"Micromedia" is the future | Yana Sosnovskaya, Zora

[00:00] Who do we have on the pod? Oh my god. [00:04] Welcome to Boys Club Interviews. This is a show where we bring on people much smarter than us to talk about the new internet. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is Boys Club. Wait, is it just Boys Club? It's just Boys Club. The Boys Club podcast? No. Just Boys Club. Hi. Hey. [00:23] Who do we have on the pod today? Jana Sosnakaia. [00:27] from [00:28] Zora. [00:29] Zorazine, she's, I think the editor in chief of Zorazine, she's so wonderful. [00:36] and so smart. [00:38] and just really like her a lot. I really like her too. I really like her too. When you think of [00:45] the archetypal cool girl. [00:47] Mm-hmm. [00:48] It's kind of her. It's her. It's her. It's definitely her. But not without any meanness. None. [00:54] She's not mean. Not an ounce of meanness. Yeah. Not a bone of meanness. We talked about new media. [01:00] micro communities monetizing through media and what that looks like. And it was really refreshing. She has like a very art forward, culture forward look at all of this work. And it's really refreshing to be around because I think you and I have a real commercial lens for everything, which can kind of sometimes suck the fun out of the room. And she was so positive and [01:26] excited and thoughtful about a different way in that I found really inspiring. Yeah. Deeply optimistic, but also very measured and grounded as well. And I think has a really...

[01:39] clear editorial lens that she uses to look at the work that she produces. And yeah, it's, it's amazing to see. So that's Yana. [01:56] Yana Sosnukaya, the cultural entrepreneur, brand strategist and visual storyteller currently working on Zora Zine. Yana, welcome to the show. [02:05] Hi, thank you so much for having me. We're so excited to have you and on a big day for Zorazine. So we're going to get into that, but thanks so much for being here. [02:13] Yeah, I'm very excited, especially because you're also a fellow zine producers. We're zine twins. We're zine sisters. Zine girls. So really excited to dive into this with you. For sure. [02:26] We think a lot about media here at Boys Club. I understand you do the same as well. For people who are maybe listening who don't spend all of their waking hours and sleeping hours thinking about on-chain media, for those folks, we'd love for you to sort of like [02:46] Pitch us the 30,000 foot vision of what on-chain media is, what decentralized media is. [02:53] to give us some grounding in this conversation, I think would be useful. This is definitely something that I'm thinking about 24-7. So I'm very glad you asked. So I [03:02] I think there are, like... [03:04] a few kind of issues right now with the current state of media, and there are obviously some of the larger ones that

[03:10] probably were not able to solve yet or were maybe too small as an industry to solve yet. You know, we've been seeing a lack of trust in just media and media disappearing as an institution, especially after the events of 2016 in the United States. So it was really interesting to see how [03:26] news outlets started migrating [03:28] to the social media channels, private telegram, [03:31] groups to SAPSTEC and just how our trust with media has been changing. And this is more kind of like [03:38] the bigger issue that I would probably lie to myself saying that I can tackle all of this. There is a bunch of other issues specifically in the cultural journalism, because just me and my team have a background on cultural journalism. [03:52] where we've been observing and struggling that there are issues with [03:56] collaboration processes, like editorial processes, some of them just outdated. There is a very big issue with the transparency both in the processes as well as in payment and compensation. [04:09] And... [04:10] monetization models. [04:12] All of it comes to [04:15] blockchain solves this, which I don't really think that it does. [04:22] I think there is a lot of potential with experimentation. And I'm talking to engineers and people way more technical and tech savvy than I am because I'm just a simple publisher. But we're talking about how the blockchain is going to be evolving in the next few years and how the quote unquote techs NFTs can evolve and what kind of potential they can have.

