Earlywork #26: Trust in the Media feat. The Daily Aus
Featuring Sam Koslowski from The Daily Aus and Joey Moshinsky from MathGaps
Hey Earlyworkers!
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Free career resources for young people interested or working in tech & startups
Interviews with young startup founders and employees
A roundup of the latest industry news
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🌏 Community Update
With almost 400 members (and growing!), the Earlywork Community is brimming with young people doing all sorts of amazing things and from all walks of life.
Hop on over to join in on discussions with other young Aussies in tech & startups, stay up to date with industry news & events, and find/share job opportunities.
In the spirit of creating a place for our members to connect with and learn from each other, we decided to launch a series of Earlywork Masterclasses. We ran our pilot event last week featuring Sam Koslowski from The Daily Aus, who spoke about Trust in the Media.
This leads us to this edition’s Weekly Cheeky Tip - let’s take a peek, shall we?
💡Weekly Cheeky Tip
I recently read the book Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky in an attempt to improve my focus and clear out distractions. Tactic #25 really stood out to me; it was simply “Ignore the news”. Ignore the news?! But what about being informed, cultured and woke?
Upon further reflection, I realised that most of my news consumption was probably closer to doomscrolling and falling for click-baity articles. How can we cut through the crap and get to the stories that matter? I was keen to get some answers and Sam’s Masterclass on Trust in the Media seemed like the place to go for them.
But, before we dive in, let’s find out a bit more about Sam and his startup, The Daily Aus.
New account, who dis?
The Daily Aus started off the same way a lot of startups do - the two founders, Sam and Zara decided to quit their full-time jobs in pursuit of a dream to make the news more accessible and impartial, especially for young people. Fast forward 4 and a bit years and now The Daily Aus brings the news to over 100K users across multiple social platforms including Instagram and TikTok.
So what’s the big deal with trust in the media?
Sam puts it quite simply - there is no trust in the media. The numbers are out there to prove it too. The most recent Digital News Report from the University of Canberra reveals that two out of three Australians under 30 have zero trust in the media1 - dayummmm.
But why is that?
There are two key factors at play here according to Sam:
“The proliferation of the democratisation of information…” - ok, that’s a lot of “-ations”, but basically the idea is that “anyone is a journalist...which means that you can get the news wrong a lot”. Consider how easy it is to share information and broadcast it at lightning speed to the public these days on social media platforms.
Note: This TedTalk on “Citizen Journalism” is one that I’ve found quite useful to learn more about this!
“News Limited runs the show...so that doesn’t do a lot to instil a sense of trust in the industry”. The industry is not structured in a way that instils trust. This is quite a classic case of having an old-school industry that’s been run in a certain way since, well, forever. But for all the entrepreneurs out there, it’s ripe for disruption.
“We’ve been messaged over the years by people who have said, ‘Hey, are you guys associated with News Limited? We wanted to know before we follow you…It’s an interesting kind of logic to draw...going straight from ‘I’m seeing a new media product online’ to ‘It must be owned by Rupert Murdoch’’” - Sam Koslowski
Ok, things sound pretty dire, what does The Daily Aus do differently?
It all boils down to one thing for The Daily Aus; “Meta-Honesty”. It’s about being “ridiculously transparent” with everyone, at all times.
This post partnered with Bed Threads says it all - check out the caption:
“We asked Bed Threads for some prizes, and they said hell yeah. We're not making money from this promotion - our aim is to reach a new group of young Australians, so we can change the face of media in Australia and sleep well at night (in our Bed Threads.).”
Is that refreshing or what!
The other thread is about owning up to any mistakes. Even with a strict editorial process, some details can slip through the cracks. What The Daily Aus does differently from traditional news media outlets is that they are completely open with their audience - they rectify the post, let their audience know, and they keep the old post so people can see the difference.
It’s all in the details.
Sam wrapped up his presentation by posing a final question to the audience - “How does this idea of meta-honesty relate to your particular kinds of professional ecosystems?”
So what do ya’ll think? What’s the next industry that needs to adopt this meta-honesty approach?
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What content would you like us to cover next? Anything we missed? Keen to share your own Weekly Cheeky Tip?
Tweet us, drop a comment or shoot us a message at team@earlywork.co.
1️⃣ 🕐 💪 One Minute Hustle
We are back once again with One Minute Hustle, a bite-sized interview with an emerging Australian young startup founder or operator. This week let’s get inside the noggin of a founder who’s tackling one of our favourite (or perhaps, least favourite) subjects from high school.
Joey Moshinsky, Founder @ MathGaps
What are you working on?
I am currently working on an EdTech startup called MathGaps. We are building an online diagnostic tool that allows students to find gaps in their foundational maths knowledge and then fill them in the optimal order.
Over time we want to become a leading software provider for tutoring companies.
How’d you get started?
The founding idea was developed during a lockdown conversation with my brother, Sonny, who is a maths tutor.
Sonny was frustrated by how time-consuming it is to identify gaps in maths foundational knowledge, and the fact that students with gaps struggle to learn new material, compounding the issue over time.
Intrigued by this problem, we started to brainstorm ways to efficiently perform diagnostic testing. Over time we conceptualised MathGaps and started building the software.
Why do you do what you do?
Technology is reshaping modern education systems and it is fantastic to be part of this global movement. We believe MathGaps will engage students, dramatically improve their learning outcomes and create immense social value, which is very exciting.
🗞 News Room
Juicy stories from the Australian tech & startup community this week:
Fastly global internet outage: why did so many sites go down - The Conversation
Antler just invested in 13 new startups – and nearly half have a female founder who’s also the CEO - Startup Daily
IAG Firemark Ventures, Squarepeg Ventures invests in UpGuard - Smart Company
Apple WWDC 2021: the 15 biggest announcements - The Verge
Reddit’s co-founder backs $65 million series B into a fake chicken nuggets startup founded by a teen Australian - Startup Daily
What sort of news would you like to see curated in future editions? Shoot us a message:
Park, S., Fisher, C., Lee, J.Y., McGuinness, K., Sang, Y., O’Neil, M., Jensen, M., McCallum, K., Fuller, G. (2020). Digital News Report: Australia 2020. Canberra: News & Media Research Centre, University of Canberra