Fred Mwangaguhunga Of MediaTakeOut On Handling Lawsuits, Diddy's Downfall, Usher's Tour Postponement + More
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Way, what's up? Its way up with Angela.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yee, y'all know, to this day, I'd be looking at
Media take Out every single day, all right, And I've
said it on this show several times.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And we have the founder.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Of Media take Out of Fred Muwangahanga Muwanga Guhanga, right,
Muwanga Okay, Muwanga Guhanga got it all right?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Fred m from here on out. Freda is here with
me today.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We met each other so long ago when Media Takeout
was in its infancy stages.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, I know, I was just thinking about it. I mean,
you know, it's been like I started seventeen years ago,
but you've been in the radio now for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It'll be twenty years this year. You started in two
thousand and six. I started in two thousand and four.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's just like it's it's great to
see just kind of like people that something someone like
you that has had so much talent. We were also
young in this industry. And now kind of twenty years later,
after all this time and all this effort, we're still
kind of here kicking and really hitting a stride, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And Media Takeout still does incredibly well.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm like people don't understand because it has a bad
rapper some reason when I'm up here and I'm like
and they'd be like, who's still on media tech? And
I'm like a lot of people every single day. So
talk about your longevity in the game and for people
who might think like, oh, it's not doing what it
used to do, but it's been consistent.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, I mean we have about thirty million people a month,
and you know, when you think about it, over the
course of a year, just about every single black person
in America is on media takeout, right, So it's you know,
we've been around and how we've been able to do
this has just been like consistent in what we do.
We're breaking news stories, we're dipping in and telling you
the tea the stuff that a lot of people aren't
going to say, and doing it kind of in a
(01:36):
fair way. We're not you know, fans of one artist
over another.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
At all, so we'll just kind of like anyone can
get it.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, Yeah, we just kind of put it out there,
but do it in a fun, lighthearted way, right, Like
we're not trying to make anybody getting any kind of
serious trouble, but we're going to tell you the tea
and just kind of you know, these are people that
we know, we love, and we want to know their business.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's interesting that you say that because the reason why
I tell people, but also for media take ut I
go there because a lot of times media take up
will print a story that maybe other people wouldn't and
do it early and then I'll see it out here first,
and then I'll see it like maybe other places later.
But sometimes people can be like overly cautious about Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So a lot of times, you know, and what I
think a lot of the readers don't realize is that
the stories, there's a lot of back behind the scenes
in the stories that we might maybe we don't report.
And you're in the industry, so you know a lot
of behind the scenes stories, you know, like the behind
scenes about what people are really like and the people
out there in the in the world see them as
you know, the artists, and we might know a little
(02:38):
bit more about them. Sure, So like with me to
take out, we're not afraid to say that, right, Like
we're not afraid to like burn a bridge or burn
a relationship. You know, we just kind of put it
out there, Like I said, We're not trying to make
anyone look particularly bad and you know, make people dislike them,
because we actually do love all the people that we're
talking about. But at the same time, you know, we
want to know. We want to know as much of
(02:59):
it possibly can, all the nooks and crannies in the
dirt in these people's lives.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And I think people you need to also understand your
background because you went to law school and business school
right got your MBA, and you were practicing law as well,
and so when you started this, it's not like it
was somebody just.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
In their mom's basement, you know, like I want to
start a site.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You had a lot of experience before that, and you've
also had experience with things not working and even at
a young age, raising money, you know, which is something
that everybody's having conversations about today. But that's something you
did before you even started media takeout.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah. I mean I was just a straight business guy.
I was you know, I was corporate. I was one
of those guys that you see in the sweater vests,
and I was doing that for a bunch of a
bunch of years and I just I never, I never
really felt that that was my calling. I always want
to do something a little bit more fun, but in
the sense I really am a business guy. I'm a
corporate guy.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah you have to be. I think that helps.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, I mean so, so I didn't. I didn't go
into this trying to become like a lot of times
people have like an ulterior motive, like they might say, well,
I'm starting a blog, but then I'm really trying to
be a talk show host, or I'm starting a blog,
I really want to be a film producer. I was
really just starting a blog to start a really successful business.
And that's that's the way that I look at it
right now. I'm not looking to transition to anything else
(04:16):
other than business. And you know that. I think that's
part of the secret sauce that I had.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And you also don't put yourself out there like that
to your point, right, because it's not like we're like
Fred says, or we don't even see you like too
much doing interviews, and I don't see you hanging out
at parties. I don't see you doing those things unless
I'm wrong, I don't know, but.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
I'm not because it's not really my thing, right, Like,
I'm not really trying to make friends.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
With people because that makes it harder to do your child.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
It does. And you know, I had like a couple
of friends in the industry, and it just never works
because it's like then they're going to tell you, oh, no,
don't don't say this, or even when you do say
something positive, oh you didn't say it positive enough. Or
if the comments are beat, oh you said it in
a certain way to make the comments. So it just
never really worked. And so what ended up happening is
the person that with my friend, I just never I
(05:07):
would be like, just we're just not going to cover
this person in any way good or bad. We're just
not going to cover the person. And it's just not
you know, at the end of the day, the media
takeout is not about me. It's not about you know,
a lot of times people are starting businesses and they're like, oh,
what I need to do, and you know what, it
feels good for me. Media takeout is not about me
at all, Right, It really is about the reader, whatever
it is that the reader wants. I am kind of
(05:28):
a servant to the reader, right Like the media takeout
is not my servant. I am its servant, and so
I have to recognize that that's the way it is, right,
So when the way that I live my life, I
have to live my life. You know, maybe I might
want to go to a party, but I know that
I'm going to meet people, I'm gonna be friendly with them.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And then you know, is this Freda, what do you do? Fred?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
No, I was like, oh damn. You never know how
people feel.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Because also, let's be clear, people have to understand what
these websites. It's not like Fred is at home writing
all the stories and like, that's not what happens.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
You have a staff, right, it does that. So sometimes people.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Would be mad at you, but you're like, I didn't
even know that story was up there.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah. I mean. The good thing is people, especially when
you've been around a lot of time, your relationships go
up and down and up and down. So people have
mad at you one day and then they're happy with
you the next day. Right, they have an album coming out,
so then they're friends with you. Right, So it all
kind of goes up and down, and so you know,
a lot of times people like that. People are like, oh,
celebrities must not like you, and I'm like, no, they
actually like me a lot, right, And almost too much.
(06:25):
You go to these parties and they're like, oh, hey,
you wanted me to take out. Hey, I got this
new project, I got this new this, and I got
this new that. So it's not so then so much
that I'm going there because I'm hiding. I just don't
want to kind of get that attention because then it
just adds to the same and it makes me not
able to do my job. Whether or not it's fun
because it's great to know celebrities, great to go sitting
in the VIP I see you there and every now
(06:47):
and then, you know, but at the same time, it
just interrupts me from being able to do my job.
And so, like I said, what comes first is the reader.
It's the media takeout reader. And so if that means
me not going to parties, that's what it means.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You know. Do you think that since you say it's
really a service to the reader. People like messy no
matter what anybody says, Like even for me, like when
I post on Instagram, I post tell us a secret.
People will go crazy over those stories, but they don't
care about like the other stories. It'll be about like
a wealth Wednesday. You know, things like that that are
really positive. And then but then they'll also be like,
(07:22):
you only post things like this, and I'm like, no,
we post a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
That's just what you're paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And so readers, as much as we want people to
be like, let's do all great positive things, a lot
of times that's not what's going to get the meter going.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, I mean think about it, right, Like it's one thing.
A lot of times people say, oh, it's especially for
black people or black and latinos to be like, oh,
you we're particularly interested in like the messy stuff, But no,
it's just a human thing. White people interested in messy stuff.
Men are interested in messy stuff. Women interested in messy stuff. Right,
It's just it's the most interesting thing that's out there.
