Paris, The Impossible City in an Impossible World

---

Transcript

[00:00:00] Simon Kuper: when you're not on your phone and you're just washing the dishes or walking through the city, as you say, you sometimes have these very small eureka moments.

[00:00:07] I mean, it's not like, you know, an apple falls on your head and you, you've, you've invented a new mathematical formula, but you think, Oh, that's an idea. And what I'm looking for always, a column is one idea. It's something that is counterintuitive. That is original in the sense that your readers very largely won't have encountered it, it hasn't been said by other media before.

[00:00:29] Maybe it's been said by some academic that nobody knows about, or maybe you just invented it. So one original idea, and then you use the 750 words that I have to explain the idea, argue, maybe add a couple of examples and anecdotes. 

[00:00:42] Eliot Mizrachi (Host): The voice you just heard, explaining how inspiration strikes them, was award winning author and journalist Simon Kuper. He joined Brian Lott, CCO of Mubadala Investment Company, on stage at our spring seminar conference in Paris earlier this year. The highly rated session was titled, Paris, the impossible city in an impossible world.

[00:01:02] And after hearing his perspective on this dynamic city amid a huge transformation, we were much more aware of the possible. With so much global instability surrounding business leaders, from geopolitical conflicts to the far reaching ripples of policy decisions, and, especially concerning in a year with so many global elections, the ever present threats of myths and disinformation, Simon articulated a very hopeful path forward for this corner of the world.

[00:01:30] And with the Olympics in Paris we also thought a look at the host city, through Simon's eyes, would add a new level of appreciation for a city that's eyeing a larger role in Europe. We hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as everyone in the room did. I'm Elliot Mizrahi, and this is The New CCO.

[00:01:49] Brian Lott: Nice to see everybody. It's uh, a particular privilege and pleasure to have Simon Cooper with us this morning. He was gracious enough to wake up at about 4. 30, uh, take the first Eurostar from London, uh, to make it here in time for this discussion. Simon has been with the Financial Times for 30 years.

[00:02:08] Something like that. Something like that. And, uh, based in Paris the last 20. He's got a new book out. He's a, not only a distinguished journalist, but an author. And his latest book is called Impossible City about Paris. So we're going to get into that in just a minute. One of the first jobs I had as a teenager was as a newspaper reporter.

[00:02:28] Uh, delivery person. And I loved the tactile feeling of wrapping the newspaper, putting the rubber band and throwing it on people's porches. I still get the same pleasure every weekend in the UAE when I go to my local supermarket to buy the FT Weekend, right? Something I love to digest over a couple days.

[00:02:46] I read the arts and leisure section first, and typically, uh, Simon's. Column as well. Those are my two favorite parts for his wit for his observations and for his global perspective. And we've talked a lot about that the last couple of days. So, Simon, we're here in Paris, and you've got a particular perspective on Paris as the new hot city, the center of Europe.

[00:03:09] There's significant amount of investment coming to Paris. It's become a hub of talent and R and D center. Why and how, if at all, does that relate to the last eight years of Brexit? 

[00:03:22] Simon Kuper: It definitely has to do with Brexit because Europeans can now not easily move to Britain. As many of you will know, you need a visa.

[00:03:30] Your company has to apply for a visa. Also, a lot of people felt, well, Britain is telling us we don't want you. And so people don't want to move to a country that says we don't want you. And, you know, I've just come back from London. I go there a lot. It's still a very vibrant place. But In the UK, you're getting a bit, this very dangerous situation that you have New York City, which is London, attached to Southern Italy, which is most of the country.

[00:03:54] So a lot of the country has productivity levels around Southern Italy levels. And that's very difficult to sustain. France also has a bit of that issue. France has much more successful second cities. So if you go to Toulouse, Strasbourg, Lyon, Bordeaux, these are vibrant cities with business communities.

