Shaun Newman Podcast - #887 - Sam Anthony

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Sam Anthony is the founder of yourNEWS Media Group, a platform launched to counter mainstream media narratives by empowering citizen journalists to report local and national news. A decentralized, technology-driven news network to provide unfiltered, community-driven information. To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionWebsite: www.BowValleycu.comEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail]

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um and uh hopefully i'll have an answer for you sooner than later um i want to remind everyone Everybody, you know, for the month of July, we have no Tuesday episode. So if you're going, where was Tuesday? We don't have a Tuesday episode for the month of July. And then Thursdays is throwback. Thursdays Friday mash up at 10 a.m. Mountain Standard regular time. But Tews has a guest co-host for the month of July as I head off on holidays and I guess continue holidays with the wife and kids. So if you're wondering, that's where, or wondering why, I should say why, there's no Tuesday.

That'd be why. um, um, yeah, we take a little bit of a break here in July and recharge the batteries and we'll be ready to roll. August 1 have no worries. I think we get back on a Tuesday or on a Tuesday on a, yeah, it's still there on a on a mashup if memory serves me correct. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, Rumble, YouTube, X, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to leave a review. Make sure to hit the retweet. Make sure to, you know, cut out your favorite parts of the podcast. I just saw a cool one where people were making commentary on some of the guests, that's cool too. You have fun with it.

If you're enjoying it, obviously text me. My numbers down on the show notes. I'd love to hear your thoughts. All right, let's get on to that. Tale of the tape. Today's guest is the founder of Your News Media Group, a platform launched to counter mainstream media narratives by empowering citizen journalists to report local and national news.

I'm talking about Sam Anthony. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Sam Anthony. Sam, thanks for hopping on. Hey, good to be here, Sean. Now, it's your first time on the podcast. I would love if you just talk a little bit about yourself.

I don't know, you can go back as far as you want, Sam. But just give the audience a little bit of who Sam is. You know, again, my name is Sam Anthony. I run a hyper-local news platform called Your News. The domain is your news.com. Currently, we're in the United States. However, we do have a Canadian version. We will be launching relatively soon.

That'll start once one piece of tech is done, which it'll be done by the end of the month. And then we'll configure the Canadian version because I told a lot of people from Canada that we will create one. A lot of content creators in Canada. So they're interested in us creating Canadian version because you guys have state control media. So I'm sure in the next year, I'm probably going to be an enemy of this. state when it comes to Canada. Join the club. They don't, yeah, you too, because they don't want any free flowing information.

But you know what? They didn't want it here in the United States, too. So we're a platform that just imagine any news website just on steroids. We're in every city in the United States and soon to be Canada, right, including Puerto Rico. So when you log in, your provider, we geolocate you. So it'll say you live in Chicago, Miami, Phoenix, L.A. So it's going to look like any news website just with massive scale. We all know the legacy media is, you know, is not going to survive.

And to keep things like short inversion, what I do, because like we've picked up over 800 news reporters, as a matter of fact, right before we started this, I was just activating another one. What our product will become is the next mainstream media, because we do local news everywhere. soon to be in Canada. Sam, before we get to the platform and everything, I'm curious, like what led you to this? Like, what's your background? Where did you come from?

Why this idea? I mean, I can rattle off probably 50 more questions, but I'm just, you know, like, I've heard different versions of this, maybe not quite, but lots of people trying to penetrate, I don't know if that's the right word, the news market or maybe you're, You figure it up, right?

So I'm curious. Like where do you sit currently and then like just give me like how on earth you got to this is the way? You know, I so a lot of people, you don't think, you know, when you become, when you figure this out, you know, and you become a success. But oh, it's an overnight success. Well, I can assure you this is no overnight success. I started this. Me and a couple guys believe that the internet was going to transform the newspaper industry. Radio TV weren't even part of it.

So just the newspaper industry because it was going to change the way people consume information. So I'm telling you, Sean, this was back in 2001. That's how long I've been doing this. And so we set out to build a platform that would replace the legacy media and become the next local newspaper in every city in America. We failed miserably. And it was it was three of us that did it. We had no idea what we were doing. My background is not media.

It's investment. banking. My background is capital raising. That's what I do for a living. I've done that my whole life. So this was something different, but I thought, you know what, let's create a model that would have massive scale and be part of a game changer in the media space. And, you know, we hit every road bump you could possibly imagine. About five or six years into it, we, I think it was 2007. I lost two partners. I had to pick up another partner. We continued on. And we, What we thought was the model, Sean, what we were doing, which was, remember, I'm local in every city in the United States, so we could serve content to a city, a county, a market, state, regional, and national.

What I thought we were doing, which was right, turned out to just implode on us. You know how the networks have, they have like Fox or CBS or ABC has the television national network, but then there's local Fox CBS networks across the United States, Iliots across the U.S. So what we did was how do you get local news in every city in the United States and do a cost effectively? Well, the way to do that is, you know, you have to partner with somebody who's already doing the local news. The newspapers, you're a competitor. But it was local broadcast stations, you know, like radio stations that have independent news directors with maybe a few stringers running around getting local news. So we had most of the country covered doing local news.