It's like if you were to make a bunch of movies, right,
(07:57):
Like the superhero movies get the most people watching them. Right,
They're not necessarily the best actors in it, they're not
necessarily the best plots, right, but they just have all
of the flash and all the pizazz. And that's what
kind of like a lot of the gossip stuff is.
So we're producing a bunch of content, producing good content.
We're you know, positive content, uplifting content and messy content,
(08:18):
and it just so happens that the reader chooses the
messy content. Don't blame me for choosing the messi content.
It's y'all doing it.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I saw the headline today was because, like I said,
I look every day Kamala Harris, they have these t
shirts calling her a hoe.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, that's I mean, that is out of control. I mean,
you know, this is the Vice president of the United States.
She has a long career in politics. I don't know
what they're talking about. Stuff that she did twenty years
ago with whatever, that has nothing to do with what
she's been doing in the last twenty years. And look,
none of y'all want to go back twenty years and
talk about like what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Let's talk about the fact that Donald Trump, right, okay,
And the fact that you could wear a shirt supporting
Donald Trump and calling Kamala Harrison hole knowing the things
that Donald Trump has been found guilty of. It's crazy
to me, Yeah, I think. And I see women wearing that.
That was really like, wow, y'all, are you know to
see white women wearing those shirts? And I don't know
(09:12):
who else, but I did see that particular picture on the.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Site and that was like, where is this world going
right now? You know?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I mean, you know, we're living in kind of like
this two different worlds where people just feel so comfortable
saying disrespectful things, especially to black people and especially the
black women, Like you saw them saying a lot of
stuff about you know, Joe Biden. But this is now
like go to the next level, and you can only
imagine if she wins, what you know, we're going to
have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Let's think about what Michelle Obama had to go through
as President Barack Obama's wife, and people were saying awful,
nasty things about her and how she I mean, it's
going to be like, you know, one hundredfold. Now, let
me ask you this, because you know, with elections coming up,
and there's always elections, how responsible do you feel like
you have to be when it comes to those types
(09:58):
of stories because there is so much information out there,
a lot of times that information is not real.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But when it comes to.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Covering politics, obviously there's some sensationalism and there's like rumor
stories and things like that that's more gossip oriented. But
as far as making sure that people are informed, do
you feel a responsibility to do that?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Absolutely? I mean I think that we always want to
put out the message. It's always one. I mean, our forefathers,
our ancestors put their lives on the line for us
to vote. We have to honor them and go out
and vote. And I think for black people that's especially true.
And so we're always pushing, pushing that out there, and
you know, the messaging you want to put out. Obviously
(10:39):
the vice president has has the messaging out there, and
we were obviously covering that. But I think today that
story that you talked about today, that's a way to
kind of introduce politics and what's going on in politics,
why it's important to vote for Kamala or vote at all.
I mean, if you're going to vote for control, I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I'm not going to tell you to vote for you
not to vote for us.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Right, It's a way of introducing politics in a way
that kind of resonates. It's you know, it's slightly sensational,
but it's what's in fact happening out there.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Right, there's actual pictures that people wearing these shirts.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Right, this is what's this is what you're voting against.
This is why it's important to vote because these are
the people that you're you're these are the this is,
these are the ideas that you are voting against when
you're going and voting for Kamma. And I think that's
the way that we're looking to do this, right, Like
you want to introduce it in a natural way, in
a way that's organic to the kind of content that
you create, and it still kind of puts out the
(11:32):
messaging that that that the importance of kind of behavior
of engaging in politics.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Now, I want to ask you, with any website, any
entertainment site, there's going to be times when lawsuits happened.
I don't think anybody has duck that smoke. Oh no, okay,
So how do you prepare for that? Knowing that every
now and then it's going to happen? What do you
do for anybody listening to to get some information on
if you're maybe starting something like this, how do you
make make sure that you're ready for that?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
I think the first thing you have to do is
you have to focus on the truth. Right, So, I
think that there's there's a good amount of overlap between
being loyal to your audience and and protecting yourself from lawsuits,
and that's just kind of like reporting the truth and
don't try and kind of take things too far. So
I think a lot of times when we're reporting on celebrities,
(12:24):
we hold back a little bit, right, And so maybe
you might know you know enough to put them in prison,
but you might allude to it. You're not going to
put everything out there because when you a lot of
times if you back someone into a corner, that's when
they're going to come after you. So if you're going
to say, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna lay out
the exact reason that the FBI can now look at
this and put you in prison, well, you know that
(12:46):
person has no choice now but to bring a lawsuit.
But if you kind of take a step back and
you know, you don't completely go in and take someone down,
that's there. And why I say that that that ties
into the audience is you know a lot of people
think that the audience really likes just you. They want
to know everything, They want to know all the dirt
and everything. The audience really doesn't remember, but they actually
(13:09):
love these people, right Like they actually like these people,
and so they don't want to see them go to jail.
They don't want to see them, you know, destroy They
don't want to see their career ended. They might just
want to, you know, wallow in the messiness for yeah, yeah,
it's a little girl you heard. Oh I know that.
But they don't want to see them really destroyed. And
so I think a lot of times you have people
(13:29):
and a lot of times people you see it on
on social media, they really kind of get personally involved
in it and they really try and take them down.
They start launching personal attacks. Oh my gosh, there's nothing
personal about this, right, Like you're literally reporting news like
launching personal attacks with people. I think when you start
going down that road, you're asking yourself for trouble because
you give them no choice.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
But yeah, because I say that Kim Kardashian situation, you
guys had to retract that and apologize. Yeah, I mean
we was the legal aspect of that, Like why did
you in that case? Because she's so she was planning
to do and I know she had her money's long
so she did too, right, Okay, she did sue.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, So I think at that time we were I
think we were a little over zealous in a lot
of our reporting on there, and I think, you know,
there was when when she brought the lawsuit. You know,
obviously we got a lawyer's involved, and they were like, oh,
you know, maybe we could fight this or whatever. But
I looked at it, and you know, you have to,
as a human being, just look at it and you say, Okay, well,
what did we say and were we wrong in what
(14:29):
we were saying? And after I looked at it, I
was like, you know what, we were wrong on this.
We shouldn't. We took it a little bit too far.
We were making implications that were there that that clearly
weren't weren't in fact true. At the time, we didn't
know it was true, but it didn't matter. And I
just said, you know what, this is a woman. She'd
(14:49):
been gone through a robbery, she was traumatized. I was like,
you know what, whether or not we could win this lawsuit,
this is not the right thing to do, right And
so I just said, you know what, we're just gonna
fall on our sword on this. We're gonna apologize, We're
going to say that what we did was wrong, and
then we're just gonna kind of work it out. And
that's exactly what we did. That was the right thing
(15:09):
to do. And so like I think a lot of
times people are just so caught up in oh the
legal thing and I'm going to legally maneuver this way
or that way. You can't do that. If you do that,
you're in the paying your LAWI is a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Right, Let's just get it over with. Yeah, you And
it's okay to be wrong, right, That's the whole thing.
There's no way in this business is not gonna be
times that you were wrong.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Right, And when you are wrong, you have to just
kind of open up to it, own it, and you
have to just apologize to the person and hope, hope
that they accept it all right.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And you know, other things that I wanted to talk
to you about was just your business savvy as far
as launching this right, you know, I think it is
important for there's a lot of people that are like, now, okay,
I want to start my own site. People have that
on their Facebook page and things like that. One aspect
that has been tough for people lately is pictures.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Right. You can't just use pictures. I know it, iHeart.
They always tell us, listen, we only have a certain
amount of pictures. We can use.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You have to licenses, you have to license that. But
it didn't used to be like that when you first started.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, the Internet used to be the wild, wild weide.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So how did you manage to navigate through that?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Because you either have to take those down or how
does that work?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So I can tell you that we pay. We probably
pay half a million dollars in pictures a year, so
that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
We might have to start a picture.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So we paid. We had thousands of dollars for these pictures,
and we happen to you know, we've been around for
a while, so we can. You know, we can. We
have the means to do it. But it's just it's
part of the industry. Like I think, when we came
into blogging kind of in the beginning, it was a
real it was a young industry, and so there weren't
really we weren't really following the rules. We were just
kind of bending every rule that we.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Could to kind and sometimes rules got made a little later.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so you know, over time, as
you start to mature as a business, as an industry,
that's when the rules start coming in. And if you're
not following the rules, you know, you might get away
with it for you know, a couple of years. Eventually
it starts coming and then you start building and you know,
at some point you get to the mature company and
you have it. So but what I'd say to anyone
out there is you just got to follow the rules.
