#11 James Huang & Jens Staudt – Covering 25 years of history in MTB media. Online vs. print.

If you think bike media today, you think mostly online. You think of YouTubers and influencers unboxing, presenting and maybe testing products. This wasn’t always the case. Hard to imagine, but print was king and our main source of information. There are only a handful of editors or writers out there which experienced this transformation to the media as we know it today. James Huang and Jens Staudt are two of these dinosaurs. 

In over 100 minutes of history in the development of bike media. Covering the rise of online reviews and online race coverage. The influence of people like Alex Rankin and Clay Porter, the rise of Pinkbike, centralization of power under media houses and some ideas on how bike people would like to consume information in the future. 

Head to www.testpilot.bike for more MTB-Nerd content.

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Transcript

James Huang (00:00.206)
here, get my levels going here, turn this up a little bit. That looks good. Okay, I can go ahead and start here.

Jens (00:09.774)
Okay, and just give me a clap in the worst case scenario. I have a sink. Also, I often like to record an intro after the episode has been done, because it helps me to put in the hooks and everything. So, yeah. How to start on this one? This is a big one. I have James...

James Huang (00:11.15)
Yep.

Jens (00:39.286)
Wang on the podcast today and I think we both look really forward to get a deep dive on the topic and it is pretty much an one quarter of a mill, how do you say, not millennial, a hundred years, a decade, a quarter century. We will cover today a quarter century, more than a quarter century of

James Huang (01:00.334)
quarter century. Yep.

Jens (01:08.76)
Bike Media.

James Huang (01:09.966)
We're gonna try to anyway.

Jens (01:11.394)
Yeah, and I think we could frame ourselves as somewhat of veterans.

out of the bike media and yeah maybe give you a little insight on how you started. You had been with cycling tips and bike radar, is that correct?

James Huang (01:35.607)
well I started... I guess my first... the first time I was actually...

paid to write anything as a job. Let's put it that way. That came in March 2005 when I started freelancing for Cycling News, actually. And at the time, even before then, I think for about five years or so, I was running my own website called angryasian.com. And that was a site that I had put together, or at least I had had a friend put together for me anyway. But on that site, was all about front suspension, maintenance, and it was all about

front suspension, maintenance and modification and tuning. And I put that together at a time when I was working at, I guess I was working part time at a bike shop back then, but I was doing a lot of front suspension work for the local community because the suspension was starting to get pretty popular. And at that point there really wasn't any information to be found online from the manufacturers as far as what you're supposed to do. So, so I did it.

Jens (02:36.564)
we might need to get this away from your code. It's a little ruffling.

James Huang (02:39.118)
Oh, still. Okay. Here, hold on. Let's if I can... Here, why don't I just... This might be... Okay, let's try that even more.

Jens (02:49.504)
OK, perfect. So it wouldn't touch.

Okay, perfect. No, that's fine. That should be filterable.

James Huang (02:55.598)
Okay, is that better? Okay, should I start that over?

James Huang (03:02.093)
Okay.

Jens (03:05.31)
I think we two, when we first met, it was at a track press camp in Sedona, kind of. It could be 20 years ago, kind of.

James Huang (03:12.97)
dear God. I don't know. It could have been 20 years ago. Yeah, easily.

Jens (03:19.414)
And yeah, and I was like, at that time, started to work for a German online magazine. It was a platform. was back then everybody called it the IBC, the Internet Bike Community. But actually it has a news part of it. And Thomas Potts was the founder and I was a user and I somehow slipped into, I got drawn into.

covering stuff and at one day he asked, hey would you like to join me and travel to the Sea Otter Classic and cover this event? it's fast forward, yeah, I worked for them and then attended bazillions of press camps I guess and potentially we two met at one of them I guess.

James Huang (04:05.038)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

James Huang (04:08.918)
Yeah, you and I have spent far too much time on airplanes, sitting in airports, sitting in buses, that sort of thing.

Jens (04:17.292)
Yeah, and the funny thing is because if you've been around the blog a couple of times in the bike media or in the bike industry and we mentioned that early on in the intro, we think it underwent a lot of changes, the bike industry. And it's not necessarily only because the internet media, online media became so strong.

But let's start maybe around the year 2000. So what was your media consumption back then? Do you remember that?

James Huang (04:59.36)
I would say I spent very little time on... Yeah, I would say back then I spent pretty little time on the internet.

despite the fact that I was just starting to run my own website. There just wasn't really that much out there from what I remember. What I do definitely remember is subscribing to a lot of print magazines. I would go to the local bookstore because they had a section of international magazines and at that time a lot of the UK publications were probably the best mountain bike magazines that I could find. were big, they had a lot of information in them, they obviously cost a little bit more because they had to be

imported but those were always ones that I liked a lot just because they were they had a lot in them. So my media consumption for bike stuff back then certainly was very very heavily print-centric.

Jens (05:52.47)
Absolutely. still remember to that day when I was into bikes, but I just were into bikes and had friends riding bikes and just like shooting around the woods and I had no idea about any kind of media or that there are magazines, you know, and at some point I was at the train station and which had a big bookstore in it and I was going in there and I saw

Back then it was called Mountain Bike Downhill. This is the equivalent. It later on became the Mountain Bike Rider magazine because they focused not only on downhill and gravity, but they changed their approach. And this was the very first magazine as a, and I think it was the overall the second issue they ever published. And it was the very beginning of this magazine and it

I really got drawn into that. And of course there was already in Germany the so-called bike magazine. There is an equivalent in the US, but it's not the same outlet. It's just the same name. later on I also saw mountain bike. These are like, these had been the three German speaking languages, magazines, German language magazines. And

at some point but I don't know exactly remember when I stumbled over Dirt Magazine and you mentioned already the UK scene and this blew me away because it was so different,

James Huang (07:31.95)
don't remember if we had dirt imported here, so I think I was exposed to dirt a lot later, but yeah, it was definitely very different. I think what was cool about some of the print media back then was, despite the fact that there wasn't nearly the breadth of information and just content in general that we have now, I think you could still...

find magazine like print magazines, print publications that really cater to your own personal interests. So I always felt like that was kind of neat. And it's funny you talked about when you were at that train station, you saw that magazine for the first time.

I don't know how it was in Germany in the early 2000s, but I know where I was. I lived in southeastern Michigan at the time. I had gone there for university and I just stayed after I graduated. And mountain biking was definitely like a very, very much a niche sport. There were not very many of us. So to be exposed to publications where you felt like you were part of a bigger community, that was a big deal.

Jens (08:39.086)
Absolutely. I also remember in the 90s, you know that there hadn't been a thing like YouTube or any on-demand broadcasting. You just followed linear television. And I was just zapping through the channels. by accident, I have no clue what kind of show it was. But it was Missy Jove on

Intense if I remember it correctly and showing like this piranha dried piranha necklace She was rocking at that time and it was totally rock and roll punk rock. Whatever it was I saw and it was just like overall maybe a 10 second of clips of her ripping down a mountain hillside like it Maybe it was just like it was so random, but I was like

James Huang (09:15.195)
yeah.

Jens (09:32.024)
blown away and it was just as you said it wasn't a mainstream sport back then and you couldn't get any kind of media and then you had like the only chance to actually consume media was print there was no video and and even though I mean in the 90s there had been when when did overall Grundig sponsoring of the downhill World Cup started do you remember

James Huang (09:54.659)
my goodness. I don't remember. It should have been right around that period though.

Jens (10:01.006)
I haven't had the... When I was younger, we haven't had cable TV. We only had like four channels. So that was out of my range. I don't remember... And as I said, think in coming back to the print magazines, they were the big deal. Like you could consume news about new bikes, like stories, travel stuff, et cetera. And it was print only.

James Huang (10:06.858)
yeah, same. Yep, yep.

Jens (10:30.744)
For me at least. And I think back then with slow internet speeds there wasn't even a market. It was just the very early days of YouTube. there were no possibilities of actually like people nowadays they can just have a World Cup. You could cover a World Cup on an iPhone. No big deal. But back then the technology wasn't there.

neither for capturing nor for broadcasting. It was all print.

James Huang (11:03.83)
yeah. mean, even if you had the technology to capture, would take you so long to broadcast and download. forget it. I could be sitting there forever.

Jens (11:11.822)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that made it pretty much a monopole of print media. it's only then, if you remember, like Pinkbike and MTV News, if you maybe talk these main players, German speaking and English based platform, they were starting around 2000, right? Or 1999. And

James Huang (11:38.958)
I don't remember the actual year when Pinkbike started, but it is around when the internet, as far as media, really kind of starting to grow. Because again, like I started working for Cycling News in 2005 and they were already quite well established at that point. And, you know, when I started it, it was definitely kind of a novelty to be working for an internet only publication.

I mean, I still remember going to trade shows and stuff like that and having to almost kind of almost had to argue to get a press pass for stuff because people were like, you don't have an actual print publication. Like that's not media. What is that? Or no, for a while it was called new media. I remember that. Yeah.

Jens (12:19.771)
yeah.

Jens (12:25.496)
That's funny. I almost forgot that. Because we were going through the accreditation process and then you had to, we haven't had a press pass kind of thing. We haven't had a license. wasn't like, weren't, yeah, you could say we weren't proper journalists. We were just bike dudes being interested in stuff. And we attended the trade shows forever.

James Huang (12:33.848)
Mm-hmm.

James Huang (12:51.787)
yeah.

Jens (12:55.264)
And we sneaked into the trade shows before that, even we covered it with like passports or passes from bike shops, which got their passes from the bike manufacturers to be invited, come over and to make their order for next year, right? Have you done that as well?

