Matthew Prince

I love the Wall Street Journal.

I think they're a great media organization.

And so is the FT and so is the Washington Post.

And so is, you know, a lot of different newspapers that are out there.

But the differences between them are actually relatively de minimis.

And you might say, well, you know, the New York Times is more liberal and the Wall Street Journal is more conservative.

But it turns out that if I take, you know, OpenAI, ChatGPT and train it on the Wall Street Journal and then say, OK, give me these stories.

But from the perspective of a slightly more liberal publication, they'll basically recreate what is largely the New York Times.

And so I think you're right that in the future, being just sort of samesies with a little bit of a different perspective is not going to be nearly as strong of a business model as being truly unique.

But that's what I think is really interesting.

Like who has struggled the most

in the time of sort of traffic being the currency of media, the answer is something like a small local newspaper in a little town.

And yet I think in the future, like my wife and I actually own the local newspaper in Park City, Utah, which is a resort destination.

And we know from the newspaper, we do restaurant reviews

on what the best restaurants are.

Like there's nowhere else that you can go in the world that is gonna get you that data on what really is the hot new restaurant in Park City, Utah.

And yet, if you're someone who likes to ski or likes to travel or likes the outdoors, and you're thinking about going to Park City, Utah, if you know that the one...

answer engine out there has the information from the park record, our little local newspaper, whereas another one doesn't, you're going to be slightly more likely to subscribe to the one that has that information.

And so it's that local information that starts to be the real gold that differentiates one answer engine from another.

And if you look going forward, I actually think that the AI companies will look more like a Netflix or a YouTube where they're competing for original