And then what happened was the Internet. just kind of got to radio and to TV. And so, you know, the first people to go were the news people in any station. The first people to go, they got rid of the news director because they're saving themselves 100,000 a year. And they could replace it with music or something else, something that's national. So that model didn't work. And it took a little time to figure this out.

But what we did was we kind of looked at the model that YouTube had. You know how YouTube has a monetization model. model where you could be a broadcaster and then share in the ad revenue. Well, we modeled ourselves after that. And then once we figured it out, we had to rip the whole engine out of the car and replace it with a new one and then test it to see if it worked. And it did. And so the model that we have is going to be no different than YouTube. We have news reporters that sign up on our platform. They write a story about anything. Could be the bank robbery, the car crash, the high school football game. We publish that content to the subject in geography it's relevant to. So in the case of sports,

it would, you know, like the football game would be sports news for that geography. And then what they do is they share it on their social media pages to their followers. Their followers who enjoy their content, consume it on our platform. We sell the ads and they get a percentage of the ad revenue. So it, it, you would think that this would be logical to come up with, but it was an evolution. to get here. So once we did it, the next step was to test it. Once we figured it out, the next step was to scale it. So this year, we have picked up now. We're over 800 news reporters across the United States and some in Canada. And I just picked up a guy in Greece, believe it or not, today, this morning. World News. I don't even know. I'm like, forgive me. I'm like, okay,

so you've been working on this for 24 years. I'm doing the math. You start this out. Yeah. You're like, there is a big hole here. The internet is going to or is exposing, you know, how news is consumed, essentially. And the fact that you can become hyper localized with the technology that's sitting there. Yeah. So keep in mind, you know, Sean, when I was doing this, nobody believed me, right?

Like people would tell me there's no way that the newspapers are going to go away. There's no way radio and TV are going away. Well, now it's clear, right? On top of it, there was an agenda. So, like, for me, I was never one of those people that believed the media was lying until 2016. So it's like I had my head in the sand. But when Trump got elected, all of a sudden, the mainstream media completely turned on them, right? And they started just fabricating stuff.

I mean, their job is to tell the truth. Just report the facts, right? Instead, they were manufacturing stuff and running with it. And I said that my partner, I said, what we're doing is bigger than I ever imagine. Because, you know, this is something, what we do will replace it. I'm just going to let your audience know and you, Sean, and then I'll even show you if you want me to share my screen so you could actually get a real picture of this because I have a working model. Right now I have tons of content in there that's coming in that needs to be approved.

It gets distributed. But the future of news will be a most likely a hyperlocal by city, by locale. global media giant, not just the United States, it'll be every city. It'll have a social component where the public can interact and share in the narrative locally because that's what the people want. Why shouldn't somebody be able to publish their kids' Little League game and share that in the media in the news space, right? We can do it because it goes in our sports section in one city. It'll have a monetization model like YouTube where news reporters can report news freely without censorship and share in the ad revenue and a self-service ad platform where Joe's pizza can

buy an ad and target it to one zip code and everywhere in between. What I just described is not fantasy. I mean, everybody geolocates. I mean, you know, it's already done on Facebook has a monetization. If you're conservative, you're not getting monetized, okay, but Rumble has monetization. YouTube has monetization. Nobody does it around news. There's your difference. So it's... If you go back, actually, if you go back to my grandmother's time, so like the, I don't know, 1930s, 1940s, take your pick, you just get the time frame I'm talking about. Local groups in our area used to write different things for the paper, right? Like, I mean, they used to have, you know, when you're talking about the small sense, why shouldn't someone write about the Little League game? Well, it still happens.

It's just very rare. Most people just publish it, let's say, to Facebook. They just go on Facebook and they talk about the weekend and they send a couple pictures and they carry on with life. If I'm listening to you correctly, hearing correctly, what you're saying is you could do that, publish it through your news and get paid for basically providing different stories from your area. And people could just go search it and be like, oh, go on your news, look up Lloyd Minster where I sit, and then start seeing. different people and you just think if somebody's really good at it you're going to start to be like I can't wait you know honestly that's that's how this started right I'm no I'm no I don't have the background of Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan I wasn't uh you know in the UFC or or or you know

fear factor and all the things I just started as a guy starting to talk to people and it's just slowly grown that's that's essentially what you're talking about in this model you can imagine bob from wherever, starts writing a local column on whatever, publishing with you. And you start to like it, he gets more interaction from the community. The community starts talking about it could actually start to pay them. And papers search for that still, I think. It's just very, well, it's a rare idea these days because it's become so centralized, right? You watch the radio.

I mean, here in Lloyd, the TV station is done, right? So it folded up, no more. You know, the paper is, is transitioned mainly to online. And so what you're talking about, I think, is maybe giving the opportunity to any citizen to write something. And if it's bad, it's, you know, it goes there, but like nobody interacts with it because we all know how people are. And if it's really good, you could see how it could start to, to drive people to read their content and then get paid for it. I may be oversimplifying, but. No, I don't think you are.