[04:52] going to be sold later as an NFT. Or in the academia world, people reference each other's work all the time and it's not always possible to kind of [05:02] see who referenced your work and who did it, whom you influenced. I think blockchain can really, really help tackle this challenge. [05:10] There's like this idea of collective ownership with decentralized media. As a contributor, you can have ownership, which feels different from previous versions of media that we've seen, which allows for contributor splits is a lot of the work that you've been doing with Zorazine as well. And editorial transparency, there's like those three pillars of media on the blockchain that feel different. [05:31] in your experience of working in publications before, where do you think there's going to be the most sort of tension in having this new reality come to life? [05:42] That's a great question. I think that I'm not concerned at all about the crowdfunding monetization models, for example, which are seeing, you know, Substack, Medium, Patreon, or even Paywalls kind of tackling this channel. And it really just comes down on how you communicate that with your audience and what value you're providing to your audience. I think the decentralized... [06:03] aspect [06:04] while maintaining the quality of your content or maintaining the journalistic integrity, quote unquote, is probably the biggest issue. The more I talk to people in Web3 who are [06:14] also thinking about the media and have started experimenting with decentralization, they all come down to this issue. How do you make sure that

[06:23] The quality of content is there, the people who are actually participating in the content creation, they are [06:28] either professional writers or editors, or at least they understand the editorial guidelines and the standards of this specific platform, even if it is decentralized, because [06:38] Writing is definitely a craft and an art. And as much as we all want to just publish something and find our audience, journalism is different. It has a specific set of rules, even if it's just a cultural journalism. So I think that's probably the biggest issue. And so far what we've been thinking about... [06:56] maybe kind of separating the governance between the readership and the editorial team or editorial contributors, because then readership can, you know, create governance and vote on [07:07] certain set of features or what goes live and all those things. But then you have a more kind of detailed nitty-gritty of a decision-making for people who've [07:15] who actually have that expertise and background. [07:18] Yeah, that definitely lands for us. I mean, that's something that we have come up against a lot, which is as it pertains to the Boy Scout brand, but also as it pertained to the zine project that we did as well, which is like, okay, in order for a brand to be legible to people and for people to understand it and for people to want to get behind it, they need to understand like what its worldview is. And that requires a crispness and a legibility that you need to work really hard to maintain. And when it's decentralized, it's a lot of people who are going to be able to do that. [07:44] that by definition dilutes that sort of worldview across however many number of people and how they're interpreting it. And that came to life for sure with the zine as well, where it's like, okay, there's 30 contributors, all with a different worldview and all with a different perspective. Our work is to try and figure out how to bring people

[08:02] lens across all of these different disparate voices that reflects some singular thing that people can relate to. So that feels like it is at odds with the decentralized approach. I like your what you're saying, which is basically we have a core team of people that are helping to make those decisions, which makes it [08:18] easier. But yeah, that totally resonates with us and is like a very alive issue for Voice Club all the time. I do want to go back to one thing you're saying, though, because I don't think I'm like totally following it. I really get the sort of... [08:31] idea of collective ownership and [08:34] building a media brand from the ground up that is collectively owned will result will be different right just for sure and i i can definitely see that and i feel like [08:44] the product roadmap to get there, especially with what you guys are building. So right, like that's clear. What's less clear to me is this idea of, [08:52] a broken trust in the media, [08:54] and how that gets solved through [08:58] this stack that we're talking about. Would love to dig in there. [09:02] Oh, yeah, that's a challenging one. So I think just for the record that the ambition with the Zorazine is we're definitely just positioning ourselves as a cultural publication just because that's the expertise and experience that we have. We don't have ambition to go and do very serious journalism. I know that there are some other, I've seen a TruthDAO, a really amazing group of very professional journalists, extremely experienced who are trying to tackle this challenge. [09:26] very different scale of people. We're just vibing out in here and trying to... all would serve as like, you know, some sort of a label for the

