Alley Sessions

A new model for membership-driven media: A conversation with the team at Defector

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The changing landscape of news media has sparked innovations in platform development, subscription models, community engagement strategies and more. The pioneers of this movement are reporters and ambitious teams of talented writers who are ready to jump out from under legacy media limits and experiment in new ways with subscriptions and relationships with their readers.

One such team is the folks at Defector, a collectively-owned sports and culture website, who recently launched Defector.com. Their goal was to create a blog where they had the editorial freedom to write what they wanted to, serve a community they can talk to and establish a financially stable and independent publication. One that is led by their staff and direct relationships with their audience, rather than demands and oversight of venture capitalists, billionaire angels, or Wall Street.

Learn from Editor in Chief Tom Ley and Vice President of Revenue and Operations Jasper Wang about how they came together with Alley to launch the site, how they organized collective ownership with their writers, and why they made the decisions they have so far. Be sure to join us!

This webinar will be recorded – register now to receive the recording afterwards, even if you can’t join live.

  • Jasper Wang

    VP of Revenue and Operations
    Defector
    Jasper Wang leads all non-editorial operations at Defector Media as the Vice President of Revenue & Operations. Previously, he was a longtime consultant at Bain & Company and worked in operations at The New Republic.

  • Tom Ley

    Editor-in-Chief
    Defector
    Tom Ley is the Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Defector. Before that he was a writer and editor at Deadspin for seven years.

  • Gillian Hart-Zamora

    Director of Digital Strategy, General Manager of Lede
    Alley
    Gillian Zamora is Director of Digital Strategy at Alley and the product leader of Lede. As a Product Owner, she brings more than a decade of experience in the media business to collaborate with clients and teams on successful solutions. Gillian is passionate about serving media clients and solving problems at the intersection of user experience, technology, business and storytelling. At Alley, she has worked with the Committee to Protect Journalists, Dallas Morning News, Kaiser Health News, Brookings, New York Post and more.

Webinars webinars

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