[00:04:14] What France has is, A, they didn't make the mistake of Frexit, which is partly because Britain made that mistake first, which, after which the far right leader Marine Le Pen quietly dropped from her program the idea of Frexit. And also, France, unlike the UK and unlike the US, can build infrastructure. So one of, I mean, what you'll see, I mean, many, many of you of course will know Paris very well.

[00:04:37] You're here in the heart of Paris. Literally, Paris, Paris is a small city of 2 million people inside the ring road, the periphery. And it's the city, you know, from postcards and films outside the periphery. You have 10 million people now in the suburbs. Some of them are wealthy. Some of them are quite poor.

[00:04:56] Most of them are somewhere in between. These are not the kind of. Hell holes or favelas of popular imagination. Unemployment in this region is very low. Things are pretty good. And what this French state is now doing is they're building 68 metro stations in those suburbs just outside Paris. Now imagine that in London or New York that the state suddenly says, you know what, we need to add 68 subway stations.

[00:05:19] And we're just going to do it. And it's partly because the French state is a bit like the Chinese state. They just, if they want to do something, they just tell you, you've lost your house, here's some money, goodbye. They have a lot more powers, you know, there's a lot less of this appealing and, you know, setting up local meetings and so on.

[00:05:34] So they, they do stuff, they build infrastructure, it's a very powerful state. And so what you're getting is The creation of a city that's actually knitted together of 12 million people. There's nothing else like that in the European Union. There's nothing close in the European Union. And it's increasingly, so, you know, I grew up in Holland.

[00:05:53] Amsterdam is pretty much a bilingual city. You can live in Amsterdam, never have to speak Dutch. You can do business in English. You can even go to court in English in Amsterdam in a lot of cases. Paris is obviously not there, but it's moving rapidly towards that, so that for many of you who will like coming to Paris, like working here, maybe not speak fluent French, it becomes more and more a city where you can do business.

[00:06:14] So 

[00:06:15] Brian Lott: it's also a city that is changing dramatically, right? Over the last two decades, you've seen just it becoming more global in terms of its immigration status, citizenry, people moving here, and it's still. A lot of people have this, uh, vision of Paris as something very different. They're going to get exposed to it quite a bit, uh, this summer through the Olympics, right?

[00:06:34] Lots of televised coverage of the Olympic Games. What have you seen as a resident? French society can sometimes be closed and desired to be sort of private. Have you seen the city open up and, uh, look at the Olympics as an opportunity to sort of market itself, for lack of a better word? 

[00:06:51] Simon Kuper: I mean, there's a lot of questions in there.

[00:06:53] I mean, one is There is obviously a fairly high degree still of racial segregation in the Paris area. And so you'll see that the center where you are is largely white, and the suburbs are much more mixed. I wouldn't say they're not white, but they're very mixed. And, Building 68 metro stations make it easy for everyone to, you know, go to work in places where pay is good, et cetera, should help that, and they're investing in schools at the bottom end.

[00:07:20] The Olympics, I mean, what you see with the Olympics, because I also write about sports on the side, is that you used to get cities like, mid sized cities like Athens got it, Manchester and Madrid had lucky escapes of not getting it, and those cities were overwhelmed. They had to build, Montreal is another great example in the earlier generation, they had to build, A lot of global top level sports facilities that they didn't need.

[00:07:44] These cities just weren't big enough to support that. So in Athens, almost all the 20, 2004 Olympics facilities are now unused and some become garbage dumps. Now Paris, so now the Olympics only goes to great global cities that already have or need that stuff. So Tokyo, London, Los Angeles next. So Paris pretty much had everything.

[00:08:03] They just built an aquatic center, it's very pretty, opposite the Stade de France, uh, just north of the city. They're building an athlete's village. What I think the Olympics is mostly going to do is the poorest department of mainland France is just north of here. If you take the train out to the airport, you'll go through it.