[09:34] hyperculture on chain that's happening in Web3 and [09:38] highlight the stories of builders and creators and expose them to the larger community. But [09:44] Speaking about the trust, [09:46] I think that right now, if you look at what's going on in the media landscape, [09:50] there is no problem with individual journalists or individual writers or individual reporters actually having their audience and having the trust for their audience involved. [10:00] There is usually a problem when the platform [10:02] And we know of that has an agenda. We know that, for example, New York Times has a certain agenda. We also know that Fox News have another agenda, right? And we understand that if they have an agenda, we should put some sort of a critical thinking. We should put some sort of a filter when we come and consume the content from this platform. [10:21] In my opinion, if the platform is going to be [10:24] very objective, very neutral, and you're only coming for the certain opinions of people, it just gives you more ability to understand, you know, [10:34] like get out of the echo chamber, understand what's going on in the world, have more 360 that's happening in the world. [10:41] And then... [10:42] research specific people who are contributing to this platform and see, do you trust them as a journalist or not? But at least the platform [10:50] should be neutral. [10:51] That if we talk about the news. I think what we're trying to tackle is create... [10:56] almost like a media brand. And I'm going to quote here my friend who is a part of the core team at FWB, Greg Bresnitz. He coined a term micromedia, and I've been lately absolutely obsessed with this term. I think micromedia is the future because we're creating a brand and we're

[11:13] It's more about finding the audience that vibes out with this brand. [11:18] So much of what is central to Web3 [11:21] communities is this sense of intimacy and niche community. [11:25] interest in something that [11:28] feels exactly at odds [11:30] with a lot of media monetization strategies. So I totally sort of buy this idea of like, okay, [11:37] big conglomerates of media are on the decline because there's a lack of trust. There's more individual brands now through social media. Like you can become a brand and you become your own publisher. And that is a change that has happened in the landscape. So there's all these things working against sort of a centralized media outlets being the future and these more niche communities with a sense of trust and buy-in to individuals as a platform that, [12:05] I see that completely where I think you have a lot of conviction and I am less sure is how then, uh, [12:15] you are able to reconcile those monetization strategies because the business of media is... [12:21] as many eyeballs as possible, as much research as possible, and that's what you're selling ads into, and that's what the business is. And yes, there's subscriptions and all this sort of stuff, but that's the core business. So as we move more and more towards a vision of sort of, [12:37] niche communities monetizing, how do we resolve that conflict? And it seems like you're really convinced, but I'm curious how you think that actually comes together. I'm just convinced in the fact that we should continue to experiment. And once again, every time when I talk to someone from Web3 Media, I'm like, we're in this together. And people are like, yes, we're in this together. We're in like a tournament. And they're like, let's share each other, you know, insights and findings. Because I think it's literally just this traditional crowdsourcing, how it's for,

[13:07] Patreon but just put [13:09] on a blockchain and that the fact that we already have the community here and the people are way more open for experimentation and then also participation i think and then for the writers it's an additional obviously incentive for the splits and royalties which we already have started experimenting and i think um natasha you are actually gonna feel it on your i know i'm so excited yeah you're gonna you're gonna get contributed for being interviewed which is uh [13:39] media world because, you know, people usually say like you get the exposure but we're like, what if that's the opposite, you know, way so the people who are being interviewed actually should be compensated. [13:51] Don't have the answer. It's just an experiment that we're writing out. I think that [13:58] advertisement model [14:00] is a complicated one. [14:02] I'm very actually curious, you know, to hear your thoughts on this because it feels like we -- [14:08] just really shifting away from this. And in order to create an authentic brand, you really want to move away from any advertisements or just like unthoughtful kind of, you know, partnerships. We actually did the opposite thing with the print issue that we do, you know, like how any glossy magazines and fashion magazines, there is always a section for really cool, fancy advertorial. [14:28] So we collaborated, we have this section, and we collaborated with 22 artists who created fake ads for us, and we just asked them to create an ad for non-existing Web3 product to serve. So you're going to start seeing this dropping soon, and we do have it, but just like the products don't exist, and we did the opposite, that we actually, instead of charging money, we actually, contributors. That's an experiment for sure.

