-termism and what\u2019s in it for her. She\u2019s looking at this, and I say she and I\u2019m sort of ventriloquizing and sort of imputing some of her motivation, but she looks at this and says, \u201cLook, technology is racing ahead, and OpenAI needs me as much as I need them.\u201d And she\u2019s thinking that if you think about these large language models, there\u2019s a certain degree to which if you keep feeding it the same stuff, the model\u2019s going to collapse. They need new, really good material. And the case talks about this. Altman talks about this.<\/p>\n So, she is attracting, right? She\u2019s looking at this and she\u2019s trying to attract the top long-form journalists and paying big money. We\u2019re going to come back to that. She\u2019s paying big money for them. And in return for giving them big salaries, 200, they\u2019re way above industry standards, two to 300,000, along with all the other platforms that she\u2019s got, but she pays them this kind of money. And in return for that, she feeds the machine, right? In return, the machine is giving her all kinds of different ways behind the scenes that they might be able to use their archives and materials, that they might be able to use all of this.<\/p>\n But look, that\u2019s short-termism. Long term, what she\u2019s doing is she is looking at this, and I would tend to, and again, imputing some of this, but look, we have a creativity crisis in the United States and we know this. There\u2019s been a wonderful series of studies done by a fabulously smart professor at William & Mary, looked at 300,000 Torrance tests. Now, the Torrance test tests creativity, and we were doing well with this from the \u201950s up until the 1990s. And since the 1990s, we\u2019ve been declining.<\/p>\n Laurene Powell Jobs looks at this and says, \u201cLook, at the end of the day, the question becomes, is AI going to make us more creative? Am I going to lose out? Eventually, are my long-form journalists going to be replaced by AI?\u201d And basically you look at this and she\u2019s saying, \u201cNo.\u201d What she\u2019s looking at this and saying, and if you look at some of the literature and some of the ways in which we can analyze this and say, \u201cSure, chances are, I don\u2019t know what the percentage is, Brian, a healthy percentage of people doing short form journalism, news copy, this kind of stuff, chances are AI is going to replace that.\u201d<\/p>\n But the question becomes, is AI creative, right? Is it creative in the same way that a human is creative? Well, right now the answer to that, and we can talk about it some more, is no. And so she\u2019s looking at this and saying, \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a market for these long-form, very exceptional journalists for two reasons. One, your language machines or large language models are going to need this material to keep going, right? So, I\u2019m going to keep producing this.\u201d But two, she\u2019s also saying that if you think about sort of the world of getting back to this business of ideas, so often we think we can just take an idea, let\u2019s say you\u2019re a super smart writer, let\u2019s say you\u2019re Jill Lepore, and you have all these great ideas. Jill just won the, colleague of mine, so smart, she just won the Pulitzer Prize for her new book on the Constitution.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s imagine you take her ideas and you say, \u201cI\u2019m just going to scale them right away. I\u2019m going to throw them out. I\u2019m going to be like the Buzzfeed of Jill Lepore,\u201d and you click all over the place. Well, what we know by this is that in the short term you can have some pretty ramped up monetization of this, but at the end of the day, what happens to Buzzfeed? It fails. So, the question, you need to have something in between the idea and the scale, and that\u2019s meaning and what she is doing with The Atlantic and what all these platforms that are going to succeed and that is they are incubating meaning to this.<\/p>\n When we think about sort of the supply chain of ideas, it goes from idea to meaning to scale to value, and so you can\u2019t take out, what she\u2019s recognizing, is you can\u2019t take out that meaning stage. You can take it out of the commodified daily news, but you can\u2019t take it out of the interpretation, and that\u2019s what she\u2019s banking on. We\u2019ll see where it goes. I have no crystal ball, but it\u2019s a new disruptive model, and I think it\u2019s quite clever.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: And as you describe it, it makes a lot of sense. It sounds very logical, but then we have to throw culture into that, and we know from the case that this was not well-received within the organization. There was some cultural backlash to this, and it\u2019s understandable. People are, frankly, concerned about their livelihoods and if you\u2019re a journalist, this is what you\u2019ve staked your life on. How do you deal with something like that?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: 100%. Okay. Let me back up for a second. I have multiple lives here at Harvard University, right? I\u2019m now full time at the business school, but I also have appointments, as we like to say, on the other side of the river. And then I\u2019m on the faculty of arts and sciences and the history department in the African and African American studies department. Now, I\u2019m telling you this story for a reason, Brian.