Focused Futures: Navigating and Thriving in Modern Day Media

Welcome to Focused Futures, a digital Q&A series where we sit down with industry leaders from diverse sectors to explore what they see coming into focus in their fields over the next 2-5 years.

Focused Futures is more than just speculative, hype-driven interviews; it's a window into the future of business, technology, culture, and beyond. We dive deep into the insights of those at the forefront of change, offering you a unique perspective on the trends and innovations that will shape our world in the near future.

Our conversations are designed to be both informative and accessible. Whether you're a business leader, an innovator, or simply curious about what comes next, Focused Futures is your guide to the ideas and developments that will define tomorrow.

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This Week's Feature: Navigating and Thriving in Modern Day Media  

In this episode of Focused Futures, we're excited to sit down with Sean McVey, he’s a modern-day media publishing executive who understands how to market and grow brands in one of the toughest industries out there. As CMO of Freethink Media, he oversees a network of over 13M subscribers and 10M monthly visitors. In addition, he built a demand generation team that helped propel revenue from 1M to 20M in 3 short years. Sean chats with us about where the state of the industry is but more importantly, why he’s so excited about its future.

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Q: Talk to me about where the current state of today’s modern media publishing is in general? What are some of those positive or negative trends your seeing? 

Competitive. Messy. Overwhelming. Always different. These are the words I feel in my bones in response to that question. There is an extreme amount of content being published but an ever-growing body of creators. How can one publisher really cut through in our mess of a media landscape? It feels impossible on most days. 

If I had to pick one theme that cuts through everything in media today, it’s the platform algorithm. As a publisher, you want to fulfill a mission and create value for your audience in your own way. But so much of the game is also considering what ‘works’ on X, Youtube, and other platforms. This variable has really thrown a curveball to journalists across the world in the last decade. 

With that being said, when things are messy and the future is unknown, it’s exciting think about what might come out on the other side of all of this. It feels a bit like when Napster disrupted music. It will be interesting to see who the winners and losers are as we continue to evolve as an industry. I predict that the winners will be the ones that can both embrace innovation in tech as well as stand by their core values. 

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Q: There’s plenty to keep you awake at night in the media world, but what are the opportunities you’re seeing that get you excited for the future? 

With the volume of shit content being fire hosed across our feeds and inboxes every minute, one clear opportunity is curation. I follow some Substack writers who just happen to be really good at picking quality content. I don’t trust social platforms to serve me quality content. So the people and publishers that can create a curated selection of people, ideas and stories that help me learn, grow and laugh will continue to be a value add.

I also believe that as more and more people burn out on endless scroll short form video content, there will be a pendulum swing back toward long form storytelling. Tiktok triggers one part of my brain, but it’s not the part that fulfills me. A beatifically told story in a Netflix docu series is tapping into the part of my brain that I need more of. It’s the same part of the brain I use when reading a great book. I’m hopeful that people will realize the need to stop the scroll. Take an hour and focus on one thing. This seems like an opportunity I’d lean into if I were getting started in media. 

Quality over quantity. It’s the future. 

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Q: You’ve been instrumental in building a successful media company over the years, what are a few of the key things you had to learn the hard way that you wish you knew at the start?   

Things that matter: 

-Building an influential, loyal and engaged audience
-Publishing fewer things, but better things
-Exploring ideas in an open, curious, thoughtful and constructive way 

-Figuring out how to tap into the zeitgeist in your own way, without clickbait
-zooming out, providing context, and asking interesting questions

-platforming people and ideas that represent your values 

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Things that don’t:
-The number of followers, subscribers or web visitors you have
-How many things you post per day/week/month

-Chasing 24 hours news, especially in politics
-Celebrities 

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Q: As a company that has the pulse on what society is engaging with or getting excited about, are their subjects or trends that you find surprising or unexpected with your audience?  

Totally! The topic areas driving interest right now are energy (nuclear, fusion), the new space race (from space manufacturing to asteroid mining), biotech, and of course generative AI. There also seems to be an emerging conversation around the changing world order. In other words how tech is transforming the landscape of geopolitics. 

