Meredith Klein of Meredith and the Media spoke with Stephanie Mehta, the CEO of Mansueto Ventures, the parent of Fast Company and Inc. magazines, about her career.
Here is an excerpt:
- You’ve been in journalism for three decades, playing major roles at major publications including The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, BloombergLIVE, Vanity Fair, Fast Company, and now Mansueto Ventures. How has the role of journalism changed?
- I think that journalism continues to have a really important role in American society and in American business. The need for journalism remains completely unabated.
- Where I think we’ve seen changes is going back to the start of our conversation. AI makes it really easy for people to get information without necessarily having to go to the original source, and that means that our journalists at Fast Company and Inc., as well as our peers and competitors, have more pressure than ever to be original in the reporting. Stories need to be deeply reported, and journalists need to be getting information that can’t be simply found through an AI search or a query. That authority comes from having a point of view and from having deep knowledge of an industry.
- I know you spoke with my colleague, Mark Wilson, at the Festival as well. He’s somebody that I think of all the time when I think about a journalist who has the ability to do deeply reported work. He asks good questions, does his research, and does his homework.
- But because he’s been covering design, because he himself was once an entrepreneur, and because he is intellectually curious about the world, he’s able to produce stories that have an authoritative voice. People want to read Mark Wilson because he brings a point of view. He knows what he’s talking about, and he’s one of the best.
Read more here.
