#MediaSnack

#MediaSnack MEETS: Evan Shapiro, Owner & Media Cartographer of ESHAP

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Evan Shapiro, Owner and Media Cartographer at ESHAP, joins Tom this week to unpack his biggest insights, challenges, and advice for media teams in 2025.

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Links:
Follow Evan on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eshap-media-cartographer/ 

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If you lose touch with the audience you're looking to serve and the employees you're looking to lead, it's very easy to wind up inside a bubble whose walls are impenetrable until they pop. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Media Snack Meets. I'm excited to say my special guest for this episode is Evan Shapiro. who is a great commentator on the global media industry, and you might know him better as the media cartographer. For those that don't know you, perhaps you can just take a minute, just explain what is it you do, uh, now, and what is it that takes, it takes to be successful in that kind of role? Um, well, technically, my term or technically, uh, metaphorically, my term is media cartographer. Um, what I do, uh, on a daily basis is take the complex fire hose of information that comes at us about the media world and turn it into somewhat pointed or provocative, um, infographics and, uh, insights in text, uh, in a way that people can digest, I think easily Understand and then Take action upon, um, and, um, people boil it down to media cartographer because I made this map of the media universe that people seem to use as a point of reference, um, which takes the valuations of 125 different companies in the media universe and puts it all on one place and scales it by relative size of value and resources. Um, the, the things that I do, uh, professionally that come out of that, I give that value away for free on LinkedIn. I have a newsletter called Media War and Peace, which people read and subscribe to. Um, but then I consult, um, I do a lot of speaking on the media, uh, ecosystem. I do a decent amount of thought leadership, um, and I, you know, offer a strategy as a source. But you seem to rise above others. I mean, there's a lot of noise in our industry, isn't it? And there's a lot of people putting a lot of stuff on LinkedIn. Uh, most of it's terrible, but, but, but yours rises. Why, why, why do you cut through? Do you think? I mean, I use dirty words a lot. Um, I think that doesn't hurt. Um, no, I think there's a, again, I think there's a lot of words out there in the world, but not a lot of insight. And I think I boil it down to the most actionable elements. Um, I do so in a way that has a bit of sense of humor to it. Um, I also am not filtered in any way, shape or form. I don't. Try to protect myself from, from things. Um, and lastly, I think the, the idea that I put these big, bold infographics connected to most of what I do that takes the information and makes it. Virally easy to understand. It makes people want to go look at this. And I think that's, that's the very nature of it is there's a provocative nature to what I do, but it's also. Instantly understandable as opposed to, I got to read all these words and find the meaning inside. We thank you for your service because it distills it down into easy. That's the idea behind MediaSnack was all just like, just try and get down to the, down, down to what people need to know. Okay, so you've been in media a few, few years. Um, and seen, seen the industry from different, different perspectives as well. Um, and now you make a. Business out of really observing the industry. So what, what, in your view, what's the best thing about working in the media industry and then give us, give us an example of something that you're most proud of that you've worked on. Um, you know, I think the things that I'm most proud of that I've worked on that aren't the stuff that I do now would be things like Portlandia. This film is not yet rated. Please like me, um, the creation of see. So, uh, those are things that I'm proud of from when I was housed inside corporate media. But since I left, the things I'm most proud of are, you know, the things I write. Um, I think my newsletter is a body of work that I'm most proud of in the world because it's mine. It's it, those other projects, I enabled other artists to make their stuff. And I was proud to do so on the reason why Portlandia took place in Portland. Um, I'm very proud of those things. And I have awards over here that, that show my pride in them. Um, but now. The stuff I make, I make myself, and it's born out of my own creativity and my own passion, and I'm very proud of that. Um, what, what's best about working in the media world is, frankly, it's import. It's, it's influence on people's lives. Um, you know, people will come up to me if they've heard I've made, I worked on Portlandia, and they'll thank me for having participated in that. Um, now people come up to me at conferences or, or other places and they say, thank you for writing the things that you do. You just thanked me for my service. Um, and oftentimes they're not even thanking me for the insights. They're thanking me about the stuff that I write that is more human in nature, the struggles we all have in, in the ecosystem right now, my own struggles with my own health. Um, and using that as a metaphor for, um, the things that need to improve in our industry. Um, and that's really. And rightly so, very good. And hopefully, you know, maybe a few more people watching Media Snack can start to appreciate you. Cause I, I, I like your vulnerability and the stories that you tell. It's not just reporting on the corporate America of corporate media scene. Um, there's a lot of stuff that you look at obviously in your analysis, but when you stand back, what would you say are some of our biggest challenges as a media industry, what have we got to overcome? Right now, the biggest challenge I think that the media industry has is a double edged sword of fear of finding out and the innovation stagnation that that creates. Um, I think that most of the corporate media world doesn't really want to recognize the things that are most important about the media world, which is the creator economy has overtaken mainstream media as the center of relevance in the global culture. And the last presidential election and then Jake Paul breaking Netflix are two inflection points, um, that I point to as I think that was the moment that the greater economy overtook mainstream media as the center of relevance on the planet earth. Um, I think we'll look back at on that as the moment. Um, and they don't want to recognize that they want to see the Jake Paul fight as a success for Netflix, not as a success for YouTube, which