Carl Javier of PumaPodcast, Philippines: How to survive and thrive as a journalistic podcast project | The Media Viability Podcast S02E06 transcript

Welcome to "Survive and Thrive," DW Akademie's dialogue with media managers on innovative and sustainable business models in a challenging global media landscape. We'll talk motivation, lessons learned, funding models, best practices, recipes for success and decisions – both good and bad. 

Watch here, or read the complete transcript below.

Janelle Dumalaon: Hello again, and welcome to Survive and Thrive, your media viability podcast. Once again, we're talking about what it takes to maintain and sustain a media outlet not to hopefully survive, but to thrive. 

As we all know, that's all easier said than done. Every media outlet is different, but many media managers out there understand the challenge of having to grow to stay alive in an ecosystem riven with financing, production and audience development issues. 

Our next guest knows what it means to have something to say, and the effort involved in building a world that listens. Carl Javier is the CEO of PumaPodcast, a podcast production company in the Philippines. Welcome, Carl. 

Carl Javier: Hello, thanks for having me. 

 

Dumalaon: In a moment, we'll be doing a deep dive into PumaPodcast's journey. But first, we have a short round of introductory questions for you. Let's get it going. Your business model in a catch phrase. 

Javier: Sell anything that we can. 

  

Did you ever manage a moment when everything seemed lost? 

Every day! Every day there is a moment when there is a challenge, and things don't look like they're going great and then we come through. 

  

What would you need to thrive in the future? 

I think beyond the organization, thriving means that we get the ecosystems right. Ecosystems of support: we need to get the right kinds of advertisers, the right kind of funders in place. And also, just coming to a proper relationship with all the platforms and AI and everything else. The ecosystem needs to work for everyone to thrive. 

All right, let's start with the name PumaPodcast. Basically, it's just taking the word podcast and turning it into a verb. (In Tagalog, editor's note) It just means something like podcasting. How'd you come up with it? 

It wasn't me. I am employee number one; I joined the team after they'd launched. But the idea was for it to function like a verb that you can add on to "podcast", meaning "I am podcasting." It's been a challenge sometimes because people think that we are connected to a shoe brand, but it is a verb conjugation. If you know Tagalog and I, I think you're a Tagalog speaker, you understand, but for the rest of the world: it's a verb conjugation. We can take a noun, and we can add this conjugation onto it and it becomes a verb. That's how that's how words can be used in Filipino. And so, PumaPodcast just means "I am podcast." 

 

Tell us a little bit more, how did you come into existence? 

Right. One of our lead founders, Roby, he put it up with some people that he had worked with in Bloomberg and in "Interaction", an online news site. He was looking for his next thing and really inspired by audio and podcasting. They put it up and then I kind of just fell into it. 

  

And how did you develop into the organization that you are now starting from that little bit of history that you gave us? 

When PumaPodcast launched, they did like one feature, like one story on a Filipino brand. They did that one story. And when I joined the team, they had been publishing the news for one week. They were doing like 3 to 5 News stories a day, daily news. 

And I came in and at first, I was supposed to just be a business guy, like try to find ways to sell stuff. I don't think they were aware that I have a strong content background. I have a background in creative writing, I've published fiction and non-fiction; I used to run a comic book line, and I used to work in publishing. So, I had sort of a sense of what kind of products would be appealing to people. 

And so, moving from one daily news podcast executed in a very newsy way I started to introduce new news and other programming, more in the direction of lifestyle, sports and history. These are interesting content spaces that we began to explore. 

So, since we started operations in January of 2019, we've launched something like 50 shows. We've cancelled most of them, some of them were limited series. 

We've worked with a lot of clients, but started with what the team knows, which was journalism, and then expanding those journalistic values into a lot of other content areas. 

  

Let me pick up on that: You said that you had over 50 shows. In fact, I was listening to a few. I found the ones on social awkwardness and introversion especially helpful for reasons I shall not get into. But why did you have so many? Doesn't that get in the way of perhaps having a more focused editorial approach or topic space? 