[00:08:20] It's Saint Saint Denis and a lot of immigrants, new immigrants from Africa arrive there. And that's where Stade de France, the aquatic center. That's where they built the athlete's village. And so. There's a huge amount of other building going on. So if you look at the map of Seine Saint Denis, the athletes village is just one small thing.

[00:08:38] There's a huge amount of construction, almost of a second business center for Paris, and a lot of housing there. And so I think the hope is that when the Olympics fade into memory, Seine Saint Denis will have been regenerated somewhat, and Paris will be knitted together. The people who live just north of Paris in the suburbs will feel that they actually live in Paris.

[00:08:59] Brian Lott: So you've written many books. Very well known on football, and your latest is Impossible City about Paris. Impossible City is out in two weeks, I should say. Yeah, in two weeks, in April. So look for it. Tell us about the book. What inspired you to write it? And, uh, give us a bit of a teaser, if you don't mind.

[00:09:13] Simon Kuper: Well, I moved here in 2001 because I realized somebody told me you could buy an apartment here for nothing. And I was already too late to buy an apartment in London, so I thought, I'll buy an apartment in Paris for, it was something like 100, 000 and then I'll never live here obviously but I'll rent it out and I'll at least own a property.

[00:09:31] And then I gave it a go in the spring of 2002 and I never went home. And then I acquired an American wife and kids and the American wife is now, she has become French, I have become French. So we've kind of raised a family and lived here for 20 years by accident. But we stayed because it was nice. And so what I've tried to write is a book about the Paris of today.

[00:09:52] I mean, the history of Paris is most written about city and the world. There's nothing I could add to that. I thought what I could describe is the Paris of today, what it's like to live in, what it's like to eat in, how you meet people in it, the bicycle, and then knitting together this very complex. And very varied city.

[00:10:10] Brian Lott: You've had a column recently that talked about the thoughtful planning that's gone into Paris. You mentioned biking. And making it more pedestrian friendly. Can you talk a bit about that? As a citizen of the city? 

[00:10:21] Simon Kuper: Yeah, so if you go outside here, you'll see, you'll, this is, we're in the 19th century. And right behind your hotel is the Opéra, which is, you know, the great, it's actually not an Haussmannian type building at all, it was by a young architect, Gagné, very flamboyant.

[00:10:35] But this city was built in the 19th century, Paris inside what we now have the ring road, for people who obviously didn't have cars. They used coaches with horses or they walked and then came the metro, you know, until the 50s, 60s, a lot of people were cycling. So the car comes in very late and there just isn't enough space in Paris for cars because, uh, this is the densest city in Europe, it's denser.

[00:11:00] Inhabitation than New York City or New Delhi. So there just isn't space to cram in a lot of cars. So in the last 10 years or so, the mayor has said, okay, we're getting rid of the cars. You cannot drive your car in Paris. We'll make it really hard for you. And since the pandemic, especially, they've made space for bicycles.

[00:11:14] So there are now a lot more bicycles than cars in Paris. And it's a very difficult living together because there isn't enough space because Parisians cannot drive and nobody obeys traffic rules, including us bicycles. So it's, it's very, um, tense. Some months though, in Paris, inside the Ring Road, the number of fatal traffic accidents is zero.

[00:11:34] Because although everyone would like to go fast enough to kill people, you can't because there's no space.

[00:11:42] Brian Lott: And is it true they're, uh, cleaning up the Seine to make it swimmable? Have you tried? 

[00:11:46] Simon Kuper: Uh, well, my daughter tried, so they, they did a pre, they've probably done a couple of these pre events testing the sand so that they can do Olympic swimming events in the water. And she shows up to this pre event and they say, well, sorry, we're cancelling because, you know, water's a bit dirtier than we thought.

[00:12:01] And she said, everyone just dived in anyway, because Parisians are not good at obeying rules. So it's a city with a lot of rules and a lot of disobedience, which is, uh, again, uh. an unusual mix. So some people have swum in the sand and they hope it will be ready for the Olympics, but they essentially in 1924 was the last time you're allowed to swim in the sand.

