- Hi everyone, and welcome to the Crosscut festival.

I'm Starla Sampaco host of Cross-cut Now on KCTS Nine and I'm excited to have Amanda Zamora and Emily Ramshaw joining us today.

Amanda and Emily are the co-founders of The 19th, a nonprofit female forward media organization launched on the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment.

Amanda and Emily are no strangers to the media industry.

Prior to becoming the publisher of The 19th, Amanda spent nearly two decades as a digital editor, product manager and audience strategist at newsrooms like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica and the Washington Post.

And before becoming the CEO of The 19th, Emily was previously editor in chief of the Texas Tribune.

She also serves on the board of the Pulitzer Prize.

Amanda, Emily, thank you for being here.

- Thanks for having us - For having us.

- I'm really excited to chat with you two today.

And I wanted to start by asking if there was a particular moment in either of your careers that sparked your idea for The 19th and made you think we need to have better reporting on gender, politics and policy.

- Sure, I mean, I'll jump in there.

I think it really started for me about five years ago when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

I was on maternity leave with a baby girl, and we'd been reading so many headlines around, you know, women and electability women and likeability that just sort of felt so fundamentally sexist in nature.

And I think in that moment, I thought, you know, wouldn't it be great if we had a new national newsroom of record that centered the experiences particular of women.

And so that was sort of the kernel of the idea.

I was raising a little girl and it was a hard time to think about doing something new, but four years later, Amanda and I really put our heads together.

We had, you know, more women than ever on the 2020 stage, more women of color on the 2020 stage.

And that really was the impetus for us to say, this is the moment to take the leap.

- All right, thank you, Emily.

Well, I know that as a female forward organization, The 19th aims to cover politics and policy through a gender lens.

I'd love to unpack that.

What does that mean?

Amanda, do you wanna take this one?

- Sure, well, we're obviously looking at women being the majority of the American electorate and at a very basic level, we were interested in centering women's voices in all of their nuance and complexity, not treating, you know, that voting block as a monolith, but really trying to get at, you know, the diversity of the lived experience of this nations women whether they are, you know, caretakers of children in school or taking care of older parents in the out of the workforce, women living in suburban areas, off the coast and rural areas.

So that's where we started.

And I think one of the things that we quickly realized as we were forming this team is that there are plenty of other people who are marginalized on the basis of their gender, who are not women.

And we have been learning a lot and really committed to covering the LGBTQ community and centering those voices as well and trying to understand, you know, all of the ways in which, you know, trans folks and LGBTQ folks are still marginalized, where they don't have, you know, equal access to civil rights or help the healthcare system or are dealing with voter suppression.

So yeah, I mean, that's sort of in a nutshell, that's where we started and we've definitely expanded our focus beyond that in the year since, almost a year since we launched.

- Wow, and I appreciate that you mentioned that we are not a monolith, and I think it's interesting for the folks who are viewing.

If you look at the way The 19th is spelled, there's actually an asterisk at the end, and that asterisk is meant to be a visible reminder of those who've been omitted by our democracy because the 19th amendment really only gave white women the right to vote.

In practice, many women of color were excluded.

So I'd love to go off of what you were just talking about Amanda, about what specifically The 19th is doing to ensure that the voices of women of color and folks of color are being elevated in your work.

- I think it all really starts with the reporting.

First of all, you know, we hired a diverse newsroom of people to examine, you know, gender and politics and policy.

We've got staff now in I think 10 states in total.

We've got people from different backgrounds and lived experiences.

And the first thing that we say is that we expect, and we appreciate those lived experiences.

We expect you to bring them with you to work.

I think that's a point of departure from a lot of, you know, the kind of, even the training that I had as a reporter, you're sort of expected to kind of, you know, adopt this sort of very neutral objective process of reporting that, you know, compartmentalizes who you are as a person.

And what we're saying is no, we feel like we can do our best journalism by yes, applying all of those great standards of journalistic rigor, but also leaning into who people are and what they bring in terms of the way that they see the world.

So I think that translates into reporting that centers, the people that we're striving to cover, you know, that diverse electorate, whether it's race or geography or socioeconomic or gender identity and continuing to be committed to building a diverse team that lets us expand those lenses in meaningful ways.

Emily, is there anything I'm missing there?

- Nope, that was exactly perfect.

- I think it's interesting that you brought up, you know, that training that a lot of us got that we're expected to be neutral and it's something that I've struggled with a lot, especially as, you know, a woman of color Filipino American.