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Okay.<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: The reason I\u2019m telling this story is I\u2019m actually writing a book right now called, \u201cCrossing the River: Creativity in the Age of AI,\u201d because I literally, physically, crossed the river back and forth, and it\u2019s like I live in two universes. On the other side of the river, the faculty of arts and the departments that I sit in, I sit in on conversations about how we\u2019re going to forbid students from ever using AI. I\u2019m not kidding you.<\/p>\n And then I come to this side of the river and I hear about how AI is going to solve world peace. Now, chances aren\u2019t somewhere down there, but these are cultural issues, right? And I think one of the things where she has, I hope, the kind of gravitas given her\u2026 Look, she wrote her graduate school application for Stanford on how does one have a lasting impact or popularize literary fiction? So, this is a woman who, and she names her LLC, the Emerson Collective, so she clearly\u2026 At the same time, she understands technology.<\/p>\n And the thing is that as all of these things happen, these disruptive technologies, it\u2019s going to be somewhere down the middle. And the question becomes, I think there\u2019s a lot of anxiety and fear, right? There\u2019s a lot of anxiety and fear around creatives. Is AI going to take my job? Is it going to dumb down our readers, right? Is it going to homogenize thoughts?<\/p>\n Well, it does all of those things. So, it doesn\u2019t mean that AI is going to replace everything, right? What it\u2019s going to do is this is going to be, as we shake all this out, and this is now just me with a little crystal ball, as you shake all this out, people who are highly creative\u2026 And in her world, she\u2019s betting on this. People who are highly creative are actually going to be in higher demand.<\/p>\n And she\u2019s looking at this. And so what she says to her writers who are all concerned about this, she says, \u201cLook, used to be in the world of writing, you were to protect your IP with your life.\u201d Number one, you get an agent as a young academic, like you think you\u2019re seeing the stars and your agent takes you out to lunch and says, \u201cYou protect your IP with all costs.\u201d Now they\u2019re telling you, \u201cDon\u2019t protect your IP, take all the money up front.\u201d<\/p>\n The business model has changed, and that\u2019s also where she\u2019s incredibly clever, getting back to this cultural tension. The cultural tensions around can you connect, let\u2019s say Brian\u2019s ideas to the world that consumes them, so they don\u2019t think it\u2019s just some AI model that shot it out? And she\u2019s protecting that with The Atlantic.<\/p>\n And at the same time, how do you as the producer, the creative, how do you make money? Well, it used to be we made a lot of money on the back end off of our IP. You always got your royalty checks, et cetera. Now you\u2019re getting upfront. You want to have the biggest possible advance, or if you\u2019re writing for The Atlantic, you want her to put a zero at the end of your salary. And so that\u2019s how she\u2019s thinking about sort of readjusting the business model.<\/p>\n But we\u2019re in this odd stage of transition, and I think that, look, for many, many, many people out there, we\u2019re still not entirely sure what AI can do and what it\u2019s not going to do and what it\u2019s going to\u2026 But some of the initial studies are telling us that, \u201cLook, AI homogenizes. AI can take somebody who has a lower degree of creativity, let\u2019s be clear about that, a lower degree of creativity, and elevate them, right?\u201d There\u2019s all kinds of\u2026 MIT has done a bunch, and there are other ones.<\/p>\n But what we don\u2019t know and what Laurene Powell Jobs is banking on right now is what we know very little about is what does AI do for highly creative people? Right now, the highly creative people beat the machine, pretty consistently. And look, she knows a heck of a lot more than I do on some of this stuff. It seems to me that she\u2019s not planning on folding The Atlantic in the next six to 12 months.<\/p>\n But what she is doing is she\u2019s weeding folks out, right? She\u2019s looking at this and she\u2019s taking the best of the best writers, and she\u2019s bringing them in-house, and she\u2019s paying them a lot of money. She\u2019s feeding the machine. She\u2019s changing the business model. But at the same time, she\u2019s got a whole new S-curve going. It\u2019s why The Atlantic is\u2026 And so I always say to my students, \u201cDo you partner with OpenAI or do you sue them? Which one is it?\u201d<\/p>\n And by the way, I\u2019ve got a lot of students who will tell me, both my MBAs and exec, \u201cI would sue them to protect my IP.\u201d And we can talk about why that is, but there are different schools of thought.