Ep. 84: Stomp clap hay ft. Jesse Hirsch of Offrange

0:00Welcome back to Taste Land, I am your co-host, Francis Zero. And I'm Daisy Aliotto. And Daisy, who are we speaking with today? Today we're speaking with Jesse Hirsch, he's the editor of Off-Range, he spent years working as a journalist focused on food and agriculture, topic that comes up frequently on this podcast. Love those things. And he was most recently the managing editor at the counter. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Bon Appetite, Eater, and other outlets. Nice. Yeah, I'm excited to talk, Jesse. Before he gets here though, I want to tell you about an insane experience I had at the cinema on Friday. I went to the Regal Essex, and it happened to Lori's side to see Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie. Really? Really? Great, great time. Really showing.

1:00It's like 5 p.m. Right at the end of the day. So, you know, any movie, kind of near the end of its runtime at the Regal Essex, the theaters are not that full. I'm setting the back row. And like, there's only two of the people in the back row besides me and Emma. And there's one seat between me and them. It's like the big Regal seats. And why did you sit so close to them, or did they sit so close to you? I, when I bought the seats and I just liked it, then there was like, there was, there were there. Got it. Very quickly, I left around 10 minutes in. I noticed that the woman who was the one closer to me is just scrolling her phone. And, you know, I'm like, whatever, like maybe I'll say something. I didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. I just wrote a rainbow. I read a rainbow. I said something. Well, you know, I wish I wish I was as strong as Greta. But pretty soon enough, pulls out a burrito. That's fine. I'm, you know, bringing food into the theater to eat it. I'm cool with that. That's cool. Yeah. Halfway through the movie, she pulls out her laptop. No. Laptop in the middle of the movie.

2:01And I, I mean, this time I stare over and I just kind of stare, stare at her until she puts it away. She has her laptop out for a full minute. She doesn't really do anything with it. She just kind of logs in and I don't know if she's checking Wi-Fi or checking some document, puts it away and then she keeps scrolling her phone for the rest of the movie. But I've never seen, I have never seen somebody take out a laptop. That's crazy. Yeah, that was awful. What time was the movie? 4.50. What a weirdo. I was going to say maybe she needed to look like she was on teams, but you can do that on your phone. No, yeah. She was scrolling her phone the entire time. Anyways, it was just, it was just awful. Yeah. But the movie was good. I enjoyed the movie. It was, it was funny. It's like, you know, it's one of those movies that obviously the creators are used to working with a low budget and they got a little bit more budget for this. But it wasn't so much budget that they then didn't know what to do with it and ruined it. They're like pulled off. That's good. That makes me happy. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad. That makes me happy. The other thing in my life this weekend, I've fallen victim to these, have you seen these

3:08Instagram ads? These ads on Instagram that are like modular ads for eBay or D-pop or like niche secondhand sites that fill in? It's like, you'll be like, are you a victim or are you a willing participant? Where's the line? Can you tell me where the line is? I think we all have to decide for ourselves. So I spent $200 on D-pop this weekend. Wow. Yeah. Brave. Brave to buy. I bought. Brave to admit it on this podcast. Brave to admit it on this podcast. Yeah. Well, you know, like I, I reveal a lot about myself, I embarrass myself on this podcast every, every week. I know this is like your thing, but I bought a J-Crew sweater, 100%. Just too few. Maybe. Maybe some things, perhaps. That's probably true. I bought this pair of Levi 501s, those are like 40 bucks and I bought a 90s Armani shirt, sort of a fine rib, that was like 90 or 100 bucks. And I'm sure that it was listed as 90s Armani shirt. Yeah. Look, the ads know me. Anyways, Jesse's here. Let's get to know him.

4:16You left New York. You are. Where are you? Massachusetts. Oh, that's where I'm from. Oh, that's where I'm from. Are you from there? I am. I'm from Rentham. I don't know what that is. Rentham, right? It's. It's your app. Yeah. It's five minutes from Gillette Stadium. Okay. So Foxboro, out of Borough. Where are you in the Berkshire's? Just shy of the Berkshire's. Okay. Einer Valley. Yeah. Nice. Gillette Stadium. I love that area. So I had recently that Fifa owes the Foxboro to the council town council something like this. Like $8 million, something like that. Maybe even more because they can have World Cup games at Gillette Stadium. Oh yeah. But Fifa isn't coughing up, which I can relate to that having some World Cup tickets that are currently I've resold through the Fifa reselling platform. And it's been 60 days since I've resold them. Has still haven't paid me. That's a private grievance that I'm hearing out here. But so off-range recently published a story about grass in World Cup stadiums.