James Huang (13:17.486)
A little bit. Sorry. I got distracted just a second ago because a bunch of balloons went across your screen I don't really know what that was

Jens (13:21.966)
If you do that, I don't know, sometimes if you make a move like that, it's pop bigger. Do you remember asking your local bike shop to get a pass for one of the trade shows?

James Huang (13:28.538)
I got really confused for a second there.

James Huang (13:38.51)
I think that was yeah, very very early I never had to go through a shop really to get a pass when I was working for I guess after I started working for cycling news But certainly when I was running my own website I'm pretty sure I attended at least one or two inner bikes under the title of my local bike shop that I was working part-time for Because for sure if they weren't going to a credit just anyone who ran some random website back then I mean a lot of times the people who were

providing the accreditation, didn't even know what websites were.

Jens (14:11.842)
And I remember that we had to set up a page where the editor with your face or your face is showing like mtbnews-team and then you had to have your face shot in there and your name and you could prove that you are on this site because they wouldn't trust. They wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy.

James Huang (14:20.194)
Mm-hmm.

James Huang (14:26.414)
Yep, yep.

Yeah. Yeah, but you had to print it out and bring a piece of paper showing it. Yeah. I do just want to point out that this conversation so far is making the two of us seem very old. We are pretty old.

Jens (14:41.644)
We are. That's way we are. I think, and I introduced us as veterans, and I think that if you're working over 20 years in the bike industry, you are a veteran, and you are actually, in that kind of setting, you are old.

James Huang (14:58.796)
Yeah, old or stubborn or foolish or unqualified for anything else.

Jens (15:02.497)
or

Jens (15:05.764)
we should have called RC to get on the show then, huh?

James Huang (15:10.056)
my goodness, yeah.

Jens (15:13.454)
Yeah, maybe we make a second part of that and maybe make it Richard Cunningham as well on it and maybe it will be a five-hour show with all the stories. But the interesting thing is, this is when the online media started, nobody took it seriously. And this lack of trust from trade shows or brands showed it because it was just...

James Huang (15:16.204)
Yeah.

Jens (15:41.922)
What are you doing? You just have a website. You don't have a magazine. You don't have like a you can't really prove anything and it this is what's way before actually Let's say professional Websites online media provide numbers. They show how many users they have they show how many clicks an article gets and report that back to the manufacturer and then you get out down this rabbit hole of marketing and

return of invest and cost per click, et cetera, which now is a big deal. at some point, and I can't really say when, we saw a shift of online media is just a hobby becoming a very professional beast compared to print.

James Huang (16:33.486)
Well, I think a lot of that, I guess to talk about the first thing that you mentioned there, I think there was a lot of doubt in terms of legitimacy as far as websites go, because back then in order to publish anything, certainly in print, more often than not, you had to be part of a bigger publishing house, To have journalists, to have them on payroll, to...

you know, to do to do layouts and photography and actual physically printing and distribution. Like it was a pretty big operation. You couldn't just have somebody just decide to do this one day on their own. And the thing that was interesting about websites, obviously, as you know, is that it really democratized a lot of publishing because all of a sudden a lot of those barriers were removed. You didn't have to have any of that stuff. It did also, I think, rightfully bring up questions in a lot of people's minds as far as like, well,

Now, like you're just a website. How do I know you're legit? And I feel like a lot of that really went away with the rise of just sort of the bigger tech powerhouses in general, Google, Facebook, that sort of thing. Like I think as people just got more familiar with the internet in general, and as that became more and more a part of our everyday lives,

All of a sudden the internet was like, that's just what it was. I can't really put a finger on a year or a timeframe exactly, but there definitely was a very big shift in terms of the internet being a novelty to being like all of a sudden that's where you had to be.

Again.

Jens (18:14.83)
No worries. A novelty and it became, as you said, an everyday life. You would bring a magazine and there's a joke like you put it in your restroom. The bike magazine at some point is a restroom read, right? And man, we should know that. When the big start and rise of smartphones came.

James Huang (18:34.306)
Yep. Yep.

Jens (18:44.492)
because I think there's a correlation as well.

James Huang (18:47.854)
My first smartphone was a palm pilot a palm phone

Jens (18:52.236)
I was late to the party, but you could consume media through a smartphone. And as said, I...

James Huang (19:00.174)
Uh, yeah, I, I had, I had a Palm trio 650. I still remember the model number. I can't remember what year it was, but I do very distinctly remember being at a Scott press event in sun Valley, Idaho. Uh, they were launching some mountain bike thing there. And this was before the days of press embargoes when companies would have an assigned date when things would get launched and that sort of thing. Um, back then it was just a free for all. Whoever could get it up first is like you won.

And back then when I was working for, I guess I was working for Cycling News, I think. May have still been back then, or may have been Bike Raider at that point, I can't remember. But I very remember we were, we did some like overnight mountain bike ride and I was in a tent and I had my camera with me and I had at that point a Blackberry and I was able to download the photos from my Black, from my camera, put it onto a micro SD card.

upload the photos one by one by email from my Blackberry, send it off to my production editor who was in Australia at the time. And we got an article up. I had the full article up, you know, all the, all the information, pictures, everything. It was published by the time we all woke up the next morning and no one had had any internet back then. Very few people had smartphones.

Jens (20:02.424)
Wow.

James Huang (20:19.79)
And then by the time we got back into civilization, people were like opening up their computers and trying to get reconnected and stuff like that. And I already had my article up and everyone was like, what the hell? When did that happen?

Jens (20:30.99)
I think that was one of the turning points. And I remember attending press camps and as you said, at the moment the people, not only press camps but also bike events, races, World Cups, the moment you were the first to publish an article to the web, you won, as you said.

You won and you could show and there's actually a research paper out about this. The very first article about any topic in the internet wins by far in reach because it will appear and people are craving this kind of information or want to know who won whatever World Cup, Rampage or are interested in this new shifting system, whatever, will be on your website and they will forward the link.

to the website and it's kind of a snowball system and it multiplies. And I remember when exactly like you sitting in your tent trying to download it from a micro SD card, it was stressful. And you were like, because you're working for an online media, you were in a very different position. could see like the print guys, they will...

James Huang (21:31.982)
Exactly.

Jens (21:58.412)
chill out. They had like their dinner. I have got to put it to my like, my deadline is far out. I have two weeks to go and they get like hammered and have a good time. You know, it's paid holiday. And

James Huang (21:59.909)
my God.

James Huang (22:09.205)
yeah.

James Huang (22:12.92)
Yep, yep. I very much remember a lot of those trips.

Jens (22:16.948)
And the online guys were like the ones like not attending maybe the party and trying to find proper Wi-Fi because it always sucked at the hotel. So you try to get pump up the photos, pump up the text, get everything done and maybe struggling with the content management system like WordPress and whatsoever and getting your article out and publish it. It was maybe just before really, yeah.

companies started to pushing embargoes, right?

James Huang (22:49.176)
Yeah, you were talking about that phenomenon of whoever gets their article out first basically collects all the eyeballs, right? And I think that is when a big part of that shift happened between online and print media because as pretty and tangible as print media was, it really became obvious very quickly to both the audience and to the industry that...

While those things were still true, it was still nice to hold a big, nice glossy piece of paper in your hand. A lot of times by those magazines, by the time those magazines came out, that news was a month old. So it was pretty to look at, but it wasn't necessarily informative because you already knew about it. Yeah, I can't, I can't even begin to tell you how many of those press trips I'd been on where, you I would stay up until two, three o'clock in the morning because I had to write up the article, write that in there and try to get it up right away.

and it, it, it kind of sucked in a lot of ways, but it was also kind of exciting to be able to, again, like you had sort of that little thrill of being first, like it definitely was a competition back then, back then. And yeah, and it was, it was very much a question of like, I was almost like, who could stay up the latest or, know, who could duck out of dinner the soonest and that sort of thing. Like who could find the internet, who could, you know, find some, some cafe or restaurant somewhere that they

Jens (23:56.942)
100%.

Jens (24:07.79)
you

James Huang (24:11.275)
I would sit outside of businesses that had open wifi routers. Can't begin to tell you how many times I did that.

Jens (24:15.278)
Ha

Jens (24:18.722)
No, I totally get it. all did the same thing. It was a funny, but also somewhat of a friendly competition. And Pinkbike was one of the earliest who had strength in numbers. They were insanely fast. at once we also had, we shared a flat together, like MTB News and Pinkbike around Sea Otter. And it was a race.

James Huang (24:27.847)
yeah, yeah.

Jens (24:47.552)
It was literally a race. Who covered which news brand hot new stuff at the booth, whatever. And you would like in the morning, you would actually look at the other side and see, shoot, I didn't cover that. We got to run there and cover that as well.

James Huang (25:05.826)
Yep, Yeah, it was very much a race to be quick and first for sure for a long time. That was the name of the game.

Jens (25:07.789)
It was.

Jens (25:13.664)
And this also from an editor perspective, the editors had to have a huge variety of skills. It wasn't only that like an editor could attend anything and just get his writing done. He had to carry a camera and he had to make it look actually good. Because I mean, a good

opener photo will draw the people again in into the article and you will justify your work because you gain more, you attract more readers and you get better click rates and overall in the end this would transfer to a ligamentation of your media outlet and the bigger your numbers were

And the funny thing is now you're looking like this is a kind of a brag competition. Who is the biggest, right? And thinking again of the times you would give in a URL at the accreditation and they would look you up if you are actually legit. And then you would bring up at some point numbers and it

it's the people started to compare those numbers to the actual numbers of print outlets.