Look, look at YouTube. I mean, they have over 100 million channels, right? But not all of them are active. The cream rises to the top. So literally, you know, 20% of the people make 80% of the money on YouTube. Why? Because that's the content that people are gravitating to. You know, in our case, what we're doing is empowering news reporters to write about their stories.

And the cream's going to rise to the top. The reality is, is it's a free market where the public decides what type of content they want to consume. And if you're doing a really good job, you're going to get more interaction with your content. More people are going to read it. If you're breaking bigger stories, you're going to get more people sharing it, more volume of consumption. And you know what I'm talking about because, you know, you've been doing this for, don't ask me how many years you've been, you know, having your own podcast. but over time you build an audience of people that are following you, right? They trust what you have to say.

It'll work the same with me. I mean, the reality is you look at the legacy media. Right now, you said it. We lived in a world that's centralized news, whereas back in your grandmother's day, it was all the centralized independent news reporting were different little local papers were having all different little local people control their own little local narrative. all that was consumed and rolled up, and now you have six companies that are controlling the narrative. I mean, there and lies the problem right there.

Okay, so what I do is because we don't do any fact checking. We're a platform. How could I possibly know in your city what happened at a city council meeting? There's no way. So we rely on the news reporters to have integrity to report the news. Honestly, and you know what happens if they don't? The public will let us know and we get rid of them. Just like that.

So the people are going to report the news. And that's how this is, that's how this works. If you'd like me to share my screen, if you want me to show you, I can show you. You can show me, but I just want to point out, I think a difference between what you're talking about and YouTube specifically. The pay structure might be similar. But the problem with YouTube, some of the different things that I think of is the algorithm pushes things that are popular or things they want you to see. certainly if you said certain words through COVID, all of a sudden you're removed.

And when I think of what you're doing, you know, if somebody's writing in Baltimore, about Baltimore things, like it means almost nothing to me. I'm not saying it can't grow. It certainly can lots of things have, lots of people have.

But, you know, if you're looking for local news, I don't care what the algorithm's doing. I'm looking for local news. So I go search, hey, what's going on in Lloyd Minster? And then I assume things pop up in Lloyd, and I go click on them, right?

Like that's a giant difference from what YouTube does, Rumble does, right? You see how content creators are super smart, right? You talk about the 80% of the money being made by 20% of the content creators. Well, part of that is their content. Part of that is they're very clever in learning how the algorithm works so that their stuff gets pushed and pumped and so that they can get in front. So sometimes it's great content. Other times it's just catchy.

headlines or clickbait thumbnails or you know different things like that when you're talking getting back to news reporting from a from a local citizen style journalist sure there will be people who are clever in their headline but if their writing sucks or their story doesn't make sense or just take your pick it won't be long that nobody's reading that right i i think like i'm like you know bob starts writing about so like that sucks i don't really want to read about that but you you find somebody who's a great sports reporter because i i do enjoy um well my background was was what was hockey you find somebody who can cover that and have honest takes or have access to say all the local sports teams and just start to fill in the the blanks on what's

going on that's that is i think fundamentally different than youtube maybe i'm wrong in that your thoughts we're completely different than you two i'm the local newspaper in every city in the United States, soon to be in Canada. Okay. So it's a completely different model. The business model that I have has been around for 200 years. The newspaper business model has been around forever. It works. This is the exact replication of the physical world, minus all the print and distribution costs, and it allows the public to interact and share in the narrative locally. That's what I do. So this model is now a new model. I mean, what is the news? I mean, news organizations by their very nature, Sean, are aggregators. People that have news will send a press release to the media, right? So if you're a

nonprofit like a church, you're having a bake sale, somebody from the church sent the press release to the news outlets, which is radio TV and print. The news organizations aggregate that. They decide if it's going to be aired or published. I'm an aggregator of the identical content. They send the same stuff to me, but they post it. They submit it. It comes in as pending review. Once approved, they get email notification with their article, and they, and they share it on social media, and that's what drives my traffic. I'll give you a perfect example. If somebody posts their kids' little league game, there's 100% chance grandma and grandpa are going to see that story.

100. Okay, it's going to them. And that's how it works. So what I am is Facebook for news. So the magic formula for any social site is simple. Content equals readership. Once you've aggregated all the content, show them the game's over. You get all the readers.

Now you take a look at the legacy media. which is in disarray, it's the layoffs are astronomical. Do you know I use something called LinkedIn Navigator? And you know how many, when somebody becomes a freelance journalist, you don't know why they do it. It's because they're looking for work. They don't have a job, okay? Do you know there's almost a half a million people on LinkedIn

that call themselves freelance journalists now? Most of them are part of the downsizing of the legacy media. Nobody's hiring. Nobody. There's almost a couple hundred thousand kids, journalists that are students that got out of school that have nowhere to go. So it's either me or pick another occupation.

I've picked up 800 plus news reporters in the last six weeks. Well, they're all trying to find different ways of using their content for people to find. I think of like substack. Substack's been coming away. But, you know, once again, and maybe the listener, maybe you know a way of doing it, when I want to search for, once again, I'll just, I keep picking on Lloyd. If I want to search for Lloyd on Substack, I don't know if that's even possible. Not really.