(17:14):
There are companies out there. Obviously we're paying a ton
of money for photos, for premium photos, but there are
a lot of companies out there that will license the
photos for less. You know, if you if you can't
do that, maybe you can show up to events and
the picture I have a picture, you know, maybe you
can you know, ask if you see a picture on
social media, you can ask them to buy the photo.
So there are ways to do it, and just kind
(17:36):
of following the rules and following the law. That's that's
the kind of the best way to do it. Because
if you don't, you know, they will get you.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yes they will.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
People have lost their whole entire site, yeah, because of that.
And then you have a different ad model too, as
far as ads to support the site. So I want
you to talk about that a little bit because some
people this is something that people also need to understand
as far as even with podcasts, people are like I
need to get ads, I need to get this, or
if they have their own thing going on, they want
to get advertising. So tell me about how you've gone
(18:05):
about with your advertising.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
So advertising on the web goes one way, and then
on social media, I think goes a little bit differently. Yeah, similarly,
so on the web, if you have a website, you
can do advertising either its going directly to brand. So
I can call up, you know, Angela and say, hey, Angela,
put out an AD on my site, and you pay
me and then you put it on the site. And
that's typically how most ads are done on social media.
(18:30):
And there companies out there that will reach out, especially
if you have following or you have whatever, and they'll
they'll say, hey, we want to put an AD on
your site, and you negotiate a one off kind of
price and you kind of go from there. And I
think that's that's a good way to start for I
think a lot of people. Once you start getting more
and more or bigger and bigger, then it just gets
harder to kind of manage a lot of that. And
(18:50):
they have systems, which is kind of like the stock
when you think of the stock market, it works kind
of like that you take all of the inventory. So
you basically take your site and you put it up
on the stock market and all the different companies could
then bid real time and buy ads on your site.
And so when you do it that way, it just
makes it a lot easier. You can have way more
(19:11):
ads on your site. You don't have to have kind
of the overhead of a large ad team. But I
think most people want to do both of those.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You want to have kind of like you can do both.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Yeah, you want to do both because the ads, when
you're selling directly to people, you make a lot more
money on the ad sales. But then you can't sell
all of your inventory. So maybe you can sell one day,
but then the next day you don't have any ads
on your site and you're like, okay, well, you know,
I'd like to have an AD on that site. And
for those days that you can't sell directly, that's when
you go to the other model of people just putting
(19:42):
your inventory out there and allowing you know, buyers to
buy kind of on the spot.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Do people ever try to maybe pay you to post
the story they have, You know a.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Lot of times people say, oh, I'll pay you to
post a story, right, And what I always do, and
they are always shocked. I'm like, listen, you tell me
a story that's real, I'll do you a favor. I'll
post it for free. You don't have to pay me
a penny, and I'll post a story just it just
it just has to be true. So and I think
a lot of times people like really, yeah, yeah, So
(20:15):
a lot of times people like, oh, blogs will pay
you to do this and that. And you know, like
I said, at the end of the day, it really
isn't about me. If it was about me, i'd be like, okay,
give me, give me that, I'll take that. I'll take that.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Terrible stories, right, So it's it's it's.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Really about the audience, right, Like I truly am a
servant of the audience. And the audience wants to know
the truth. They don't care about any bag I'm getting
on the side. They don't that they're not that's not
helping them, right. They want to know what's what. And
so I have to always come back to thinking like that,
you know, and and the more that you do that,
I think it's it's it's a weird way of thinking
(20:46):
about a business because you know, especially if you go
on social media, you hear people talking about business. They
always about me and I and whatever, and it really
has nothing to do with you. You're like, in terms
of the business, the business is more important than you.
The business is what you're working for. You know, I'm not.
I'm not you know, I'm not an entrepreneur free on
my own. I have a job. I work for this business.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
What's been the biggest story so far this year? I
would have to assume it's Diddy, but yeah, traffic wise, yes, okay,
it's Diddy.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
I mean the thing about Diddy and you know, it's
weird because everybody's talking about Diddy parties and they're like,
oh my god, have you gone a Didy party? Like
two or three years ago, Like going to Diddy party
was like the heighlight of your life.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Everybody like did you get yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Right, because you watch if you went to a party
and Diddy was there, You're like, I'm at the right party.
That was like for the last twenty years, and now
all of a sudden they're like, ooh, what what was
going on? Didty parties? So I think it's just it's
sad one that, you know, the things that he's alleged
have done. I mean, it's horrible, but I think it's
also sad because.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
The things that we've also seen, right, yeah, that's not
even allegations, right yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
There's clearly a lot of horrible things that this man
has done, and I think that's that's very sad. I
think the other thing that's said is I remember, like
Diddy was like my like model of like what I
wanted to kind of grow into. Like when I was
even in business school, I was like I want to
be like did.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
He Yeah, everybody did, people to name themselves after him.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah. You were like, you were like, look, this guy,
he's cool, he's in the industry, he's young, he's black,
he's doing it, and like to see this icon go
down like that, you know, this just I'm not defend.
I'm not saying that what he did is right. I'm
just saying it's just kind of like a portion of
your life. You're just like, damn, this guy is gone.
(22:30):
I mean, I guess that's how people felt about Bill Cosby.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean, you know, yeah, yeah absolutely, And listen, people
still will say he was trying to buy it a network,
and they just say anything.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
You know, he was well to do with let me
tell you did he was, in fact, and I can
tell you he was trying to buy a network, which
one I'm not going to say him tell the story,
but it's one hundred percent true. He was doing that,
and he was raising money, and he was doing stuff,
and he had a bunch of things that he was
doing right before it's happened. Like I said, I'm not
trying to put out and he can conspiracies, but I'm
(23:01):
telling you one hundred percent as fact that he was.
He had a ton of money, and he was trying
to buy a network, and he was trying to do
a bunch of other things. And that happened directly right after,
right before all of these allocations.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's also shocking to me that something like that could
happen at a hotel and there's video footage of it
and clearly people have seen it and it's been buried
for so long.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, that's not shocking at all. I Mean, there is
so much stuff that's out there that like just doesn't
get really especially when you're a celebrity, right.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And you can pay yeah, you can say you.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Can just say hey, look, you know, it's a really
bad look for me. I'm really sorry, you know, I'm
going to go to counseling, you know. And sometimes you
feel bad, You're thicking, like do I really want to
destroy this person? You know?
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Have you ever felt bad if you've gotten something that.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
You've gotten some crazy stuff, right, that could really destroy people, right,
And a lot of times we're just like, you know what,
I don't know if I want to kind of do
this to this person. This is a person that's really loved.
Nothing like this, right, like anything like that.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, I was gonna say if they really should be
accountable for certain things because you know, but nothing like that.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Yeah, Like there was like some criminal stuff that was
There was a lot of stuff like that that we get,
and a lot of times we just the one thing
that we don't want to do is we don't want
to like put out anything that's gonna put someone in prison. Right,
Let the police handle that. Like if you if you're
gonna leak it out to us, leak it out to
somebody else. There's plenty of people that after that, right, right,
(24:29):
But I don't want to I don't want to do that.
I don't want to get involved in like putting someone
in prison, that too many black people in prison right now.
If you're gonna do it and the police are gonna
do it, that's fine. I don't want to have any
part of that. And another thing we don't want to
do is a lot of times we don't want to
do something is going to really mess up somebody's money. Okay,
So a lot of times they'll be like an actor
and they'll say something or do something or whatever. There's
(24:51):
a story about it, and it's right around the time
that they're negotiating a deal or anything like that, and
it's just like, these people work so hard to kind
of get it out there and not necessarily even that person,
you don't want to mess it up for another black
actor that's coming coming behind them, or a sports star.