5:19So why? Oh, I was wondering how you were going to handle that transition. It's very elegant. Yeah, it was quite elegant. And also that you have something in common with the Foxboro City Council is kind of interesting too. Should I know? It's up with the Foxboro City Council. No, nothing. I just think that you guys should be allies in your debt recovery against the evil entity that is beef. You should write a letter of support for answers. I should sue FIFA is what I should do. You should all sue FIFA. Yeah. So surprise was a sham. The story that we did was about how basically the four world cup, a lot of the stadiums that they're using to not use natural grass, they use like astroturf. And it's kind of a really like the stadiums in Europe will have it all the time. They figure, you know, they just play soccer all the time, but this is going to be like a one and done. So they spent $5 million on sought research, basically figuring out how to just like zoom in, roll down some, some nice FIFA, FIFA is money, FIFA dead, yes. They put $5 million into research in collaboration with some universities and farmers.

6:23And it's going to be a big boon for the sod farming industry, which is like not something that people think about very much, but it actually, it is like a whole cohort. They're trying to get their own like lobbying group right now, actually the sod farmers of America. Do you know, there's like a specific state where most of the sod farmers are located or something like that? Rhode Island, actually, oddly enough, if you drive through Rhode Island, you will see a lot of just, it looks like huge lawns, but they're being like watered by like industrial like irrigation machines. Sod and cranberry bogs. Everyone who grew up in New England has the canonical experience of going on the cranberry bog field trip. That's true. And very few, I think have the sod field trip in their memory. My parents brought us to like you wake up on a Saturday and they're like, get up, like we're in the cranberry bog. And then you never, and you never see cranberry bog again in your whole life, but it sticks with you. Taking a step back, I realized we never really said what off-ranges. So it's a digital publication covering American agriculture, food production and natural resources to publish three original stories each week, a monthly podcast, weekly newsletter.

7:28It's a lot. That's like, you're putting up dirt numbers. And so we, we get into like Ambrook first off range, because I know there was a little bit of a rebrand recently, but started off and is still in nested within a company that builds software tools for our family run, American farms. So how does that work and what, what's, did you guys fully rebrand? Yes, fully rebrand from Ambrook research to off range. So when I first started out, I had just left it to other publication, the counter, which is a nonprofit doing food and agriculture coverage. And somebody said, do you want to have a conversation with the CEO of this company, Ambrook, that I had never heard of. And I was kind of, it was a little ifionic, because I thought it would be a marketing job. Like I thought this is going to be like editing press releases or, you know, dealing with the website. But it was a very kind of exciting and novel idea. It was like, here's this thing that we want to start. We don't know exactly how it's going to look. They had done, like it existed.

8:28They had 10 different articles up. And most of them were research projects that someone had done in collaboration with like university professors. They were very, it was more like an academic study than it was an article. But yeah, McKenzie, the CEO, it's just like, you know, like we love the counter. I think that providing news and information for people who actually are working in farming and ranching would be like a great service, you know, to the people that we would like as customers ultimately. They did that and they also did this funding library, which was like a resource for farmers to go on and figure out all the grants and loans that they could apply for anywhere. And these were just kind of thought of as little gift, little bond bonds for the industry. And she was like, so I don't know exactly how it would look. But like in collaboration with you, like could we try this out? And so we just did it for three months. I was a little nervous about the idea of editorial independence because I never worked in a place that was like funded by one specific company. After three months, I was like, okay, no, they really, this is not just like marketing light.