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. I mean, what you\u2019re describing has huge ramifications across the whole creative industries, right? And we\u2019re seeing this play out in Hollywood. We\u2019re seeing it play out in the creation of video, using characters images without actually using the actual actors. So, I think it is just beginning to shake out. And the case talks a lot about the concept of fair use, which is one of the central themes of the case. I\u2019m wondering, how should leaders be thinking about fair use, just beyond the sort of legal defamation piece of it?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: Yeah. Fair use, of course, just so we\u2019re clear with our listeners, fair use is the idea that you or I can create something, and that we don\u2019t own the copyright or somebody else can use it without licensing it from us, right? And there are generally sort of in a legal universe four points or litmus tests around that. But I\u2019ll give you an example. The last book that I wrote, this was a big book on colonial violence. I used a lot of George Orwell. I love Orwell. He\u2019s great.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: I do too, yeah.<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: He has smart things to say. His foundation protects IP with their life. So, if you even think about George Orwell on your way to work, you\u2019ve got a phone call from his lawyers in the morning, right? So, they\u2019re vigilant about that. And if I quote anything from it, you just know you\u2019re going to go, you\u2019re going to pay for the licensing fee, and off you go. And so typically what will happen with IP for all writers, and that is, as I said before, that\u2019s your bread and butter, that\u2019s what you own, that\u2019s what you\u2026 And the AI machines, for lack of better terms, are saying, \u201cActually, all of this is fair use, everything.\u201d Right? And I was telling a group of\u2026 I was teaching a group of execs, real estate execs the other day. I said to them, \u201cOkay, how many of you own property?\u201d Duh, right? The entire place raised their hand. And then I said to them, \u201cOkay, so would you be okay if the government came in and took all your property, didn\u2019t pay you for it, and said you got to move out? How would you do it?\u201d And so they\u2019re a little bit of this.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah, of course.<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: Now with this IP stuff, it\u2019s a little bit\u2026 This is a sticky wicket here because on the one hand, AI can get your ideas out, if I\u2019m a creative person, but I want\u2026 There\u2019s two things that creative people tend to want. They want to pay the rent. We don\u2019t take the vow of poverty like we all\u2026 I like nice stuff. And you want attribution. Now, she has solved the first one, right? We haven\u2019t gotten to the people who get left out, but the attribution part becomes a bit of an issue right now, right? Because right now we know even if they give the link, first of all, the link\u2019s wrong 50% of the time and nobody clicks on it, and obviously some of that will get fixed in the future iterations, but it gets back to what she\u2019s also betting on, which is this: that people who really want to understand meaning, interpretation, and that\u2019s what people crave the most. We are swimming, I call it sort of collective exhaust, from the business of ideas world. There\u2019s so much coming at you that you\u2019re actually willing to be paying to somebody who is this intermediary like The Atlantic, who\u2019s really good at producing stuff that produces deep, insightful meaning.<\/p>\n But what it does mean, Brian, is that the world, despite what we think, this democratization of getting ideas, anybody can have one of these microphones and send stuff out into the podcast universe or somebody can write a Substack, but the fact of the matters, as I pointed out before, they try to move from idea to scale, and they don\u2019t have the meaning, right? And that\u2019s also what she\u2019s banking on here.<\/p>\n So, if we get back to the question about fair use, right? She\u2019s looking at this and saying, on the fair use model, even if some of these AI folks pick this up, at the end of the day, people are still going to pay money for that full article. They\u2019re still going to pay money for that book. And by the way, sales figures are showing that people will pay for this stuff. So, it\u2019s interesting. It\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n But look, it\u2019s a cultural shift insofar as, imagine you spend 10 years, right? You spend 10 years writing a book, and maybe you\u2019re not Jill Lepore or you\u2019re not Anne Applebaum or fill in the blank, Ezra Klein, and you spend these 10 years and your mom buys a copy, and the libraries buys some copy. Anyway, you haven\u2019t made a lot of money off of this. And then AI scoops it up. I could submit my money to you on the Anthropic lawsuit, right? There\u2019s been a settlement, and you can get a whole $3,000, Brian, from Anthropic that you have to share with your publisher if they took your book.