You know, there was one time, I don't want to
say the name, but what a really really big sports star.
(25:12):
There was a gigantic scandal happened and we didn't report
on that.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Did other people report on it?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
No?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh, so you got the law, Yeah, so we we
had what about Okay, let me ask you this. What
if it's a couple, right, the married couple, somebody's cheating
and you guys get the exclusive on that, would you
hesitate to put that out because it could potentially break
up their marriage?
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I think a lot of times. I mean, remember, we
we go in on stuff. So we'll do in that case,
like let's say we have someone caught red handed dead
and the rights on it, what we'll do is we'll
we'll report on it, but we'll allude to like the cheating,
but we'll give it away. Where Like, there's a good
number of people that are read that and be like, oh,
that's media take out, right, that never happened, right, Like
(25:56):
I don't believe it, right, And there's so myths, so
much stuff that's on here that I think people will
be like, oh, that's on media to take out. That's
never true, that never happened, and it's one hundred percent true, right, right,
Like you think about it, Like we broke a couple
of months ago that Cardi B was pregnant, and the
Cardi B came out and she told the press, who's like,
I am not pregnant, and then everybody was like, ah,
(26:16):
media to take out and friendalized big news, right, and
it turned out obviously we were right. So there's so
much of that that goes on that people will literally
believe that we were wrong on something we were one
hundred percent right on it.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Is it wrong a report on a woman being pregnant
before she wants to, because you know, you could look
at her and see she's pregnant.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
But I would never have been like, oh, Cardi B's
pregnant because you feel kind of bad.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
That's like sometimes women, you know, for various reasons, don't
want to announce it until they're in a place where
it's like, Okay, the pregnancy is safe, you know past
a certain period.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Yeah, I think you're you know, I get why you
wouldn't do it. But we gotta make a living. We
are porn on something, right, We're not gonna put some
to jail.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
To report on.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So where do you see growth going now here? Because
I know there's other companies that you have acquired, so
talk about that please.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah. I think right now we're in a really interesting
space in digital media. I think a lot of people
are just down on it. They're like, oh, the internet
and specifically news companies are dying or dead. I see
the exact opposite. I think that there are tons of
really really strong publications that are out there, and we're
looking we're in full on acquisition mode. We're out there
(27:31):
looking at we acquired cheat sheet.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yes, I get I didn't realize that because I get
cheat sheet and so that it's very helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we did click what's happening?
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Right, It's it's definitely a little bit. It's a different
side in that it's not African American focus. But there's
a ton of other ton of celebrity news on there too,
and we're doing a bunch of other sites right now.
We're in negotiations on two or three others. I think
before the end of the year, you're going to see
a bunch of Next year you're going to see more.
And I think it's really about expanding black media and
just believing in print journalism, right, Like I think a
(28:04):
lot of times people just kind of are saying, oh,
it's dead. People aren't reading news articles, but news articles
are kind of the foundation and people a lot of
times people say, well, well, I get on social media,
but you're not really getting the news from social media.
The news is being created by real journalists off social media, right,
and then someone is taking it and then they're talking
about it or adding or adding commentary which I think
(28:24):
is very valuable on social media too. But you need
to have both, right, Like you need to have the
folks on social media that are providing good quality commentary
on it, but you need to have true journalists that
are going out there, trained journalists out there doing it.
I mean, between media takeout and cheat sheet, we have
over one hundred years of journalism experience, professional journalism experience
on our staff, and you need people like that that
(28:46):
are going to go out there and do it. Like
I said, you don't have to necessarily believe it or
you say, oh, well, you know, I don't know. There
are people that are following the traditional journalistic ethics that
are going out and doing this, and the era of
fake news, you absolutely need that.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
When I see the media takeout stories and no one
else has reported it yet, I'm always like, Okay, let
me go, let me do a little research. I mean it,
and then I always have to be like a credit
and media takeout because.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I have to get myself just in case. But you
know a lot of times you guys have been spot on.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of stories out there
right now. I mean there's one that we were working
on that I'd like to preview with you right now. Yeah,
I'm ready, Okay, So you know everyone's hearing about Usher,
and he just recently canceled.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
His performance, yeah, the kickoff show, right.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
So the official word is that he was just tired
or ill or whatever. So we did some digging on this,
and it is true. So Usher has been spending a
lot of time over the summer with his children. He
was away obviously when he's doing the Vegas stuff, and
so he's been really kind of into his family and
so it really is exhaustion. So that's kind of the
(29:51):
official which is true. But now the tea is so
I spoke a couple of people and they're a little
bit worried about the relation ship or the impact that
ushers what new wife Jen is having on him. They
said that Usher in the past would have kind of
pushed through this and kind of performed, but it was
(30:14):
Jen who convinced him that he needed some to take
a little bit of time for himself and his family
and to not perform. And so there's a growing rift
I think between kind of people in Usher's kind of
management team and gen and I think this is something
that I think we're going to see play out over
the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Okay, that's juicy. You know his wife is also. Isn't
she related to Donald Glover's wife or something like that.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
I know she's she's been in the industry for a while.
You know, they look alike.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I think that their sisters or something like that. Let
me double check that. Let me not give media take
out of stories. Somebody gonna fact check this, dig into that.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
But yeah, we'll be looking for that one. That's it.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Okay, she's good. I mean, and I'm just like, I
got tickets for him in New York in September. I'm like, uh, sure,
you got to get yourself the job, you know, if
you've got to rest through Atlanta, and we know that's okay,
but just be good when you come to New York.
I'm joking.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
All right, Well, listen, I appreciate you for coming through.
It's been too long.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I know, Angela. I love just being around you too.
Thank you. That means you got to hang out too, okay, good.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
That means you can't write nothing, no pace, I actually
don't mind. I have friends that work at Bossip and
they've definitely done like not flattering stories about me, but
I don't take it personally because I also because I'm
in this space, I understand what it is.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I've seen a lot of people write things and I'm like, Dan,
that's my friend. But I'm also knowing that it probably
wasn't them necessarily that wrote it, and that people have
a job to do and that this too shall pass.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
And so that's what I tell myself when something happens.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah, that's the thing too. A lot of times, like
when something like that happens, they're like, oh my god,
this is the end of the world. Think about the
internet is like the like the life cycle of a story.
It's like three or four hours, maybe maybe six hours,
certainly not a day, and then it's over.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
People, something tragic happens, you're like, woo right, get me
out of here. But you know, that is something that
I have learned as far as myself not responding to
certain things or giving it too much, because I know, like,
once I leave something alone, it's about to go away,
and there'll be people that bring it up online and
things like that here and there, but it's not a
bigger it's a bigger story when you give it more ammunition, right.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
I mean, think about it too. There are millions and
millions of people that love you, Angela and they listen
to you, and then there's like a couple of people
that are.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Going to say there's millions they don't yet as well.
You know what I'm saying, But it's fine, comes with it,
It comes.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
With the job, right, But I'm just saying, like, on balance,
there's way more people that love you and like that
that then the people that are going to say and
hold on to this other stuff. And sometimes it's hard
to see that, right because like our eyes in your
your mind just fixates on the people that are saying
the negative stuff, and so you think, like, oh my god,
the people they're really when they think about me, they're
thinking about this scandal or whatever else. But they're not.
(33:02):
They're just thinking about you, know you and all the
great things that you do, and that's why they know you,
and that's why they follow you.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
We'll see y'all hearty here. Thank you so much. I
appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
We got to catch up more often though, because this
was fun, and you know, feel free to keep giving
me some takes.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I don't mind, and I'll keep on looking at a.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Media takeout like I keep on saying I'd be on there, y'all. Okay,
all right, well it's way up. Thank you so much,
fred m for joining us way up.