9:31This is like a real actual agricultural publication. So I think I got hired in July maybe and then by December, we were actually putting out the three stories a week and the newsletter. How long had Ambrook the company been around by the time he joined? Well, I get like mixed answers to that because, you know, with the clock started kind of when the three founders sat around in a living room, you know, and we're just like whiteboarding it. But they said it was about two years when I was there. They had gone around and actually done kind of a listening tour to figure out from farmers around the country what the pain points were in their bookkeeping and their finances, like how they could be useful rather than just like busting in and disrupting without knowing what they were dealing with. Yeah, a question two in the difference between like what you're doing in marketing as somebody who runs a publication owned by a company that is to some extent marketing myself, I was clicking around on the Ambrook website and I saw that

10:31you guys are hiring your first content marketing hire, which is like reading that. It's like, okay. So, you know, Francis, are you something you're, I'm throwing at me. No, I'm happily employed. No, but I thought this was really interesting because like this, the, the, like what, what that tells me is that like what you do was, even though it's like not marketing, as you said, it's also not not marketing. And for the first few years of you doing it, it's like the bet has been that this is our content marketing function. And then only now, three years later, do we need like a formal content marketing function? So yeah, I'm just curious about like the, the degree to which offrange isn't is not content marketing, Brambrook. Sure, I mean, I think that, I think the key thing is just like intent and how explicit it is. You know, like yes, we put out this newsletter every week, but you know, I'm not telling you about Ambrick products that you can buy or like, you know, what, what a smooth and seamless system it is. But I will talk about, you know, like this week, we went on a team retreat, right?

11:31And it, interestingly, even though there is full editorial independence, like I worked in the New York office, like I, I consider these people, my colleagues, the engineers, the salespeople. Um, so I mean, in that sense, like just general Ambrick positivity that I exited, like that, that would function as some kind of marketing. But I think it's pretty key that like, you know, just the adult, I don't want to hold you to it, but you did promise me a hat at one point. I did. Do you, I was just saying about that. Actually, at the team, I was waiting to confront you on Mike. I almost wore that hat, but then I was like to two on the nose. Um, the white one or the dark one, I can't remember. Oh, I want the dark one. If that's like, yeah, I'm making it about me. Reggie has the dark one. Reggie James has also been on this podcast. Uh, they're both so nice. All right, you can. So if I can explain it, I have one dark and one cream colored. So, okay, so me, the cream and Francis, the amazing. Okay, well, so on the, on the, on the topic of like editor on the pen separation, like what would I do? So I do create a spotlight for Beehive newsletter and more software company.

12:35And what I do, like sometimes I'll write about people who use Beehive, but I see it more as like, I'm propagating this, this world view that's aligned with Beehive's customers, right? Which is like, this is a certain type of creator. This is a certain type of digital media entrepreneur. I'm promoting that way of working, right? Um, with Amber, so looking at the editorial guidelines on your website, there was one line I pulled. We will avoid coverage of a particular company organization or individual. If there is a working relationship with Amber, the company that funds off range, we strive at all times to maintain editorial independence. But sometimes the reality of doing business will inevitably influence coverage decision. So my question is like, you know, what I'm doing with Curtis Spotlight is, I see this like world view propagation is, is, is like the mission of off range to, like, is there a defined world view that you guys work around? I would say no. I mean, there's no such thing as like journalistic neutrality, right? But I think that there is kind of, like we have our readership is 60% farmers and ranchers,

13:37right? And that's like from all sides of the types of farm like the ideological spectrum. And for, you know, we have like small CSA farmers in Vermont. And then we also have like road crop farmers in Iowa and cattle ranchers in Texas. And we hear from them. That's how I know because they're vocal, you know, and we hear complaints sometimes about, you know, like that, you know, like I, that coverage is too crunchy. You're not really taking in the economic realities of what I have to deal with day to day or vice versa, you know, like, wow, how could you promote something that's like destroying the planet? So essentially, I mean, I'm trying just to walk a pretty fine line down the middle and present, you know, just the, the facts on the ground of what is happening in agriculture. Like scientific studies on, you know, pesticide runoff or, you know, like we will, we'll do labor stories and just take them where they go. You know, and sometimes that's going to inevitably end up seeming like coded one way or the other. Well, the scientific study is for more, again, from what I understand, like that's really the

14:38core of this is like you're looking for data in around like the agriculture farming. And that is the foundation of your stories. What's the hard data we can find that has something to say. And then we will build stories around that. This is true. But I do think that there's also a very human part of it too, right? Like we, we insist that there's going to be some farmer or rancher voice in every story. And if it's like, let's say it's about lobster fishing, then it's going to be a lobster min or if it's about livestock veterinarians, we're going to have a livestock veterinarian who speaks, right? Like I think a lot of like mainstream coverage of agriculture can sometimes not actually include the voices of, you know, the people being covered. It'll be like advocates, politicians, academics without. So yeah, as it's evolved, I feel like those voices have become more prominently pieces of the articles. And we even do like first-person essays now, which I think has been really nice, like just hearing actual voices like from farmers, yeah. The, we mentioned the rebrand earlier, but I did want to follow up on that. So I am, you wrote a piece about the rebrand and how when you joined, you were like,