<\/p>\n And so the question we have to ask ourselves, getting back to this dearth of creativity, what\u2019s to prevent people from putting their tools down to say, \u201cI\u2019m not going to do this\u201d? So, as we think about this and we spin this out, we need more Laurene Powell Jobs, more Atlantics of the world, more serious publishers, more podcasts like this, where we\u2019re sitting and talking to each other, not for five hours, but 30 minutes of insightful, incisive commentary on a particular theme. And I think as we see right now, we\u2019re sort of dealing with a whole lot of exhaust, and we\u2019re going to come out the other end of this.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: I want to go back to creativity for a minute because you talked about the importance of deep creative thinking and how that\u2019s different than somebody who\u2019s just writing copy or somebody who\u2019s doing maybe a less strategic form of writing. Do you think that we\u2019re sort of entering an age of meritocracy in the creative industries where the people who are truly creative are going to be able to continue to maintain what they\u2019re doing, but a whole bunch of other people are going to fall by the wayside?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: Yeah. I mean, that\u2019s a great question, Brian. Look, I like to imagine, to a certain degree, it was a meritocratic world. Let\u2019s sort of take aside biases, but that really good ideas and work rose to the top. And I think that one of the things that\u2019s different about the world that we\u2019re in now is that we have ideas out of the raw material, but the business is everything else that\u2019s around it, all these complimentary assets.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll take myself as an example just because I know this example, which is okay. So, if you write a big book about British colonial violence, it was true back in the day, when I first published back in the early 2000s that the New York Times would cover you as a book review and then other people would pick you up and you might be on morning edition, and it all took off. Not even close to enough anymore.<\/p>\n Now you need your own, you need to be on podcasts, you might need your own LinkedIn course that you do. You have all these different sort of systems around you, right? And so that\u2019s different. Now, I want to be very clear, some people today confuse the systems for a great idea. They go, \u201cBam.\u201d Right up to scale, and this stuff is junk, and it burns out, it flames out.<\/p>\n So, getting back to meritocracy, it\u2019s going to become harder and harder, I think, to break in, right? But if you have a really good idea within all of this, that the essence of sort of creativity, the reward for people who have sort of pathbreaking or thought-changing ideas, I actually think it\u2019s more valuable than ever, and that\u2019s what Laurene Powell Jobs is telling us. She\u2019s telling us in this world of all this noise, right, \u201cI\u2019m going to find the people who are really forcing us to think differently, to interpret differently.\u201d But so therefore what ends up happening is gatekeepers like Laurene Powell Jobs begin to have even more power than they ever had before. And by the way, it\u2019s not just her. She\u2019s got a whole panel. She\u2019s a firewall between herself, Nick Thompson and the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, and you have all this going on. But that funnel is getting, in some ways the top of the funnel, is getting more and more narrow.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Right, right. And would you say that these partnerships are going to be essential to the scale part of the equation? Are these partnerships with the AI engines going to be essential to success going forward? Or is there another path that you can choose?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: I think they are. Look, I\u2019m somewhere in between. When I say crossing the river, I\u2019m like, \u201cAm I going to raft somewhere in the middle of the Charles River, right?\u201d But I think that if we eschew the idea that AI is the bane of all evil, which is what some writers or folks come out and the case talks about this, it\u2019s problematic. We should be leaning to any new technology. I\u2019m a firm believer in that with my own work.<\/p>\n At the same time, I think that if you embrace this technology without a hint of criticism around it, and also you need to understand what precisely it\u2019s doing in the world of ideas and creativity. It is not unto itself creative. It\u2019s pattern recognition. And so when you think about this and you think about the fact that if we even step back a little bit, and we think about sort of the\u2026 I tend to think about the new era that we\u2019re moving into, I hope, is the age of creativity, and we\u2019re coming out of and it\u2019s overlapping with an age that\u2019s called the age of efficiency. It\u2019s all Taylor, right? Taylorisms, principles of scientific management.<\/p>\n You and I have a job because HBS was the first business school in the world built on the principles of Taylorism, scientific management efficiency. And if you think about this long march of efficiency, all the way through the 20th century, that in some ways AI is the last logical chapter in this march of efficiency. How do we make humans more and more efficient? Well, ultimately, you just get rid of them and replace them with a machine, right?