I mean, 50 accrues over almost five years. But for me, there was an awareness that we need to occupy more spaces that were monetizable. Sports was a really monetizable space. I'm sure you're familiar: In the Philippines, news is a really hard sell unless you have tremendous numbers. 

But as part of the business model, when I say, 'sell everything that we can', it's not in the sese of selling things in a way that compromises our values. But part of our strategy was to create products that audiences would attach themselves to that they could care about. 

We care about our audiences. We can make things that advance audience communities and things that they care about. And through building good, good content with our audiences, we then have something that we can bring to a sponsor and say we are engaged with this audience. We're in this content space. We think that you should partner with us because our brand values are aligned.   

That's one reason why there were a lot of shows. And really if you've been around in podcasting long enough, you will try a bunch of different things and then some of them will work and some of them won't, and some of them will run their course. 

We were around in a time when miniseries were still a thing. We were still trying to make the next serial and all that stuff. And those things really end. You end and then you move on to the next thing. 

So that's why there's like a lot of stuff going on, but right now we're much more focused on fewer podcasts, more regular output and more sustainable approaches. 

  

You mentioned your business model that is to sell everything you can. You talked about perhaps, if I understand correctly, bringing a story that's doing numbers to a brand that may be aligned with the story that you're trying to tell. Maybe you can give us an example of something that's worked well. 

Sure. I think one of the most appealing shows that we have for brands is called Go Hard Girls. It's been nominated and won awards, and very recently it was nominated again for the International Women's Award for its reporting. 

The key thing about Go Hard Girls is it's the only program in the Philippines, the only sports program in the Philippines focused on women. And it's crazy that I'm saying that in 2024 when Filipina athletes have done so amazingly in the Olympics and on the world stage. But ours is the only show that's still 100% focused on women. 

And we believe in women's stories. We, this is one of the first things that we launched with my head of business development, Ceej Tantengco-Malolos. She used to be a courtside sports reporter and now she is at the spearhead of a lot of our projects. This is one of her advocacies and we believed so much in this advocacy that we spent years building this community. 

So now Go Hard Girls has been funded by several organizations, among them Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, Hershey's and then right now we're it's expanded to be a platform for other journalists. We're working with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and we have a Go Hard Girls grants program. 

It's not just telling women's sports stories. It is us training aspiring young women journalists and male journalists who want to tell women's stories and we're training them and we're putting out Go Hard Girls episodes with them as the guest hosts. 

This is very value-driven, it's advocacy, but it also makes sense for brands to align with. 

  

You have these synergies in terms of focus, in terms of the audience that might be interested, the consumer that might be interested – but you are founded on journalistic value. How do you maintain editorial independence from the brands that you work with? 

Well, this is a constant push and pull. It's important that brands don't just buy their space onto our news. We've been outright offered like "hey, we're trying to promote this person, and we'll pay you if you make them a specialist on your news show." 

But we run the newsroom with integrity. And then we do have other product lines. So, in that case, we knew the news was not the space. The news gives us credibility. The news allows us to work with grants. The news gives us opportunities to take in story grants and pursue things independently. Our news and journalistic work have to be fiercely independent.  

That is a struggle, it's a push and pull. I'm not going to lie. Surviving and thriving is a challenge and there are opportunities to get cash. But we have been very good about turning down money when it doesn't properly align with the mission. 

So that's usually what it boils down to: If someone comes to us and says we want this kind of story, we will divert it to one of our other podcasts where it makes sense. 

 

I don't know if you can say, but what kind of money have you had to turn down? 

Oh yeah, no. Let's say I'm a PR agency and I have a client, and they want to be seen as a specialist in a certain sector. They want to pay their way into a news program. We'd turn that down. And then the other might be like, you know, influencers who want to advance a, a, a political message that does not align with our advocacy or values. 

 

Earlier during the lightning round, when I asked you if you had ever managed a moment when everything seemed lost, alarmingly but also admirably, you said every day. 

Tell us about the current challenges to the viability of your organization and how you're facing them. 

Yeah. It's been a hard year for podcasting. I think globally, this is a trend. I think everybody felt a dip in numbers this year – and that is, of course, accompanied by a dip in advertising money. 