15:42hey, are we married to the name? And they said, yes, we want to promote amber. So it has to be called amberc research. And then it was last summer, I think in June, that you launched the rebrand. Why were you able to do it then? I imagine it's connected to like, now they're hiring a content marketer. So they're now making a more dedicated marketing effort. I don't know why I'm answering your question for you. Why were you finally able to rebrand? I think there's a few reasons. Like one thing that's interesting is like, obviously when we were first doing this thing, it was a calling card too, right? Like it was a way to like get the word amber, like that's what I was told, right? We have to keep amberc in there because no one knows who amberc is yet, you know, like we're still making a name for ourselves. And this is just like another way that the name is on people's lips. But then as I understand it, like some of the agriculture conventions that like the sales people would go to, people would come up and be like, oh, I love amberc. And then they'd try to sell them accounting software. And they're like, no, I mean, the story is like, I like, you know, like, I like, I was too successful at noting the name. Yeah, so there's a little bit of that.

16:42And then I also think that there is kind of a push like to ultimately make like an incubator that makes off-range or, you know, amberc research, this media brand become something that can stand on its own two feet someday. And like there are challenges with working with it with one company alone that, you know, like I feel like maybe more kind of investigative features. For instance, you know, like looking at difficult issues in agriculture could be accomplished if we were able to achieve full independence. So like changing the name was a way of kind of giving a little more sunlight between the two. How many people work on it full-time on, on average? It's me, yeah, it's me. I mean, we have almost a full-time designer. And like that's a big part of it too is I think the look is really distinct. A lot of care put into the way that it kind of falls to the newsletter and the stories. How did you get into the food and architecture beat originally? I did one of those like funny things where you send a publisher of a magazine,

17:43a typo that you found on their website. And then you're like, hey, I found this typo. But also I'm available for any of your editing needs. It was Edible Queens magazine. I was living in the story of Queens. And this is a small food magazine. And I read this like New York Post's story about the publisher. And it was all about how overworked she was. And I was like, it was just a beautiful publication. Like Anthony Bourdain was on the front cover of the first issue. And I just like, it may be proud to live in Queens. And I was like, oh nice, okay, getting some recognition. You know, this is over a decade ago. So I wrote to her and the gambit works. She was like, yes, I'm actually like, you have no help at all. Can I, I'll take you on as a part-time editor. And then I just started freelancing about food. First full-time food writing job was as a restaurant critic in Oakland at the Alt Weekly, which is really strange and kind of- Did you tell us about that? What was the scene? This was in the early 2010s. What was the scene you were covering right then? It was Oakland Git and Fancy.

18:43I mean, that was kind of, that's kind of was my assignment. They took it seriously enough, even though this was in Alt Weekly, that I had to scrub my picture off the web. I had to get a fake credit card. I had to get a fake open table account. Like they were like, you're going to do the real food credit thing. And yeah, I lived in, it was a weird, I did a reverse commute. I was living in San Francisco, commuting to Oakland every day. And yeah, I just kind of got dropped. And I felt like I parachuted in there because, you know, I knew San Francisco, but I didn't know of them that well. So it was kind of documenting the, the fancification of Oakland. That's what it felt like. Do you still absorb a lot of food and restaurant criticism or have you divested from the scene? I know that it's changed also a lot. I don't, I think that it's like in me personally, you know, I just think that I personally like to go to restaurants. And now that I'm in Western mass, you know, like this is like a burgeoning scene of like really good places to eat. So I enjoy it. And I, you know, I, I nerd out a little more than maybe my friends want me to, you know, like I'll, I can talk for a while.