And there's, you know, there's this expectation from some folks that in order to be a good journalist, you must be free of bias, whatever that means.

And we have to be very careful about bringing our identities into our work.

How do you navigate that as journalists, either as the leaders of your own newsroom now, or even when you were working in newsrooms like the Texas Tribune, how did you navigate that?

I mean I would just say this has been a journey and look like it's no surprise to any of you.

I'm sitting here as a white woman of privilege in this space.

And I received the same kind of journalism training that I think a lot of us did, which is, you know, making sure we're talking to both sides and making sure we're presenting everybody's argument.

When at the end of the day the reality is some people are peddling truths and some people are peddling lies and misinformation.

And I think, we made beyond the pivot to increasingly cover the LGBTQ community, which we talked about, Amanda talked about a minute ago.

The other thing we did this year is decide that we are pivoting from this label of a nonpartisan newsroom to an independent newsroom, with the idea of meaning that, you know, we wanna have the flexibility to say, we stand for gender equity.

We stand for racial justice.

We stand for human rights.

And at the end of the day, we peddle facts and we peddle science and we peddle accurate information.

And there are both sides to every story when you're dealing with that, with those arenas and the issues that we've covered.

So I think that's been an important pivot for us.

And I think one that you're gonna see even more newsrooms emulating.

- Yeah, that's really interesting.

How has your audience been reacting to that decision to not peddle that whole, both sides ism?

- We just got incredible response.

I mean, I think one thing that's been fantastic is that we heard from after we made that pivot, we heard from a lot of folks who are really exceedingly excited about that progression for us.

- Awesome, thank you, Emily.

Well, I do know that a lot of your content from The 19th is geared towards empowering women, people of color and folks who are LGBTQ, but I'm curious, how do we get straight white men to care about these issues and to look at them through a gender lens?

I ask that because often straight white men are still the gatekeepers to a lot of opportunities that affect people of color or even the decision makers.

How do we get them to look at things through a gender lens?

- I mean the two ways that come to mind are that we're covering them.

So Amanda Becker did tremendous of the Lincoln project.

You know, the never Trump organization that was really working in the last campaign cycle to try to make sure that he was not reelected.

And she was really examining how women were key, should have been key to their messaging if they were really trying to swing Republican voters or sway them away from Trump and pointing out that a lot of their campaign or their tactics and strategies were not inclusive of women.

So I think there's that meta, the journalism always allows us, I think, to kind of examine the gender dynamics of power.

But then also frankly, I think just by creating more journalism and making sure that for every conversation in every story that the mainstream media is covering, that we've got a 19th version that really is centering gender and racial equity in our headlines so that when you're stacking them all up, I think that the one of these things is not like the other approach.

We want more of that until we can hopefully, you know, nudge or influence, mainstream media frankly, to pay more attention to how they're framing these stories.

- Yeah, Emily, do you have anything to add to that?

- Just that it's been really a special journey to be doing this with somebody like Amanda, who is so devoted to the audience.

I mean, I think I went into this as sort of a, you know, a politics hound, like a news hound.

And I think to sort of step back and reframe this through the lens of what is our audience looking for?

How can we best serve them?

Has sort of flipped the media paradigm for us on its head and has been supremely rewarding.

- Yeah, and I know that, you know, you have that background, Amanda in audience engagement, and really you know, listening to your audience, both of you really.

What have you been hearing from your audience about the types of content they want to see more of?

- Well, they want to content that reflects them first and foremost.

And that's, you know, we ask analysts, I'm not gonna remember how to say her last name frankly so I'm not gonna do it, but our newsletter editor Annalise is terrific.

And one of the things she asks for every time you subscribe, she asks why you're subscribing to The 19th.

And people time and time again, they talk about seeing us at Erin Haynes on MSNBC, or seeing us out on social and just being so appreciative of finally seeing again, gender and racial equity centered in our headlines.

And they're just, you know, hungry for that kind of serious substantive coverage.

I think people are really gravitating toward the tremendous reporting of Kate Zosyn, who is covering the LGBTQ community for us in a way that I don't think other mainstream outlets are doing with regard to politics and policy.

With our events, we get a lot of really great feedback just in terms of, again, substantive conversations that are centering women and women of color and the LGBTQ community.

And frankly, conversations and coverage that make people, and maybe that really challenged the status quo and make people uncomfortable, that we're willing to kind of sit with that.

And so I think, yeah, people are hungry for that coverage.

