We've Gotta F*#cking Fix The Media Biz

Momma needs some good curated content. It's up to you, sis. This is your moment.

An open letter to the millennial unicorns who read this letter.

Hey,

1-I love you.

2-I’m so happy you made your dream come true. I love that we have that in common.

3-I recognize that the media industry you inherited is not the one I stepped into.

Yeah.

It kinda fucking sucks.

You came to NY to work at a magazine but now you work at fill-in-the-blank.

You may feel like your dream is dead. That you did all the right things but….pfffffft.💨 The industry kinda evaporated. Or at least it shrank. It shifted. It changed.

4-You may have already made peace with the cool job that you do have. Because you do have a cool job…It’s just not the job you thought you would have. It’s not the job you salivated over when you were a kid. But hell – you have great friends. A great community. You love to cook….have interesting adventures. Maybe you catalogue it on TT or IG.

Does this sound familiar?

5-This is just a reminder of who you are. You. Are. A. Killer.

And a suggestion that…

6-It’s your unique destiny to bring back curated content the way it’s meant to be. The way only you girls (and yes, guys, non-binary aka my readers of CG! and Seventeen late 90’s early 2000s) know how to do.

Okay – I’m done with the list. Now let’s just chat.

One of you, the spectacular Venus Wong (below), came from the UK this past week and visited with me in my living room. And I will tell you what I told her (before she talked me into making the most embarrassing TikTok video of my fucking LIFE. MY LIFE, VENUS!!!!!):

If you left print or media altogether, don’t write it off as having given up on your dream. Some of you are writing books, producing television, working in marketing, the list is endless. All cool gigs. If you have left, think of it this way: You are on a fact-finding mission. You are traveling to other lands, other industries and gaining skills to bring back to the mother ship. Listen, traditional media, as you entered it, was largely a decaying carcass. Not all – but mostly.

It was nothing like the industry I entered in the early ‘90s.

When I was an intern, people like Spike Jonze and Courtney Love would just drop by the magazine offices because my bosses were icons. Returning library books for them was a fucking honor. Fashion shows were events of the century. To get my name in the magazine? A publication that would be read by millions upon millions of eyeballs? IT MEANT SOMETHING. I still remember Jane Pratt interviewing 20-year-old me for TV Guide (RIP TV Guide print edition, the magazine no home in my childhood existed without) about 90210. The subject was Brandon versus Dylan. I, of course, picked Steve. 🙄 Always the contrarian. (He’s on my dating app now, btw – alas, my tastes have changed…and I suspect I don’t fit his mold, either.)

But I digress. The point is, things have changed. The world has changed. And not just my penchant for Ian Ziering either…(And btw - I only liked him for his car 🏎.)

One of the last meetings I had at Hearst before I left foreshadowed what was to come. I was having a pre-game before our annual Seventeen budget meeting. I had a big idea and hoped to get everyone’s sign off before I presented it to my boss, Hearst President, Cathie Black. Here was the idea: Let’s take me and my whole team and put us on Seventeen.com and keep about 5-6 people on the print publication. Back then, UK print editions of our magazines did a great job with just a handful of people per title. This was very contrary to how our company was functioning at the time. They would hire people who didn’t quite make the cut for print and put them online and have big editorial teams on the print publication. This made no sense to me as I looked to the horizon. I remember proselityzing about how we actually own the word “seventeen” online. Forget for a moment, the brand Seventeen. I mean sure, we will tap into people who have brand awareness. But no matter where you live, the age 17 is significant. It means something. Let’s own content for this age group regardless of whether or not they are readers of the print publication! (This is my energy always – annoyingly optimistic). I still remember the guy’s face. I won’t name him because he is a truly special, sweet and lovely guy. But like many of the men in suits at the company, changing the world wasn’t on his radar. Getting a reasonable budget approved is what he was going for. It’s a probably a part of why the print industry fell so far behind. This is not a criticism. It’s how innovation happens. Their lack of vision replaced Editors with Influencers and democratized content. And here we are.

Right now, and you this know better than me, the content we view is largely on social media, made by ordinary people (some extraordinary, most not). This is happening on platforms created by men. Conditioned by algorithms. A random girl can decide to jump into the Hudson River and the yuck factor of that will make her a social media star being interviewed by outlets across the nation. This is what average everyday people are watching. Don’t get me wrong, there are many wonderful aspects of social media. What an incredible way to organize. BLM is a great example, as social media helped connect communities and ignite a political conversation across the nation.

What’s missing in content today is the heart. The qualitative. And that’s you, my sister.

But do we want algorithms setting the future of content? To see what the young men in sweats come up with next, fingers crossed?  Or wait for the old men in suits at traditional media companies to finally figure it out? Listen, there’s a place for their quantitative thinking. An important place. But what’s missing in content today is the heart. The qualitative. And that’s you, my sister.

I believe this is your time. And maybe that’s the only reason I came back. To just sound the alarm...a battle cry by a voice from your past. A voice you listened to when you were just a kid in your room with big dreams of taking the media world by storm.

I have spent almost a month on TikTok. A few years on Instagram. It has lulled me into a trance. Has it done the same for you? Scrolling short form video after short form video. It feels like I’m in the waiting room of my life. Or like I’m eating pirate’s booty for every meal. (Can you tell I have kids?) We need the full meal again.

Let’s wake up, my sister. I will help you organize. I will say it again: This is your time. Respond to this email if you are interested and we will put together a meeting of the minds IRL (and zoom for those who are not yet in NY). Let’s just dream and discuss - create a real life Pinterest board. Rather than living in the past, (don’t get me wrong – I’m a beneficiary of nostalgia – but 90’s fashion shouldn’t be back yet, it just shouldn’t) I think you can create the future. I don’t necessarily think it’s print…but let’s see what it is. Happy to lend my living room as your war den. It’s time to shake things up. And you know, I’m here for you 24/7, as always at atoosa@atoosa.com

xo, atoosa

The soundtrack of my 🤍🖤❤: