Katie Roof joins Business Insider as it pivots to scoop-driven journalism under new editor-in-chief Jamie Heller

Speaker 1: That's amazing. Well, congratulations on the progress. You so much for coming on and breaking it down for us. We will talk to you later. But for now, we will bring in Katie Roof. She's the editor of Business Insider. We're very excited to have her joining the show. It's time to bust down the paywall. Jordy, you wanna do the honors? That's right. We gotta bust down the paywall because we have Katie Roof here. We have a physical paywall here.

Speaker 2: I'll bust it down. Do it, John.

Speaker 1: Bust it down. There we go. You know her from her scoops. Many paywall busting scoops.

Speaker 2: We built a real paywall here in the UltraDome for you.

Speaker 1: Yes. For busting down. Well, welcome to the show. Is life? How is the new gig?

Speaker 9: Well, good to be here. I just started the new gig yesterday, so so far so good. I got through a new hire orientation okay and Mhmm. Ready to get scooping.

Speaker 1: Yes. Of course. We won't ask you how you get your scoops. We all know signal DMs probably. But what is the shape of Business Insider these days? How do you fit into the organization? And then I wanna talk about where Business Insider is going editorially.

Speaker 9: Sure. So I I know Jamie Heller from when we were both at both at The Wall Street Journal. She oversaw all business and technology coverage there, and she's been brought in to be the editor in chief of Business Insider where she's changing the direction towards more scoops than original content. That's probably how I fit in. You know, stuff people would actually pay for. And so, yeah. So I'm part of that new direction, that new chapter for Business Insider. And I'm also part of a new program for the parent company, Axel Springer.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 9: I'm in the Global Reporters Network, which is a network where I team up with Politico and our other sister publications. We just acquired The Telegraph in The UK. We we own a lot of stuff in Europe. So, you know, whatever whatever they acquire next, my stuff will appear in those news outlets as well.

Speaker 2: Take us into into a scoop. I wanna know I wanna know how often you're working on a story and there's other reporters chomping at the scoop. What is that what is that process like? How much time do you have for a lot of these stories with with how quickly AI is moving? I can imagine you you catch a whiff of a story. You're chasing it down. Sometimes, hopefully, most of the time, you get to it first, but then other times, it's a it's a dog eat dog world. It's a dog eat scoop world out here.

Speaker 9: Right. It's true. It's gotten a lot more competitive, you know, these days. I feel like back in, like, 2020, 2021, I could get most of the scoops, and I still get a lot of them. But, there's a lot of reporters now doing what I do, and, you know, being first is is harder. But I think the the key is to not just go after things that are rumors that are widely circulating because everyone can hear about that. Sure. Some of my biggest scoops have actually been predicting what happens next, And I will I'll just ask around about my theories, like, would this company buy this company?

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 9: I I don't call people up and say, I heard this if I didn't hear this. But if I'm having an extended conversation with them, I just throw out a lot of scenarios. Scenarios. And then sometimes we're like, you're right. This company is buying this company or this company is going public or they're they're raising. You know?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Can you talk to me about in regards to the paywall, the business of media these days, how is the original reporting scoop driven journalism versus opinion versus news aggregation actually changing? And are we firmly in the AI is affecting the business or are we still just seeing knock on effects from social media and just a screenshot of something can change the business model?

Speaker 9: Well, I think original reporting matters more than ever because regardless, you know, technology can change and the format in which we tell our stories can change, but people are always gonna wanna find out what's going on in the world. And I think, you know, the reporters like myself who've been fortunate to make the decision to double down on human skills instead of just writing skills Mhmm. We have, you know, we still have value because I do things that maybe AI is not doing by having a network of people asking questions that they weren't planning to share and informing the public of that.

Speaker 1: Do you think any tech CEOs or people with potential scoops would ever talk to an AI reporter who's digging for a scoop?

Speaker 9: Well, I mean, yes, if it's something they really want out there. But Sure. The reality is, you know, people think that most of these stories are things people wanted out there. It's usually, they were kind of neutral. Like, if usually, people weren't, like, trying to leak something, but, like, reporters were asking. They're like, oh, yeah. You're right. Like, that's usually how it goes. Mhmm. And so, you know, AI, you know, unless they, you know, proactively wanna plant something, which would be almost more like PR, what PR does with PR pitches, then, yeah, I I I think it's it's not the same.

Speaker 2: How do you clock when a story's been planted? There was there was a story, about Colossus Biosciences raising at between 20 and $30,000,000,000. And to me, that Might be true. That just screams like they planted a story because I don't I'm not I I'm just gonna say it. I don't know that many institutional investors that are sort of clamoring to invest in Colossus Biosciences and it's a way and my my theory is that it's a way to signal to potential retail investors that we're open for business.

Speaker 1: Yeah. This this round's getting hot.

Speaker 9: This is something I think about all the time. I mean, I take accuracy super seriously and, you know, as much pressure as as there is to be first to the news, I think it's much easier to destroy your credibility than it is to build it. And so I always try to think, does this make sense? Do they have an agenda here, like, to be misleading or dishonest? And, you know, I used to say to some people, sometimes reporters, past jobs might hear about something and they would be like, company x wants to be worth 10,000,000,000. And I would say, well, I also wanna be worth 10,000,000,000. You know, can they can they get the 10,000,000,000? I think that's the real question. And so I think that you have to obviously, people have incentives to use us to manipulate public opinion. We have to be savvy about that.

Speaker 1: Do you think with how dominant tech is generally now, it feels like it's a bigger story. We see it, you know, tech has moved from the business and finance section of The Wall Street Journal to the front page more and more, not every day, but, you know, just today, AI models raise alarms. On the front page, it's international news. Is that is do you see that as driving Business Insider's TAM essentially? Like, is the TAM for technology scoops and in in private markets news going even bigger now?

Speaker 9: Yeah. You know what? I think that's absolutely true. I think there's a lot of curiosity out there about AI and money behind it and Yeah. And how it's gonna change things and transform the world. And so, yeah, I think that's part of, why, you know, there there's so many news outlets have been doubling down on getting more venture capital and AI reporters because I think that there's it there's broad appeal. Even if you're not an investor that's standing to make money off of this AI boom, you you're curious to see where it's headed.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And then last question for me. I'm interested, I mean, we love Business Insider. We love business. We consider ourselves a bit of insiders ourselves But I'm wondering where you want the brand of Business Insider to go and where you see it in a few years after, you know, you've been on the job for a while.

Speaker 9: Well, from what I understand is, you know, Jamie, you know, I'm not running Business Insider. I have a fancy title, but

Speaker 1: I go.

Speaker 9: Jamie's Jamie's running this and she's got, you know, she's really, made a big difference already in bringing bringing out the

Speaker 1: To us, you're the CEO of Axle Spring now. Okay? Dabner, you're out. Katie Roosen. She's got the scoops that we know and love. And so, I'm sorry,

Speaker 9: So, you know, she's already played a major role Yeah. As our editor in chief in in bringing they've they've doubled their exclusive content. I think it used to be 40%, now it's 80%. And so I think they, you know, I'm part of that strategy where they want to just build upon on that.