You have to, the person. You'd find the person. Right. You'd have to, it'd be word of mouth to find a person. And what your news, what you're talking about is you type in Lloyd Minster, Bada Bing, Bada boom, you pop up six people that are there. And you just think of over time, people start to understand that. Now you could have 50 people in Lloyd talking about crime, sports, economy,

exactly. City council meeting, et cetera, et cetera. By the way, this is something. something that nobody's going to pay for. Nobody's going to pay to read about the high school football game. Nobody's going to pay to read about the bank robbery, the car crash. I mean, they don't want to. There's other places they can get it. So, you know, the substack stuff where people are getting paid. I'm talking about the content itself. The consumer doesn't want to pay to read about their kids literally game. That's what I'm getting at. You know, a substack is

great for specific information. But when you're talking about daily, news, local stuff happening in the community, that's not substacks stuff. You know, we have some stuff that could be substack stuff, but for the most part, no. This is just things that are going on in your local community, in your state, in the United States, and abroad, soon to be Canada. So, I mean, look, I can show you a quick presentation if you want to see it in two minutes or one minute. It's up to you. Sure. I worry about the person listening as we go through a presentation.

That's the only thing I think. Oh, you mean it's for audio. Or audio. Because there's going to be people who just listen to it. And so to me, the idea is, makes a lot of sense. I mean, you know, there's been, you know, to actually see the functionality of it. We can show it. For sure we can.

I just think of people listening and I go, can we do a good enough job of explaining how it's going and just not get sucked into walking through a website. I won't. Because if they go to your news.com, they can start interacting with it right now, correct? Yeah, you can. I'll only show you a couple things. You see it opens up to a city name here. Sure.

Okay, you do see this, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for people listening, it's your news.com and where it's sitting right now is it shows the date and then Palm City, Florida. Right. And so at the top of the page, I mean, this is my front page nationally, and it gives you all national news. And for somebody who wants to navigate your mouse over national news and you see all the different topics, hockey, golf, basketball. Yeah, business environment, science technology. I mean, my point, it's laid out like a newspaper.

So if I want golf news, I click golf. If I want auto racing, I click auto racing. So this is everything golf. Okay. If I want auto racing, click auto racing. But that, anybody can do that. Here's what they can't do. Let's say that I want in my market local sports.

We have here contributors that do baseball, but they're not, it's not like, see this, Mets pitch one hit shut out, okay, over Cardinals. That's the St. Lucy Ments against the Jupiter Cardinals. Okay, this is local stuff that's happening. And here's local news. I'm just showing you this because I want you to see how this works, because all this is local news for my market. Florida charter captain is for shooting poisoning dolphins.

So now what I'm going to do is I'll just take you to a couple places. And this is going to be Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Again, I'm going to do the local news. Here you go. All of this is people boots on the ground in in Sioux Falls. This is all, defense begins to make a case in Dakota Dunes murder trial. This is not a feed coming in from CBS 12. Okay, this is local news and this in the Yankton market.

Whereas if I went to Chicago, you're going to see Chicago-based news. If I went to New York, you're going to see New York-based news. See what I mean? Yeah. I have hundreds of news reporters all across the United States that are covering local news. And all of them come from, and I'll show you this here. Hold on. Let me find it.

LinkedIn. This is the key here. So what we're doing right now is I'm going to LinkedIn Navigator because I just want you to see this. Here's freelance journalist for the United States. Sean, do you see the amount of people that don't have jobs? Actually, all I see is your news still. Oh, I have to share this tab. Sorry.

So here. So do you see the search I just did, freelance journalists? Yes. Okay. Right here. Shows $490,000. Sorry, 190,000. Read the script, Sean.

490,000 plus results. Okay. These are the people that were part of the downsizing of the legacy media. Students are about 170. So I'm going to stop sharing and go back to you because I just wanted you to see I do local news all over the place. Question for you. With the revenue show. sharing, I think that's the right term.

Can a local reporter earn enough? You know, you think of just, you know, when you go to Sioux Falls or you go, you know, like different populations, right? I have different eyes that are going to be interested in said story. If you're only drawing 10 people to you, is it going to be worthwhile? And by worthwhile, I mean, is there going to be enough incentive for a local reporter to continue to upload it? They only get 10 people on there.

Or is it is it? Yeah. So like I mean, you have to be, as you say, the cream rises at the top. You're, you're going to have to be excellent at your job in order to earn enough to make this worthwhile, I guess. Yeah. I mean, so let's say you started a show on YouTube or Rumble or wherever you're doing. You decided you want to be a podcaster. It could be politics, sports, whatever it is.

It's irrelevant. They take them all. you're going to start out with literally nobody watching your show. You have to build your audience, right? Now, it certainly helps with YouTube having like a billion people on there that they can find you by doing searches and make them come up and people like your content and follow you. It works the same with me. I just am not that big.

But what's going to happen is each link that you submit to me is a business. Every time it gets clicked, the advertisers select the content they want their ad to run around. So it will pull those ads. But the trick is because everybody on my site, just like on YouTube and Rumble and wherever else you are, has an author page. And that author page carries everything you have, but it feeds the last story into the main site. If it's a local story, it'll feed it up to the top of whatever category.