19:46But, but professionally, no, I don't, I don't put much into that. It really is just like places that I could potentially go to and have a good meal. What's the difference? Oh, go ahead, Frances. No, no, Dezi, you have a better answer. I was going to ask, we love to ask people what the meal, the best meal they had so far this year was. Oh, goodness. I think that I would say it was like on New Year's Eve a place in North Africa called Dirty Truth that was like we went there because it seemed like it was like fun vibes and good cocktails but then the food was just like phenomenal and because I don't think I had high expectations like it just it went through the roof. I had a pork pasta dish that like this is why it wasn't that great of a restaurant critic is because like the details of an actual dish can't tell me the shape of the pasta. Yeah I was like long long works. Oh wait I had the best this is like years ago I still think about this is a restaurant for Scythia in Manhattan. I had these beef short rib agnalote which like those little like

20:47dumpling like little pockets and it was the sauce was this like cooked down beef stew so unctuous that I just you're doing good to provide me with that. Yeah see I'm I'm a disjunctuous for a brand so this would be a good restaurant. Incredible Queens. I would in another life I am one but that's that's not this life. Can I can I say that candidly like I was not great restaurant critic like I think I was good at describing like the feel of like what it would be like to be there the atmosphere the chemistry you know like who this is for but in terms of like actually describing the food on your plate I would always call the chef afterwards to be like so that you know like I loved that sesame noodles dish and it'd be like there was no sesame in that. That was lemon grass or whatever you know like that happened to be a lot and I was like your palate is not you're not a super faster so anyway. So atmosphere is awesome people care about so yeah maybe we just be an atmosphere critic that'll be a new job. Well that's just called an architecture critic I think. Fair enough. What's the difference for you in as much as there is one in covering food

21:50restaurants versus farming and agriculture. It feels like a pretty distinct difference although I was just talking to I'm going to talk about a freelance pitch that I just took yesterday because she put it was it was kind of a foodie pitch. It was about the taste of bitter and like a long help like that in the food industry bitter is kind of like frowned upon but then in other cultures bitter is like one of the many flavors that people enjoy and it was about like marketing efforts to sell certain bitter produce here in the United States and like you know whether or not that will take off and how challenging that is and I was like that's kind of it's kind of about the consumer and it's kind about the palate that's almost not an offering story but also like it's kind of funky and weird and like we would be able to get into like the people who are growing these vegetables so like but I think that that's probably the outer limit of of what we would do. I don't know a lot of a lot of food writing I'm going to like alienate myself from people that I know but like it just feels a bit precious you know like it feels it feels like it's not taking into the context of

22:53like everything that got it to the plate um and I think just after doing this for a while that that ends up feeling a bit frivolous to me you know like I want to know about the labor that went into it you know like the the bottom line of the people who are growing the food things like that I think that's also about some like the farming agriculture people who are growing the food type of work you were doing before off-range in amber. So are you too familiar with modern farmer how it initially hit the scene the magazine? I'm not. No. I'll send you a New York Times like article that they wrote making fun of it basically when it came out it was like a glossy lifestyle magazine it was like 2014 I think. What can folks vibes? Very very can folks vibes. The person who started it came from Monaco and it was very much like because this was a time when you had that story of like the Wall Street broker who's like I'm just gonna open a cupcake trucker but or you know even better I'm gonna go by like by like ten sheep or a winery or something and just live

23:56off the land. Late stage. Stop clap hey. Yes exactly. That's hey H-A. That was good. I've pictured like a lot of like hands with like the soil. Oh right. You know. Stop photos. Yeah. Stop photos like. If you just if you ever want to write a piece for dirt about like the conventions of the farming stock photo it's very talent to publish it. We actually had modern farmer we published like just a daily piece where we said it was like 24 photos of people holding soil and we just tried to like do an array and then like Jake think our digital editor just made little snarky captions for each one. Yeah so modern farmer was like at this very weird hybrid because it kind of was like we did a fashion shoot with actual like good looking farmers wearing like a high-end work work gear but then it was also like hard hitting journalism too. Like the first story that I did for them was I went to Mississippi and investigated how

24:56wild pigs were kind of like running wild we're like ruining the land and years before we needed 50 wild hog. Cheers before. 30 to 50 wild hogs came out and I'm like that's my beat. Never has somebody been I've been working on this for a decade. They just tweeted it out. They just tweeted it out. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah I mean we did we did a lot of serious agriculture journalism and I just had never gone there before and I was just like oh I like this you know like I don't have a farm background. This isn't like something that was like in my blood but it was just really interesting and I loved how agriculture journalism kind of intersects with like technology and culture and business you know like you can make a lot of different types of stories with farming in the core. And it seems like that was like a really good time for it too because that was a time when a lot of people were just like getting interested in like what's on their plate and the farm to table was kind of like you know going through the roof. So there was a good built-in readership of like farmers market shoppers is what we kind of thought of as our target demo.