[00:12:19] So it'd be nice if it happened this year, but I think it will happen soon. 

[00:12:22] Brian Lott: Fascinating. We spent a lot of time talking about geopolitics and the state of, uh, let's just call it Europe versus the U S versus China and its, its role in the world. How have you seen, particularly after Brexit, the sort of French identity as a global player in policy evolve?

[00:12:41] Is it more relevant? Is it stronger than it was? Is it see itself now as a rival to the UK? The 

[00:12:48] Simon Kuper: UK has become less relevant, also in Europe, because UK ministers just quite simply, they don't meet European ministers. Very much anymore. If you're a minister in an EU country, you go to Brussels once a month, you meet your, the other environment ministers, other foreign ministers, whatever it is, because the Brits are now out of that, they have far fewer of those meetings, and so a lot of stuff gets discussed, and it's harder for Britain to count in areas where it really wants to, like military and security, but there are only two serious military powers in Europe, and the thing is, they have to become relevant, because what Europeans are realizing is that Whether Trump wins or not, and it would be worse if he wins, but the U.

[00:13:26] S. is abandoning European security. So even if, let's say, Biden wins, and the Republicans hold on to one house, one chamber of Congress, there still probably won't be aid for Ukraine. And so we face this massive army, so Putin is also recruiting mercenaries in India. He is forcing Ukrainians in areas occupied by Russia to join the army as cannon fodder.

[00:13:50] So we face this very large army of a ruler who doesn't care how many people die in battle. He just doesn't care. And the U. S. is no longer there. So it's terrifying. And so then who takes, who takes it up? The Brits are much less in these circles where decisions get made, but they're very important because there are only two semi serious armies in Europe right now.

[00:14:08] Soon there'll be four, Poland and Germany are building up their armies, but right now it's just Britain and France. And Macron, Emmanuel Macron thinks, you know, France always wants to lead. So the French dream for, since Charles de Gaulle, was always, The Americans should go away. This is our continent. We should make the big decisions.

[00:14:24] And now it's happened and it's terrifying. So, you know, um, and so Macron is trying to bring everyone together. And, but the thing is when France says something, because France doesn't really like consulting other countries much in unveiling its vision, especially not because the president, it's a country run by one person.

[00:14:41] It's a kind of, uh, elected dictator and the president can wake up in the morning, decide whatever he wants. And so the president will say to Eastern Europeans, you know, um, He used to say, Oh, I like Putin and we can, he can be a partner in the security of Europe. Macron was saying until two years ago. So whenever France opens its mouth on these issues, a lot of other countries think, shut up France.

[00:15:00] So there's enormous disunity. There is no leader of Europe. It was much easier when the U. S. did that job. That's the long answer. 

[00:15:06] Brian Lott: Mm. And what's his domestically? Can you give us, for those of us who don't live here, a perspective on French politics and his coalition here, his popularity, his standing within France.

[00:15:19] Simon Kuper: When I arrived, the president was Chirac, and Chirac was quite popular still. The last three presidents have been detested, and you start to think maybe it's not the president's fault, maybe it's something structural about the country. And, uh, Francois Hollande, at one point, his approval rating fell to 4%.

[00:15:35] So Macron is quite widely detested, and he has a base of about 30 percent of the population, mostly more educated, more urban people who support him. And he can't stand again next time. And he's lost control of Parliament, so he, it's hard for them to get laws through. And I think the President is detested partly because the President is so powerful, and it doesn't really work in the 21st century anymore.

[00:15:54] People don't accept a leader who can just do whatever he wants. So, the thing people are always asking in France, which is an unanswerable question, is, will Marine Le Pen, the far right leader, become President in 2027? To which the answer is, who knows? But yes, it's feasible. And so that's the kind of great anxiety.