If it's a national story, it'll feed it up at the top. So it becomes fresh content all day. But everything gets hosted on the site and resides on your author page. So over time, and this is the best example I can give, the guy that has a thousand videos on YouTube makes more money than the guy that has 10. And the reason is because there's more content to be viewed. So as you start building your content, you want to start building your social media pages. This is imperative because the next wave of news reporting is going to be a combination of platforms like mine, which I'm the only player. And as imagine me having 100,000 news reporters that are submitting local news all over the United States.

Do you have any idea what kind of traffic that's going to drive? I mean, I have one woman that I'll be bringing on here shortly that's got 1.7 million followers on, no, on TikTok, another quarter million on Instagram. So like, I'm sure there's a lot of crossover, but you're talking almost a couple million people. So when she and her, you don't want her passion is fashion. That's what we have a fashion section. So let her start writing articles about fashion, and then she's going to share them out, you know, check out my article that I just wrote on your news. Will you get all 2 million people?

No, but it'll be promoted to 2 million people. You might get 2,000, 400,000 of them. It's a massive number, but I know where everybody lives. So as you start bringing in more content creators, it drives a massive audience. And when you're reading a hockey story, then you look and go, well, who wrote this one? I have people that do auto racing news. I have people do auto racing podcasts, okay, that produce content daily. And so as people start, like we don't have it yet, but it'll be done this week, this week.

There's going to be a follow button where you can actually follow an individual. And so over time, as they get more people following them, they're building an audience. This is where they start to make the money. Because if you're no good, you're not going to have but a couple followers. but as more people find you and start consuming your content, you might have 5 or 10,000 or 20,000 followers. And when you submit an article, it immediately alerts 10 or 20,000 people.

So this is a building process no different than YouTube. Start on YouTube today with no audience, put together a show, and see how long it takes you to rack up and make a bunch of money. It'll take you at least a year before you start rolling. Am I right? Well, I started this in 2019. it took three years to go full time. So, so like, there you go.

I mean, you have to be, all the things are true. You know, I just, I got to, I brought this story up a couple of times on the podcast, but I got to go back to my hometown and be a keynote speaker at graduation. And, you know, like, if, if, if I listen to all the naysayers of starting a podcast, they weren't wrong. You do have to be the best. You do have to get paid peanuts to start. Because nobody, if you have no background in journalism or podcasting or whatever, the chances

of somebody paying you a million dollars to start it, well, your name better be Donald Trump or something like that, right? Like somebody, but already they command such an audience. That's what they're getting paid for. When you have no audience, you have to build a reputation and you have to, you know, you have to build that audience. It's everything you've said. I don't disagree.

It's a longer road than people think of just getting instant overnight success. I actually don't know what that looks like, right? Like even instant overnight success people that are successful talk about it's 10 years to become an overnight success. And no different in this thought process. The only thing that I find really interesting about this, speaking of my area, and maybe all of Canada for that matter, is there has been there is a big void of local news it's just a giant void and it doesn't mean there there are but the best and most capable in my area what are they doing they're working in the oil field or they're working in an egg they're working for something that can pay the bills

and can you start something on the side and start writing yes you can but if you walk in thinking that it's going to pay you a million dollars overnight, that's a lie, you have to build it out. And so, in fairness, it's, you're going to have to put in the work,

but there is a void there. So if you're good and you go into the void, your success can actually probably be almost fast track faster than most people think because of the void that's been created. There's this void of local news content that has been sucked up by, you know,

I think you said six different companies or six different networks that have sucked up majority of that. Like on the radio stations here, I think we have, and forgive me, folks, I want to say we have one private, like, that's locally owned or roughly locally owned. And then the rest have been bought up. And, you know, if you go for local news, you can find a little bit. But even the commentators are out of the bigger centers. And then they just stream it over all the different local radio stations. So if you listen long enough, you're like, these people aren't even in my community. And they're talking about things that are generic that aren't to where I live.

And what you're giving people is an opportunity, I think, to report on what's actually happening in their local communities. And if they're good at it, they can have financial reward. Now, is that in two months or is that in two years that remains, you know, on each individual person? Yes. It's, you get out of it, what you put into it. And you certainly have to have the talent and the skills. You have to be able to produce content that people want to consume. Or you have to be somebody that already has a big social media following,

like Tucker Carlson or like that woman I was telling you that does the fashion stuff. But Tucker, but the Tucker, if he didn't put out content people wanted, he'd have the same problem. Nobody, eventually people stopped listening to him. I remember when Barack Obama, you remember Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, I think it was, had a podcast on Spotify. Right? And I can't remember.

Was it a million people to listen to it? Was it 20 million? Maybe. But if you notice, it isn't there anymore. Why? Because who wants to listen to Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen? I mean, honestly, I don't. And so you don't.

