As the Washington Editor-at-Large at The Atlantic, Editor-at-Large at Quartz, and publisher of the political blog The Washington Note, Steve Clemons has built a career around the delicate exchange between policy, politics, and media.
We connected with Steve at the 2014 ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL to get his take on information overload, the power of storytelling to initiate listening, and the role marketing plays in the spread of ideas.
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There’s been a lot of talk about “Information Overload” and “Content Shock” in recent years. How do you filter the information you consume?
Steve Clemons: I have a different strategy than most of my colleagues: I love living in a gusher.
I just realize that so much is coming at me, so I don’t try and order it. I don’t try and make it make sense. I think any attempts to make it make sense are artificial.
Instead, I deal with it in terms of how waves in the ocean work. You’ve got a lot of waves coming at you. I have so much coming at me because of my role in media, my role as a commentator, my role engaged with a lot of people in the public policy field.
We get so much and it’s so rich that I feel like if I try to order it, I would actually lose a lot. So I find myself regularly more informed than most people by not structuring it and just realizing that I live in a gusher.
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Where does this “gusher” of information come from primarily?
Steve Clemons: It comes through social networks. I’m on everything: Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Email. But that’s just passively receiving information or running into stuff based on what I’m engaged with on the networks. The other half is information that I go out and actively look for.
There are new apps like what Thomson Reuters has where you can say, “Okay, I’m interested in Kim Jong-Un in North Korea,” and you can see quotes, and you can see the Seth Rogen piece, and you can go through a line of interconnected links that takes you to destinations you wouldn’t have otherwise seen.
I read a lot of international press and global press that is also on Twitter. I’m basically a curious person, so I follow links or things that are coming my way, but then I also try and scan the big players.
There are things like Talking Points Memo, or folks in both the conservative and progressive press that I’m interested in, so I see what’s driving the conversation on all fronts.
It’s kind of a teeter‑totter between what’s coming my way and then what I actually go out and get. But, social media networks are vital.
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Since we’re at an ideas festival — where do your best ideas come from?
Steve Clemons: My best ideas come from strands of thought, or something I may have heard or run into. When I’m writing something, I think what I bring to storytelling or what I bring to being an intermediator between an idea —whether my own or someone else’s — is I try to understand the context.
What I often see, and what I don’t like about today’s media world, is how everything is just such a small sliver. I think understanding context or creating context around cool ideas is very important.
I hear ideas or get ideas from any number of sources. What I do is then try to step back and put it into a context, either socially, historically, or in policy terms, by looking at how it impacts lives so there’s a broader understanding.
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How does the power of storytelling manifest in your work?
Steve Clemons: Storytelling is vital. The Atlantic prides itself on being one of the great assemblies or collages of storytellers and storytelling for years.
That said, I think that when you’re seducing people to think differently, to get out of the grooves they’re used to, it’s very hard to just hit them with dry data.
What you see in many cases, particularly in policy issues, is that most people tend to not listen, and they tend to just say more loudly what they already feel or believe.
Storytelling is a technique that triggers listening, and it triggers learning. It triggers the opportunity for getting someone out of their grooves.
It sounds neat, but it’s a remarkably effective way to get people to think in alternative terms than they would otherwise. I use storytelling to take complex ideas and basically put them in a way to draw people into a conversation that they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Those that can do it tend to be very powerful, because they’re able to convey things and move people in ways that people who don’t use that technique can’t. Storytelling is a tool. It’s a trade.
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How do you see the strategic role of marketing changing in the next decade in the media business?
Steve Clemons: Increasingly, people in this dis‑intermediated world are becoming their own brands. I may have an Atlantic brand. I could have a Steve Clemons brand. I could have a brand of trying to talk about the Middle East or China.
We are making marketing and excellence in marketing concomitant with good policy or good ideas. But a good idea without good marketing is not efficacious. It’s not going to work.
Previously, there were only certain pipes that everyone would go through, certain TV shows everyone would watch. It was very homogenized, or at least oligarchic.
Now, it’s really disaggregated. We have people who make their own pipes, who build their own audiences. It’s essentially a wonderful chaos. Everyone’s much more in control. It’s like a really super‑active beehive.
What’s cool with what I see with modern, cutting‑edge marketing is it gets those waves. It understands how old-style, sloppy, oligarchic outreach to people is 1‑size‑fits‑all. Now, you have to deal with 10,000 sizes‑fits‑all, and some people are good at that, and some not.
In the social media experience, where you have a lot of different engagements with ideas and people, it’s going to be important to reach people where they are.
Where they are is not necessarily sitting in one place. That sounds very cosmic, but marketing is as vital as any other part of the equation in terms of moving ideas.
If you liked this post, you might like SOCIAL MEDIA, STORYTELLING, AND “DEMONSTRABLE AUTHENTICITY”: Q&A WITH MATTHEW BISHOP or AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHENTIC MARKETING: Q&A WITH CANDICE FAKTOR.
Interview has been edited for clarity.