[14:53] We're very much also experimenting with our zine. I mean, I think for us, [14:58] Boyz Club is bootstrapped. So every dollar and cents that's coming in and coming out, we're very hyper conscious of and I think how that's manifested for us and especially with the zine is we were looking around and thinking about the model and thinking about the strategy for like how we're going to bring money into this thing to sustain it. And it didn't feel like the market environment or even really like a sustainable environment. [15:24] scalable option for us to be charging the readers to be paying for the content. We wanted the content to reach as far and wide as possible and bringing in any friction into that experience felt [15:38] like at odds with what we wanted it to do, which is to travel. So for us, we made the decision to have the [15:48] the content be free and have that the production cost be subsidized by a full sheet ads in the zine, which is very traditional way of approaching, um, [15:58] this as a project and i think it's probably the model that we'll use for at least at the very least the next edition and ultimately we're like man i don't want to put the onus on the reader i want that content to move and so that's why we sort of reverted back to an advertiser model but maybe it isn't for like a micromedia brand and like maybe that's sort of the future where it can be sustained by the community but curious how that lands for you

[16:24] Let's experiment all this ways and then compare the notes for the experiment finishes and then see, you know, what was better because if the commuter is going to say, I really don't care, just like, you know, maybe the type of partnerships that you're selected. [16:38] is actually I learned something like I discovered a product. [16:40] then your model might be actually better, you know? So we'll see. [16:44] So today's a big day for you and Zora Zine. You have your first print edition going live. This episode will come out at the beginning of May. This is a 250 page print zine. [16:58] So where you're saying you can hold the internet in your hands, which I love as a tagline. I'm so curious about you calling it a zine when this is like a, this is a book. My team calls it a Bible. They're like, we need a Bible. [17:14] Totally. I'd love to dig into some of the specifics around the zine, really looking at the text-based NFTs. Could you explain what that is for the listener and how you guys have utilized that as a tool within this publication? [17:28] Right now, there is no easy solution or at least widely spread solution for text format NFTs. We only see just a video or artwork or a cover. And we were minting covers, articles for a while while we're working on this. But it is still frustrating. And I would love if anyone from the wallets is listening to just pay attention. And maybe we should collaborate on this so wallets also will be more welcoming to the text NFTs. When you can...

[17:55] mint the [17:56] whole article the way it is in its native style, literally the way it looks with your fonts, you know, with your formatting, with all the other type of media, whatever is embedded in the article, and have it [18:08] let's say you're looking at Zora or OpenCA in a sort of marketplace, and you are going to be able to see this little square, this whole article, and scroll in the square and actually read through this whole. [18:21] articles so you don't have to like go to any other website or have any reader or come back to the zone. You know, you can literally just, you know, look on any marketplace that you're using. [18:31] So I think that was kind of a big step forward for us. Print issue, we are putting everything on chain as well from print. And for the duration of the sale, only NFT holders are going to be able to access it [18:42] Just first, once the sale finishes, it's going to become widely available because I'm here with Dina about like, I, [18:48] also totally agree that the content should be accessible. We just want to, you know, incentivize the people who are buying first. And then [18:56] The print edition is going to be minted for free, and it's going to be an open edition, so it's, you know, mint and get kind of the sense what does it mean, you know, why they want to mint it and what it gives them. But we're experimenting with different, very accessible price point of open editions of the rest of the articles. We usually keep them open forever just because we had like a lot of argument internally about this and we're like, what if people come back to this like in 5, 10 years and they still, you know, want to mint it. So, [19:23] It feels like, as another team member says, the wards should live forever. So that's open forever. And we're going to experiment with a price point.