James Huang (26:42.432)
You

James Huang (26:47.01)
Yep. Yep. Yeah. When, when people started to realize that there was a lot more tangible data associated with online publishing, that's that's when I feel like a lot of things started to change. because with print media, you would have your subscription figures and then publishing houses would kind of artificially inflate their, their, their exposure numbers because they would assume that if someone had a print magazine that

they wouldn't be the only ones to read it. They would maybe hand it off to somebody else or like it would be sitting on a coffee table and someone else would read it, so on and so forth. And it was very fuzzy math. Um, whereas with internet publishing at that point, you really had hard data. Like you knew not only how many people were reading articles, but where they were. Uh, a lot of times you could identify who they were. You knew where they were, what time of day, day of the week, all that stuff. All of a sudden you had all this information and

for the manufacturers that obviously was really valuable to them because they want to sell more stuff and back then in their Media whether it was print or online the way that they paid the bills was still through endemic advertising You know the ads that were purchased by by industry companies and they wanted that information So if they could put their ad into an online magazine or an online a website where they had real data and the the

the cost to them per thousand exposures or something was so much fewer than what it would get from. It was so much cheaper to buy an online ad than it was to buy a print ad that at that point, that really shifted things a lot, I think. I mean, I don't really know what the actual numbers were because I've never been involved in the publishing or advertising side. But my understanding, it was orders of magnitude cheaper to advertise online.

Jens (28:23.79)
100%.

Jens (28:38.318)
100%. I can give a little bit of an insight on that without like calling numbers. In the 90s I worked at the newspaper and it was mandatory and we pushed very very hard to get the overall run for that newspaper over a hundred K of issues per day. Because there are rules on how much you can

charge per square millimeter for your advertising. And if you would have crossed 100k like print run, you could literally double your cost for advertising. And you mentioned it already. Online media became attractive because it was way cheaper.

to put in an ad. Because they were craving for any kind of money. And print was established. They were the big players back then. It was like, we are the media. And nobody would take it online seriously until this, what we explained earlier, this kind of race started. And the online media became legitimate.

James Huang (30:02.292)
Yeah, and again, like because people wanted to know about stuff right away, it all of a sudden you had friends who were like

you know, they, they maybe were B they'd be plugged into online media and they would find out about stuff really early. And then, you know, you'd, you'd be there with your buddy who was spending time on the internet and they were always the ones who knew about all this new stuff that was coming out. And if you were the guy who was still primarily getting your stuff through print, you're like, what are you talking about? I haven't heard of that. And then no one wanted, you didn't want to always be in the dark. You you wanted to know what was going on too. So then all of a sudden that just everyone got online.

Jens (30:37.422)
the fact that you also online, you're not restricted in space. Like the thing is, to that day, I also do kind of some write-ups for print magazines, but they have super strict rules on how many photos they can use. They will take up space, but you need to explain a complex product, maybe a new suspension, for instance.

James Huang (30:43.714)
Yes. Yep.

Jens (31:04.706)
Then you have like, you need to show the suspension, you need to show it in action. And today it goes all the way down to an app and you need to have the screenshot in there. And this all takes away space for your actual write up. So in print you had the delay in publication and you still to that day you have not unlimited space. While online, whatever, just make it scrollable to...

It's like endless. You can put in anything. It's good and bad at the same time because sometimes it's just too big and people just jump to the conclusion of the write-up and maybe not necessarily are interested in this kind of deep dive and you're putting all in this lot of time in write-up and making beautiful photos and putting in geometry tables, et cetera.

James Huang (31:33.612)
Yep. yeah.

Jens (32:01.048)
But it has been that the online media had or built somewhat of a reputation of getting the real information because you can get all of it. Not necessarily just this tiny text box in the print run. here's a giant had this new bike and it's whatever. While online you had

This is the new bike. This guy is riding it. This is the geometry and it's like extensive in comparison.

James Huang (32:37.71)
Yep. Yep. Yeah. It got to the point where all of a sudden it very quickly went from online being a disadvantage to being online being a very big advantage. Um, and I feel like that, that shift from a consumer perspective, from an audience perspective changed very quickly. Um, and I feel like from the, from the media side as a, as a, as an industry anyway, that, that shift happened, I feel like very slowly for far too many.

print outlets. I mean, we can see by, you if we talk about how many print outlets we, you and I were familiar with back then, I just do a quick survey, how many of them even still exist now.

Jens (33:17.358)
Yeah. And also, if you put yourself into the, or maybe explain to the listeners out there, an editor for a print magazine would always need to fight for the space in the magazine. And you couldn't just like say, here's a new product. I want to cover it on six pages.

James Huang (33:36.664)
Yep, yep.

Jens (33:44.45)
because every page costs money to produce. Not only like the actual paper, but ink, but the graphic designer who puts it together, the lecturer who needs to proofread and everything. It's not that you can put in whatever. And then you come to the point that the editor or the journalist, while we always try to have journalists separate.

James Huang (33:47.896)
Yep.

Jens (34:13.005)
from the sales department, but the sales department gets a lot of like say over the editors because they can't just use up space and produce costs without pulling in advertisers. And we mentioned it earlier and the cost for a print ad to that day because the print magazines have so much overhead compared to online media.

James Huang (34:29.294)
Yep. Yep.

Jens (34:43.585)
Like, classical print media houses. They have a big office. They have a sales department. They have a front desk person. It's a lot of money they need to earn every month to just like keep the machine running. While online, it started so basic. You don't need an office.

James Huang (35:03.566)
Yeah.

Jens (35:12.14)
You don't need no front person. You don't need a whatever. It's cheaper.

James Huang (35:16.204)
No, I remember when I first started working for Cycling News, I was working remote. think I was still living in Michigan at the time, but I had shortly thereafter moved to Colorado. I definitely did not have a physical office. I had a production editor who lived in Australia. don't remember if, I think Cycling News did have a physical office at the time in...

Surrey Hills, Australia, I think it was somewhere around there. And, but it was a very small operation. I mean, you basically just needed internet and a few computers, right? and it was, the overhead costs were, were microscopic. And I still remember cycling news was purchased by future publishing in maybe like 2008 or something like that. can't remember. And I remember going to bath in the UK and visiting the, the, the, the main office for future publishing and

my God, it was like multiple floors and all these people and all these cubicles everywhere. Like, holy. And they, they, they published something like a hundred different print magazines or something. I was just like, what on earth? Like, holy cow.

Jens (36:29.058)
Yeah. Yeah. You always like pre pre feel pretty humbled when you saw this kind of stuff. Because for me, I started with online working for an online and you just wing in it like whatever. Like you have so in the the best case scenario, you are able to formulate a little bit of a couple of sentences and are able to hold up a camera and make a photo, which is looks kind of decent.

James Huang (36:43.374)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep.

Jens (36:59.498)
And you're done. There's no person needed to do color correction to make it to print.

James Huang (37:07.842)
Yeah, I mean, I could see how a lot of print outfits were frustrated at the time because they did, a lot of them did put an awful lot of work into, you like you had art directors who were really careful with layouts and fonts and like, you know, all this other, like you were talking about color correction and all this other stuff. There was all this effort put into making things pretty. And early on with internet media, they, again, like you said, the emphasis was on getting it done quickly. There wasn't necessarily a lot of emphasis on quality. It was,

It was quick there maybe was a lot of quantity but there wasn't a whole lot of Wasn't a whole lot of thought necessarily always put into what you were writing or what images you were producing because as you said there was no limit I Think for a while if there For sure, I think there was maybe a period where internet media You know wasn't very good again because those barriers to entry were so low because anyone

could put up anything and everything. It was certainly nice to be quick and first, but it was always my goal to be quick and first and good. because it became pretty clear that it was a race to the bottom as far as who could be first. and that at that point it became a lot less appealing to just be first. You want it to be first and good because as you were saying back in the day, was all you had to do was to be the first one to get the information out. But quickly it became.

obvious that you want it to be ideally first, but ideally very quick to have a good article out because that is what people were going to pass around. And then that became the goal. So it it did seem to evolve fairly quickly from there. And then like a lot of the, like the, like the individual blogs and that sort of thing, a lot of that stuff, I think for a while kind of went away because there was a gradual shift back toward their

people wanting more quality in the online publishing.

Jens (39:08.27)
Quality is a good point because I think if you talk about media You also have to talk about World Cup coverage or event coverage in the form of video because if you think of World Cup downhill World Cup because this was maybe visually very appealing and there was with Alex Rankin

and early Alex Rankin maybe before Clay Porter, but they were covering something you haven't been able to see before. And they were like running around traveling to all the venues on a budget and just covering it. And it was just like a point and shoot style, but it really influenced how we perceive media and the overall, yeah, let's say

the blood, the heart of the scene, the core scene. It influenced how we understood ourselves. And it was really influential how they did it. And they did it under the Dirt Publishing umbrella. And they did it once a year. And the series were called either you could start with Sprung.

video or erst series. And both series were chained into the box you would call a DVD and this would be available at some point late in the year after the last race was finished. So you may have may knew that like this guy or this girl won this in that event but you couldn't have

seen this in a motion picture. You would need to order a DVD. And you were willing to pay, they weren't expensive, but you would need to pay money to actually order the DVD, you would wait for it, and you could invite your friends over, get chips and beer and just watch it. You would be so stoked and you would watch it on repeat. And I watched Earth and Sprung so many times, I...

James Huang (41:29.006)
Yep, yep.

Jens (41:36.55)
the music is embossed in my brain. And I would even know when they mixed up the music and toned the music down and you would hear so like, Schlattmeng, wo sind die Hände? Kind of, announcer would scream into the video and it was just so, it was so impressive. to bring this back to online media.

James Huang (41:39.48)
Yeah.

Jens (42:07.352)
There was one point where online media provided coverage video of the races in their magazines, in their online platforms. And this was a game changer.