[00:16:12] I think there will be a more popular figure who succeeds my call in the center. Maybe a dwarf leap who, who could probably beat the BAM. But yeah, this is all possible. 

[00:16:21] Brian Lott: So Biden's slogan is I'm still more popular than Oland. Yes. I think 

[00:16:26] Simon Kuper: every president more or less, whoever lived as being more popular and all on.

[00:16:30] And whereas Oland didn't have a base at all, my corn does kind of have a base among these, Urban winners, the people who the French people who are doing well out of globalization, who, um, you know, who eat sushi and who go to London on the Eurostar, that kind 

[00:16:43] Brian Lott: of thing. What's the view of geopolitics, particularly U.

[00:16:47] S. politics in this election season as we see it so fractured? We've talked a lot about polarization and what to do about it, and we'll get to that in a second, but can you sort of give us a sense of how people are seeing this election season? 

[00:17:00] Simon Kuper: The countries I kind of spend time in most, the France, the Netherlands and the UK.

[00:17:06] So the French public is not really, does not follow the US. The UK and the Netherlands do and there's enormous fear. In the UK, there's one poll that suggests that if Trump and Biden were running in the UK with our constituency system, Trump would not win a single of the 650 UK constituencies. He would end up with zero seats in Parliament.

[00:17:28] So it's very, Europeans. And this is true in all U. S. elections, are always on the side of the Democrat, but now extremely so, yeah. And also because we now have this war, the consequences for Europe feel much higher than in 2016. I mean, leaving aside Trump's talks about 10 percent tariffs on foreign imports, I think, which would obviously be devastating for Europeans, but the big anxiety and the talk is about what happens.

[00:17:57] Does Trump say on day one to Putin, you know what? Have it. 

[00:18:01] Brian Lott: Mm. And is the polarization we see in the US where, you know, families have these sometimes, uh, splits of red and blue, partly attributable, attributable to the current state of politics, maybe social media, et cetera? Is that the same? It's a general statement across Europe, but is it, is it the same here, that same sort of 

[00:18:22] Simon Kuper: stratification.

[00:18:23] There is a bit. So it is like in the U. S. The kind of far right against a liberal center. But I would say almost ever. It's less extreme than in the U. S. Partly because religion doesn't really play a role in most European political systems. So if you're, let's say, a Christian fundamentalist who supports Trump, you feel well, God is on our side.

[00:18:44] And that makes you feel more righteous in your struggle, whereas in Europe, it's more about Oh, I like that one. I don't like that one so much. There's no guns in Europe, which means that people are less afraid, I think, of the people who they disagree with. And you have issues. I mean, especially abortion now, which is gonna be a huge issue in the U.

[00:19:01] S. Election is I think settled even in Poland now. So these kind of very personal issues are less present, so Europeans are less polarized. I'm very heartened about the UK because we made the big mistake first with Brexit, and even almost all Brexiteers now accept, you know, it hasn't really worked out, let's not talk about it, uh, it's over, it's done.

[00:19:24] The UK is actually depolarized, so people don't talk about Brexit, and it's like this embarrassing thing that happened in the family that was painful, and um, and we're just going to pretend it didn't happen, yeah. 

[00:19:37] Brian Lott: And what about UK politics? We know it's an election year, not just in the US, but likely in the UK as well.

[00:19:42] What's your, what's the view of the landscape in the UK? 

[00:19:45] Simon Kuper: I mean, I would say everybody would say that Labour is going to win the election. And maybe with a landslide and Keir Starmer, who's a slightly dull center left figure, not so different from Biden or Olaf Scholz, will become the UK Prime Minister.

[00:20:04] That's a very strong expectation. And that's another sign the UK is not really polarized like the US because in the US, essentially, the vote barely moves like one or two percentage points is big news. And in the UK, the conservative support just collapsed, and sort of a third of their vote or something just, just left them, or more than a third.