Way, what's up? Its way up with Angela.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Yee, y'all know, to this day, I'd be looking at
Media take Out every single day, all right, And I've
said it on this show several times.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
And we have the founder.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Of Media take Out of Fred Muwangahanga Muwanga Guhanga, right,
Muwanga Okay, Muwanga Guhanga got it all right?
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Fred m from here on out. Freda is here with
me today.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
We met each other so long ago when Media Takeout
was in its infancy stages.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yeah, I know, I was just thinking about it. I mean,
you know, it's been like I started seventeen years ago,
but you've been in the radio now for twenty years.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
It'll be twenty years this year. You started in two
thousand and six. I started in two thousand and four.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So it's just like it's it's great to
see just kind of like people that something someone like
you that has had so much talent. We were also
young in this industry. And now kind of twenty years later,
after all this time and all this effort, we're still
kind of here kicking and really hitting a stride, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
And Media Takeout still does incredibly well.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I'm like people don't understand because it has a bad
rapper some reason when I'm up here and I'm like
and they'd be like, who's still on media tech? And
I'm like a lot of people every single day. So
talk about your longevity in the game and for people
who might think like, oh, it's not doing what it
used to do, but it's been consistent.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, I mean we have about thirty million people a month,
and you know, when you think about it, over the
course of a year, just about every single black person
in America is on media takeout, right, So it's you know,
we've been around and how we've been able to do
this has just been like consistent in what we do.
We're breaking news stories, we're dipping in and telling you
the tea the stuff that a lot of people aren't
going to say, and doing it kind of in a
(01:36):
fair way. We're not you know, fans of one artist
over another.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
At all, so we'll just kind of like anyone can
get it.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Yeah, Yeah, we just kind of put it out there,
but do it in a fun, lighthearted way, right, Like
we're not trying to make anybody getting any kind of
serious trouble, but we're going to tell you the tea
and just kind of you know, these are people that
we know, we love, and we want to know their business.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's interesting that you say that because the reason why
I tell people, but also for media take ut I
go there because a lot of times media take up
will print a story that maybe other people wouldn't and
do it early and then I'll see it out here first,
and then I'll see it like maybe other places later.
But sometimes people can be like overly cautious about Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So a lot of times, you know, and what I
think a lot of the readers don't realize is that
the stories, there's a lot of back behind the scenes
in the stories that we might maybe we don't report.
And you're in the industry, so you know a lot
of behind the scenes stories, you know, like the behind
scenes about what people are really like and the people
out there in the in the world see them as
you know, the artists, and we might know a little
(02:38):
bit more about them. Sure, So like with me to
take out, we're not afraid to say that, right, Like
we're not afraid to like burn a bridge or burn
a relationship. You know, we just kind of put it
out there, Like I said, We're not trying to make
anyone look particularly bad and you know, make people dislike them,
because we actually do love all the people that we're
talking about. But at the same time, you know, we
want to know. We want to know as much of
(02:59):
it possibly can, all the nooks and crannies in the
dirt in these people's lives.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
And I think people you need to also understand your
background because you went to law school and business school
right got your MBA, and you were practicing law as well,
and so when you started this, it's not like it
was somebody just.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
In their mom's basement, you know, like I want to
start a site.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You had a lot of experience before that, and you've
also had experience with things not working and even at
a young age, raising money, you know, which is something
that everybody's having conversations about today. But that's something you
did before you even started media takeout.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Yeah. I mean I was just a straight business guy.
I was you know, I was corporate. I was one
of those guys that you see in the sweater vests,
and I was doing that for a bunch of a
bunch of years and I just I never, I never
really felt that that was my calling. I always want
to do something a little bit more fun, but in
the sense I really am a business guy. I'm a
corporate guy.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah you have to be. I think that helps.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, I mean so, so I didn't. I didn't go
into this trying to become like a lot of times
people have like an ulterior motive, like they might say, well,
I'm starting a blog, but then I'm really trying to
be a talk show host, or I'm starting a blog,
I really want to be a film producer. I was
really just starting a blog to start a really successful business.
And that's that's the way that I look at it
right now. I'm not looking to transition to anything else
(04:16):
other than business. And you know that. I think that's
part of the secret sauce that I had.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And you also don't put yourself out there like that
to your point, right, because it's not like we're like
Fred says, or we don't even see you like too
much doing interviews, and I don't see you hanging out
at parties. I don't see you doing those things unless
I'm wrong, I don't know, but.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
I'm not because it's not really my thing, right, Like,
I'm not really trying to make friends.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
With people because that makes it harder to do your child.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
It does. And you know, I had like a couple
of friends in the industry, and it just never works
because it's like then they're going to tell you, oh, no,
don't don't say this, or even when you do say
something positive, oh you didn't say it positive enough. Or
if the comments are beat, oh you said it in
a certain way to make the comments. So it just
never really worked. And so what ended up happening is
the person that with my friend, I just never I
(05:07):
would be like, just we're just not going to cover
this person in any way good or bad. We're just
not going to cover the person. And it's just not
you know, at the end of the day, the media
takeout is not about me. It's not about you know,
a lot of times people are starting businesses and they're like, oh,
what I need to do, and you know what, it
feels good for me. Media takeout is not about me
at all, Right, It really is about the reader, whatever
it is that the reader wants. I am kind of
(05:28):
a servant to the reader, right Like the media takeout
is not my servant. I am its servant, and so
I have to recognize that that's the way it is, right,
So when the way that I live my life, I
have to live my life. You know, maybe I might
want to go to a party, but I know that
I'm going to meet people, I'm gonna be friendly with them.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
And then you know, is this Freda, what do you do? Fred?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
No, I was like, oh damn. You never know how
people feel.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Because also, let's be clear, people have to understand what
these websites. It's not like Fred is at home writing
all the stories and like, that's not what happens.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
You have a staff, right, it does that. So sometimes people.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Would be mad at you, but you're like, I didn't
even know that story was up there.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Yeah. I mean. The good thing is people, especially when
you've been around a lot of time, your relationships go
up and down and up and down. So people have
mad at you one day and then they're happy with
you the next day. Right, they have an album coming out,
so then they're friends with you. Right, So it all
kind of goes up and down, and so you know,
a lot of times people like that. People are like, oh,
celebrities must not like you, and I'm like, no, they
actually like me a lot, right, And almost too much.
(06:25):
You go to these parties and they're like, oh, hey,
you wanted me to take out. Hey, I got this
new project, I got this new this, and I got
this new that. So it's not so then so much
that I'm going there because I'm hiding. I just don't
want to kind of get that attention because then it
just adds to the same and it makes me not
able to do my job. Whether or not it's fun
because it's great to know celebrities, great to go sitting
in the VIP I see you there and every now
(06:47):
and then, you know, but at the same time, it
just interrupts me from being able to do my job.
And so, like I said, what comes first is the reader.
It's the media takeout reader. And so if that means
me not going to parties, that's what it means.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
You know. Do you think that since you say it's
really a service to the reader. People like messy no
matter what anybody says, Like even for me, like when
I post on Instagram, I post tell us a secret.
People will go crazy over those stories, but they don't
care about like the other stories. It'll be about like
a wealth Wednesday. You know, things like that that are
really positive. And then but then they'll also be like,
(07:22):
you only post things like this, and I'm like, no,
we post a lot.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
That's just what you're paying attention to.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And so readers, as much as we want people to
be like, let's do all great positive things, a lot
of times that's not what's going to get the meter going.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, I mean think about it, right, Like it's one thing.
A lot of times people say, oh, it's especially for
black people or black and latinos to be like, oh,
you we're particularly interested in like the messy stuff, But no,
it's just a human thing. White people interested in messy stuff.
Men are interested in messy stuff. Women interested in messy stuff. Right,
It's just it's the most interesting thing that's out there.
It's like if you were to make a bunch of movies, right,
(07:57):
Like the superhero movies get the most people watching them. Right,
They're not necessarily the best actors in it, they're not
necessarily the best plots, right, but they just have all
of the flash and all the pizazz. And that's what
kind of like a lot of the gossip stuff is.