25:57I was talking to my mother on the phone this weekend so I grew up on a small farm in Northern California. Eight acres organic produce flowers. Nursery starts and speaking of farmers market shoppers in that era. So let's say you know 20, 10, to 2014 I would work farmers market in the summers and on Saturdays and I remember when you say farmers market shoppers I think of the people who I'd be standing near the front of the booth and we had our romanesco display there right in the beautiful vegetable beautiful beautiful brassica that romanesco and people would say what is this and they'd take photos and I'd tell them oh so it's you know kind of like broccoli kind of like cauliflower it's really good and they'd say huh and then they would move on and not by any I hated those people hated them yeah just like that that's a you're still mad okay I'm just bitter I'm bitter like just like you're bitter like the flavor yeah exactly you'll have you'll have your day um so okay I was just going to say what we also at modern farm did a romanesco story because our intern who is a little um dreamy she loved how

27:01it's it's a fractal it's right it's a fractal yeah it's a fractal and that and like that's the only vegetable that it was so it's like she just like wrote a personal essay that was like an ode to like the beauty of looking at a romanesco yeah and I bet she also came to my booth it didn't buy any goddamn romanesco no she didn't want it she's also okay she what are you gonna say sorry sorry that your intern's kitchen strays here I know I just not mean to do that I wasn't gonna say uh what else what else do you know about your subscribers like how do you know 60% of them are in the industry do you do surveys um no I mean uh we we did do a survey at the beginning but the survey was kind of more um what do you want like what what kind of stories do you want to read right now you know and that was back when we had like a readership maybe five thousand um it's it really is an estimate like we do some data enhancement with our subscribers you know like we put we put it through that and that's that's kind of what did it but I think that we could like drill down a lot deeper if we wanted to uh just at this point we have and so yeah 60% is a

28:03rough estimate based on just like taking the email addresses and names and kind of like figuring out what we can know about them in that uh that rebrand right up you said that there was around a hundred forty thousand total subscribers yeah now it's like one fifty three maybe one fifty comes from like hmm um a lot of it is just organic growth um but then we also like I've had media partnerships with like investment west and fast company um and then like do you know knowable knowable magazine no uh it's very science driven like uh kind of all topics uh nature and environment they um just today put a banner ad in there for us like we do we do link exchanges with with other like-minded places study hall we've used a lot and braze awareness yeah daisy was on the study hall podcast this week it was we should chat maybe if there's something you could do it dark feels natural it does it feels natural um does i uh you said that

29:05you get a lot of feedback that this is a very vocal audience can you tell us more about that the kind of thing to say how yeah what are they saying to you like okay we did it we just did a story on um tractor theft right like it was pretty straightforward and you know sometimes we get these story ideas just from farmer message boards like I like to see what people are chatting about um and that was one there's first farmers um yeah the closest thing it's called new ag talk um everybody just calls it ag talk but the official thing if you look at the website is new ag talk uh one word and it's like um it feels like it's a very a place for conventional farmers like people who have had been had farms in their generation yeah in in their family for like five to ten generations and I don't know if you can actually see the post without becoming a member like that it's a little bit insular it's kind of an exclusive this farmer's only still exists yes it does i don't know yes pretty quickly i don't think that was a joke i didn't know that there's a real thing well you think i do thought it was a joke i can't even imagine the havoc you

30:05would have wrecked on there yeah do you think i mean do you know what farmers only is it's a i do not need to say yeah for farmers yeah for farmers yeah you thought it was a joke i thought it was that's like a joke yeah the life of farmers i mean anecdotally i have heard that that site has been great for people relocating you know that like it's really like let's say you live in a town of three hundred people and you put like blaze through the dating pool like it's a good way to see oh you know five times over there's someone who actually shares my interest so i never ever met otherwise you know that makes it like yeah is that does it extent to like fishing people all fishermen fishermen i don't know i would say sure that might be as as yeah the fishers own somebody from a farming family definitely not different type different type of guy well he said off range covers lobster men so true we do we do but i think that if we were ever to like you know spin off a date dating situation ourselves like we would keep the the farmers in the