It comes in waves. If you asked us two years ago, we were all riding high. There were so many people listening to podcasts, everything was on its way up. 

But now, there is this very clear sense that the market is trying to figure itself out. There's a market correction that's happening right now in terms of how much are podcasts actually worth? How much should we be charging for them? What is their actual value?  

And so that is a real challenge that we're confronting because that just means like a challenge in revenue. 

Add on top of that, we receive a significant amount of grant support. But in the last couple of years because of geopolitical situations that grant money has been diverted – and deservedly so – to really important issues like the war on Ukraine, or Gaza. These are important issues. But at the same time, that's money that we had been expecting or that we had thought would be coming for our pro-democracy efforts and it's going elsewhere. 

I don't know if it makes sense, but like, because of the political situation in the Philippines, things look fine. It seems like there doesn't have to be that much support when in fact, you know, the drug killings continue. All these things that still need to be reported upon are happening, but that funding is no longer here. 

  

You just outlined all these challenges, and they do seem quite existential: a market correction, perhaps a certain drying up of grant money and this perception that everything is fine in the Philippines when it's not for reasons we'll get into later.  

Where do you see your organization going? What is your vision for the future in light of these many challenges? 

I'm happy to be a guest here, but I was reluctant because I wasn't sure if I would be a relevant speaker on the idea of surviving and thriving. I feel like my only credibility is because I have survived for five years. I have been a part of our survival for five years. 

Honestly, given how challenging the situation is, my only vision is to get through another year and then to get to January and then to keep going. That's obviously not a great business strategy, but given where things are, it's hard to plan out given all of the like shifting sands. 

Podcasts are big, but they're not. There's investment money, but there's no grant money. But you know, so if I step back, in five years, this is this has hit the flywheel. 

Basically, we have hit our stride in terms of original content that we get sponsorships for, and we have the clients that we need who understand podcasting and they are also supporting our work. But that's where we wanted to be two to three years ago, and we would get close and then there would be a cooling of the market. 

So, there's been a lot of experimental budgets, a lot of companies testing out whether podcasting is for them. And on the one hand, it's great that they did it because we were able to work with them. On the other hand, for some of them it's early. The investments weren't there yet. 

The reason why I talked about ecosystem is these companies that want to be in podcasting are still figuring out what the engagements are and what the opportunities are. And we're such a weird company in the context of everything because a lot of our, I don't want to call them competition because the pie is so small and there's so few players that we are all friends. 

But the other podcast groups and the other individuals are drawing on more popular things. And we're really leaned into this all-journalism, advocacy, mission driven, which is a challenge for certain advertisers to get into. 

  

I don't want to let your comment about not being appropriate for the show pass without my own comment: Of course I'm very glad you're here. Thank you for talking to us about your journey. 

You've talked about all these challenges, and you talked about how first you came from the content side.  Now you are a manager. You're responsible for this organization that has put out close to 50 podcasts.  Some have come and gone, but still, it's a lot of podcasts, a lot of projects, a lot of people. 

How did you experience that shift from journalist to manager and how's it going? 

That's a hard question to answer because it's like, it's OK. I think I'm OK. (laughs) 

I think I was ready to start doing something on a managerial level when I came in. I do come from the content and creative side. So, if I'm to be honest, I do miss it. I miss sitting down and having ideas, coming up with things and just writing. I'm a writer by training, so I miss that. I don't have any bandwidth to do any writing.  

But I've actually taken to being a manager quite well. Chasing money has been a real challenge, but that's a challenge for everyone. I think one of the strengths that I do have is that I am able to cultivate a strong team. That's really what I've been able to do. I've hired good managers, I've hired good people. 

When you ask: 'How do you survive?' Unfortunately, one of our solutions to surviving has been to cut staff at certain points when it doesn't make sense. Also, AI really helps. I know people don't really want to hear that, but AI helps you keep going as you cut staff, and you figure out what the best thing is.  

So, thriving and being a good manager, they're both about figuring out what works and then surrounding yourself with the team that will help you do what works. 