<\/p>\n Now, if we think about that and we think about the idea that we\u2019re becoming more and more efficiency and AI is about efficiency, well, there was a study by Microsoft about, I don\u2019t know, two years or so ago, 30,000 companies, and they asked these top CEOs, super smart guys and gals, \u201cWhat\u2019s your biggest worry?\u201d<\/p>\n Number one, more than two thirds of them, where the next big idea is going to come from. Second question, \u201cWhat are you going to do with all of your efficiency gains from AI?\u201d Hire KPIs. They\u2019re going to plow the efficiency gains back in. Now, the reason I raise this, Brian, their connection with creativity is this, we know from our fabulous colleague, Teresa Amabile, who\u2019s done lots of work on creativity, that the kryptonite to creativity is time pressure, efficiency.<\/p>\n So, you have two things in tension with one another. The question becomes whether it\u2019s Laurene Powell Jobs and long form journalists. So, she\u2019s patient capital, she\u2019s patient, she\u2019s letting these writers write. Time for insight. But for businesses, it\u2019s the same thing, right? Are you going to take AI and plow all those things back in and create your little cushy ballrooms and think you\u2019re going to come up with the next big idea? Not going to happen, right?<\/p>\n Time is a beautiful thing and it can\u2019t be compressed. Now, in some ways, you can get divergent ideas that spit out of AI and the rest of it, but I would love to imagine that if we\u2019re moving through this era of the age of efficiency, that the next big era is the age of creativity. And in the age of creativity, it\u2019s going to reward highly creative people, and AI actually will take over in my view, a huge amount of stuff, including short form journalism and news copy and this kind of stuff. And we\u2019ll get all the fact-checking figured out.<\/p>\n Anyway, in the big picture, I think we have to think about something like The Atlantic and OpenAI. I know we\u2019re in big picture right now, but if you take it from the weeds and into the bigger picture of things, what this suggests to us is somebody like Laurene Powell Jobs, and she\u2019s not the only one, she\u2019s the protagonist of this case, they\u2019re thinking really deeply and hard about the relationship between these things and how, in this instance, she can distill it down to a business plan and a strategy and a new S-curve in the context of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: So, do you think that something like this can completely redefine partnerships the way that the media industry works?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: 100%.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah.<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: 100%. And I think, look, the challenge too is we\u2019re in a very anxiety-provoking time, right? We\u2019re also in a time we just have to go to the supermarket and load up your grocery bag to know that it\u2019s 2x of whatever it is of what you paid for. We have this moment going on where we have higher inflation and cost of goods and the rest of it, while we\u2019re also telling people that, \u201cAI might take your job.\u201d<\/p>\n And so I think there\u2019s a huge tension, not just in terms of business models, but just from a human standpoint, right? And how do we begin thinking about that? And I do think though that the notion that all of this is going to be replaced by AI and we\u2019re going to, I don\u2019t know, what some of these guys tell us when we have a two-day work week and blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n Look, this is another podcast for us to be on, Brian, but the long history of technology tells us that\u2019s not what happens. There\u2019s all kinds of unforeseen contingencies that happen around this. But what we\u2019re trying to do in this case is say, \u201cWell, what can we say about creativity and efficiency? And how this plays out in a business model, in this case, from legacy journalism?\u201d Which by the way, has been, I mean, it started with new media. I mean, it\u2019s just got hammered, the whole advertisement business model, just not going to work.<\/p>\n And so she has really figured that one out. And I think right now we all sit and wait and watch to see what happens with the New York Times. And let\u2019s be very careful. Folks will say, in this case, Marc Andreessen comes in, it\u2019ll be the end of the universe if we have to pay for fair use, blah, blah, blah, or they enforce fair use. They said that about standard oil, and the world kept spinning on its access.<\/p>\n My guess is that we\u2019re going to see also different ways in which we\u2019re going to have different kinds of IP issues coming into this, how do you think about IP going forward. If I were to advise any young person like, \u201cGet a law degree in technology and IP today because it\u2019s going to be a big one.\u201d Anyway, so these are some of the things, but I think legacy media, I think she has shown the world and legacy media that there is a very different model to this, and a model that can withstand the anxiety of the writers, while also demonstrating to them that the universe isn\u2019t over.