Emily, what am I missing?

- Just that I love every time I go on social media and I see like a young black woman saying, you know, I have never seen myself or my experiences or my family represented like this before in a legacy media publication.

I find that kind of feedback to be so rewarding and so empowering because it means that we are doing the job.

- Yeah, and I think it absolutely makes a big difference when folks have, you know, the identities that we share when we're not portrayed in a way that otherizes us, you know, in a way that humanizes us.

And I think that's really missing right now.

And I'd love to see more of that.

Speaking of, you know, otherizing certain folks in our audiences, I'm curious to get your take.

I was thinking about this a lot as I preped for this interview.

When we talk about female leadership, even the way that we talk about female leadership is very gendered.

I mean, we hear words like She E O and girl boss, those are very prevalent.

It's also really common to ask women about their experiences as female fill in the blank, journalists, engineers, anything like that.

But in contrast, we don't really say He E O or boy boss to talk about men.

And we don't really ask them about their experiences as male journalists as often.

When do you think society will stop feeling this need to otherize women in this way?

What has to happen for us to get there?

- I think we need to be equitably represented at the highest ranks of, you know, certain leadership and entrepreneurship.

I mean, we still are others because we're so underrepresented.

I mean, and if you look at who's writing the national narrative, right?

And like 70% plus of politics and policy reporters and editors are men, they're almost all white men.

So they're the ones deciding what's news and what isn't, whether the story plays on the homepage or the front page who's quoted in those stories.

I mean, if you were The 19th coverage to some of those news organizations, you know, virtually everyone we quote is someone from an underrepresented background.

And I think, you know, you feel with Kamala Harris's leadership too.

It's these, how do we normalize women's leadership?

How do we normalize the leadership of women of color and underrepresented people?

And it's by leveling the playing field and sort of rewriting who gets to tell our nation's stories.

Amanda, didn't I say there?

- Yeah, I think that the second piece of that that's really super important because yes, it's getting better representation in positions of leadership it's having, you know, women like you leading and asking the questions.

I won't rest until The 19th is moderating a presidential debate, but I also think it's about, it's not just about the icing on top, so to speak.

It's about the culture of the entire company of an organization of a system that makes it more hospitable for women and women of color to operate.

And one of the things that we learned, for instance, by virtue of this remote, we started, we pulled our team together just in time to get up and off the ground for last August.

That means that we hired the majority, actually all of the people that we hired last year, we hired in the middle of a pandemic.

We were working a hundred percent remote.

That meant having people all over the country, people with jobs and partners and kids, trying to figure out how to do their part to get our startup launched.

That meant we had to be really flexible and empathetic and supportive of a team that had a lot of different needs.

I think about how that translates with regard to people's again, people's identities and lived experiences and being willing to kind of be open and vulnerable to questions about our leadership even.

That's been another lesson for us that we're gonna continue to be learning about as we grow this organization.

Like, so it's not just about hiring or placing, you know, a diverse roster of folks in the right places.

It's about keeping them and supporting them and making sure that they feel that, you know, your organization is a place that they can grow and impact and shape the trajectory of the organization.

I think that makes a big difference.

It's not just about who you hire in place in positions it's and how you enable them to shape the trajectory of the work.

- I think it's really interesting that you've, you know, throughout this event, you've brought up this idea of, you know, it's not just the icing, like you said, you know, it's everyone within an organization.

And I know that so many media organizations are struggling to retain a diverse workforce.

Recruiting is one thing, retention is another.

Your experience leading a big news organization, what are some of those strategies that have helped you retain folks of color, for example, or retain a diverse workforce?

And what are some of those strategies that we could learn from you?

- Emily can talk about our unparalleled benefits.

We're really trying to make it impossible to pick anything other than The 19th.

- That's true, that's where I'll start.

I mean, I think, you know, look, I believe that the reason more women and women of color in particular don't advance to the highest levels of newsroom leadership is that we make it really difficult in those years where you're navigating both children and, you know, aging parents and trying to care for your family.

And so we, you know, we're one of the few, if only newsrooms in the country that offers things like six months of fully paid family leave, four months of fully paid caregiver leave so that you can take care of your mom or dad or your aunt if you need to, you know, we offered the parents on our team, caregiving stipends during the COVID pandemic, in order to help us get to launch, we pay for a hundred percent of our employees healthcare premiums.

I mean, I think that the goal for us, you know, four weeks of PTO, from the moment you walk in the door and it's not something that has to be earned.