James Huang (42:21.838)
Yeah, yeah, because I came to this realization a long time ago that as an editor, I feel like what people look for in what you produce is not so much, you know, it's sort of like the information and that sort of thing. Like that's kind of just kind of, I mean, it's obviously important, but ultimately what it boils down to is, you know, you have the privilege of access to

an event or a company or a product and that sort of thing. And that is exactly the sort of thing that most people do not have, but they want. They so desperately would love to just like see this thing or hold it in person. And so I realized pretty early on that ultimately what my job really was to do was to make it feel like someone was there, like they were holding some part in their hand, like

make sure to ask the questions that I feel like they would want answered. When I, when I put myself in that perspective, that I feel like that maybe changed how I handled things a little bit because it changed my perspective on what I was supposed to be doing. like, you know, back to what you were talking about with World Cup coverage for sure. mean, you very few people were able to travel to all of these events, especially if they didn't live in Europe. And

If you were a hardcore mountain biker, you would so, so love to be there. You'd want to hear everything, smell all the smells and see everybody and see all these people in person. Having a DVD at the end of season was kind of okay, but it was way more powerful to be able to watch something online when it was either live or close to live and at least get some kind of, some little bit of sensation that you could actually go.

When you can transform someone from where they are sitting to wherever it was that you were, where you were creating this coverage, that's where the power came from.

Jens (44:23.52)
Absolutely. again, if you compare them, print to online print, you're so restricted. could have like, some of them had what they call galleries, like the first couple of double spreads. You would have like maybe the winner winning guy railing the last corner or whipping it sideways. But these were like maybe six to eight pages maximum. But I'm thinking of one of the first

whip-offs like I think it was the first whip-off I covered as a photographer and you would shoot maybe two thousand photos in in two hours because it of course it's not like necessarily that you you pick like five bangers you would have maybe only five bangers but you just the essence of this event

James Huang (45:03.842)
Yep. Yep.

Jens (45:21.526)
you could make an article online and put in 80 photos. No big deal. And then in addition to that, I had a tiny GoPro 2, whatever, I had just that, like, holding it on top of my camera and just panning it, and it was just insanely lo-fi. But I sticked that together in a...

James Huang (45:26.146)
Yep. Yep.

James Huang (45:33.866)
god, they were so terrible.

Jens (45:51.434)
iMovie, I think. It was so random. And I just put that in the article as well. And it was, you could hear the people screaming. You could hear the freehub, like literally yelling at you out of the speakers because it passed so close. And you said, able to feel the event. This is something you could only do even though it was lo-fi. It was only possible by having

the option to put in a video. And this was online only.

James Huang (46:26.51)
Yep, Yeah, and I feel like, you know, as things like YouTube really started to get popular in terms of, when I look at it terms of product, I can't remember when exactly this started to become really popular, but there was this period where we had all these unboxing videos, right? Remember when that was like a thing? And I think that ultimately, as far as why they were so popular, it boiled down to what I was talking about earlier with.

being able to provide someone with the idea that they are holding the product. A lot of times those unboxing videos were shot from a POV style. And so, you could almost sort of imagine that it was your hands unboxing this thing and moving it around and playing around with that sort of thing. Because that's the sensation that you wanted to provide to someone. They didn't physically have the thing in their hands like you did, but you wanted to be able to give them that sensation.

Jens (47:22.22)
And this is maybe the moment online media started to sprint. They hit the ground running and print media were slipping. They were still in the start block. They were at the start gate and haven't started anything. Some of them, they were smiling at, smiling down, we say in German.

on online and maybe only to realize at some point, dude, we might need to do this kind of, you know, cross media, cross media, like having a print issue, but adding to it in an online appearance and maybe add to your write up, which could be maybe different, but you need to catch that emotion and you need to to literally expand your space in a bigger writing.

showing more photos and maybe showing a video.

And online media, we're already like 60 % of the race.

James Huang (48:32.534)
yeah, and again, because the online outfits were so much smaller and had fewer people and again, like you said, lower head counts and less overhead, that sort of thing, we could move so much faster. Looking at big publishing houses, it took them a long time to make decisions because again, as they were used to dealing with these huge advertising contracts and...

you know, when you're dealing with that kind of scale, things don't happen very quickly. And at that point in time, I feel like unfortunately for a lot of them, a lot of those changes needed to happen very quickly and they didn't. So we did see a lot of print titles go away.

Jens (49:11.512)
Yeah. And they went away because maybe they tried to compete on something which they couldn't. Because there's no possibility to open up a magazine and see a video. And I think, and there's a couple of magazines, and you said it, many of them disappeared. Many. In the US, even more than in Europe. In Europe, it's still like if you...

James Huang (49:24.204)
Right. Right.

Jens (49:39.064)
do like some research, you see there's somewhat of a 50-50 readership, which is very different to the US. And there's here still like a market for print magazines. But still, print magazines, and as you said, it's like a big tanker. They can't like do a swiftly change. They need to reinvent their storytelling.

And we saw, I'm not super familiar about what Singletrack did and then with the rise and buy-up of Beta started in the US. we, think Freehub did a similar thing. They changed the way they're producing their content. And for instance, Freehub has a super strong online version of it, but in their magazine, they're

they're putting in the extra laugh to make it more of a, let's say, it's not a magazine, but rather a coffee table book.

James Huang (50:46.882)
Yep, exactly. Yeah, there was a big shift just again, in terms of timing, because you couldn't, it didn't make sense to put the more time intensive stuff into the magazine. because again, people already knew about it. They didn't necessarily need to read it again. They didn't need to know about it anymore. So it did shift for a long time to, like you said, and I would say that like this shift is arguably even still happening. It moved to a lot more.

Kind of like evergreen content stuff that you it really was much more You would have some more of your like, you know time intensive more maybe more of your heavenly research pieces that sort of thing Ones that you really did want to just sort of like sit down and read with a cup of coffee in the morning on a weekend that sort of thing because certainly now obviously the majority of

media is online, but there is still valid romanticism with holding like this physical thing in your hand. Like my wife reads a lot of books. I definitely don't read nearly as many books as she does, but she never got into the idea of like an e-reader or Kindle, that sort of thing. Because, you know, our daughter too, our daughter is 11 and she has an iPad, but she doesn't read books on it necessarily.

Jens (52:13.484)
interesting.

James Huang (52:13.602)
she absolutely, absolutely loves to read. She has a book with her all the time, literally all the time. She has some sort of book with her and she loves like flipping the pages and like sort of like the, look and the feel. And, know, my wife even talks about that, like the smell of a physical book. is, there is an appeal to that. So, I think it's good that, you know, to see, to see publications, just drift to sort of like that dual channel model.

But people do really have to be careful, like what you put where.

Jens (52:44.91)
Do you think that publication proactively should pursue the change in a narrative and put in different stories on paper?

James Huang (52:56.27)
I think you kind of have to. I don't know anyone who would have intimate knowledge of distribution numbers as far as mainstream news here in the US, like New York Times, that sort of thing. But I would have to imagine that there's far more consumption of media online than in print. But they do...

still sell newspapers and magazines again for that reason. I can go to my local bookstore still and there's still a huge rack of magazines there. You know, I still get print magazines. I still subscribe to a handful of things because I don't always need to or want to read something right then and there, but there might be something that I want to read that I'll get to, you know, later that week or the next week or something like that. And a lot of that stuff isn't necessarily super timely. It does, it just,

doesn't really matter when I read it. can pick up an issue of, you know, the New Yorker magazine or the Atlantic or something like that. And there could be a feature article in there that was written three months ago. That is still interesting.

Jens (54:06.83)
Yeah, but it's different. It's not like you need to to if you are a media house you need to have like like let's say two teams or two two different kind of editors like one is like the up-to-date super fast-paced race results and product news and then you have the evergreen people doing like the bigger stories the talking about stories that are like

more of the core of the scene, like these emotional pieces, like the travel stories. It doesn't matter if you're doing like an ice and bicycle trip over Iceland to bring up an example. I don't care if it's like happened two years ago, if it's an appealing story.

James Huang (54:57.688)
Yeah, I look at it, I almost look at people who work in media now as far as editors as like you can be a reporter or a writer. And I came to realize pretty early on that I'm much more of a reporter than a writer. And I feel like it's more often than not that the stuff that reporters are producing are the sorts of things that you'd want online. And then you have the writers who are really, really artists with words.

that sort of content more often than not would end up in print.

That's how I look at it anyway.

Jens (55:31.962)
That's really beautiful. like reporter versus writer. This is really to the point, I guess. And online, okay, thesis. Online became so fast-paced that the writers went under the bus.

James Huang (55:54.412)
Yeah, yeah. mean, well, like we were saying, because that still exists, the desire to be first. I think that by the very nature of online publishing, that is never going to go away. And I feel like with, I certainly know how it is in US society. I don't know how it is in Germany, but I would imagine it's not very different. There is just sort of a societal desire and need to have everything right now.

Jens (56:20.334)
Instant gratification.

James Huang (56:20.92)
People want to know what's going on. Yeah, they want everything right now. They want all the information right now. I see it in my kid now. She's not really necessarily used to looking things up or researching. She can just ask Siri or look something up on Google and all of sudden the information is right then and there. She's slower to figure things out on her own because it's so easy for her to find the information somewhere. But that unfortunately still

drives this race to the bottom, I think, where people are still compelled to be really quick with stuff. And that's a dangerous thing to chase after because someone is always going to be quicker. you could, you could type 200 words a minute, right? And then hit publish as soon as you're done, even if you had no typos, anything. But if you're competing against, you know, someone on who's live streaming on social media or something like that,

They don't have to do anything. They just publish as they see it and maybe have some sort of running commentary and they're done. You can't beat that in terms of time.

Jens (57:23.79)
You need to adapt, I think, depending on the speed of your media, to put it this way, you have to adapt your content.

