Casey Neistat sold his video news-sharing app to CNN for $25 million. He's not a journalist, he
just wants to show billions of viewers what's going on in the world.
By Matthew Belloni
Sep 5, 2017
431
A few miles downtown from the shiny headquarters of CNN Worldwide in Manhattan sits a grimy warehouse space housing a startup company called Beme. PLEASE DO NOT RING THE BELL UNLESS YOU HAVE OFFICIAL BUSINESS HERE, reads a handwritten note taped above the buzzer, because all kinds of adorers show up here with cameras looking for Casey Neistat, the square-jawed YouTube star turned media entrepreneur who cofounded Beme and whose 7.5 million subscribers and 1.5 billion video views convinced CNN to pay a reported $25 million last year for his company.
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Neistat is a 36-year-old high-school dropout who had a child at 17, bounced around the art and advertising worlds, landed a quickly canceled HBO diary show in 2008, and, finally, gained a rabid following ("high engagement," in digital-media-speak) for his cheeky and well-produced YouTube videos explaining such topics as when to use the emergency brake on the New York City subway and how to take a shower in the first-class cabin of a transatlantic flight.
Before selling to CNN, Beme had created a Snapchat-like social media app that was becoming popular. After the purchase, CNN shut it down. It didn't want the app. It wanted Neistat and his team to figure out the future of news. Even as cable executives feast on the ratings and profits of the Trump phenomenon, they see the terrifying trends: The average CNN viewer is 60 (Fox News' is older); people are watching their phones, not their TVs; and when they do watch, they increasingly don't trust what they see.
Neistat, who rides a skateboard to work and wears backward hats, is seen as better able to figure out what young people want to watch and how they want to watch it than anyone in the glass tower at CNN. He may represent one of the last hopes to save television news from itself.
Danny Clinch
Thursday, 2 p.m. Neistat offers a compressed green juice and pulls up a chair at a schoolyard table in the center of a sparse communal work space.
Popular Mechanics: So why did CNN spend so much money on your company?
Casey Neistat [chuckling]: CNN's a media company, and they have tremendous technology. But all that technology does is further disseminate their media. Written, print, photography, and video. Their app is another way you can consume that. They're not how we're approaching the marriage between technology and media. And the best example I can give to you right now is an app we've made called Panels. Where Fox News or CNN or MSNBC would want to take a topic with a diverse number of opinions and perspectives around it, they would throw it to a group of older, typically men, wearing suits, who sort of pontificate around that point.
PM: Right. The panels.
CN: It's always the same people. There's a reason why that's become institutionalized: because it's effective. But that's not interesting for us. So we built a digital product, an app, that people can download, that we populate with subject lines all the time—an individual subject line that we might be talking about on our news show. And then everybody who owns that app sees that. [Yells] Hey, Jack? You have the latest build of Panels on your phone?
A T-shirted 20-something appears with an iPhone that shows people sharing video opinions on news of the day.
Jack: These are the, like, topic questions.
Jack clicks on a subject titled "McGregor-Floyd Mayweather Fight" and a video of a young man appears.
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Video: I've been trying to make a bet in the office for the Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather fight . . . I have $200 on McGregor . . . nobody's taken the bet yet . . . so my question is . . . who would you have your money on, for this fight?
CN: So, it's right to the next one.
A shadowed military-looking dude with a high-and-tight haircut appears.
Video: Probably Mayweather, because he's the master of not getting hit. But if he gets hit . . .
CN: And then we have—there's a poll you can take. So all of a sudden, this isn't about consumption. Once we send this out publicly, if we're getting tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of downloads—which I think we can do—we're able to crowdsource subject matter around news that not just informs the way that we report on it, but informs how and what we're sharing to people who otherwise feel largely ignored. Because those middle-aged people you see wearing suits on TV—I have no relationship with them! They look like my uncle, who I don't understand, who has bad breath.
PM: So you consider that a news product?
CN: I mean, I don't really know what a news product is. I'm a high-school dropout, not a journalist. But to me, the problem we're trying to solve here is, you have an entire demographic that's consuming media at a higher rate than any time in history, and you have an entire demographic that's further disenfranchised with the news and media and politics and the things that actually affect the world around them—arguably greater than they've ever been disenfranchised in history. How do we address those two issues? Whether you call it a news product or not, it's exciting.
PM: But for better or worse, CNN is professionally produced journalism. When you see Anderson Cooper on TV, there's a team of professionals behind him, and there's 20 years of his experience presenting you with the facts. I don't know who those people are on your app.
CN: Sure, but no one's presenting those people as journalists—the same way one wouldn't present the eight panelists behind Anderson Cooper.
PM: But they've been vetted, at least. The question is: Do young people care about whether they're getting news from Cooper or the people on your app?
CN: Well, they're not getting it from Anderson Cooper, so that should answer your question.
PM: Right.
CN: What's the average age of the CNN viewer? You know the answer.
PM: I see your point: They're already not, so why not give them something that they are interested in.
CN: We don't consider those contributors journalists any more than someone would consider Kellyanne Conway a journalist. She's a contributor offering her perspective on a matter. Now, the news that we present from our team is news that's backed and researched by experienced, extremely well-versed journalists that are sitting downstairs right now researching our next story.
PM: So, what is the plan for your journalism?
CN: I still haven't answered your larger question of why me.
PM: Right. Keep that going.
CN: Yeah, no problem. So, I think what my daily [YouTube] show—which is 800 episodes in—has demonstrated is an ability to connect with an audience around a range of topics, from very personal issues to a tongue-in-cheek technology review to something more serious. And the reason people are engaged with the content I make is 'cause they're invested in me as an individual.
PM: You're compelling. When you're in that airplane shower, it's fun to watch.
CN [pauses]: Thank you.
PM: That sounded weird.
CN: Yeah, superw—
PM: When you hear that you're the future of news, how do you feel?
CN: Well I've never said that.
PM: But others say it about you.
CN: I push back against that. Aggressively. We're certainly not trying to be the future of news. I think that's a horrible North Star to go after. We're trying to build a YouTube channel that people might like. So if you want my cover story tagline, it's "Beme News: Trying to build a YouTube channel that people might like." Because that's how we're building this.
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