Navigating the narrative

About the problems media can help solve, as I exit from DigFin, the fintech media business I launched in 2017.

Although I might insert a view or an opinion into stories I wrote at DigFin, I mostly kept my stories focused on explanation.

My job has been to digest the opinions of others and put them in context, not to override them. While DigFin may have a spin, its mission is to provide independent coverage of the founders, executives, and service providers driving fintech in Asia.

DigFin continues under its owner, AMTD Digital, but my relationship ended last week amid the gathering winds and rain of what would be a T-10 typhoon hitting Hong Kong. I always did love a bit of drama.

I thought about writing a ‘so what does it all mean’ sort of thing about the trends in digital finance over the past eight years. But my style of writing at DigFin was to report on business models and try to explain them. What AI or a stablecoin means to one person doesn’t hold for someone else. These technologies lead to some good outcomes and some bad. When it’s hard to make a definitive statement, then it’s better to keep your own council.

Instead I’d like to take a moment to talk about media and covering these topics. When I founded DigFin, launching the site in March, 2017, the media was already a shrinking industry. I came from the B2B world (DigFin is my second creation) and while I was ready to be an editor, I wasn’t sure what being an entrepreneur meant.

I made plenty of rookie errors. In retrospect I should have not hired anyone until I had built an audience and the brand, but I was still in a traditional publishing mindset. I got lucky with several of my hires, who were a pleasure to work with, but the business wasn’t ready for them. Being an entrepreneur means ditching the forms of the industry you grew up in, of being ready to completely rethink how you are delivering a good that solves a problem. I only began to figure these things out midway through.

What problems can media solve today?

Businesspeople are awash with content and information. A lot of media consumption is produced by companies directly (and now, by bots!). A reliable voice can help executives navigate the narratives. And media can solve the problem of how marketing and PR teams get their message out there, if that media is trusted.

The most sustainable way is to produce great content that people will pay for. For B2B media, being expert and niche has been the only answer.

But even there, it’s hard. The internet, Google, and now LLMs have completely disrupted the traditional publishing model, while making it easier for other companies to serve valuable content.

In the fintech world, for example, many startups provide data or content that is very relevant to their core buyers, including media stories (for sentiment analysis, for example). This is the kind of thing that a journal can’t reproduce except Bloomberg. In the end, the brand becomes harder to uphold, and trust flows to people, away from the media company. The advent of ChatGPT means even voices can be disintermediated.

While top-heavy media companies may struggle, there are new ways for writers to make themselves heard, and get paid too.

I look to the advent of newsletter platforms to confirm that there is a huge demand for expert voices. Substack also launched in 2017, and I regret not knowing about it till much later. Many writers have decamped there from the biggest names in publishing, offering their original, quality reporting and insight to their readers directly.

This is not a great substitute for all traditional media, but it may be the best we’ve got. LLMs will force anyone with a website to rethink how they write and position content, because now the name of the game is to convince ChatGPT and Perplexity of your relevance and authority. The headwinds for media companies are only blowing stronger.

And, yes, books play a role too, even today. The journalists I most admire are those who have published books exploring facets of their reporting work: I’m thinking of Lulu Chen’s book on Tencent, or Zeke Faux’s takedown of the crypto industry (or my history of money, COWRIES TO CRYPTO). I also do projects with writing partners (PLANET VC, BLOCK KONG). Writing a book is a great way to earn the stamp of authority, and they are prized if you target your audience properly.

Therefore, despite the implosion of one media company after another, I believe starting a career in journalism still has its worth. It offers someone with curiosity and critical-thinking skills entrée to new industries and the chance to ask experienced executives anything you want. I was always amazed by people in the industry who wouldn’t dare pose a critical question, or even just a routine query, to a CEO or to a client. People like me had more access than sometimes we realized.

So I do encourage young people to try out journalism. What you will inevitably lack in detailed knowledge you can make up for through wider context. Build a reputation for domain knowledge and integrity. But if you pick up the pen, know when to put it down. The most essential trait for a journalist is entrepreneurialism.

I learned this more from covering fintech than from my own stab at being a founder. Covering startups means jumping into the cauldron of boiling change. Although I often disparage the excesses of Silicon Valley bro-culture, the facts are that innovation is essential, there is a mindset that makes it possible, and this attitude can be learned.

It is, ultimately, about optimism, not something I normally associate with reporters. But amid the forces that are destroying the media businesses I grew up with, I remain optimistic that people and businesses will continue to meet the problems of navigating the narrative.

My time at DigFin is up, but I will continue to find my own ways of addressing these problems. Thanks for reading this far. I’m celebrating my DigFin years this Thursday at The Globe gastropub in Central, Hong Kong, from 6pm. If you can make it, please stop by.