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: It also, it makes me wonder about the motivation. She has great motivation. We know that she appreciates the creative endeavor and she\u2019s doing things to protect that and to sustain it, but there are other people who have bought large media organizations in the recent past who don\u2019t seem to necessarily have that same bent. And I\u2019m wondering your thoughts about how they might come at this model. I mean, would they take a different approach? Would they really try to rely on the AI for the creative endeavors and use that as an opportunity to downsize?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: Yeah. Look, I think, Brian, in those cases, we\u2019ve got obviously the famous case of Bezos buying the Washington Post and threats right now potentially he and his new wife buying Cond\u00e9 Nast, and we have these sorts of things out there. And look, we have two separate but related things intersecting, right?<\/p>\n So, if we look at the case of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs is reasonably known as being an owner who is not terribly interventionist. She\u2019s not very present. She\u2019s not on red carpet, she\u2019s not on\u2026 She\u2019s doing her thing behind the scene. And if you watch, it\u2019s a very interesting interview with her with Kara Swisher and actually Kamala Harris a few years ago, and Laurene Powell Jobs was talking about what her interest was, and this is pre-buying The Atlantic and she\u2019s very interested in sort of the, one, high quality journalism, and two, making them a business concern, but three, that you have to have all signs being able to write for these things that it\u2019s a democratic process or a project.<\/p>\n I think Bezos and some of these other folks are up to something else, right? When we see things like, and I don\u2019t care where you stand on the political spectrum, but he\u2019s been pretty interventionist from Bezos one to\u2026 Basically Trump administration one to Trump administration two. Trump administration one, he was doing some really interesting things there in terms of bringing in some of his creativity around technology and bringing it\u2026 In Trump administration two, that\u2019s changed.<\/p>\n Where I\u2019m taking us is it\u2019s not just the technology, but when you have people in the billionaire class coming in and buying these, the question becomes, \u201cWhy are they doing it?\u201d In her case, it\u2019s that she wants to facilitate augment the creative process and also the democratic, and what she sees as sort of the democratic process of free ideas.<\/p>\n Some might say something\u2019s going on that\u2019s different right now with the Washington Post, and there are a lot of folks who are feeling pretty negative about the fact that this storied newspaper has gone in a different direction, but that\u2019s not to say it will always be that way. And there\u2019s lots of potential there. There\u2019s a massive brand. And then of course we have the New York Times, which is a very different kind of business model, and they\u2019ve been very clever too in sort of thinking about their complimentary assets around\u2026 So, they certainly have, I have a separate, we can do a whole nother Cold Call of a case on the New York Times opinion and Paul Krugman. And Krugman ultimately decides to leave, and Katie Kingsbury needs to decide what to do about does she try to get him to stay or go or whatever the case may be.<\/p>\n But the New York Times is another model where it\u2019s a little bit like Laurene Powell Jobs. They\u2019re paying for some high profile people and the opinion and the rest of it. But they also have a series of complimentary assets around it. Wordle and cooking and all this kind of stuff. And also still, some long form journalism. And that\u2019s different than your everyday news.<\/p>\n Anyway, it\u2019s a very interesting time, but I think folks have a lot to learn from The Atlantic. And certainly our student, believe me, this case has great debate in terms of students on the side and participants on the side of partner or not partner with OpenAI. You just ask that one question, and it\u2019s an hour and 20 minutes later. I\u2019m done.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Well, this has been great, Carrie. I have just one last question for you. I always like to know if there\u2019s one thing you want people to remember about this case, what would it be?<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: It\u2019s how visionary Laurene Powell Jobs is, that she has really come in and looked at this with an equal love and embrace and clear eyedness around creativity in the literary form and technology. And she\u2019s brought both of this together, and I think there\u2019s a huge amount we can learn, not just from legacy media, but more broadly as we think about the impact, as I said, of the 21st century, as I see it as the age of creativity.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Carrie, thank you for joining me.<\/p>\n CAROLINE ELKINS: Thanks so much.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like our other podcasts: Climate Rising<\/a>, Coaching Real Leaders<\/a>, IdeaCast<\/a>, Managing the Future of Work<\/a>, Skydeck<\/a>, and Think Big, Buy Small.<\/a> Find them wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n