31:06fishermen distinct what would you call the fishing one fish would it um because they already have like too many fish in the sea surf and turf oh my god that's that's not really dirty yeah that's surface turf could be like the sniffies and you don't have the tractor theft sorry so i just like basically it turns out there was like a rash of tractor theft in like northern Kentucky that's that's what this person was bringing up and i realized that it was just not something that i've ever seen addressed a story like story ideas or just something like that like let's look into this and i've got some contributing writers who are like great for that kind of thing like they'll have no subject matter expertise on that and they'll just start digging um and so one of our writers like started looking into it and it turns out that it is actually for like the small tractor a lot of farmers just leave their keys in the tractor that's the number one reason why it's a like an easy take but that said it's very difficult to get away like you can't just like you can't just ride down the road on someone else's tractor so you do have to have the infrastructure to come pick it

32:09up in like a big semi or something like that so just you know she talked to like law enforcement and you know some farmers who had actually suffered through the but my gosh like the number of people who just like rode in and wanted to tell a story about like how 17 years ago like their neighbor you know like had put a four wheeler in their barn and you know they thought everything was safe it was just like it was anecdote after anecdote after anecdote like everyone had a personal story so that's the often what it is is kind of like i recognize that or i don't recognize that that other people would write in be like i've never seen theft so i don't know if that's real first real quick are you more of a Kubota guy or a John Deere guy wait there's a third one too i don't know what the third one is that's the kind of guy it's the blue with the green the red um but now i'm just talking about um uh i would say John Deere like classic i did a modern farmer's story in in Iowa a long time ago and the lady at the chamber of commerce gave me a little green John Deere tractor as a gift um that's the difference now you've gotten to the bottom of why like aliens love cows i feel like every time i read about an alien abduction it's like and they

33:15messed with the cow no but that's a really good question though it's a real beast who wouldn't love them uh maybe you could do an audience survey about their experiences but check yourself come on dude i find the instructions the aliens are taking the tractor i am offended the truck is not there open your eyes um the truth is in the field uh and in the sky um with the tell us about about your writers like do you have a stable of you know very consistent writers where one to do every month you're publishing something from this person um what percentage yeah just tell us about your writers um okay so i took like when i first started i just ported it over my favorite writers from the counter right like that was the easiest way to do this um and just i was just like we have this thing we it's like wide open field we can do whatever we want you know what stories ideas you have um and then i put out calls for pitches for a while which netted some really good people um and yeah so i have writers who will write with like one piece and then disappear forever and then i have people who are maybe like on a monthly cadence and then

34:19i have like some writers will write almost every week too um the interesting thing i think is that most of them are not like ag background writer even or food even necessarily like i have like one of my favorite go-to reporters does is mostly like criminal justice outside of writing for offering what are some of the stories they've written for you um she wrote the tractor theft sort of that was a good idea um she's a grad school right now so she's she's been out of the loop for a little bit oh she did um she did a Ponzi scheme there was a cattle Ponzi scheme that involved actual like people she cut you in huh she didn't cut me in but like she talked she talked to the North Dakota commissioner of agriculture who was so he called her in the middle of the night just like upset about this like terrible company that was like building millions of dollars literally from cattle ranchers it was that's a good story you should check it out if you can find it uh what was about what some of the other um writers who have an unexpected background that they bring a lot of tech writers and that's not that surprising because like the ecosystem like i feel like

35:21i'm kind of like in the hybrid tech journalism world role right like like somebody who wrote this week was actually just like best friends with one of the engineers on my team um and like i'm open to it right uh i feel like if you can craft a solid pitch or you've got an interesting story to tell let's just talk about like what the needs are um give it a run but yeah like she i don't think she never written on agriculture before um this week i have more of a meta question which is um you know coming from bottom farmer the counter sort of seen that's the arc of the farm to table era the way that manifested in cities like in Brooklyn and Oakland and the way that people talked about it but like where how has the media landscape changed along with the evolution of this beat like obviously restaurant criticism today it's very driven by social media the critics are an anonymous sort of sometimes it's even seen as an asset for the critic to be somebody who has built a following of their own we've talked a lot about eater like kind of getting rid of a lot of

