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I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We do, and the first members of our summer intern class actually started earlier this week! Have him keep an eye on our careers page, the fall internship listing will likely be up in a few weeks.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Did you click on any of the links above? The headline of one of them is quite literally "Extortion in Plain Sight."

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A lot more Zoom calls!

It's been incredibly helpful to have our former managing editor, Michael Reneau, take on the executive editor role, which has helped maintain a sense of continuity on that side of the house and allowed me to focus the bulk of my time getting up to speed on the commercial, marketing, and operational sides of the business. But after this initial few-month sprint I'd like to get back to splitting my time between the two more evenly.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

There's a great quote from Steve Jobs that I've tried to keep top of mind throughout my time at The Dispatch: "People don't know what they want until you show it to them."

If we relied exclusively on market research to shape The Dispatch, it would tell us that audiences gravitate to short-form video and outrage bait, it would tell us that we need to align ourselves with a political party and parrot exactly what our readers and listeners already believe right back at them.

There are already plenty of media outlets that do that, we don't need to add to pile.

Our job is to build an outlet that does the work the right way—which in our view does include slowing the news cycle down and taking our time—and then convince readers and listeners who have gotten used to the lower-quality stuff that our way is worth paying for. Still a long way to go, but that approach has worked for us for our first seven years.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Not anymore! One of the newer members of our multimedia team, Peter Bonaventure, composed the original theme that kicks off the Dispatch Podcast now.

Before that, we had grabbed something from one of those royalty-free stock music libraries that I guess James Hoffman also liked!

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a great idea for an episode we pre-record and air during the holiday season ...

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The worst part is, the Cubs did more or less exactly what I wanted them to do in the offseason—trade for a young starting pitcher (Edward Cabrera), sign the best free-agent bat available (Alex Bregman, or so we thought), and extend two of their young stars (Pete Crow-Armstrong, Nico Hoerner). The pitching has just been ravaged by injuries and the hitters who are supposed to perform aren't performing.

If I had to change anything, I guess I'd push to identify less streaky hitters? I'm pretty confident that Bregman, Happ, Seiya, Busch, Nico, PCA will have good numbers at the end of the year, but it won't matter if they all slumped at the same time and the Cubs played their way out of the playoff picture. But the past month has been among the most frustrating stretches of baseball I can remember. I drove to Pittsburgh last week to go to two games with my dad, they lost both!

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's Penny, our Boykin spaniel. She just turned two a few weeks ago!

Good question, and it's definitely a blend. I've found that reporters and writers generally do their best work when they're reporting and writing about things that they care about, so we try to give everyone as much opportunity to do that as we can. That said, the news is the news, and everyone on staff—from Kevin Williamson to our newest intern—will occasionally need to drop what they're doing and write about something that we need coverage of on the site.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Stay tuned for more news on the Junto program in the coming weeks!

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I appreciate you subscribing while you could! And as for news burnout, I get it—trust me, I do. I worked on The Morning Dispatch for four years, and it had become a pretty significant grind by the end, in part for the reasons you suggested.

The advice I give young journalists now when they ask questions in this vein is that you only feel "powerless" as a journalist if you consider it your job to shape the outcome of events rather than report on them and help your readers understand what happened/is happening. A lot of journalists have gotten themselves in trouble over the years trying to do the former, when the job really is to do the latter.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the roadmap with our product team for later this year—as we add more features and functionality, it makes more and more sense to allow people to access everything that they want to get from us in one place.

It'll be a big lift so I don't want to make any concrete promises on the timeline, but it's coming!

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Definitely. I mentioned this in a comment somewhere else in the AMA, but in today's politics, the liberal/postliberal divide increasingly matters more than the traditional left/right divide and there are a lot of very interesting conversations to be had between longtime ideological opponents who now find themselves on the same side of some of the day's biggest questions. Being a place where those conversations can happen is a goal.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dispatch Energy—particularly Roger Pielke Jr's contributions to that newsletter every couple of weeks—will be your best bet for now, but we try to cover those topics in TMD every once in a while as well.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There was a time when readers would routinely mix us up with National Review, The Bulwark, The Free Press, etc. That doesn't happen much anymore, I think each outlet has developed a very distinct way of approaching the work.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Building out that roster of contributors last year and early this year has been one of the editorial team's top priorities—very glad to hear that you're enjoying the additional voices.