  

You were also talking about where you wanted to be a few years ago, the goals that you had, organic content that you have, the clients that you need. You say that you've been surviving. How will you know when you are thriving? 

To me, thriving is when I can give everybody a raise. When I am not worried whether we're going to make it to the end of the year. I know that those are low ambitions: having a sense of sustainability and knowing that I can pass this on. I've talked about this before, I don't imagine myself to be the person who leads this company 5 or 10 years into the future. My aspiration is that when I let this company go, it is going to be taken over by someone diverse, ideally a woman or LGBTQIA or someone not a dude because there's too many dudes running things. I want someone who is not, you know, a middle-aged straight guy to run this company. 

That would be a success. If I can put the company in a position where when I hand it off, that person can pursue a new vision because I'm not the person with that vision. Honestly, straight dudes have had too much control of vision for too long. 

  

I don't know so much that those are low ambitions. But I think the fact that you feel you have to keep your goals realistic must have something to do with just how difficult things are within this media ecosystem that you described. 

Could you tell us a little bit more about Puma Podcast and its position within that media ecosystem? You've already pointed out that you're sort of unique as a content provider compared to other podcast companies. 

How would you describe the landscape that you find yourself in? 

The Philippine landscape is very interesting in terms of there being a significant audience. This is just me quoting some study that I can't give you the link to right now, but there's some projections that up to 30 million Filipinos have access to podcasts out of like 130 million population. That's not huge, but a big number.  

And within that listenership, one of the things that we found when we participated in a study among podcast listeners int he Philippines, is they listen to podcasts for almost two and a half hours a day. If you're a podcast listener in the Philippines, you're listening for almost two and a half hours every single day. That's a tremendous number, right? 

And, and it speaks to how interesting this local market is, particularly because it is spread out. But when you think about the Filipino population, the educational systems here and access to the Internet – the decision to listen to a podcast is like a next step up. 

In terms of genres, the most popular in the Philippines mirrors other places: It's comedy and horror. That's very Southeast Asia: comedy and horror. 

But even if those are the top, we can produce content that draws viewers, whether it's about history, economics, the news or our approach to entrepreneurship. We're able to draw people in because the audience, the potential audience is so diverse and specific. 

The Filipino audience is so huge and there's such a high poverty line and so many people are not doing well in this country. But our listeners are affluent, middle to upper middle class, they're well educated, having a college degree or above. They are invested in making the world better. That is a really unique niche for us within this larger ecosystem of media where the biggest podcasts are still comedy podcasts or people who are chatting like it's good old morning radio. 

And then beyond that, it's everybody who's just hooked to TikTok or Reels, or whatever. I don't know if I was able to draw that out, but that's our unique market position: Our audience says we are a smart friend that helps them to feel smart about the world.   

 

We all need friends like that. I just wanted to say two and a half hours, that is quite a chunk of time. Does it have something to do with sitting in traffic?   

Yes, it's the Filipino traffic and it is what we've started to call habit stacking. Basically, when people are doing their laundry, washing the dishes, doing other stuff, that is when they listen to our podcasts. We observe that our listeners are on the go, they're on the make, they're doing stuff. And they listen to podcasts because they want to enrich themselves and improve themselves in some way. 

And if you're like a crazy person like me – I listen to podcasts at twice the speed. So, I'm getting 4 hours of content. 

  

Wow, I mean, I could try to talk in 2x, but I think I might need some practice before I attempt that. So apart from apart from the content you produce, what can you tell us about how a podcast engages with listeners? How do you build community engagement around your shows?  

I was talking earlier about Go Hard Girls and how significant that show has been for us.  We've built a super high-powered audience for that: They do a thing called the Badass Brunch where they get their community together and the people who show up are like national athletes, people who are in sports in other countries, members of sports commissions, journalists, sports lawyers. It's not just like a bunch of people hanging out, but the cultivation of that specific group. They go to each other's games, and they provide each other with support. There's little get togethers.  

One thing that we have struggled with is that after the pandemic people really wanted to meet up. They were so done with Zoom, and they wanted to hang out with people. And we were able to organize events during that time.