[00:20:22] Brian Lott: Fascinating. One of the things that has dominated the discussion this morning and yesterday, to a certain extent, is the state of journalism. Both the overwhelming Support and desire to have a vibrant, uh, independent journalistic arm and in most modern countries to preserve democracy and also, uh, based on the column you wrote yesterday, the sort of dismay at the business model, uh, and the loss of so many local newspapers around the world.

[00:20:51] What's your view of, is this a dip that will come back or is it a decline that's going to be with us? 

[00:20:58] Simon Kuper: I mean, I don't see newspapers. Those dead newspapers you're talking about, I don't see them coming back. It may be that people consume serious media in other ways, so Substacks, I'm writing a book about British political corruption, so I've subscribed to this substack by a journalist who's an expert on it.

[00:21:15] And I thought I was, like, one of seven people, but he, he tweeted the other day he has 5, 000 subscribers. Wow. So I'm paying him Six pounds a month or something, so the guy's making 30, 000 pounds a month from us. So, and he, he delivers serious news and it's, you know, he sort of comes from the mainstream media, but yeah, we tried everything.

[00:21:34] We tried clickbait, not, not we, the financial times, the media tried clickbait, didn't work. Facebook ate the ads and then Facebook stops even. Putting us on their feeds and Google ate the ad. So what you see is there's a few islands of media that sells to the 1%, especially in English where you can have a global market that survive.

[00:21:53] So the new, the New York times sells a bit beyond the 1%, but it's very successful often because of the crosswords and the cooking. That's fine. The FT, the economist. And then I'm already starting to run out of titles that are thriving, coping big market like Germany. You can get some publications in France.

[00:22:13] I think all the publications, massive trouble. I think what you're going to see is everyone tries to become a global media among the serious newspapers, serious publications like the Monde, El Pais, Spiegel. You do AI, you turn your site into English, you pay a 23 year old to improve AI's English. Where it's faulty, and then you have Le Monde in English every day, and then they're competing with us.

[00:22:33] Brian Lott: I was going to ask you about AI, and is this a topic in the newsroom and a concern? 

[00:22:38] Simon Kuper: Yes, I was with colleagues last night who were saying that we're now using AI to do bits of editing. I'm not quite sure which bits. I think that the thing is, if you want generic news, Like the score in last night's football match or who won the Indonesian elections.

[00:22:56] You don't have to pay anyone anyway. So if you're going to pay someone you're looking for really high quality insights and or reporting that took a long time and I don't think AI can do that. I think what AI can do is the generic stuff like it describes the earthquake based on, you know, pulling together a lot of reports.

[00:23:18] Part of your 

[00:23:19] Brian Lott: repertoire is now you're a podcaster. Yes. Since last night, I'm curious about that. I mean, it's a, it's kind of a fascinating extension of, of your writing. Tell us why and what it's about. 

[00:23:32] Simon Kuper: So I just launched yesterday, this podcast called heroes and humans of football, which is a, every week we're going to do a person in football.

[00:23:39] So this week it was Gideon Mbappe, next week, Roman Abramovich, and I discussed them in a kind of deep and serious profile with my cohost, Mehreen Khan. And, you know, like I'm sure most of you, I listened to podcasts a lot and I was starting to think, you know, a lot of the skills are transferable between being a journalist and being a podcaster, you'll, you're just selling words.

[00:24:00] And I've been selling words for 30 years. And I thought this is now the way to reach people and sell words. And the. Upside is potentially large. So what that explains we are the podcast market is only podcasts make a profit, which doesn't sound good, but then 90 percent of podcasts are people in their bedroom or academics talking about some arcane subjects.

[00:24:22] 90 percent are not even really trying to make a profit. There's only 10 percent that are commercial. And then you're in that window, which is a bit more. Promising and still only a third of the population in most countries know what a podcast is. So this is a pretty new medium. And interestingly, we're backed by a Swede.