James Huang (57:34.242)
For sure, yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely true. And this, we haven't even talked about social media yet because that's been this other incredible evolution in terms of media. Because in terms of speed and the style of consumption and that sort of thing, social media has completely changed things now. So I took off for about maybe four months or so in between when I left.

escape collective to when I started up my own venture and I was only just kind of doing stuff on Instagram every now and then almost kind of for fun kind of just to like, you know, keep keep not keep busy but like kind of like keep my skills somewhat sharp to some extent and You know, there was one piece of news that I broke it had helped that I was somewhat local there was a big online retailer here called the pros closet and

just by word of mouth and knowing certain people. I had gotten word pretty early on that they were shutting down and I had posted something on an Instagram story. as far as I could tell, that was the first word that had gotten out outside of the prose closet that they were shutting down. And there were no news articles online anywhere. There was nothing on forums and whatnot. But that's all it took to be f**ked.

necessarily and at the time I wasn't really again I wasn't working I wasn't I wasn't even trying to fill out information or I kind of be more in-depth it really didn't matter to me at that point but yeah that that's all it took for me to be first was it good I don't know I mean other people wrote more in-depth stories later that I think were better certainly but if you just want to be first that's all it takes now

Jens (59:20.515)
didn't

Jens (59:28.568)
Did it show in the numbers that you're the first and then people forwarded it? I mean, there's a lot of insights actually in your standard social media. Looking at Instagram, you can see like, you reached this amount of non-followers, for instance.

James Huang (59:43.736)
yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't remember what that post looked like in that sense. I don't remember if I even looked. But I did see later that it did generate a fair bit of discussion in places online, forums and that sort of thing. And people definitely were talking about it, but there was a lot of like, well, they haven't made any announcement and they only have a sale going, so on and so forth. Like, is this just some rumor? Is he looking into this too much? So on and so forth.

Yeah, it was interesting. definitely, it was like a little drop of food coloring in a bucket of water. It definitely spread.

Jens (01:00:22.326)
Interesting. Social media as well. mean all the big publications out there, let's talk digital online platforms, they're really pushing also through social and trying to, mean social is a bit of a beast. If you, for instance, pushing, putting in a link to drag people off social media towards your website, it's being penalized.

So it's not super easy to play social media game if you have an actual platform. But still, like, online are doing a pretty decent job on using this tool. And print is working eagerly to catch up. Like putting in a format, trying to explain also basic stuff like...

what is a flat pedal, is a click pedal, for instance. So they're trying to put on these evergreens. I saw that as a trend as well.

James Huang (01:01:28.43)
Yeah, mean the Social media like you said it is it is a whole separate beast It's an entirely different thing and I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that that You can be a full-time social media influencer and like make literally millions of dollars Being on social media that's still it still blows my mind like We can get we can talk about that more later, but

But yeah, social media for me has been interesting because I primarily spend most of my time, at least on social media, on Instagram. I walked away from Facebook and Twitter quite a while ago for various reasons. But Instagram for me started out just being kind of like this fun way to just almost like, you know, publish pictures that don't seem to have any sort of relevance anywhere else with stuff that I was doing for work. And it was just sort of another thing to kind of just put out there. And it definitely has.

grown into its own separate thing. These days I use it more almost kind of like a marketing tool for my work. But it is also just fun to put stuff out there. It is just like a separate, almost like just entertainment channel. But I have also watched it evolve in terms of how I use it. Like got into, like a lot of people, seemingly I got into baking during the pandemic.

And my Instagram feed is essentially filled with like sourdough baking tips and mountain biking and dog stuff and that sort of thing. And at any given moment I can look at something for like, yo, should I use a Dutch oven or an open bake method? Or like, when should I score my loaf? All this other stuff. And it's like, there's a lot of useful information in there. So it's interesting to see how social media has evolved. again, I'm still trying to figure out like, aside from

being just obviously being paid to post certain things. Like, how the heck do these people make money? I don't get it.

Jens (01:03:33.738)
It's insane. It's insane. And it generated a very specific style of communication and presentation, which is... And now I'm feeling old again because it's super... It's somewhat super annoying for me. Like, it's super... Like a person screaming in the streets to buy this product and smacking the sign into your face kind of thing. And...

James Huang (01:04:01.986)
Yep. Yep.

Jens (01:04:03.466)
It's because it's not believable. It's like, okay, I'm paying this influencer this amount of money and he will hold up my product for five seconds and rave about it. And you're like, is this true? You can see, he did it like bazillion times before and he will present a pen and the next week he will present an air fryer, whatever. Just pay him.

James Huang (01:04:33.294)
But yeah, but it doesn't matter. I mean, I remember reading a while ago about this. I think it was a Chinese social media influencer and it's not bike related at all, but she would literally just sit there in front of the camera and just like, just a few seconds, like show this thing and like say what it is as a link or whatever. And then like, you know, move on. Like there's this other thing. Like that's all it was. Like, are you kidding?

Jens (01:04:40.974)
I know what you're talking about. go on. I know.

Jens (01:04:55.426)
Yeah, I saw that. It was hilarious. It was hilarious. He was just, she was like totally like unemotional face ripping up and open the box, pulling up the clothes, smacking it to the side, open up the next, but it was hilarious.

James Huang (01:05:04.686)
100%. Yep.

James Huang (01:05:14.158)
It was hilarious, but it was also kind of depressing because it was just such overt, blatant consumerism.

Jens (01:05:21.452)
I mean it was actually art. Be honest.

James Huang (01:05:23.854)
It was perversely entertaining.

Jens (01:05:28.236)
Yeah, it was it was somewhat if you could go down in the rabbit hole and compare it to Andy Warhol and the consumer criticism But maybe

James Huang (01:05:37.058)
Maybe, yeah, but like there's another account I follow where it is nothing but someone who has a big hydraulic press and all it is is like just smashing stuff with this hydraulic press. That's all the account is. And they've got, I don't even know, like a billion plus followers or something, I can't remember now. And you know, it's mesmerizing. I don't know why I watch it every now and then, but I do.

Jens (01:06:01.6)
stay away from cutting sand and cutting soap,

James Huang (01:06:07.566)
cutting sand and cutting soap.

Jens (01:06:09.802)
this is the next thing. hydraulic press, if you go down that rabbit hole, like there's some super odd people cutting up soap and or kinetic sand.

James Huang (01:06:22.734)
Oh, interesting. Oh no.

Jens (01:06:22.978)
But yeah, maybe this is totally unrelated to bike media, social media has its weird, weird, weird ways and weird steps.

James Huang (01:06:35.06)
And, you know, I guess to bring up my kid again, I mean, we, we try to keep her off of social media in general, because I can see, I can see in real time how those sorts of things can just suck you in and like literally rot your brain. Like, like she doesn't do this necessarily so much now, but I certainly have friends who have older kids who just sit there and just mindlessly scroll on Instagram or whatever. And like they are, they are checked out there. That brain is turned off.

But that does seem to be unfortunately where a lot of things are going now. it does, you know, this topic is supposed to be, you we're here talking about bicycle media and it's interesting to see how things have evolved now because certainly bike media in general, I would say is not doing great in terms of business health and that sort of thing. And it's been kind of fascinating to see how different

people and publications and that sort of thing have evolved or tried to evolve to figure out how to keep the lights on because it really is all these shifting tastes and habits and desires and trying to just chase all this stuff to figure out what people want to see.

Jens (01:07:49.422)
This was also my motivation to invite you for this kind of conversation because You started and I started and an own Media like an own kind of magazine kind of Yeah news channel your is n plus 1 and minus 1 your is n minus 1

James Huang (01:08:14.134)
N minus one, yep, yep.

Jens (01:08:18.446)
And then it's so different the way your writing style is if you compare it to other media outlets. there's a... I don't want to like... In German we say put honey around your mouth. But you have finesse in the way you write your text. And it's such a stark contrast.

to this fast-paced media out there. It's so calm and entertaining to read that it provides this contrast to what bike media has become.

James Huang (01:09:02.744)
No, well, thank you. I guess that wasn't really necessarily the intent, so to speak, but I feel like now, particularly if you are trying to be some sort of viable bike media entity, whether you are a big publication with a big staff or an individual like myself, or even just like two or three people like you're doing with Test Pilot.

You have to identify where it is possible to compete, where it is possible to stand out with stuff. And for me, feel like what I've been trying to do is just, I've done this for quite a long time. feel like there, we were just saying earlier at the beginning of this episode that you and I have both been around for quite a long time and we have...

physically seen and lived through a lot of different things and we have seen a lot of things sort of come around full circle or you know, we're able to put things in a little bit more historical content or You know, maybe somebody can come out with something that you know, lot of people like that's brand new and you know You and I can be like, no, it's not someone did that 15 years ago. Here's the thing

And there's a lot of benefit to just being having been around for that long. So I try to bring in some of that experience and context into into what I cover. I think I try to use some of that to maybe kind of filter out what I deem to be sort of worth paying attention to and what's not worth paying attention to. But it's interesting looking now, particularly at an online media. And we were talking earlier about.

we kind of touched on this idea that, you industry holds a lot of these press camp things, right? They, they introduce a product, they fly media into some location to check out this new thing and they, they give you your spiel and their, their, their presentation and their product and so on and so forth. And when I look out at the room at the people who are sitting in that conference room or wherever, just, you know, look at the audience of editors, it has been interesting to see how they've gotten progressively younger and younger.

James Huang (01:11:19.662)
and there are a handful of people who I recognize and who I have literally traveled around the world with at all these different events and you know, there are several of them who have been around for quite a long time, but there are an awful lot of them who are literally half my age. Which blows my mind. Absolutely makes me feel super old. But at the same time, it's super helpful to again be able to draw that, draw into that experience and that history with stuff because the

lot of the people just don't know about it.