And now, we're in a phase where we're figuring out how to – instead of just being a large Puma Podcasting company – turn our different shows into smaller communities. 

For example, I have a show called "The Imaginable Workplace." It's about HR, work concerns and stuff like that. And instead of us trying to do an imaginable workplace event, what my Co-Host and I have started doing is to go to HR events and other things where we can talk about the workplace and then build a community around that. 

That's one example. It's also about having touch points like newsletters, because social kind of is dead. Social media is more for people who don't know anything about you these days. You just hope they'll find you on reels. 

Community building is about newsletters, direct engagement, sometimes people chat with us. One way I engage is taking people's questions about work and answering them in a one-minute-reel on Instagram. So yeah, we're just testing a bunch of things out. 

  

The Badass Brunch with professional athletes – I can imagine this is this is quite protein heavy. 

I actually don't know. The thing about the badass brunch is that we have made it in a safe space for women. So, I've never been to one. I'm adamant that we protect that space because there's so few spaces that's just all women. That that's one of those things that we're committed to.  

 

I would like to go sometime but I hope nobody asks me to prove my athleticism. 

But you were also talking about your interest in workplace issues and human resources. One of the issues that keep coming up in journalism now, of course, is going to be the role of AI and whether AI is going to replace all of us as journalists.  

I'm sure this is something that you must have talked about in your podcast before. And the way I understand it, AI already plays a role in how you produce content, perhaps not quite in in the scary way that we might imagine, but you can tell us a little bit more about that? 

We use AI in the most boring ways and in what I hope are invisible ways. Puma Podcast was part of the AI journalism challenge last year funded by Open Society Foundations.  

They gathered a bunch of media organizations and had them test out what it looks like for AI to be integrated into their workflows. And I did the most boring thing. I didn't want to innovate anything new. I just looked at every process that we had in terms of production, in terms of social, like research everything and asked the question: Could this be replaced by AI? And if we were to replace it with AI, how much more effective would we be? Because if we replace it but it winds up taking the same amount of time – pointless, right? 

I think senior journalists don't have to worry as much as entry level people because a lot of the entry level work can be done by AI. Cursory research: AI can take care of it. Like, you know, interview prep and all that stuff. It's nice when you have a producer to do it, but if you don't have a producer and AI can pull up a bunch of research information for you, great. Also, transcription: Once you're done with the interviews, AI does that transcription in an insanely fast way.  

We didn't get rid of our audio editors, but using AI meant that our audio editors could be focused on scoring and other high value creative things that a human can do that the AI cannot do. 

You and I, as podcast hosts, we know we stumble. Our editors are good: they make sure no one hears our stumbles. But imagine how much time they would have to spend 2 hours, 3 hours just removing all the stutters and 'ums' and the stumbling. Using AI for that just makes everything faster. 

And then my new favorite toy is an app that basically from a one-hour conversation will auto-generate the ten most interesting moments already edited with subtitles ready for posting on social. If a human was going to do that task, that means that they'd sit there, they'd watch the whole hour, they would figure out which are the moments that need to be cut. Then either they would have to cut it, or they would hand it off to someone else and that person cuts and then they must do the subtitles and upload. An AI that just does it magically. So that's how I feel about it is if it helps the work get out there faster than great. 

  

How does that affect your business model? You've pointed out that it saves man hours, time is money. I can imagine that there are also financial savings in that. Are there other ways that it might affect your operations?  

Yeah. There has been a very clear shift to video in podcasting. This company was built under the assumption that audio is the way and then people rushed into video in the mid-2010s. That broke a bunch of business models, and a lot of media has not recovered from that attempt to get into video even with that awareness. 

Now we can offer video to clients. It adds capability to do more social, which means more impressions. If you're working with a client who is interested in the performance marketing aspect of the work, then I can offer the client a full-length podcast, like one hour. And then that one hour very easily also translates into a bunch of social video. And the best bits of that social video also translate into static art cards and a lot of other opportunities for engagement. 