[19:32] We think it should be always accessible, but then it just depends on the... [19:37] obviously volume of the readership and not only us, but also the people who are contributors. It's obviously in their interest to help reach as many readers as possible. So. So is the consumer behavior then for this NFT, oh, [19:51] I want to... [19:53] save this for later or is it I want to [19:58] support the writer. That's something that we're on and trying to figure. We're literally right now working on the piece that's about people's first NFTs to understand [20:09] different motivations and different use cases of why people were minting, not just texting, but just, you know, what was the moment when you breached that gap for you? Because it is a lot of steps in this onboarding, right? So what was this motivator? But right now, I feel, I see in the community, especially in the market that we're in right now, that's probably mostly for people to support. [20:29] They just understand that they want to support either the publication or the person. Because it's really interesting. Really different users and consumers and buyers come depending on the author. Like they kind of bring them with them their readership. And then you can see different, you know, wallets. Totally. Yeah, it's really cool. So right now it's probably the desire to support, which I think is amazing. And I almost like, I'm like, that's the society I want to leave in, you know. But we'll see. Jana, this was so, so fun having you on. [20:59] where they can find Zorazine and, yeah, where they should be watching all that you guys are doing.

[21:06] Totally. So you can go to zine.zora.co to read our digital version. And for the print version, you go to zine.supply and you meet your NFT and then you need to redeem it for this physical copy. And then once you receive it, let us know. [21:23] how does it feel to hold the internet? Jana, thank you so much. I'm excited to compare notes in a couple weeks time when you guys have some, some zine insights. [21:32] Very, very excited. I think, guys, you're doing an amazing work. Really excited to see what you're doing with the zine and how you're supporting the media. [21:46] Okay. Yeah, I have a draft tweet. Okay, great. I'm glad you do because I only have one in my mind. Okay, I just wrote this. [21:56] Okay, talk to me. [21:57] My wellness routine? [21:59] eating two cheese sticks and a bowl of my kid's goldfish for lunch and winding down my day by taking a conference call on the Peloton. [22:08] it's funny but it's also like a little sad when it's true there's truth in it [22:14] Oh my gosh. I just, I found, I have found that... [22:20] when you're trying to, when you have something that's funny, that's also self-deprecating, [22:27] Twitter does this thing that makes me cringe where it makes it serious. Yesterday I tweeted and I was like... [22:35] Um...

[22:36] Any ideas on how to reach a calorie deficit while also eating whatever you want? Like, clearly it's a joke. And like, clearly I know how, like you get a calorie deficit by like working out a lot and not eating bad. Like, that's how you do it. There's no other way. Okay. And all these other people with all their ideas, that's the only way to do it. And everybody like, it was like my most, one of my most engaged tweets ever with replies. [22:58] And I was just like, I'm not actually looking for advice. People were earnestly answering as though it was an earnest question. Yeah. And I'm just like, you've made you, there's like a little bit of me that's like, [23:08] No, no, like this is just... [23:11] This is just funny. Like this is just meant to be funny. I don't, I'm not looking for advice. I'm actually not looking for advice. Next time you could say, don't at me. [23:20] to avoid that situation okay my my tweet [23:25] Mm-hmm. Which I need to type out and send and, but I need some, like, it needs some more meat, I think, or an image or something is a true feeling I have, which is what am I going to do when succession is over? It's my entire personality. Like, I truly mean that. [23:44] This whole, my whole world is succession. And like, we've got four episodes left. And then totally, totally. Okay. You definitely need an image. But the good news is, is I think... [23:54] You have a... [23:55] like a library of succession related images to choose from. So great. It's ripe. [24:02] Okay, great, great, great. I would recommend timing that tweet.

[24:07] to [24:08] an episode watch so that it has. Do you feel like the episode, it needs to be one of the later episodes or now? I think now, I think now it'll work. Okay, great. Okay. Thanks. Dina, where are we going to be in September? We are going to be at Permissionless in Austin, Texas. Permissionless too. It's happening and we're curating the culture track for the conference. So if you're into the stuff we talked about here, you should come and have a good time with us. So email your boss, [24:38] will never be as cheap as they are today. And we also have a promo code in our Discord for Boy Scout members. Ooh, come hang in Austin. [24:49] This is where we make an ask. We're in our call to action era. It's CTA times. Rate and review this podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter. And if you're feeling extra generous... [25:02] Send it to one friend. Thank you for listening. We love you. Bye.