Jens (01:11:54.23)
I think to circle back on why you and I started a different style in media is that everything moves in waves and we saw an ongoing acceleration in speed in publishing which you said or framed as somewhat of a race to the bottom because the quality will be lost along the way.

And I think we are now in a phase of people would appreciate a change in tone and speed in an article, in a write-up, in a text. Because if you, we dipped a little bit into social media, we dipped a little bit into influencers, and if you look into YouTube, and you would like type in review, bike, whatever, and...

The most successful videos out there with the biggest clickbaits and the numbers will show are thumbnails with screaming typo like MrBeastStyle

photos or thumbnails to put it this way. And I think we are at the verge of actually a turning point that people are maybe not sick of it but overwhelmed by it and crave the book again, crave the calmness again and they're being more reasonable in a text.

James Huang (01:13:36.302)
I think it's certainly not the majority of people who want that. think we are still very much heading in that direction of kind of like that race to the bottom that I was talking about. But for sure, I really do agree that there is a growing contingent, albeit minority of people who do want.

the more in-depth information, the more thoughtful piece, that sort of thing. That's certainly the sort of audience that I'm looking for, kind of like the more informed and kind nuanced person. It's interesting, you mentioned sort of like the Mr. Beast style YouTube thumbnail video.

And I remember having a conversation with Ray, Ray maker over at DC rainmaker. And if you are at all interested in sports electronics and fitness devices, that sort of thing, he has been for quite a long time, the absolute authority on all that stuff. because he is so incredibly in depth, like his style of public, his style of, of media content is very much geared almost exclusively toward online. because that sort of thing would just never exist in print. Like you'd have like a 10

thousand word review of something that you do you just never see that in print but he also does he very intelligently kind of plays the game he told me that you know when he he realized pretty quickly that when he's producing a YouTube video he'll get twice as many views if he just has like an arrow pointing at something or he's gotten very savvy as far as putting together his YouTube videos

to appeal to that person who is most drawn to like the shiniest thing, right? But at the same time, like he's very good at drawing in that audience, but then he sucks you into this rabbit hole of like a 15 minute article or 15 minute video on a watch. You know, that sort of thing. So he's done an exceptional job of playing both sides of that coin.

James Huang (01:15:32.634)
And I like it because he has the realization of being able to play to people's tendencies like that, but also being able to simultaneously provide that depth of information that people should want.

Jens (01:15:45.486)
The difficulty in that is that you need to understand as a viewer because the human brain functions pretty predictable. So if you start knowing that this video will provide a certain style, it will show in the thumbnail and people will know how to drop videos or how to do a bunny hop, wheelie, whatever, will have a similar look and feel.

like a review of a new e-bike, for instance. And you will pretty easy understand with a glimpse of an eye that this is mountain bike content. And this is a very specific style. And if you mention this guy doing a 15 minute review of a watch, you not necessarily have, or he might have a bigger quality in a video, wrapping it up,

in a MrBeast package. So this is the point of where I'm curious of how to diversify a thumbnail to actually showcase, this is actual information and not just clickbait and not just rewriting of a press release, right?

James Huang (01:17:03.042)
Right. Yeah, it's tricky, but I feel like for a lot of those things, would be, do, maybe this is just me fooling myself, but I do wonder how viable it would be for someone to put together a one person or two person publication who is completely new at it. Because at that point, all you really do have to draw on is, you know, that ability to,

sort of pulling the initial eyeballs and to kind of play the tricks and like be flashy and that sort of thing.

I don't think anyone reads my content because it is flashy. And, you know, when I was doing a lot of video stuff, they certainly weren't looking at those videos to see me. They were not doing that. But I feel like people were interested because I was hopefully be hopefully able to provide some useful information for them that they could that they could then take to decide if they wanted to, you know, do something on their bike or, you know, purchase a new bike or keep their old one or whatever.

I feel like it's challenging to be able to put together something like that on your own if you don't have that level of experience to draw from. So that n minus one thing, I run that on Substack. That was the platform that I chose to use. And if I look at some other writers that I look at who I follow on Substack,

Like, you know, if I look at U.S. politics, for example, like Robert Reich, was a shoot. Was he like former secretary of commerce? I think anyway, I can't remember what position he used to hold in government. But I read his stuff because it is incredibly insightful to see what someone with that level of experience sees in a situation that I might not have seen. And that's the sort of information that I am drawn to. And I feel like that's the sort of information a lot of other people are drawn to. And that's not something that I would be

James Huang (01:19:07.064)
drawn to if I were interested in you know Robert Reich is not putting the other fancy thumbnail images on on YouTube he's not doing that

Jens (01:19:17.656)
Yeah, and I think if we revisit the topics we touched and looking at the constant acceleration in media production and media consumption and lower attention spans and your race to the bottom quote, I think the media...

In German we say cut in its own flesh. Because by providing this kind of content, it was a lower quality and it could be produced cheaper, but the overall quality declined. And now you need to provide towards a brand or a company, you need to provide value. And the moment you are

providing a value which is not distinguishable to a social media influencer, like the content you provide as a magazine, and you're doing the same fast-paced style as an influencer. The influencer, you can maybe just send free product or a couple of dollars and he will do it. But the media needs to elevate their game to a point to justify

actual pay for their work.

James Huang (01:20:48.972)
Right. Yeah, and that sort of thing is frustrating because as I mentioned earlier, like looking at how a lot of social media influencers not only make money, but are making a lot of money. They are very much capitalizing on the... I shouldn't say all of them, but certainly a lot of them are very much capitalizing on this concept of just pure entertainment.

and more power to them for having figured out how to do that and to play that game. That's unfortunately for better or worse that's just not necessarily how I operate. I just can't do that. But it's...

it's been interesting to see how things have sort of come around full circle where you had print media who were concentrating seemingly on quality, maybe not necessarily quantity, they weren't necessarily super fast. And then you had this shift toward online media where it was a lot of quantity and speed. And then now we're coming back a little bit more toward a desire for more quality in one aspect of things anyway. But then you also have social media. It's just like, again, still continuing this race to the bottom. But

It has really been fascinating to watch how certainly things with with with my publication has progressed and Talking with subscribers and listening to what people want to see there is certainly a desire and almost just sort of an exhaustion with how

how things have evolved now. it is kind of exhausting to just be constantly bombarded with all of this social media stuff and so much information. Like I don't necessarily need to know absolutely everything about everything right now. I don't need to know it. I don't want to know it. I can't process it all. and certainly as things have gotten

James Huang (01:22:45.9)
busier and faster paced in my own life, with having a wife and our daughter and a house and things are just always busy. And sometimes I just want things to slow down.

Jens (01:23:00.61)
Do you think that curating content is the goal or a solution? Curating.

James Huang (01:23:08.174)
creating content? I think to some extent and I think to I think yes, because there is certainly a limit to how much and what people can consume. It's been interesting again, as far as watching.

the growing number of people who have had long careers in journalism and media launch into solo ventures. It's been interesting to see how that sort of thing has evolved because you do have audiences who come to really trust and rely on certain individual people to...

they trust them to tell them what they need to know or give them the advice that they can believe in, that they can kind of walk away with and lead on. Because in some sense, that is a level of self-curation. Like you follow the people that you want to follow because they have provided good information or they've been reliable in the past.

You know, me being just a one person operation, I certainly can't cover anywhere near as much ground as I would love to. At this point, I'm kind of settling into a rhythm of publishing two, maybe three things per week. And there's only so much ground I can cover. It just takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of time. I'm still shooting a lot of my own photos, that sort of thing, because I do try to still maintain a level of quality that I feel like I need to maintain.

you know, what I love to do more, sure. But I'm sort of self-curating, I guess, to a certain extent because, you know, almost just out of necessity. But I think a level of curation is necessary because again, like it's easy to be overwhelmed. Like I just, again, I don't want to know everything. And I feel like a lot of people feel the same way because it's just exhausting.

Jens (01:25:09.486)
Do you think that you're using Substack and we don't need to cover your business model in detail, but the people out there are trained towards I'm able to read every information, every review online for free. I can watch every World Cup coverage for free. Now that changed, you have to have a subscription to watch World Cup for instance, but

You also have like in your model you have some stuff you can read for free and you can subscribe to it and you can have more extensive information and a broader broader text and insights but the people are so they need to adapt for that and let's put the word of a paywall out there. So if you want to have a person

editor, a journalist, spending his time and work onto something and he needs to win some bread. He needs to make some money from that. So what do you think is the future of that? Will there be more paywalls and subscription models again? Because there always will be this fast-paced social media

unboxing videos, this is the new product. And is this enough for the bike community out there?

James Huang (01:26:47.458)
I'm.

Obviously, that's a hard question to answer and I don't know if I have the answer to that. I think I'm still trying to figure that out myself. We certainly have seen a huge rise in subscription models in general, just in general society over the last few years. Like we used to, you it really wasn't all that long ago that if you, you know, like for TV, for example, you chose a cable provider and you chose your package and you got like here, you can choose the 120 channel package or the 40 channel package, whatever. And now you have

I put subscriptions to Disney and NBC and or like Peacock now and yeah, all you pay for all these things individually. And now we end up paying the same, if not more than we used to anyway. And that sort of thing has become kind of frustrating there. And I can see how it has started to be more frustrating and kind of more specialty media too. Just because

Jens (01:27:22.786)
Netflix and whatever.