That means that we are able to offer a lot more value because of our ability to have that one conversation that's very meaningful with, you know, with, with someone that maybe the client wants us to talk to. 

 

You've pointed to the ease that AI enables in your work. Couldn't clients just take those tools for themselves and sort of cut out the middleman, so to speak? 

I mean, everyone can do that, but also all these people could have started podcasts and that would also be fine. What's important is both manpower and expertise – that's what we're leaning into here. When you are a brand, is it your core competence to produce a podcast and then do the social and all of this stuff? Or is it within your brand management to engage with people who actually can create content for you? 

I mean, sure, brands can do this, but we bring editorial and creativity to the table. That's our confidence. You're perfectly correct: Someone else can sit down and do it. But I will tell you what happened to us once – and this was in the early podcast days – we had been talking to a potential client for months. And finally, they sat us down for lunch and it was basically because he was going to say that he was not going to push through. So, he says, 'yeah, I told my marketing staff to just make a podcast. So, we already have one now.' And we said, 'sure, why don't you play it?' 

And while we're waiting for the food, the guy pulls out his phone, starts playing it off the phone speaker. And it's two very boring guys talking about stocks. And right there, even before he finishes the episode he goes, 'I guess we're signing with you.' 

So yeah, all of these tools are available, but we have the bandwidth and expertise to use them. 

  

I mean, maybe there's an audience for that. I mean, who knows? It might not be very big, but I guess it depends on who you want to reach. 

Yeah, like if you're just a person hanging out having fun, it's not a problem. But if you're a brand, there are expectations of the quality of work that the brand will put out and we are positioned to deliver on that. 

 

I read an interview with you where you talked about how news providers are being paid for their work feeding AI. What are your views on that and how do you see then the future, especially for small newsrooms with regard to that particular development? What do you think needs to happen? 

The thing is that as Puma Podcast we don't have any leverage. The New York Times can go bang up against Open AI and make certain demands. I don't know how this will all play out to be honest, if we just become content farms for the AI.  

I'm going to go theoretical first. Starting in like probably the mid 2000s, we have ceded the imagination space and we've allowed management and platforms to devalue creativity. I was working in magazines and used to have a byline. Then eventually it was "words by". But no, this is not words. This is a composition, this is an essay that is written by me, right? But the moment that we ceded that ground, then we just keep ceding the ground of what is valuable. It's a thing that I have been witness to for the last 15 years with digital media basically bringing down the value of a lot of journalistic work. And unfortunately, we've seen a lot of journalistic outlets turning to digital and just doing clickbait and stuff like that. 

AI is the next thing. AI is what social media was 10-15 years ago. They came along and were like 'oh, we love journalists, and we love the news. And you're so important to these platforms and here's a bunch of money.' And then once they're not interested in you anymore, then they're done with you. Because at heart, there was nothing there that was really committed to the public good, the common good of journalistic work, right? 

We've allowed a lot of these platforms to really devalue journalism, creativity, and, and now we're struggling to get people to understand why it matters. But people have also been trained not to care. So where do we step in? 

As a small player, I think the big people, the big global brands need to not just demand for themselves. But what is the UN version of this where we are able to participate even if we're a smaller and don't have the same financial assets or whatever? I do think it's a thing that we're not thinking about (enough) - and that's probably because we're all just trying to survive. 

  

Yeah. And not to be banal, but it is very, very hard. It's a very, very hard problem to solve. Now you've pointed out that AI is basically what social media was in this context five to 10 years ago, only very much accelerated. Filipino audiences, of course, are known to be extremely online, very high levels of social media saturation. What do you think that means for the wider media audience in the Philippines? 

I think it'll be user-oriented stuff. Let's say I want to watch a romantic comedy with this actor and this actress. If it becomes available for AI to auto-generate that for me, they're going to start doing that. I don't see why not. It's the same as you know, I want to hear a new diss track from Kendrick and he hasn't put it up yet. I'll have AI generate one for me.  

However, and this is where again humanity, personal taste, all of that stuff comes in: I really like content. I really like reading long form pieces, I really like watching a film that has perspective and not just a bunch of explosions, but it really mines someone's ingenuity, someone's artistic creativity and all that. 