it is. Really was more successful for YouTube than for Netflix because it broke Netflix and then Jake Paul returned to YouTube. Um, and then, uh, the, this innovation stagnation, we really haven't innovated that the traditional media world hasn't had any innovation introduced to it since Netflix started streaming content. That was the last major innovation that the media world has. Um, and we've been almost backpedaling from innovation since then. The advertising economy has gotten more confusing and confounding since then. Um, the user interface for most consumers has gotten more frustrating and more of a paradox of choice, uh, since then. And we've taken a lot of the joy out of Consuming the content that we put out in the world and frankly, distributing the content that we put out. So you're, let's talk about, uh, you and a bit of your journey. One question I always like to ask, you know, cause you've been a high flying exec, as you say, in kind of corporate media and now, you know, building your own enterprise. Is there a particular piece of leadership advice that either you've got that. It's been a real driver for you or something that you, you share with others that you think is really valuable. Yeah, I, uh, there was a long time where the most important things to me in my career were the title, the pay and the power. And what I found out was that the title, the pay and the power are very lonely objects to obtain. And that it's very easy to get promoted past the thing that you love and forget the reason why you got into this in the first place. Um, and I think that's, that's, that's one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is, um, I think if you lose touch with, um, the audience you're looking to serve and the employees you're looking to lead, um, it's very easy to wind up inside a bubble whose walls are impenetrable until they pop. And so I talked to a lot of executives and one of the things I say, that's most important to them, which is something I learned from Mark Thompson, uh, in his exit interview from the New York times, which is empower the audience members who work for you to make decisions about your business. Let 20 and 30 something year olds who are downline from you make decisions where the rubber hits the road. Let them make mistakes, um, and then let them iterate and iterate and iterate. And you say that in front of crowded rooms of Gen Xers and boomers, and you can hear the butts clench. And it's really, I mean, if you want to, if you want to try to run a business that's for 20 and 30 year olds without having the 20 and 30 year olds in the room, helping you make those decisions, good fucking luck. Very good. Uh, I like that. Okay. Evan, uh, you're a busy guy. You put out a lot of stuff. I see it all the time. Uh, when you're not doing that, when you're not obsessing about the media industry, where would we find you to, when you're kind of like detox from media, cause we all need that. walking my dog around, um, the Upper West Side, uh, and Morningside Heights here, um, at the theater. I know that's still media, um, but I'm seeing a play tonight. Um, I'm seeing another play this weekend. Uh, uh, I'm going to see Wicked tomorrow night. Um, the, the, the movie, not the, not the play. Um, and then I would say, you know, I, I'm very much, uh, into Philadelphia sports teams, which is a painful addiction. Um, so, you know, I'll be spending Sunday night screaming at the television screen for the Philadelphia football Eagles to beat the Los Angeles football Rams. Um, so yeah, I, I, you know, I am, I, I am very much a media consumer. In addition to being a media professional, I watch a shit ton of television. Um, I mean, I just really watched the heck out of tv. Um, I'm, I'm in the middle of bad sisters right now. Um, uh, you know, I just finished a disclaimer, which was just fucking brilliant. Um, and so, yeah, I just, I love content. I'm a, I'm a, I grew up on content. I was to a certain extent raised by content. Um, and now I, when I'm not. Thinking about and writing about and working on media, I'm usually consuming. You can't get away from it. Okay. So to wrap up, um, I mean, you point out a lot of the challenges. You've mentioned some of them earlier in the show, and a lot of the content you put out is about. Some of the doom and gloom, frankly, that we should be confronting with. But, but you always bring it like a hopeful and optimistic tone. I think that's why people like consuming it so much. Um, because as you said, there's some personality in there. So give us, give us some hope. You know, if we look back a year from now, what do you want us to have achieved? What, and what great hope do you have for the year ahead for the media industry? I think what I talked about earlier, I think the creator platforms are, they're, they're not at war with mainstream media, they are coexisting with the mainstream media. And I think if mainstream media understands how to lean into, um, the hierarchy of the creator economy, they can really find a pathway to not just thrive, surviving, but also thriving. And the best example I'll give you is something that I've been trying like heck to get. To manifest into a reality, which is I really, really, really, really, really want mainstream news, legitimate. Verifiable professional news, whether that's public service media around the rest of the world, um, or professional media here in the United States, both of which are professional, um, to embrace, um, the platforms where the next generation of audiences are gathering. Um, if you don't, you're going to see those platforms to the bad actors and you're going to lose your relevance on the, in the marketplace for ideas. So I'm hoping that the BBCs and the ZDFs who were already leaning into, uh, uh. Uh, the creator platforms and the PBS's and the CBC's and the news organizations and the information organizations who are responsible for the way we see the truth in the world, um, find a pathway to finding the consumers who most need that information and that truth at this moment in time, when you look at the outcomes of recent elections all over the planet earth and 40 of the world's population. will have voted this year. Um, the younger a consumer is, the more likely they will have been to consume their news and information on social media, which is not always a good thing. I don't know if everybody understands that it could be a very bad thing. And without getting political, that's where misinformation tends to thrive. And so I'm hoping that a year from now, we will have taken the lessons of the outcomes of the elections that we just found and. Find a way to put the truth and information back to the consumers who most need it What a big hope that is, uh, Evan Shapiro, the media cartographer. Thank you for joining us.