So we're producing a bunch of content, producing good content.
We're you know, positive content, uplifting content and messy content,
(08:18):
and it just so happens that the reader chooses the
messy content. Don't blame me for choosing the messi content.
It's y'all doing it.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I saw the headline today was because, like I said,
I look every day Kamala Harris, they have these t
shirts calling her a hoe.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Yeah, that's I mean, that is out of control. I mean,
you know, this is the Vice president of the United States.
She has a long career in politics. I don't know
what they're talking about. Stuff that she did twenty years
ago with whatever, that has nothing to do with what
she's been doing in the last twenty years. And look,
none of y'all want to go back twenty years and
talk about like what you were doing.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Let's talk about the fact that Donald Trump, right, okay,
And the fact that you could wear a shirt supporting
Donald Trump and calling Kamala Harrison hole knowing the things
that Donald Trump has been found guilty of. It's crazy
to me, Yeah, I think. And I see women wearing that.
That was really like, wow, y'all, are you know to
see white women wearing those shirts? And I don't know
(09:12):
who else, but I did see that particular picture on the.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Site and that was like, where is this world going
right now? You know?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I mean, you know, we're living in kind of like
this two different worlds where people just feel so comfortable
saying disrespectful things, especially to black people and especially the
black women, Like you saw them saying a lot of
stuff about you know, Joe Biden. But this is now
like go to the next level, and you can only
imagine if she wins, what you know, we're going to
have to deal with.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Let's think about what Michelle Obama had to go through
as President Barack Obama's wife, and people were saying awful,
nasty things about her and how she I mean, it's
going to be like, you know, one hundredfold. Now, let
me ask you this, because you know, with elections coming up,
and there's always elections, how responsible do you feel like
you have to be when it comes to those types
(09:58):
of stories because there is so much information out there,
a lot of times that information is not real.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
But when it comes to.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Covering politics, obviously there's some sensationalism and there's like rumor
stories and things like that that's more gossip oriented. But
as far as making sure that people are informed, do
you feel a responsibility to do that?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Absolutely? I mean I think that we always want to
put out the message. It's always one. I mean, our forefathers,
our ancestors put their lives on the line for us
to vote. We have to honor them and go out
and vote. And I think for black people that's especially true.
And so we're always pushing, pushing that out there, and
you know, the messaging you want to put out. Obviously
(10:39):
the vice president has has the messaging out there, and
we were obviously covering that. But I think today that
story that you talked about today, that's a way to
kind of introduce politics and what's going on in politics,
why it's important to vote for Kamala or vote at all.
I mean, if you're going to vote for control, I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I'm not going to tell you to vote for you
not to vote for us.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Right, It's a way of introducing politics in a way
that kind of resonates. It's you know, it's slightly sensational,
but it's what's in fact happening out there.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Right, there's actual pictures that people wearing these shirts.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
Right, this is what's this is what you're voting against.
This is why it's important to vote because these are
the people that you're you're these are the this is,
these are the ideas that you are voting against when
you're going and voting for Kamma. And I think that's
the way that we're looking to do this, right, Like
you want to introduce it in a natural way, in
a way that's organic to the kind of content that
you create, and it still kind of puts out the
(11:32):
messaging that that that the importance of kind of behavior
of engaging in politics.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Now, I want to ask you, with any website, any
entertainment site, there's going to be times when lawsuits happened.
I don't think anybody has duck that smoke. Oh no, okay,
So how do you prepare for that? Knowing that every
now and then it's going to happen? What do you
do for anybody listening to to get some information on
if you're maybe starting something like this, how do you
make make sure that you're ready for that?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
I think the first thing you have to do is
you have to focus on the truth. Right, So, I
think that there's there's a good amount of overlap between
being loyal to your audience and and protecting yourself from lawsuits,
and that's just kind of like reporting the truth and
don't try and kind of take things too far. So
I think a lot of times when we're reporting on celebrities,
(12:24):
we hold back a little bit, right, And so maybe
you might know you know enough to put them in prison,
but you might allude to it. You're not going to
put everything out there because when you a lot of
times if you back someone into a corner, that's when
they're going to come after you. So if you're going
to say, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna lay out
the exact reason that the FBI can now look at
this and put you in prison, well, you know that
(12:46):
person has no choice now but to bring a lawsuit.
But if you kind of take a step back and
you know, you don't completely go in and take someone down,
that's there. And why I say that that that ties
into the audience is you know a lot of people
think that the audience really likes just you. They want
to know everything, They want to know all the dirt
and everything. The audience really doesn't remember, but they actually
(13:09):
love these people, right Like they actually like these people,
and so they don't want to see them go to jail.
They don't want to see them, you know, destroy They
don't want to see their career ended. They might just
want to, you know, wallow in the messiness for yeah, yeah,
it's a little girl you heard. Oh I know that.
But they don't want to see them really destroyed. And
so I think a lot of times you have people
(13:29):
and a lot of times people you see it on
on social media, they really kind of get personally involved
in it and they really try and take them down.
They start launching personal attacks. Oh my gosh, there's nothing
personal about this, right, Like you're literally reporting news like
launching personal attacks with people. I think when you start
going down that road, you're asking yourself for trouble because
you give them no choice.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
But yeah, because I say that Kim Kardashian situation, you
guys had to retract that and apologize. Yeah, I mean
we was the legal aspect of that, Like why did
you in that case? Because she's so she was planning
to do and I know she had her money's long
so she did too, right, Okay, she did sue.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, So I think at that time we were I
think we were a little over zealous in a lot
of our reporting on there, and I think, you know,
there was when when she brought the lawsuit. You know,
obviously we got a lawyer's involved, and they were like, oh,
you know, maybe we could fight this or whatever. But
I looked at it, and you know, you have to,
as a human being, just look at it and you say, Okay, well,
what did we say and were we wrong in what
(14:29):
we were saying? And after I looked at it, I
was like, you know what, we were wrong on this.
We shouldn't. We took it a little bit too far.
We were making implications that were there that that clearly
weren't weren't in fact true. At the time, we didn't
know it was true, but it didn't matter. And I
just said, you know what, this is a woman. She'd
(14:49):
been gone through a robbery, she was traumatized. I was like,
you know what, whether or not we could win this lawsuit,
this is not the right thing to do, right And
so I just said, you know what, we're just gonna
fall on our sword on this. We're gonna apologize, We're
going to say that what we did was wrong, and
then we're just gonna kind of work it out. And
that's exactly what we did. That was the right thing
(15:09):
to do. And so like I think a lot of
times people are just so caught up in oh the
legal thing and I'm going to legally maneuver this way
or that way. You can't do that. If you do that,
you're in the paying your LAWI is a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Right, Let's just get it over with. Yeah, you And
it's okay to be wrong, right, That's the whole thing.
There's no way in this business is not gonna be
times that you were wrong.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
Right, And when you are wrong, you have to just
kind of open up to it, own it, and you
have to just apologize to the person and hope, hope
that they accept it all right.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And you know, other things that I wanted to talk
to you about was just your business savvy as far
as launching this right, you know, I think it is
important for there's a lot of people that are like, now, okay,
I want to start my own site. People have that
on their Facebook page and things like that. One aspect
that has been tough for people lately is pictures.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Right. You can't just use pictures. I know it, iHeart.
They always tell us, listen, we only have a certain
amount of pictures. We can use.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
You have to licenses, you have to license that. But
it didn't used to be like that when you first started.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, the Internet used to be the wild, wild weide.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
So how did you manage to navigate through that?
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Because you either have to take those down or how
does that work?