I think the larger audience will just buy into whatever is out there and they don't really care how it's produced as long as it entertains them. And honestly, that's fine because people need to be entertained. 

That just doesn't bode well for middle of the road film makers, middle of the road TV show creators and middle of the road musicians because people can just also generate that. My belief, my aspiration is the more unique you are, the more human and the more creative there will be a niche audience that appreciates that and will want to invest in that. And I know that's like a pie in the sky kind of thing, but then again people collect vinyl. If you're able to commit that to people's feelings about content creation, really good films, really good podcasts, then maybe that's where the opportunity lies. 

Obviously, I can't connect these aspirations, these creative aspirations yet to like real cash. But as everything becomes devalued, then the very human things should ideally increase in value. 

 

I have wondered in the past if this journey towards ever individualized creativity and uniqueness is all just going to push us to become weirder and weirder in the content that we produce. Is that bad? Is that good? I guess we're going to find out. 

But what I wanted to get at: you were also talking about the societal costs of this devaluation of content, and with that, also a sinking of journalism standards. Earlier you alluded to what you feel is going on where because nobody is really paying attention, there is this perception that everything is in fact fine in the Philippines. 

Is there a way out of that? Because things are not fine. Like if you could describe the situation - perhaps that's better for you to do than me, as you are there.   

Yeah. So, the veneer of things is nice. But the killings continue. There's still immense poverty. 

  

The killings from the drug war, of course. 

Exactly, the drug war. 

I guess when we think about the information ecosystem or what the information space looks like, we always imagined that what would happen is that like there would be AI and there would be like this information and, and people would just believe the wrong things. But actually, you don't even need to convince people of the wrong things anymore. All you need to do is to flood the information landscape with so much material that they don't know what actually happened and what the news is. 

We're seeing this everywhere, but much more so for a Filipino audience that lacks media literacy and the ability to discern whether something is true or not. And with the speed at which things that are not true can easily be shared. Just this last couple of weeks, there was so much Olympics disinformation circulating and it just goes so fast. 

The big challenge in this space is not so much the specific disinformation narratives in play, but the volume of narratives in play that make it so that people just become disengaged because they don't know what to believe. They're just checked out. They're like, you know what? I don't know what's true. I just want to have fun. So, I'm going to watch this person dancing and that that at least I can, they can derive joy from that. And I cannot blame someone who is so tired of information for turning to that. But that is the challenge we're confronting. 

So, the reason I turn to podcasting and the reason I believe in the medium and in conversations like this is because it's a chance to sit down and listen to someone talk for a while, really immerse yourself in someone else's thinking. I want weird people with weird ideas to talk through and explore and share and that's not going to happen if we just flatten all content. 

  

Well, at this stage, I want to thank you for allowing us to immerse ourselves in your thinking. But before we let you go, we do want you to tell us your three best practice tips in this very, very difficult environment. There must have been some lessons you've learned, so give us your top three. 

Number one is just a team. Hire a strong team! Leadership is nothing. If you're running the show, you need those really, really strong people. 

Number two is a piece of advice that I give most of my managers: hire women. I've found that women work so incredibly hard and so incredibly well. It's not that we don't hire men in the company, but we really go out of our way to hire outstanding women. 

And then the third one is never do anything without knowing the budget first. There's a tendency for journalists and for entrepreneurs to be like, let's just do it. Let's just figure it out. But if you want to survive, you need to have a budget and you need to keep to that budget so that you can sustain your operations. I know that's really mundane, but people lose sight of that all the time. 

  

I think it's a good thing to remember. Just so we have all three once again: hire a strong team because leaders are nothing without a strong team, hire women – we're great, that's me editorializing – and know your budget and keep to your budget. I think those are great tips for media managers around the world.  

We'll have to leave it there. Thank you so much to our guest today, Carl Javier of Puma Podcast from the Philippines. And a thank you, dear listeners, appreciate you joining us again today.

 

This transcript of "Survive and Thrive: The Media Viability Podcast" has been lightly edited for clarity.   

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