There’s always a thirst for leadership content. We have an entire section on Big Think dedicated to business and how to be a better leader. We interview CEOs and other leaders about their journeys and learnings—this kind of ‘news you can use’ content doesn’t ever seem to go out of fashion.

Q: Your brands are built on the notion of inspiring people to think differently, in some cases helping to explain the complex, educate and open minds. I can only imagine the last few years of technology; societal and scientific breakthroughs have bolstered the mission and need? 
We believe our mission has never been more relevant. The culture today is toxic. Media reflects it and amplifies is. As a society we’ve become cynical about the motivations of others, simplistic in our thinking about complex issues, certain that we have all the answers, and scared of the challenges we face. 

It’s understandable but unsustainable. And it doesn’t have to be like this. Progress happens when we are curious about new ideas, thoughtful about hard questions, open to considering other perspectives, and constructive about the challenges we face. It’s everything we do at Freethink, it’s our ethos that makes us different. And it’s our ethos that makes what we do matter. 

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Q: We’re seeing how AI is influencing every industry in both expected and surprising ways; from your media publishing POV, what is the biggest change you see happening in your industry as well as the most unexpected, these can be both positive and negative?   

The biggest change I’ve seen is an influx of generic creative. The tech is too early to fully do your job and people are overly relying on it as an easy button. As a result, they push out stuff that’s not as good as it used to be. 

Don’t get me wrong, I find tools like Claude and ChatGPT useful for ideation and a sounding board for many things. And I love Perplexity as my new Wikipedia. But in general I don’t think the average user is good enough at prompting to make great stuff. Written copy is….fine. Art is still clearly AI-looking. Before long maybe these tools will be so good that my tune will change. But right now, these tools just seems to be accelerating that firehose of bad content both in the publishing and marketing worlds. 

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Q: You’ve done a masterful job at navigating the waters of the modern-day publishing world, what are a few key pieces of advice you’d offer a new platform coming into today’s media industry?

Here are a few things I’d suggest if you were starting a new media platform today: 

1. Focus on creators and big personalities

2. Embrace quality video directors and editors. Storytelling is a differentiator that’s hard to copy.
3. Focus on Youtube, X, and Substack. LinkedIn if related to business. These are the platforms that matter right now if you are building an influential audience.
4. Find journalists that can go very deep, explore hard questions, and provide context for the audience. There is enough quick hit news already.
5. Do the little things to build relationships with smart, influential people. Something as easy as a nice piece of merch can go a long way.
6. Use influential mentions as your north star metric vs. traffic, followers or views 

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Q: Is there any speciifc technology or innovation on the horizon whether in publishing, content, or distribution that you can’t wait till it’s ready to apply or play with?

This isn’t new, but worth mentioning because it’s the most under appreciated feature for social platforms. On places like LinkedIn and X, you can upload a list of emails and run campaigns just to those people. Seems simple right? Yes, this is a thing and it really works. Whether you are targeting buyers for your product or influential people for a different reason, this is the most focused targeting you can do and I can’t believe more people don’t do this. This is for the one marketer out there reading this that can’t quite get their LinkedIn ad campaign ROI positive. Go download the target sales prospect list from Salesforce right now and upload it to LinkedIn. You will thank me. 

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Q: The platforms, tech, and way we showcase stories will always be evolving, but the power of storytelling feels like the one constant throughline – for a company in which brilliant storytelling is core to the success, how do you nurture, instill, and grow that skill as a central focus going into the future?          

We’ve built a culture that favors creatives. There is a lot of freedom at Freethink to explore ideas, try new things, and create your own style without the fear of messing up. This culture attracts good, talented creators. And when those creators get together, they inspire each other—through conversation, content sharing, providing notes, or collaborating. So I would really point to that culture as the core reason our storytelling remains fresh.

Teams will often host ‘watch parties’ where we virtually watch a film together and talk about it. Mostly this is our own content, but not always. Creating a social space like this is a great way to not only collect feedback, but enhance that creative culture. 

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