[00:24:37] It was the Swedes who did podcasting first. So they were doing this 10 years ago when none of us had heard what a podcast was. So they know what models work and Spotify is Swedish, Acast is Swedish. So they, the Swedes feel we're seeing everything happen now that happened with us 10 years ago. So they're quite confident.

[00:24:54] And now they're part of NATO. And now they're joining NATO, 

[00:24:56] Brian Lott: which will help with the podcasting. I wanted to open up to questions. If you have a question, please raise your hand. It seems like 2024 has the potential to be a hinge moment. For the world, given the conflict in, in Europe, in particular, uh, the election seasons.

[00:25:14] And that sort of disruption is accompanied by technological disruption, uh, where we're starting to see the work that we do on a daily basis become somewhat automated, much impact, a lot of impact on our stakeholders and our audiences. If you think about the, the business of journalism and its evolution, going into podcasting and other ways of delivering information to people, what's a prediction for 2030?

[00:25:41] What is, what is information delivery gonna look like? Aside from staring at our phones all day. 

[00:25:46] Simon Kuper: Um, maybe we'll have moved beyond phones. I think one thing that's gonna happen is there'll just be less information. And most people won't particularly want information. Because, If you think about it, my industry made you watch the news or listen to the news.

[00:26:03] Because even if you just want us to listen to music on the radio, we played the news every hour. And on TV, we put, you know, you want us to watch Soaps and every hour there's a, there's a, every evening there's a TV news. And if you want it, you bought the newspaper, you know, when we were kids, people bought the newspaper that you were delivering.

[00:26:19] They didn't care about the news. They wanted to know what's the weather going to be tomorrow, what's on television, what's the local fair, you know, when does that start? And then we gave them the news in it. And so we bombarded people with news that they probably didn't want, and now they don't need all that.

[00:26:34] And what you're seeing is people are starting to switch off the news. So yes, you're going to get fantastic deep fakes and you won't even know what the news is anymore. But most people, I think, just don't really want to know. So there was this test by a pollster yesterday. He tested the approval ratings of a British politician called Wilson.

[00:26:53] front bench figure and people said, I like Wilson. I don't like Wilson. My problem with Wilson is this, the guy didn't exist. And so people feel they have to have a response to news, but really they're not following. So when you see polls about what do people think about. The war in Israel or the war in Ukraine, people will give you a response or a tiny proportion of people will respond to a poster, but they're giving you a response.

[00:27:17] They haven't been thinking about before you ask them. So I think we're moving into a non information era for most people. 

[00:27:24] Brian Lott: How do you pick your subjects when you write your column? Uh, do you have like a, a list that you, as you walk through the city, you think, Ah, I should write about that next week. 

[00:27:32] Simon Kuper: Yeah, when you're not on your phone and you're just washing the dishes or walking through the city, as you say, you sometimes have these very small eureka moments.

[00:27:40] I mean, it's not like, you know, an apple falls on your head and you, you've, you've invented a new mathematical formula, but you think, Oh, that's an idea. And what I'm looking for always, a column is one idea. It's something that is counterintuitive. That is original in the sense that your readers very largely won't have encountered it, it hasn't been said by other media before.

[00:28:02] Maybe it's been said by some academic that nobody knows about, or maybe you just invented it. So one original idea, and then you use the 750 words that I have to explain the idea, argue, maybe add a couple of examples and anecdotes. 

[00:28:15] Brian Lott: You're a dad, and you have a generation now coming up that's seeing journalism in a very different way.

[00:28:20] Simon Kuper: Well, he's an anthropologist. He has actually also just published a book recently, but he's 82 now. But yeah, he wrote in media on the side, but he's an anthropologist. 

[00:28:29] Brian Lott: Wow, incredible. And you've got kids as well. And how do they consume news and see the news industry? I'm curious. 

[00:28:38] Simon Kuper: So my daughter, who's the oldest, I mean, she's being raised by two journalists.