And if they had created content that was just like, you have to go listen to it, Joe Rogan has content at times that almost every person goes and listens to. Why? Because it's that compelling. Tucker Carlson's no different. And there's others in that, realm they're the same way you can have 10 million followers for TikTok and if you don't

produce content on a news platform that people want to go and consume then eventually it'll dry up because they'll be like oh this doesn't really do much for me I think right look they the but the void you're talking about the local news void I mean there's a demand for it people want 100% I'll be the first I'll be the first we had the and once again

Sam won't know what I'm talking about but that's because it's local I had the number one podcast I did last year Sam was a story on the national championship winning basketball coach

in our town being removed from his job and it was it was a surreal experience if I can tell you to be honest because I brought

in some of the team and they talked about it. And overnight that had, just on Facebook alone, it was 125,000 people had watched it. And I was like, like our community is only, you know, 30,000 is the town surrounding area, 70,000. And it was 125,000 on one platform alone. And I was walking around town and people were stopping in the middle of street going, hey, you that Sean Newman? I'm like, uh, yeah. And they're like, that was fantastic what you did. And then they'd peel off. And I'm like, that was wild.

So when you talk about there's a demand for it, absolutely there is. Especially to get to the heart of some of the issues that are on the top of mind that people are like, the hell is going on. Why is nobody talking about this? Well, you've already shown that freelance journalism is getting purged or the purges on media because it's not being successful anymore. Nobody's consuming it. And it's leaving all these people who are probably talented that can't find a way to get their content to people to get reimbursed for, or you know, paid for it, paid for their efforts. And you're giving them an option. And what I'm hearing is, is it's coming to Canada very soon.

Yes, I will guarantee you I'll get that done. That'll be within, right after this one piece is done, Canada's next, then I'll get into something else. But that piece is coming because I promise some people I would do it. And I always do what I say I'm going to do. So you're getting it. I don't know how good. I mean, it's going to be we're going to create it so that your zip code tables are different than ours. So somehow they got to get postal.

Yeah, we have postal codes instead of zip codes. So whatever they have to do to fix it, it'll basically be North America minus, you know, Mexico. Right. And so it'll carry all the same national news. But then all the, I have to. to create the, we have TV markets like 210 television DMAs. You guys have provinces. I think there's 10, 11, something like that. So within it, I'll create the 10 or 11 provinces. So we'll be able to run something to a province, to the country, to the province, you know, or to a specific

county or a city or multiple counties. So it'll work the same as ours. But the distribution of information will be, you know, based on geographical relevance for that particular piece of content while we're still being able to feed you the, uh, the Florida Panther game, which I'm sure you were very excited about. Thanks for bringing that up, Sam. Are you a Florida Panthers bad? Yes, I live here, South Florida. Yeah. You got a very good team. I'll give you that. Yeah, they really are. You know, that's two years in a row running, right? So, you know, Three years in the finals. That's no small feat.

No. In that league, that's no small feat. Yeah, I have a friend that's had season tickets since they started. And this guy, both years, saw them win the set, the Stanley Cup in Florida. I'm like, wow, I've never seen that before, you know. I mean, I go to the games with them. I never asked them to go to the, you know, the Stanley Cup game. But man, what a game that had to be.

Just to watch and win, it doesn't matter. I've been down to the stadium a bunch of times, but it's got to be a cool experience to be able to go to any one of these games. And any team, I mean, I grew up playing ice hockey. I played 20 years, right? I mean, as a kid in Chicago. So, you know, everybody, every kid's dream is the whole. You're not a Chicago.

20 years in Chicago, you're not a Blackhawks fan? Oh, I am a Blackhawks fan. So if Florida's playing the Blackhawks, I'll go down there with them and cheer for the Hawks. But if they're not, I'm going to cheer for Florida. I mean, I've been here for 35 years or 37 years. any final thoughts before you know like i don't know what i've missed like maybe i've missed some things with you but i'm like i don't know like to me i get the void i get what you're trying to do as soon as it's open can it'll be see it'll be interesting to see if you get 100 people that

jump on it 800 people that jump on it and then see if it's adopted as like hey if i want to get local news this is where i go i type in lloyd mince or boom there's four people there that are they're giving things people are really cool because you know like i even think of joe rogan some people watch everything joe does others get sent things in group chats and they're like holy crap you got to go watch this episode and it's no different with any platform if something good is written there's people who follow everything an author does and then there's people who get shared every time an author does something amazing. Like, holy crap, this is must watch, must listen, must read. And with your news, once it's, once it's open in Canada, it'll be interesting to watch if the adoption is

100 people, 2,000 people, you know, like, and then, and then is it consumed the way that you're laying out? Because once again, the void is here. There's no debating that. There's a giant void. Yeah, I'll get, you know, I do marketing, a little bit of marketing on LinkedIn to these content creators and they sign up daily every day. And I don't spend a ton of money on it at the moment. You know, we're working on that because I want to get this right now we have 803 or five news reporters or something like that. So but I want to get that to 5,000 in the next six months. So in order to do that, you're going to talk about a lot more marketing. But in Canada, I could actually pull Canadian freelance content creators and I can market

specifically to them. So I can start building Canada instantly. and everybody signing up will be for a specific province in Canada and we'll localize them and set them up. And then all of a sudden, that's when the content starts coming in. In addition, I have a handful of podcasters up there that I'm sure have a network of people that they're going to want to start bringing local information in to start building this up. Because it's what I do is inevitable. I mean, it's going to happen whether I do it or not. wherever there's a void, some entrepreneur fills it.