And so for us, I think it's about trying to provide the kind of infrastructure around our employees that makes them feel like they're a part of a family and that they're well taken care of.

- Yeah, and then I think the other really important piece of that, again, when people ask me when they're applying for jobs at The 19th about the culture, I definitely talk about all the fun things and how we communicate and how we work together.

But I also talk about the fact that we are a culture that's open to tough conversations because we feel like that's an integral ingredient.

And for being able to do the work that we do, to be able to tackle the journalism in the way that we need to be the kind of organization that is yeah.

Just prioritizing equity as a value means being open to tough conversations and the tensions that come from building an intersectional organization.

And so, yeah, that's part of it and that's a constant work in progress for Emily and I, and the entire organization is learning together and trying to create the right particularly challenging again in an all remote environment.

Like to create a really safe constructive place for us to wrestle with some of those issues.

But as a leader being determined not to avoid them I think that's probably what happens all too often in news organizations like the first sign of discomfort and news leaders wanna shut it down and say, get back to work.

And I think we need to acknowledge, particularly in this moment of racial reckoning and so much loss of life, of livelihood, that that's simply not acceptable that people need to be seen for their entire selves.

And that means treating them with dignity and humanity and it's yeah, that requires much more of us than just, you know, punching through a checklist every day.

It means taking care of people.

- Yeah, and I think those benefits are huge, especially for those of us who didn't come from generational wealth.

I've definitely noticed that in my own career, as a journalist, you know, a lot of folks end up leaving because they simply can't afford to stay.

So it's really interesting the way that you're approaching it.

And I wish more newsrooms would think about doing things like that too.

I wanna switch gears here and talk about your experiences as media entrepreneurs.

You know, I think that there's this belief that in order to be a successful media entrepreneur and launch, you know, a newsroom as big as The 19th, you need to have a lot of money to lead a venture like that, which can be a big barrier for a lot of women and folks of color.

I've spoken to folks who think that they assume that you need to have a business background, a lot of VC funding, or just come from a really wealthy family to have a successful launch.

Was that the case for you?

- No, for neither of us.

I mean, I will talk about the privilege that has allowed us to raise money, but I will say from the get go.

I mean, we started The 19th effectively with one person giving us $25,000.

And that was $25,000 to travel the country, trying to raise the $2 million we believed we needed to really make a go at this.

And so everything, you know, this is an entity that is now raised more than $12 million.

It has been, you know, I think by all stretches of the imagination, way more successful than I think either of us imagined in pretty short order, because so many people believed in the mission, but that all started again with $25,000, which was more money than I had ever raised before.

So, you know, look, I really don't like the girl boss term.

And I do not think either Amanda or I qualify for that term which I think is just scoffed in general.

But I do think, you know, the privilege that I had grown up with allowed me to feel comfortable in the rooms where we were making those big asks.

And that's not something that to be scoffed at.

That's an important part of this equation.

At the same time this has resonated across the board, not just with major donors, but with small dollar donors who are giving us $19 a year or $19 a month, you know, we're in the middle of our spring member drive right now.

And Amanda had this vision for a newsroom that was powered by members.

And I think we hoped we have something like a thousand members in our first year.

And instead we had 10,000 plus paying members if I have that right, Amanda.

But it's just, that's been magical.

It's the combination of, you know, major philanthropists who thought this was worthy of their investment and also people for whom $19 is a big deal.

- I also wanna just say something that I have learned.

Emily and I come from different backgrounds too.

I'm the daughter of an immigrant.

I don't come from generational wealth.

I come from a very multicultural family, and I'm not the one asking for money because I'm not good at that, but I've learned a lot along the way.

And two of the things in particular is that women, I think, do themselves a disservice when they don't articulate their hopes and dreams.

I think sometimes we psyche ourselves out of even saying these things out loud.

And I think that the reason that we're here today is because Emily was brave enough to like, say the thing out loud to me, and like to keep doing that until got to a place where it was tangible, rooting each other on and encouraging each other.

And the second thing I think is just not being even though I came from a place where I may not be as comfortable in all of those rooms.

Like for me learning to like back up and make the ask anyway, because there's money to be had.

And I think that there are a lot of really interesting projects right now that I hope that all of you will look into and donate to Metro College launching, Epicenter New York and URL Media to really try to elevate the stories of people of color there in New York and across the country, Lauren Williams and Akoto Ofori-Atta, before you are relaunching Capital B, another non-profit newsroom that centering black voices.