James Huang (01:27:47.566)
before I think a lot of people had the impression that like if we go all the way back to print media for example or even newspapers people had the idea that what paid the bills what kept those businesses going were the subscriptions right but ultimately

those subscriptions, all they did were provide a vehicle for those publications to generate viewership numbers that they could then take to advertisers and be like, look, if you buy an ad, I know that I can give you, I can expose you to a hundred thousand people. Like you were saying with that newspaper where you trying to hit that magical hundred thousand, hundred thousand number. And with the rise of Google and Facebook and that sort of thing, you know, all those advertising dollars went away. They're all gone.

and now you have the subscription models as as

publications and titles have tried to figure out all the ways to bring in revenue. They've realized that if their main source of income is gone, how do you bring in revenue? But now online media was free for so long. have been accustomed to, like you said, being able to get all this content for free. So now still, okay, how do you pay for that? So now the thing that has been really popular now are these, they call it affiliate models, right? So if you go to online media, they'll cover some product

And then somehow at the bottom of that product review, you have this magical link that takes you to the manufacturer website or something that lets you buy the product, write that in there. if you usually more often than not, now, if you click on that link, even if it's not explicitly described as an affiliate link, you click on that link. If you look at the actual URL in your, in your browser, in your browser title bar,

James Huang (01:29:38.83)
you know, there's all sorts of code that goes after the website address that tells that tells someone or tells the manufacturer that the source of that traffic was from this article. And then if someone buys that thing, that that article or that publication gets a cut of that. That's how a lot of companies now are making money. So it's just as other new revenue stream that they've tried to come up with. But it's I've always had an issue with that because

You know, I feel like whether intentional or not or you know, whether it's what I should say whether it's well intentioned or not You'll see more often than not now little disclaimers at the top of articles saying like okay, you know, we we have affiliate links, but they don't influence our editorial so and so forth like

Okay. That may technically be true, but really like, like if I am a consumer, if it sounds weird, if I'm, if I'm a reader, like, okay, I'm reading your product review of this thing and you're telling me straight up that if I buy this thing, you get a cut of it, but you're telling me that because I get a cut of it, it doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It, it, it doesn't, it doesn't pass the sniff test, right? That, that as I describe it.

Jens (01:30:28.672)
It sounds weird.

Jens (01:30:42.894)
You should tell me it's good because you want me to spend money because you benefit from it. Yeah, that's the...

James Huang (01:30:55.31)
And it's been, I, that, that's been frustrating for me because it doesn't feel good, but yet more people are using it because they have to, because they have to figure out some way to keep the lights on because being able to shift consumer tendencies into this idea of paying for the content that they want to consume is a very, very slow progression. Um, I certainly wish it was a faster progression. Um, but,

I just got a cramp somehow. my God. What just happened there? Clearly been sitting in this chair for too long. but that, that's a slow thing for people to, to, to change their mindsets on as a general population. Like people have not been used to paying for content for so long that now to

Jens (01:31:26.924)
You

Jens (01:31:40.854)
Neither does the manufacturer.

James Huang (01:31:44.876)
Yeah, yeah. So it's definitely a shift that is, I feel like it is happening, it is happening albeit slowly, but there is also this tendency because everyone is having to pay for all this content piecemeal that they're tired of having to do all these things individually. You have a subscription burnout basically. And I even see, sorry, go ahead.

Jens (01:32:08.654)
And, and, sorry. I also, it's hard to pay actually for it. It's, I don't want to be, let's say I want to read an article on New York Times. I want to be just at least, or let's say at maximum two clicks away of paying them, I don't know, two, $2, whatever for reading that one article. But that's not, I have to put in my credit card.

I have to be at least, even though the first month is free, I will be at some point in a subscription and I hate that. As you said, we are tired of that and it's not easy to pay for it. And there are different concepts out there like these links, buy me a coffee or whatever, or have a Patreon and providing your content there. And it's all not super easy. And people, as you said, we are just

James Huang (01:32:49.026)
Yep. Yep.

Jens (01:33:08.238)
tired of it. Even though you would like to support, you don't. Because it's too hard.

James Huang (01:33:15.8)
Yep. Yep. Yeah. And it, it, it's kind of funny because, we keep, we've brought up this idea of things coming around full circle several times as we've been having this conversation. And one of the things that it was kind of funny to see me see, see me read this, or it was kind of funny for me to read this somewhere. But someone was talking about how they subscribe to several authors and sub stacks sort of thing, because they want to hear their perspectives of all these people.

And they were kind of joking and like, Oh, if only all those people could come together for one thing and kind of all, all, you know, join forces into one publication. And then I can pay just one thing and like, Oh, right. But then that would be sort of like a website or a magazine that you pay for and like, Oh, wait, that's what we start. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, but I think a lot of that has been, we haven't even touched upon this yet, but one, one frustration has been how

Jens (01:34:03.374)
going full circle.

James Huang (01:34:13.142)
Yes, that is how a lot of those things used to work. But with this, what we've seen lately with a lot of titles consolidating under these big, huge, big, huge entities, you know, yeah, like outside they've bought, they've bought literally hundreds of titles and put them all together and they're trying to do exactly that.

Jens (01:34:28.29)
media outlets like outside.

James Huang (01:34:38.634)
but unless you're able to do that sort of thing and also retain the individual voices that people want to see and give those individual voices incentive to stay there, then you've basically lost what you're trying to put together. Right? So it's, it's, it's tricky. mean, ideally you certainly would have all of the people that you specifically want to hear from all together in one thing. Like I would love it if everyone that I wanted to read about from bikes to

Baking to general news to cars like I would love it if everyone would come together into one magical publication that I could just pay one subscription for and I could get everything in one content on one bill. That would be amazing. But the reality is that's just not going to happen.

Jens (01:35:25.462)
Also, I think it's hard if you put yourself into the shoes of a manufacturer and you have a shiny new product and you want to have magazines talk about maybe in a positive or hopefully in a positive way to drive your sales about this new product because it's so good. You need to work with specific media outlets and you

build a relationship over the years with this kind of editors, this kind of media outlets, you have some kind of trust towards this media outlet that you won't be thrown under the bus because, yeah, this is like whatever carbon cross-country rim and you're giving it to a media outlet and they don't care, they're just giving it to an Enduro racer editor and just like he smacks it. He breaks it in a thousand pieces and he said this

thing doesn't hold up. So trust burned. It's over. A manufacturer wants to have a trustworthy relationship to the media, to the editors, and wants to be able to give the product to an editor and get a review from. Now we see this, on the one hand, this big centralization of media, of

making it unnecessary to give this one product or spend money in this media house to cover for, to finance this article. You have on the one side this media house and you on the other side you have this influencers doing it for free. And you have in the case of outside you maybe have Pinkbike and you have other

media houses under Pinkbike, why should you work with these other media houses when you have it already on Pinkbike? It's a monopolization and they're paying just once because they are so strong. And I don't want to pick on Pinkbike because they're doing a good job and just providing information out there. But they got so strong and so big that if any

Jens (01:37:47.542)
media outlet, which is tinier, and even maybe now under the same umbrella of outside, they won't get any cut off the cake again. It's just because why should they work with you? You have your super tight, narrow target group of readers who are interested in, okay, now making something up, mechanical shifting. This is like your niche. Why should I?

James Huang (01:38:15.491)
Mm-hmm.

Jens (01:38:16.652)
work with you if I have like this bigger outlet and I get like 50 times more clicks and reach out of that.

James Huang (01:38:24.642)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's completely understandable. It's interesting that, you know, when I, when I took my break from media work over the summer, I found it fascinating how much more open some long-term industry friends I've had within bike companies were. It was interesting to see how much more open they were with me about how, how a lot of those things work. It was.

It was it was fascinating in the sense that you know looking from they were basically letting me know how things look from their perspective as like a product marketing person or that sort of thing and It was a lot of exactly what you were saying like they they will allot almost their entire marketing budgets toward Outlets that they know will provide favorable or at least non critical coverage

because that's what they want. They just want their product exposed and they want it put in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And they don't want it disparaged and they don't want to criticize ideally, but they just want people to know about it. And...

This is not to say that Pinkbike does that because I do think that they like I know a lot of the editors at Pinkbike still and I do think that they do still do a pretty good job of being critical of a bunch of stuff. But like if we look at GCN, for example, if we look at GCN, for example, they.

They've been very careful. They've been very shrewd to never do product review, right? They, you will never see a product review on GCN because it's completely counter to their business model. But if you see a product on a GCN video, you can be 100 % assured that the company whose product you see on that video paid to put that product on that video.

James Huang (01:40:17.978)
And that's not necessarily a knock on GCN particularly, because again, they're not trying to be critical about any particular product. not, they're very specifically not evaluating product. but they've been exceptionally good about monetizing product placement. And if I, yeah, I mean, they, they lean into it. They are absolutely not hiding at all. The fact that they are

Jens (01:40:34.754)
Yeah. And being entertainment and providing entertainment.

James Huang (01:40:45.354)
entertainment first and foremost, maybe some like general information here and there, but they are absolutely not evaluating product. They absolutely avoid it. you know, more power to them, I guess. Like they don't, I would have much less respect for them if they did try to evaluate product and also were taking a lot of money from manufacturers for product placement, because that is just, that's just completely unethical.

You know, so does what GCN is their business model? you does that appeal to me? Not necessarily, but wow, does it work for them? Good for them. So anyway, as far as what would motivate a manufacturer to work with someone who doesn't necessarily provide guaranteed positive coverage, that's a tough one because...