[00:28:42] So we actually have newspapers in the house and we're the only people who sell newspapers. And so she actually reads the newspapers, which is very odd. And she says that on Instagram where everyone she knows is, she follows reputable media. She knows from us that. You can't trust stuff that people say online.

[00:29:03] But most people she knows do trust stuff that people say online. So she follows, for example, The Economist on Instagram, but most people just getting stuff on Instagram. My sons are much more influenced by influencers, and what the French call Youtubers. So a Youtuber is a young person with a, A show sometimes about current affairs.

[00:29:21] There's this guy who I think has something like 5 million followers in France. And he essentially covers the news. And he does it for kids and young people. And McCormick gave him an interview, I think, before the last election. Because this guy is so influential, he's probably more influential than Le Monde.

[00:29:37] Yeah, so these kids don't really know that newspapers existed. 

[00:29:44] Brian Lott: Incredible. 

[00:29:45] We spend a lot of our time valuing the media, thinking about how best to interact.

[00:29:50] Uh, do you have any guidance for us? Uh, what do we do well? What do we not do well as a room full of chief communications officers? 

[00:29:57] Simon Kuper: I find I'm bombarded with generic emails that have no relevance to me at all. And I understand they're, they're sending it to a thousand journalists. They just want to get one person to reply.

[00:30:06] Or there's this desperate stuff like, Simon, have you tried our new Valenstein's Descent? Would you consider writing a feature about this? And I just feel that there must be a kind of level of professionalism that this is below. And then And then you, you realize often, I think the communications person is trying to deceive the company they're representing by over promising.

[00:30:38] So if I speak to anyone, like they have a story that might be vaguely interesting. I'll say, look, we can talk for five minutes on the phone, but I don't want you then to pester me for the next two weeks about when are you going to publish this story? I'm just getting five minutes of information from you.

[00:30:55] And what they do is they speak to you and then they call the company and say, yeah, the Financial Times is interested. The Financial Times is looking at a feature and then they, they think, oh my God, I've over promised. So then they pass to me and I just feel that there's an enormous amount of dishonesty and over promising.

[00:31:11] And there's also too many of you compared to us. So, you know, I was, I was talking to people earlier. I recently saw a stat there's seven communications professors, U. S. and U. K. to every journalist. But now there's probably more because there's fewer of us. And so you're just this enormous army and we're, we're this tiny group of people and we, we, we can't cope with all of this.

[00:31:31] Brian Lott: How do we do it right? 

[00:31:32] Simon Kuper: How do you do it right? When you actually have a sense of what the journalist does. So I write a lot about Paris. So if you say, you don't have to say, Oh, I loved your, what they sometimes do. I loved your last Coleman's brilliant anyway, so I wanted to introduce you to this company.

[00:31:49] Just say, I see that you write about Paris. This is a story that is something that you might do. Can we talk just for a few minutes on the phone about it? Or can I send you some information? That is really helpful. That I like. 

[00:32:01] Brian Lott: That's great. Thank you for replying to, uh, to our pitch, uh, and coming here today.

[00:32:06] It was a pleasure. We, uh, appreciate that. A big round of applause, please, for Simon.

[00:32:23] Eliot Mizrachi (Host): Thanks for listening to Simon share his invaluable international perspective. Whether you're based in Europe or working for an American company, in this multi stakeholder world, we are all connected. And communicators need different perspectives to counsel their organizations. Check out Simon's latest book, Impossible City, and his new podcast, Heroes and Humans of Football.

[00:32:43] And don't forget to subscribe to The New CCO, wherever you listen to podcasts, to get our latest episodes.

[00:32:51] If you enjoyed today's episode of The New CCO, be sure to check out our latest episodes and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, don't Leave us a rating and a review. We want to hear what you think so that we can keep making this podcast more interesting and valuable to you. To find out more about what's happening at Page, please visit us at page.[00:33:10] org. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time on the new CCO.