And there's just so much, really good work prism, fuller project, so many great projects that are really trying to expand what is offered to an American public that's hungry for, you know, more representative journalism.

And any way that you can throw a dime their way.

Like, please do, like, we need to be investing in journalism like this.

It's doesn't always fall, you know, money doesn't come falling from trees or whatever but like, I do think that the bottom up, you know, donations make a big difference too.

So anyway, just putting that out there.

- Well, I love that, you know, you pitched yourself even on here.

And I think that that's something that's really hard for a lot of people, especially women and folks of color to do.

How do you, what tips do you have for folks who are really struggling to build that confidence, to make those big asks, whether it's VC funding or negotiating their pay?

Sometimes it's really hard to just build up the confidence in the first place.

What advice do you have for folks who struggle with that?

- Mine is silly, but I think it has not failed me yet.

And that is that I remember when I was negotiating, when I got my first salary offer, my mom said to me, you always ask for more because the worst thing they can say is no, and that's not such a bad thing for them to say.

And that sounds so silly and basic, but it really works.

It has worked, you know, on the negotiation front, it has worked on the fundraising stuff.

As Amanda said, it's just about getting the guts to say, you know what, the number I need is not $10,000 to make a go at this, it's $100000 to make me go with this.

Or in the craziest world, it's not $100000, it's $1000000 that it's really gonna take to build this, you know, this brand new venture and having the confidence in your mission, but also just it's never gonna feel good and comfortable.

I ask for money about 80% of the day, and it's still makes me feel queasy literally every time I do it.

My hands sweat, my knees shake like it's, you know, but it's for the audience and it's for the mission.

It's not about me.

And I think you're giving them an opportunity and that's to invest in something really special.

And that's what I have to keep reminding myself.

- Yeah, I think that that translates actually down to the personal or individual level as well.

I think the two tips that I would give one is if someone asks you your salary, you are not obliged to give them that information.

And when you do give them a number, it should be what you're worth and what you need, not, you know, what you made before.

It's none of their business.

And the second thing is to really feel confident in what that number is do the homework.

Go and do the research, what are the comparable roles?

So if for an organization like us, we did the homework to figure out here's what it's really gonna take to get this done so that when people asked, we could say, well, your investment is gonna help us do X, Y, and Z.

Same thing applies on a personal level.

Like here are my skills.

Here's what I bring to the table.

Here's what it's worth.

Here's what it's gonna cost you.

Here's what I'm gonna require in order to succeed, you know, for you to do the job that you need me to do.

So that would be my 2 cents.

- Yeah, thank you.

I hope all of us are taking notes as we prepare to make our big asks.

- It's worth a lot than 2 cents.

(Laughs) - All right, we are moving towards the end of our session, but I have one last question for you.

I know that The 19th came out of the gate with a lot of momentum.

In fact, the first time I had heard of The 19th that had to do with the announcement about Meghan Markle being involved in the 2020 summit.

You also had big speakers like Stacy Abrams and Kamala Harris.

How do you keep that momentum going?

And what's next for The 19th?

- We're so tired.

(Laughs) (inaudible chatter) - I'm going on my first vacation in a months or two, my first vacation in like 18 months.

So that's hopefully how, but I don't know Amanda--- - We have another big annual summit, our second annual.

So we had our inaugural summit in August.

We're having our second annual summit, this coming August.

We're gonna have more, really not just big names, but really meaningful conversations.

We're gonna be digging into a day of talking about gender and sports, gender equity in sports, which I think is so relevant right now as you look at what sort of what's rolling across state legislatures around the country and just our entire staff is like obsessed with sports and gender.

Well, almost our entire staff.

I'm gonna start like, oh, there's gonna be a slack battle about that statement.

But so the summit is something that we're really excited about.

We're excited to take our journalism into podcasting in the next year.

That's a big, exciting thing for us.

I don't know what else is on the horizon.

And we're really, we're still hiring.

We have so many jobs that we're filling right now.

- I mean, nearly doubling the size of our newsroom over the next several months.

So much more great journalism to come.

- Wow, well, sounds like you are running a marathon.

I do not envy the position you're in, but have a lot of admiration for you.

All right, well, thank you so much.

We are unfortunately out of time and for all of you watching, you can learn more about The 19th at 19thnews.org, Amanda and Emily, thank you again for spending time with us.

- Thank you, Starla.

Great to be here.

- Yes, and I enjoyed chatting with both of you and to our viewers, thank you all for joining us.