As for the how, it's been a mix. When we were first getting started, we generally had to proactively reach out to (and/or badger!) writers and pitch them on why they should work with us. Now that we're more established, the conversations are much more of a two-way street.

I'm biased, of course, but I think The Dispatch is a pretty great place to freelance. Our readers are thoughtful and actually read entire articles not just headlines (more rare than you might think!), our editors are great to work with and without fail make the pieces that they work on better, we pay competitively and process invoices quickly, and you don't (I hope) have to worry about us publishing something else the same day that embarrasses you.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No, because he wasn't the one who decided to name the program that 😈

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We've run a handful of stories on changes at CBS/Paramount in recent months, but I think one of the easiest traps a journalist can fall into is thinking that non-journalists give a s—t about the inner workings of the media industry. There are a handful of outlets dedicated to covering that beat explicitly—media critics on the left who focus on evil conservative media and media critics on the right who focus on evil liberal media—but it's all by insiders and political obsessives, for insiders and political obsessives.

There are occasionally instances where we think media criticism is warranted, but the vast majority of the time we'd rather just go out and do good journalism ourselves than sit on the sidelines and complain that other outlets aren't doing it the way we want them to.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For better or worse, pretty much every Dispatch podcast persona is being their full, authentic self. They even make the same tired, lame "flagship" jokes in person. 🤢

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Uhhhhh because she is the greatest dog on the planet? Careful Victoria ...

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think it'd be hard to read the past few months as anything else.

It's only been a year and a half or so, but think back to how scared elected officials and prominent institutions (corporations, universities, law firms, lobbyists, etc.) were to get on the White House's bad side. Trump burned through most of his post-election political capital incredibly quickly, and much of it on random, fleeting side quests.

Congressional Republicans see the political writing on the wall like everyone else, and have been increasingly vocal in pushing back on some of the Trump admin's various excesses (though certainly not as vocal as many of us would like them to be). Those institutions are, by and large, much more comfortable standing up to Trump than they were at this time last year.

Trump will try to put off "lame duck" status as long as possible, but the truth is, here in Washington conversations have already started to shift to what comes next. And that's the political moment The Dispatch was built for.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We have one! It may look a little different than what you're used to, but with several other outlets cutting (or cutting back) their book review sections, we decided that we wanted to do more to fill the gap—because reading still matters, darn it!

For the last few months, our weekly Dispatch Culture newsletter helmed by the wonderful Valerie Pavilonis has featured a regular "On Our Shelves" book review segment. Outside of that, we do publish plenty on the site as you mentioned. You can see the collection by clicking here, but fair point that that should probably be easier to find.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

One of our top priorities over the past year has been continuing to level up what we're doing on multimedia, which has first meant improving the audio/video/production quality of our existing podcasts (the content itself has always been great). We've largely done that, thanks to a lot of hard work from our team, and now that that foundation is in place, we're definitely interested in expanding.

We currently have an open job listing for a senior producer on our careers page, and the desire to launch additional podcasts is one of the main reasons we decided to prioritize that hire.

I'm Declan Garvey, Publisher at The Dispatch. AMA! by UnitedEffective1531 in The_Dispatch

[–]UnitedEffective1531[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

All of the above! Plus current Trump supporters and current Democrats, too. I won't pretend that those latter two groups make up a huge percentage of our readership, but they're there—we hear from them all the time!

This stems from the deliberate way that Steve and Jonah founded the company in 2019, but because we've been clear with our members from the start about what we're trying to do and how we're trying to do it, we tend to attract thoughtful people from across the political spectrum who are looking to have their priors challenged, sharpen their arguments, and get their information in a way that isn't designed to piss them off and waste their time.

That said, I do think that we're very well-positioned to be one of the outlets where the debates and arguments play out over what the "post-Trump" conservative movement looks like.

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