And you've got a void of 500,000 people that are out of work in just the United States. I don't know what Canada is just because I haven't looked it up, but I know there's two million across the globe. I figure Canada is probably going to be maybe 20% of that number, maybe 30,000. I mean, just because what's the size of Canada? Isn't it like 10%? 40 million, roughly. Yeah, okay.

So, you know, maybe there'll be 20 or 30,000 people that are freelancers. so I'll mark it to all 20 or 30. I can say this. Like, we're no different than the United States in that if you're in the news industry, nobody watches it. Like, I mean, I'm not saying nobody is like not one person. Just like where it was 50 years ago to today, it's nobody watches it. And so what's happened?

There's been, Purge isn't the right word, but like there's been mass layoffs. There's been a ton of people have to try and find different. ways to make their ends meet in that industry. And this will be a way that if you market to them, it could possibly be a huge success. Sean, there's still a demand for news. It's just consumption that's changed. So for years, the mainstream media in Canada and here, they've had a monopoly because there was no other options. But when the internet was spawned, all of a sudden you have technologies like YouTube, which allows somebody like you to be a broadcaster or a rumble or whatever. And so now people have choices.

Okay. You have options. You are one of millions. There's an ocean of content creators out there, people that have podcasts that that can be doing auto racing or that can be doing baseball or hockey. Well, take a topic, any topic. Any topic. Entertainment news. It doesn't matter.

There's millions of them. But what happens is the way the younger generation consumes information is completely different. I'm going to give you some stats. AdWitt came out and, you know, You guys are right next to us. So everybody knows the United States. We got CNN, MSNBC, Fox News. Fox News was number one in terms of viewership, but the numbers were abysmal for the first quarter,

which is January, February, March. But the numbers I want you to take out of this, that age demographic between 25 and 54, which is the target audience for advertisers, because at 25, you got your first job, you might be buying your new house or renting a place, but you're, you're, you're, you're, you're getting your wife, you just had a baby, something. And then you're buying furniture, you're buying diapers, you're buying everything, right? It's all consumption. And then the next group of people get all the pharmaceutical ads, right?

Because it's just the age demographic. Well, the average age of the cable news viewers like 72 years old now. Okay. And the younger generation, that demographic, I'm going to give you some numbers. This is from AdWeek. That market for the United States, I'm going to guess, represents 120, 130 million people, between 25 and 54, the main numbers. There was a total for three months of 500,000 viewers on network TV news, network news.

That's for all three stations, those stations, 500,000 people. That's the problem. It has nothing to do with networks lying. It has everything to do with how people are consuming. The 130 million people aren't really watching cable news. They're getting their information from TikTok. They're getting it from Instagram. They're getting it from any other source.

They just don't care about news on television. And that's why these networks are collapsing. So there's millions of options. What I am is the aggregator of all that information. That's all I am. I'm like any news outlet. I'm an aggregator bringing all the countries, information under one umbrella and creating one uniform media. And, you know, we then we'll start

growing this in other countries. So your country will be the first one I opened besides the United States very soon. It'll have U.S. news in there. I'm just going to let you know. Makes it easy for me to do. But then all the stuff could be populated with all the local, the Canadian news as well, which you guys are going to give me. Yeah, well, the U.S. news, we already consume it anyways. It's, I would say, the entire world consumes U.S. news because of how big of a player on the world stage they are. You know, the U.S. goes in and bombs Iran. You can act like that isn't global news, but that's global news. And you're sitting there and you're watching that and you're going, holy crap, right?

Canada doesn't make moves like that. We don't, I mean, we make other moves that are silly. But that is, you know, that is a giant move that has repercussions for the. entire world. Canada, on the other hand, we don't have a military like that. You know, if we're making world news, it's because our hockey team is beating you guys in the Four Nations Cup. If I can poke back at the Florida Panthers beating the Oilers, while the Canadians found a way to defeat the Americans. So, you know, that's how we make world news currently other than the stupidity of our prime minister, which I'm sure there will be an appetite from Americans to read that as well. Yes, of course. So,

you know, this, what I do is inevitable. It's going to happen whether I do it or not. It's, there's a void to be filled. You saw the numbers, a half a million people. So, you know, it's just a transition. There's still a demand for local news. It's just consumption has changed. All I did was built a business model with a real revenue model behind it. And now it's just in the process of starting to scale it out and build it. So, you know, normally, I mean, I don't know, you, you know, we got connected through. I think it was Allison. I know. know you and I had a conversation a while ago. I do remember that, but you know, I do a lot of shows. Did Allison bring up what we do, what we're doing with an equity crowd fund at all?

