Mark Little: ‘If you’re not taking risks, you’re going to die’

Traditional media organisations will die unless they start innovating. That’s the view of Mark Little, the former journalist turned entrepreneur who is now Twitter’s vice-president for media partnerships in Europe and Africa.

There had been a revolutionary change in news, Little said. News used to be a one-way system consumed by the public at the publisher’s timing of choice. Now they can answer back. They are participants that can choose when, what and how they consume.

Established media still has not adapted to that idea, Little believes. “There’s been a craving from news publishers for the one single thing that will deliver them from the disruption that they’ve gone through. And there is no single silver bullet. There just isn’t,” he said.

The hundreds of different elements that define a news organisation’s success and profitability range from the speed with which articles load to relationships with social media platforms, Little said.

Big media organisations should try small things, fail fast, learn lessons and think like a start-up. “If you’re not taking risks, you’re going to die,” he said.

When asked if we will still have newspapers in 20 years, he said: “Take the paper out of that. There’s no question in my mind that we’ll still have news organisations. Perhaps not every single newspaper group that exists right now will exist in its current form in ten years’ time, but I have no doubt that there is a craving for context and authenticity and storytelling.”

The role of a journalist and a newsroom has never been more valuable in filtering and contextualising all of the content out there, including billions of social media messages every day.

“If you think about a news organisation as a source of storytelling and context, then the future of news is very strong. But if you get wedded to a printing press or a satellite dish or a radio transmitter and that’s all you do, then your days are numbered,” Little said.

RTÉ nostalgia

Little spent 18 years reliant on a satellite dish when he worked for RTÉ in a number of roles including Washington correspondent, foreign affairs correspondent, and anchor of Prime Time.

He left RTÉ in 2010 to set up Storyful, a social news agency, which he later sold to Newscorp for €18 million.

“A lot of people leave RTÉ and bitch about it when they leave,” he said. “I’m the opposite. I’m the boring guy who says, actually, I’ve worked with every single broadcaster in Europe in some form, I’ve worked with every single news organisation in the world in some form, and when I come back and look at RTÉ, I put it up in the top ranks.”

Although he would not be drawn on speculation over who would get the soon-to-be vacant director general job at RTÉ, he was full of praise for the outgoing DG, Noel Curran, who he described as “one of those inspirational leaders that come across RTÉ not very often”.

Little recounted a time when Curran was head of news at RTÉ in 2002, when the story broke about American rogue trader John Rusnak. The foreign exchange dealer employed by AIB’s Allfirst subsidiary caused $691 million in trading losses in the currency markets.

Prime Time was not due to have a programme that night, and it looked like RTÉ would have no slot to cover what turned into one of the biggest business stories of the year.

“Noel pulled us all together, saying: ‘We don’t have a programme tonight’, and I remember he kept banging the table. He jumped up, grabbed his coat, ran out and got us a slot that night. He is a hard act to follow.”

Little said his journalistic background served him well at Storyful and Twitter.

“You’re live on camera and you’ve nowhere to go. Or you’re in a warzone and you know that turning right or left could be a fatal decision. You’re essentially writing stories that have an impact on people’s lives.”

In a start-up or an innovative company like Twitter, decisions were not life or death, but they carried the same buzz, he said.

“You see a problem, something coming down the tracks, a threat, a challenge, and I still get the same kind of excitement I would get in Iraq or Afghanistan. I know it sounds bizarre, but it is the same charge.”

Sometimes, he misses journalism, but less so than he expected. “I used to call myself a journalist, and I’m not quite sure now. The greatest boast of my professional life is that I created the team that created Storyful, not necessarily that I did it,” he said.

Little said he had never regretted selling Storyful. “I was never in it to be an entrepreneur. I was in it for a single mission, and that was to find ways to protect the values of journalism that inspired me in a completely different age of social media,” he said.

“I feel that by people making a fetish out of not selling your business, that is doing a great disservice to some entrepreneurs for whom that might be the right decision when they get to a certain point.”

Storyful got to a point where it could continue on its own, but Little said he was pretty sure it did not have the resources to succeed, especially as competitors were emerging all over the world.

If it did not get a massive cash injection, the company might have fallen way back. He said his options were to raise money or bring on board a news organisation that committed itself to Storyful.

“A vast majority of start-ups fail. The vast majority of start-ups that are bought are gobbled up and spat out by the organisation that buys them. The opposite is the case with NewsCorp and Storyful. They put tons of money into it, they grew it and they did it well, so Storyful still exists in its original form,” he said.

Storyful was a talent academy, and Little said he was very proud of where people have gone since. He said he had no doubt that he would meet and work with some of them again.

“One of the things business people say is: ‘We’re a family’ – which is not true, you’re never a family, but you are allies. Being in the bunker together forges closer friendships than you can actually have with some of your relatives. That bond can never be broken.”

Staying power

After leaving Storyful, Little took six months off and became convinced that the only way forward was to start up a new company.

At the time, he was considering setting up a venture capital fund for people who leave media organisations that do not have business skills. It would coach them and supply them with money to help them get international breakthrough. He had financial backing for the idea in New York and California, but he realised he did not have the staying power for it.

He had a friend who was in the same position as him, having sold his start-up three months before Little sold Storyful. They met for lunch in New York one day, and discussed the pressures of everyone expecting them to set up another company. They left giving each other permission not to do another start-up, Little said.

“One of the most creative acts for an entrepreneur is to realise when not to be one. By that stage, Twitter had already come knocking on the door, and it was definitely an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he said.

Negative press

As part of his role in Twitter, which he took up in mid-December, Little is responsible for ensuring the “power” users of the platform increase their activity.

Little said he did question whether he would be able to go from being the chief executive to being a part of a very large company. But he said the transition has been much easier than he expected.

“Twitter is now ten years old, so it’s not a young start-up any more, but it still has a lot of that mentality,” he said.

There has been a lot of negative press about Twitter recently. The company has not yet turned a profit and its user growth has plateaued. But Little said there was no fear that it would become the next MySpace.

“Twitter has an incredibly strong business model. The business’s success has not been recognised in the public mind,” he said.

Social media was going through a transition, he said. “We’re going through the maturing of social media. Each platform knows what their strengths are,” he said.

There is an assumption that people will eventually choose just one platform, whether that will be Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or something else – but in reality, there is space for the various platforms as they offer different services, he said.

Clouded judgment

So what’s next for Little? He said he is enjoying his role in Twitter, and he has no desire to add to his “cluttered” CV.

While Little has invested in ChangeX, a company that invests in social capitalism, he said he is not an investor, per se.

“If I was an investor, I wouldn’t know what to do. I could have passion for an idea and that would cloud my judgment. I’m not a good investor,” he said.

He said he did not have the start-up bug, but he might set up another company if he has the right idea.

Little, who has already penned three books, might have another in him. He said he may do more writing in the future, and would love to pass on some of the things he has learned, but he is confident he can do that in the context of where he is.

Although Little has given up on his childhood dream of being a football player, after leaving Storyful, he briefly attempted to learn how to sing and play the guitar, but he was terrible at both. Now he is learning languages. “If I can speak Spanish within a year, that’s something I will be very proud of,” he said.