Jens (01:41:21.41)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Huang (01:41:35.97)
Am I seeing less willingness from certain brands to include me on stuff or to send product my way to review? I don't know if I have necessarily. Maybe I'm seeing some of that just because of course I'm no longer working for a bigger publication. My numbers I'm sure are smaller. And if I hadn't been doing this for as long as I have, if I hadn't...

built these relationships with people over however many years, then I probably wouldn't even be receiving access to stuff that I do now. It would be hard from the manufacturer's perspective to justify working with someone who's very small because there's just not much of return on their investment, even if it's just loaner product, because not that many people are going to see it. you know, so I think it almost comes down to more

It's kind of ironic that as far as what I'm doing it almost kind of comes down to more fuzzy math to certain extent because you have to be able to You have to be willing to put a higher priority on like a higher value audience member as opposed to just straight numbers because certainly if I'm looking at just a straight numbers from a manufacturer perspective I don't provide that

Jens (01:42:55.118)
If you want to use like marketing terms, you would say that your reader is actually further down the funnel. And maybe to explain this to non-marketing people out there, would like, depending on how much, let's say, how many times, I try to really simplify that now and not diving into acronyms. So it depends to know a product in advertising and marketing.

And to have a customer know the product, he needs to see it at least this and that amount of times. May it be in an advertisement, in an editorial and further down the line, in marketing you call this the customer journey, you will be at the point where you consider the product to be on your list of items you want to purchase. Or

to be on the list of, I wanna buy a new tire and there are this and that brand out there. And I read about this new tire model maybe five times. Should I spend now my money not on a tire I actually know and used in the past or make like the jump and try it out and be willing to spend my money on that? So people...

If you could spend many, many advertising dollars to put your product in front of a lot of eyes. So you could maybe, let's say, New York Times, you make a one-pager of your new bike tire in the New York Times print publication. A lot of people will see it, but only a tiny percentage of these people will actually ride bikes.

So you have like a big loss in your advertisement money because the people that actually read this are maybe not necessarily interested in this kind of bike tire. But if you're looking into this tiny niche magazine, which may have like a fraction of the followership and readership of the New York Times, these people are further down the funnel. We say it's a more narrow target group.

Jens (01:45:20.322)
Because they actually, if they read a bike magazine, I guess they might be interested into bikes. So they are way more willing to actually purchase this tire than the New York Times reader.

James Huang (01:45:20.43)
Mm-hmm.

James Huang (01:45:35.446)
Right, right. mean, that that makes sense because I guess is what I was talking about earlier as far as it being like a higher value audience member to somebody. I again like my.

My subscriber audience is, I guess looking at it now, it's not actually not that small surprisingly, but certainly not huge. But the level of engagement is pretty high. The level of readership is pretty high. I would say the level of general industry and product knowledge is surprisingly high, or maybe even not surprisingly high. Like it's just sort of the audience I've cultivated over the years.

So yeah, I guess maybe a brand would be motivated to provide some loaner product to me to review because they would want to put that thing in front of those of that audience, you whatever the coverage may be. And I guess that's sort of the game that I have to play now, right? mean,

But I guess from my perspective, it's been kind of nice that again, I can't cover everything. And I am certainly not lacking for things to write about. If anything, I am so wishing for another few hours in the day or another couple days in the week because I just cannot cover as much stuff as I want to.

Jens (01:46:56.44)
Do you think that in in we say in in Germany is like a wish concert We say that that's a term like if you could like now your day would have more hours or let's say you have two More persons on your team to cover this kind of stuff Would you go down this route?

James Huang (01:47:16.908)
I would probably cover more stuff, but I think right now, what sits very high on my priority list is getting a podcast going again. Because I did used to host a tech-focused podcast for not even really sure how many years now, and I do feel like it's another...

Another media channel so to speak that really appeals to a lot of people I mean a lot of folks don't have time to sit down and read a four thousand word article but if you had something if you had a podcast that went for an hour or in this case to You had a podcast that ran for an hour or so that you could just have running in the background while you're doing some other stuff that

Jens (01:47:54.935)
You

James Huang (01:48:01.71)
people still would pay attention to that podcast, but they're still able to get all the things done. It just works better for a lot of people who are like, listen to it in the car on the way to work. so if I were to have another one, two or three people like podcast is definitely very, very high on my list of things to do, but I probably, I shouldn't even say probably, I would definitely cover more, more product.

stuff in general, because I just want to cover more. If I look at the sort of audience that I am trying to appeal to, is maybe by subconscious design. Like I'm basically sort of appealing to people who are like me. Like they are middle-aged people who have been riding for a long time, who have a fair bit of experience with their bikes, who have probably multiple bikes, multiple different types of bikes.

have a lot of varied interest in cycling and You know, there are a lot of things to cover there like I ride gravel bikes and Cross-country bikes and trail bikes. I have a dedicated park bike, you know, I have fat bikes. I have cargo bikes like I try to spend as much time a big as big a portion of my life sitting on a bicycle as I can whatever type of bicycle that may be and

There is just so much out there and it's hard to filter through everything. But if I look at, if I view my typical audience member as being me, there is an awful lot of ground to cover it. I can't do it by myself.

Jens (01:49:37.614)
To come to somewhat of a conclusion, I would draft some kind of a picture that the media, as we talked through the rise of print, the rise of social media, the changes it underwent, that we will see maybe a further transformation in the

content in which channels it will actually go and how people will consume it. So while we see and you said there's this middle-aged person who has somewhat of a background and maybe an enthusiast to actually be willing to read a longer review and also has the attention span of following

a podcast maybe for an hour or in this case two then this person might

get an offering again in the next couple of years, I guess. Because the media needs to transform.

James Huang (01:50:54.31)
so and I think it's it used to be that you wanted to be big as far as media like you wanted to be part of a big outlet a lot of reach a lot of resources and now I feel like there has been this massive shift toward very small like you don't follow publications you follow people and there is a very challenging like if you sit somewhere in the middle of there like that's that's a tough place to be in

But now I feel like what I hear more most often from people is they, would say lives in general have gotten so busy, so hectic. People spend so much of their time being just, you know, just, just trying to, make it through the day sort of thing. Um, that what they want now is they,

You brought up this idea of curation earlier. They, they want to pay attention to the people that they know that they can reliably trust for good information, reliable information, truthful information. I feel like people are willing to pay for that. And I feel like there has been a big shift toward just following the people and publications and content that you feel like will make your life kind of better in some way. Right? Like,

I am definitely not out there trying to be a cheerleader for every product or manufacturer or whatever. If I can keep someone from making a mistake, like if I can keep someone from buying some $5,000 bike that turned out to be not very good, then I would consider that to be a job well done. but you know, you said earlier that, you know, you found my riding to be, I think you said entertaining. but

If I can inform people, also provide people with some level of entertainment that, you know, maybe just brightens up their day even a little bit, even if it's just some sort of product review or whatever, if I can provide information and some sort of distraction from what might otherwise be cluttering up their lives, then I would consider that to be a successful venture.

Jens (01:53:09.102)
That's a good point. I mean, you brought it up like there's maybe a diversification and it's the same if you want to compare it to music. You would say, I like to listen to jazz. And then that's pretty a broad spectrum to talk about jazz. is it like freestyle, experimental, new jazz, old school jazz? Even just like, maybe you're totally not into some parts of this.

umbrella called jazz like there's like parts of it you don't like at all and I think it's the same with the media and you refer to it as People want to listen to a person they actually trust and maybe got this trust like How you say that proven? Because they they used the same product and had the same experience as it was written

in the review or in whatever article. maybe the same with music lovers. They have a very specific style they like to listen to. Maybe they have also a very specific writing style they'd like to read or listen to. So that might be the future. Because we see even in the bigger picture in social structures, like we have a

diversification in people, how they identify or what they try to do. Like you said, you are, you have fun on every bike out there, but this is just you. And maybe out there, there's some person, it's a die hard fat bike, single speed guy. And there's nothing besides that. Everything else just plainly sucks. I'm over-exaggerating here, but you get the idea. So.

This guy might need to find the media outlet which is just covering this FET by single speed, whatever. Because he will be happy and he will be in his own echo chamber in a maybe good kind of way. Because that's his escape. That's what he's interested in.

James Huang (01:55:29.39)
I mean, there's no way I can appeal to everyone, obviously. if I can, so that's probably not the person that I am trying to go after just because I'm not trying to hyper specialize like that. But again, like if I feel like for any immediate outlet, it's just absolutely.

critical to identify who your audience is or who you want it to be and then you have to Do everything you have to put yourself in the perspective of that person Like what do they want to see? What do they want to hear? What is like the tone of what they want to hear? I'm not saying that you need to change who you are to suit that person But I think it's really important to just keep in mind what that person wants to see because

especially for me, if I'm looking at it from the perspective of like, what can I, what, what am I doing that would, that would prompt someone to actually pay to read and consume my content? What does that person want to see? Um, and in my case, they want good, solid, deep information. Um, and that's what I'm trying to provide, but I think every media outlet has to do that exact thing and they can choose or not to, uh, you know, figure out

what sort of niche they want to cover or if they want to be super broad, but they have to make that decision one way the other and then go from there.

Jens (01:56:58.702)
100 %

James Huang (01:57:01.208)
So fingers crossed, we'll see if I can make a living out of this.

Jens (01:57:04.078)
Hopefully we all, we all, yeah, perfect. I that's pretty much it, right? I mean, we covered it pretty extensively. I don't want to like really pick on companies now on how they, on where they're spent their advertising dollars. So that's maybe not necessary, but thank you a lot for your time. This was very insightful.

James Huang (01:57:23.634)
yeah. Yeah.

Jens (01:57:33.32)
and I hope we could shed some light into what media came from, how it developed and maybe where it will go.

James Huang (01:57:44.226)
Yeah, yeah, for anyone who is still awake listening to this, thanks so much for listening. Jens, it was good to catch up with you again after so long. Maybe we'll actually see each other in person again sometime.

Jens (01:57:53.186)
Yeah, hopefully maybe add some press camp again Who knows? Perfect. Thank you. I Will just like now hit stop. Are you are familiar with Riverside? Are you?

James Huang (01:57:57.432)
We'll see, never know.

James Huang (01:58:07.096)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.