No, actually. I did, you know, I'm just going to share this with you because I think it's news or like the, the issue we face today is because the mainstream media is owned by six institutions. That's, you know, everybody knows black rock vanguard because you've seen it all. But these are the people that control everything because they have all the money. My background is investment banking. It's capital raising. is bringing money to deals. And you don't go to individuals and say,

hey, I got this deal, give me 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks. You go to the institutional players, which doesn't have to be Black Rock or Vanguard. I have friends of mine that have, one guy has a $300 million hedge fund. The other one has a private equity fund with $100 million. These are good friends of mine. These are the people that fund these deals,

but they come with strings attached. Whenever you're getting funded by somebody that has big money, that's putting in $5, $10, $20 million, they're not signing your paperwork, you're signing theirs. And there's a reason, and I do agree with it. It's because most founders usually aren't able to execute. And if you're somebody that is screwing up and these people have $5, $10, $20 million in your business, they need to be able to get rid of you and put somebody else in power. That could run the business, right?

So it makes logical sense. But also, if you get an offer for somebody like a George Soros to buy my platform, those guys would take the money because they don't care. It's not about cause. So I did something that was different because to me, I think if you're a news organization that's supposed to be by the people for the people that puts the power to press in the hands of the people, it should be owned by the people, not the corporations. Do you agree? I would agree. So there's something called an equity crowd fund, which is not like gives and go or go fund me, where it's donations.

This is actual securities where you could actually buy stock in companies. And when you buy something, that's what's called a private placement because they're private entities. You can only sell to accredited investors, which represents 1% of the population. That's why you're going to the institutional players. It's because they basically control everything. But equity crowd funds allow everybody to be able to participate. It's actually really cool. But it's based on your income.

So when you fill out the app, not application, but the subscription agreement, you have to enter your income. If you don't enter your income, it puts you at the lowest level, which means the most you could put in is this. And it regulates the whole thing. So somebody can't steal money from people. And it's FINRA regulated and SEC regulated. So it's owned by brokerage firms.

So you have to go through audits, background checks, the whole night. Like this took me seven, eight months to set up. I mean, it's not an easy process until you're both. So people can go on to your news.com and buy shares? I don't know. In your news? Yes. So I'm not going to the institutional players to get them involved with this.

I'm actually selling stock to the public. So to me, like we've raised this year, I think it's about 350 grand or something like that. But if you go, and we have a million dollar raise or 1.2 million. So we've raised about 30% of it. So if you were to go to your news and go to the bottom of a page, there's something that says become a citizen journalist. You could create an account. And once we activate you, you're now a monetized news reporter.

The second thing down there is going to be something that says invest, which takes you to a different website, which is a brokerage firm, where you could read up. about what we're doing. And if you like what we're doing, you could invest as little as $200 and everywhere in between, depending on the income of the individual and what they want to participate with. But that's what we're doing because to me, it didn't make sense to go the institutional route, which is my background, because I feel like that's the reason we're in the mess we're in. I'll tell you where I got this from. I went to Miami. They had one of the, what do they call it, the Reawaken America tours, and there were 5,000 people there, and I'm looking around.

And I go, you know, every one of these people needs to own stock in my company. And that's when the equity crowd fund, because somebody I was talking to said, you know, equity crowd funds allow everybody to participate. So I said, well, then that's what we need to do. You know, it was a difficult road to get it set up. But we're doing this round. And then it's kind of like when Facebook, you probably never got a call for. from Silicon Valley saying we have eBay or Facebook or, you know, Amazon stock, right?

You didn't get any of that for a buck or two, right? Well, it's because it all went to the extreme high net worth or these institutional players that were dropping 10, 20, 30 million into these deals. And they do them in stages. So by the time you get to participate, it's when the company goes public. And that's when you get. So you're, by the way, you're buying their stock because the guy that's spent a buck or two is selling it a $30 to you.

That's when you get to participate. That's where these equity crowd funds are cool because it allows the little guy to be able to participate. And you could get little bits of money from, look, I'd rather get a thousand people to give me, you know, 500 bucks than one guy

give me $5 million, right? I mean, whatever the math is on that, it's, it means that not one person controls it. Because all Ultimately, what I do will become the next mainstream media, and it needs to be owned by the people. So we have a plan to get us public within two years. I hired a guy that has taken four of his own company's public, and then a total of 17.

He does it as a consultant. He actually put money into this. So his job is, once we reach a certain plateau, his job is to actually take us public. I think the market will eat us up on this just simply because of the nature of the product and the fact that there's no other players in this space. I think the public will love this. So that's what I'm doing. Well, I appreciate you coming on and doing this. I know you got meetings to hop to, but appreciate you bringing this to, well, my audience's attention, Canadian's attention.

And we'll, I assume people will be checking it out, but waiting to see it when it comes to Canada. Any idea on time frame of Canadian content? Three, four weeks. So sometime in mid-July, essentially. Yeah, that's what I'm guessing. saying it because we have to finish this one piece and then he said it'll be done by the end of the month then Canada. I'm going to suspect that the Canadian piece is not going to take more than three four weeks if two. So that's why I'm saying. I think it'll be relatively quick. I don't think it's a

massive undertaking. What he's doing now is taking a long time. That won't be there. Well, thanks for hopping on, Sam. Appreciate it. Hey, Sean, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate that as well. And I'll let you know when we get the Canadian version of. Appreciate that. Thank you again. Thank you.