Speaker 3 (16:17):
So I can tell you that we pay. We probably
pay half a million dollars in pictures a year, so
that's yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
We might have to start a picture.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So we paid. We had thousands of dollars for these pictures,
and we happen to you know, we've been around for
a while, so we can. You know, we can. We
have the means to do it. But it's just it's
part of the industry. Like I think, when we came
into blogging kind of in the beginning, it was a
real it was a young industry, and so there weren't
really we weren't really following the rules. We were just
kind of bending every rule that we.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Could to kind and sometimes rules got made a little later.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so you know, over time, as
you start to mature as a business, as an industry,
that's when the rules start coming in. And if you're
not following the rules, you know, you might get away
with it for you know, a couple of years. Eventually
it starts coming and then you start building and you know,
at some point you get to the mature company and
you have it. So but what I'd say to anyone
out there is you just got to follow the rules.
(17:14):
There are companies out there. Obviously we're paying a ton
of money for photos, for premium photos, but there are
a lot of companies out there that will license the
photos for less. You know, if you if you can't
do that, maybe you can show up to events and
the picture I have a picture, you know, maybe you
can you know, ask if you see a picture on
social media, you can ask them to buy the photo.
So there are ways to do it, and just kind
(17:36):
of following the rules and following the law. That's that's
the kind of the best way to do it. Because
if you don't, you know, they will get you.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yes they will.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
People have lost their whole entire site, yeah, because of that.
And then you have a different ad model too, as
far as ads to support the site. So I want
you to talk about that a little bit because some
people this is something that people also need to understand
as far as even with podcasts, people are like I
need to get ads, I need to get this, or
if they have their own thing going on, they want
to get advertising. So tell me about how you've gone
(18:05):
about with your advertising.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
So advertising on the web goes one way, and then
on social media, I think goes a little bit differently. Yeah, similarly,
so on the web, if you have a website, you
can do advertising either its going directly to brand. So
I can call up, you know, Angela and say, hey, Angela,
put out an AD on my site, and you pay
me and then you put it on the site. And
that's typically how most ads are done on social media.
(18:30):
And there companies out there that will reach out, especially
if you have following or you have whatever, and they'll
they'll say, hey, we want to put an AD on
your site, and you negotiate a one off kind of
price and you kind of go from there. And I
think that's that's a good way to start for I
think a lot of people. Once you start getting more
and more or bigger and bigger, then it just gets
harder to kind of manage a lot of that. And
(18:50):
they have systems, which is kind of like the stock
when you think of the stock market, it works kind
of like that you take all of the inventory. So
you basically take your site and you put it up
on the stock market and all the different companies could
then bid real time and buy ads on your site.
And so when you do it that way, it just
makes it a lot easier. You can have way more
(19:11):
ads on your site. You don't have to have kind
of the overhead of a large ad team. But I
think most people want to do both of those.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
You want to have kind of like you can do both.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Yeah, you want to do both because the ads, when
you're selling directly to people, you make a lot more
money on the ad sales. But then you can't sell
all of your inventory. So maybe you can sell one day,
but then the next day you don't have any ads
on your site and you're like, okay, well, you know,
I'd like to have an AD on that site. And
for those days that you can't sell directly, that's when
you go to the other model of people just putting
(19:42):
your inventory out there and allowing you know, buyers to
buy kind of on the spot.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Do people ever try to maybe pay you to post
the story they have, You know a.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Lot of times people say, oh, I'll pay you to
post a story, right, And what I always do, and
they are always shocked. I'm like, listen, you tell me
a story that's real, I'll do you a favor. I'll
post it for free. You don't have to pay me
a penny, and I'll post a story just it just
it just has to be true. So and I think
a lot of times people like really, yeah, yeah, So
(20:15):
a lot of times people like, oh, blogs will pay
you to do this and that. And you know, like
I said, at the end of the day, it really
isn't about me. If it was about me, i'd be like, okay,
give me, give me that, I'll take that. I'll take that.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Terrible stories, right, So it's it's it's.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Really about the audience, right, Like I truly am a
servant of the audience. And the audience wants to know
the truth. They don't care about any bag I'm getting
on the side. They don't that they're not that's not
helping them, right. They want to know what's what. And
so I have to always come back to thinking like that,
you know, and and the more that you do that,
I think it's it's it's a weird way of thinking
(20:46):
about a business because you know, especially if you go
on social media, you hear people talking about business. They
always about me and I and whatever, and it really
has nothing to do with you. You're like, in terms
of the business, the business is more important than you.
The business is what you're working for. You know, I'm not.
I'm not you know, I'm not an entrepreneur free on
my own. I have a job. I work for this business.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
What's been the biggest story so far this year? I
would have to assume it's Diddy, but yeah, traffic wise, yes, okay,
it's Diddy.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
I mean the thing about Diddy and you know, it's
weird because everybody's talking about Diddy parties and they're like,
oh my god, have you gone a Didy party? Like
two or three years ago, Like going to Diddy party
was like the heighlight of your life.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Everybody like did you get yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Right, because you watch if you went to a party
and Diddy was there, You're like, I'm at the right party.
That was like for the last twenty years, and now
all of a sudden they're like, ooh, what what was
going on? Didty parties? So I think it's just it's
sad one that, you know, the things that he's alleged
have done. I mean, it's horrible, but I think it's
also sad because.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
The things that we've also seen, right, yeah, that's not
even allegations, right yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
There's clearly a lot of horrible things that this man
has done, and I think that's that's very sad. I
think the other thing that's said is I remember, like
Diddy was like my like model of like what I
wanted to kind of grow into. Like when I was
even in business school, I was like I want to
be like did.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
He Yeah, everybody did, people to name themselves after him.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah. You were like, you were like, look, this guy,
he's cool, he's in the industry, he's young, he's black,
he's doing it, and like to see this icon go
down like that, you know, this just I'm not defend.
I'm not saying that what he did is right. I'm
just saying it's just kind of like a portion of
your life. You're just like, damn, this guy is gone.
(22:30):
I mean, I guess that's how people felt about Bill Cosby.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean, you know, yeah, yeah absolutely, And listen, people
still will say he was trying to buy it a network,
and they just say anything.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
You know, he was well to do with let me
tell you did he was, in fact, and I can
tell you he was trying to buy a network, which
one I'm not going to say him tell the story,
but it's one hundred percent true. He was doing that,
and he was raising money, and he was doing stuff,
and he had a bunch of things that he was
doing right before it's happened. Like I said, I'm not
trying to put out and he can conspiracies, but I'm
(23:01):
telling you one hundred percent as fact that he was.
He had a ton of money, and he was trying
to buy a network, and he was trying to do
a bunch of other things. And that happened directly right after,
right before all of these allocations.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It's also shocking to me that something like that could
happen at a hotel and there's video footage of it
and clearly people have seen it and it's been buried
for so long.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Yeah, that's not shocking at all. I Mean, there is
so much stuff that's out there that like just doesn't
get really especially when you're a celebrity, right.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And you can pay yeah, you can say you.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
Can just say hey, look, you know, it's a really
bad look for me. I'm really sorry, you know, I'm
going to go to counseling, you know. And sometimes you
feel bad, You're thicking, like do I really want to
destroy this person? You know?
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Have you ever felt bad if you've gotten something that.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
You've gotten some crazy stuff, right, that could really destroy people, right,
And a lot of times we're just like, you know what,
I don't know if I want to kind of do
this to this person. This is a person that's really loved.
Nothing like this, right, like anything like that.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, I was gonna say if they really should be
accountable for certain things because you know, but nothing like that.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
Yeah, Like there was like some criminal stuff that was
There was a lot of stuff like that that we get,
and a lot of times we just the one thing
that we don't want to do is we don't want
to like put out anything that's gonna put someone in prison. Right,
Let the police handle that. Like if you if you're
gonna leak it out to us, leak it out to
somebody else. There's plenty of people that after that, right, right,
(24:29):
But I don't want to I don't want to do that.
I don't want to get involved in like putting someone
in prison, that too many black people in prison right now.
If you're gonna do it and the police are gonna
do it, that's fine. I don't want to have any
part of that. And another thing we don't want to
do is a lot of times we don't want to
do something is going to really mess up somebody's money. Okay,
So a lot of times they'll be like an actor
and they'll say something or do something or whatever. There's
(24:51):
a story about it, and it's right around the time
that they're negotiating a deal or anything like that, and
it's just like, these people work so hard to kind
of get it out there and not necessarily even that person,
you don't want to mess it up for another black
actor that's coming coming behind them, or a sports star.