36:26their traditional criticism but then hiring people who are like prolific yelpers to write um and i'm interested like how those shifts like your perspective on those shifts and what what's next for this beat is it people having individual newsletters is it more projects within larger organizations like off range i mean i still i mean maybe i'm naive but i still have hope that there'll be a return to something a little more thriving in both both this area of journalism and everywhere like i end up i think a part of the reason that i've been able to work with people who don't necessarily consider food and agriculture their beat is because there are just fewer and fewer places to write in general and it's like okay well you know you pay decently and you'll give it a good edit and we'll have some nice art with story like let's let's get into it um but yeah i mean i think we've contracted like there's very few like there are very few publications i even consider like a competition at this point you know and nobody's doing exactly what we're

37:29doing you know like i think that like some of the agricultural publications are more lean towards the advocacy side like um there there's more of like a point of view right like there's sustainability focused um and yeah um i don't know you know like i feel like i'm on a bit of an island like this is this is a good thriving sustaining place that i am um and we're we're doing well um but it feels rather bleak when you look elsewhere like eater eater kind of hit me hard like i feel like eater kind of came up when i was first starting to do food writing um and now it's used that my lunch there yeah i do and we actually i mean we do writers that i admire they get laid off i will reach out to them like jius eksina wrote for us a couple things for us which just left eater yeah that's the thing too like i i tried i tried to think that this is like a place that people could have like at least a temporary home you know while they're looking around for another journalism job would you ever do a print edition we did you did well shows what i know he is

38:34no uh we did there is a when when we're amber research it looks like a little academic journal Daisy did you get one when you i don't think so how does one name somebody's a listener is interested if i'm interested how does one get their hand on they're pretty exclusive uh i think well because i think we only have like maybe 40 left 40 or 50 left but i could send you to one i think that's that's this conversation hundred dollars each guys name your price i want to send my parents one my uh i i'm thinking of like um like you know my parents being farmers their early 70s my father was for a long time pretty technology technology technologically not literate let's say um he got his first smartphone maybe a year ago maybe two years ago um big magazine guy dwell those his favorite for many years twelve like strand uh great magazine i'm on to apartment originally he likes that replaced well form anyways uh all of which is to say like he is somebody who i know would love reading this stuff but he until the last year or two somebody who would have never ever come across it because it's just not you know he listens to the radio

39:37he's magazines and the newspaper that's that's how he plays the game but i imagine it's like a younger generation of farmers deeper or more online um i don't really know where i'm going with this i i guess i guess the point is it seems to me that this is something that would be really well served by a more um routine uh frank cadence quarterly once a year at least something like that like this on specific it would be really well served by that i think that's a million percent true i think it's like a resource issue like or bandwidth more you know like i it was it was a labor of love me and the creative director at ambrook you know like locked ourselves in a room in suburb in Boston for a week and just like you let her let her wildest ideas just run free um and it's like it's like a really nice it's a little more there i say artistic than the website you know like like it's it's less straight news reporting and more kind of like somebody meeting their their idol wendelberry um god of the influential farmer thinker um just that you know like personal essays uh

40:38i wrote a story about how i got something really wrong once in a freelance piece about cows for the Wall Street Journal um was it that aliens don't love them no it's that i call it's that i call it's that i called a male that i called a a biker a cow i called a cow oh that's a great story tell us more that's it it was it was a story how did you put so that was that that's what you wrote yeah i called a bullie cow that's what you wrote bullgate no bullshit obviously oh yeah what did you call it it was okay so this was a story it was a story on the only cow in manhattan i called the the line was the the loneliest cow in a manhattan at the central park zoo there was one cow that was used to kind of teach kids about food systems right um and basically like one of the premises of the story was that it was specifically like a dairy cow from upstate new york um and so kids were supposed to go by and they're like this is where your milk comes from and the kids are like yay oh interesting but it was it was a guy it was a i called it a cow throughout and all

41:42these farmers were like that's not a cow that's a bull like you don't know the difference to predict and be and be kind of like the the gotcha at the very end of the the behind the scenes piece i wrote for the off-range story was that uh bulls can't make milk so the entire premise of everything is that like this is supposed to teach them that like milk comes from them but that's like it doesn't even make sense as a story or so the Wall Street bull there's two bulls this is the publication the Wall Street Journal and it just never came out to write another one another attraction justy thank you so much for coming on taste land this is fast Wall Street next week