You know, there was one time, I don't want to
say the name, but what a really really big sports star.
(25:12):
There was a gigantic scandal happened and we didn't report
on that.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Did other people report on it?
Speaker 3 (25:18):
No?
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh, so you got the law, Yeah, so we we
had what about Okay, let me ask you this. What
if it's a couple, right, the married couple, somebody's cheating
and you guys get the exclusive on that, would you
hesitate to put that out because it could potentially break
up their marriage?
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I think a lot of times. I mean, remember, we
we go in on stuff. So we'll do in that case,
like let's say we have someone caught red handed dead
and the rights on it, what we'll do is we'll
we'll report on it, but we'll allude to like the cheating,
but we'll give it away. Where Like, there's a good
number of people that are read that and be like, oh,
that's media take out, right, that never happened, right, Like
(25:56):
I don't believe it, right, And there's so myths, so
much stuff that's on here that I think people will
be like, oh, that's on media to take out. That's
never true, that never happened, and it's one hundred percent true, right, right,
Like you think about it, Like we broke a couple
of months ago that Cardi B was pregnant, and the
Cardi B came out and she told the press, who's like,
I am not pregnant, and then everybody was like, ah,
(26:16):
media to take out and friendalized big news, right, and
it turned out obviously we were right. So there's so
much of that that goes on that people will literally
believe that we were wrong on something we were one
hundred percent right on it.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Is it wrong a report on a woman being pregnant
before she wants to, because you know, you could look
at her and see she's pregnant.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
But I would never have been like, oh, Cardi B's
pregnant because you feel kind of bad.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
That's like sometimes women, you know, for various reasons, don't
want to announce it until they're in a place where
it's like, Okay, the pregnancy is safe, you know past
a certain period.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Yeah, I think you're you know, I get why you
wouldn't do it. But we gotta make a living. We
are porn on something, right, We're not gonna put some
to jail.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
To report on.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
So where do you see growth going now here? Because
I know there's other companies that you have acquired, so
talk about that please.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
Yeah. I think right now we're in a really interesting
space in digital media. I think a lot of people
are just down on it. They're like, oh, the internet
and specifically news companies are dying or dead. I see
the exact opposite. I think that there are tons of
really really strong publications that are out there, and we're
looking we're in full on acquisition mode. We're out there
(27:31):
looking at we acquired cheat sheet.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yes, I get I didn't realize that because I get
cheat sheet and so that it's very helpful.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we did click what's happening?
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Right, It's it's definitely a little bit. It's a different
side in that it's not African American focus. But there's
a ton of other ton of celebrity news on there too,
and we're doing a bunch of other sites right now.
We're in negotiations on two or three others. I think
before the end of the year, you're going to see
a bunch of Next year you're going to see more.
And I think it's really about expanding black media and
just believing in print journalism, right, Like I think a
(28:04):
lot of times people just kind of are saying, oh,
it's dead. People aren't reading news articles, but news articles
are kind of the foundation and people a lot of
times people say, well, well, I get on social media,
but you're not really getting the news from social media.
The news is being created by real journalists off social media, right,
and then someone is taking it and then they're talking
about it or adding or adding commentary which I think
(28:24):
is very valuable on social media too. But you need
to have both, right, Like you need to have the
folks on social media that are providing good quality commentary
on it, but you need to have true journalists that
are going out there, trained journalists out there doing it.
I mean, between media takeout and cheat sheet, we have
over one hundred years of journalism experience, professional journalism experience
on our staff, and you need people like that that
(28:46):
are going to go out there and do it. Like
I said, you don't have to necessarily believe it or
you say, oh, well, you know, I don't know. There
are people that are following the traditional journalistic ethics that
are going out and doing this, and the era of
fake news, you absolutely need that.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
When I see the media takeout stories and no one
else has reported it yet, I'm always like, Okay, let
me go, let me do a little research. I mean it,
and then I always have to be like a credit
and media takeout because.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
I have to get myself just in case. But you
know a lot of times you guys have been spot on.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of stories out there
right now. I mean there's one that we were working
on that I'd like to preview with you right now. Yeah,
I'm ready, Okay, So you know everyone's hearing about Usher,
and he just recently canceled.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
His performance, yeah, the kickoff show, right.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
So the official word is that he was just tired
or ill or whatever. So we did some digging on this,
and it is true. So Usher has been spending a
lot of time over the summer with his children. He
was away obviously when he's doing the Vegas stuff, and
so he's been really kind of into his family and
so it really is exhaustion. So that's kind of the
(29:51):
official which is true. But now the tea is so
I spoke a couple of people and they're a little
bit worried about the relation ship or the impact that
ushers what new wife Jen is having on him. They
said that Usher in the past would have kind of
pushed through this and kind of performed, but it was
(30:14):
Jen who convinced him that he needed some to take
a little bit of time for himself and his family
and to not perform. And so there's a growing rift
I think between kind of people in Usher's kind of
management team and gen and I think this is something
that I think we're going to see play out over
the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
Okay, that's juicy. You know his wife is also. Isn't
she related to Donald Glover's wife or something like that.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
I know she's she's been in the industry for a while.
You know, they look alike.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I think that their sisters or something like that. Let
me double check that. Let me not give media take
out of stories. Somebody gonna fact check this, dig into that.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
But yeah, we'll be looking for that one. That's it.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Okay, she's good. I mean, and I'm just like, I
got tickets for him in New York in September. I'm like, uh, sure,
you got to get yourself the job, you know, if
you've got to rest through Atlanta, and we know that's okay,
but just be good when you come to New York.
I'm joking.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
All right, Well, listen, I appreciate you for coming through.
It's been too long.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I know, Angela. I love just being around you too.
Thank you. That means you got to hang out too, okay, good.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
That means you can't write nothing, no pace, I actually
don't mind. I have friends that work at Bossip and
they've definitely done like not flattering stories about me, but
I don't take it personally because I also because I'm
in this space, I understand what it is.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I've seen a lot of people write things and I'm like, Dan,
that's my friend. But I'm also knowing that it probably
wasn't them necessarily that wrote it, and that people have
a job to do and that this too shall pass.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
And so that's what I tell myself when something happens.
Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah, that's the thing too. A lot of times, like
when something like that happens, they're like, oh my god,
this is the end of the world. Think about the
internet is like the like the life cycle of a story.
It's like three or four hours, maybe maybe six hours,
certainly not a day, and then it's over.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
People, something tragic happens, you're like, woo right, get me
out of here. But you know, that is something that
I have learned as far as myself not responding to
certain things or giving it too much, because I know, like,
once I leave something alone, it's about to go away,
and there'll be people that bring it up online and
things like that here and there, but it's not a
bigger it's a bigger story when you give it more ammunition, right.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
I mean, think about it too. There are millions and
millions of people that love you, Angela and they listen
to you, and then there's like a couple of people
that are.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Going to say there's millions they don't yet as well.
You know what I'm saying, But it's fine, comes with it,
It comes.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
With the job, right, But I'm just saying, like, on balance,
there's way more people that love you and like that
that then the people that are going to say and
hold on to this other stuff. And sometimes it's hard
to see that, right because like our eyes in your
your mind just fixates on the people that are saying
the negative stuff, and so you think, like, oh my god,
the people they're really when they think about me, they're
thinking about this scandal or whatever else. But they're not.
(33:02):
They're just thinking about you, know you and all the
great things that you do, and that's why they know you,
and that's why they follow you.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
We'll see y'all hearty here. Thank you so much. I
appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
We got to catch up more often though, because this
was fun, and you know, feel free to keep giving
me some takes.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
I don't mind, and I'll keep on looking at a.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Media takeout like I keep on saying I'd be on there, y'all. Okay,
all right, well it's way up. Thank you so much,
fred m for joining us way up.
Way Up With Angela Yee News
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Angela Yee
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