Samantha Barry
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Media TribeShaunagh talks to Samantha Barry
Samantha Barry is the Editor-in-Chief of Glamour magazine in the US.
Samantha has worked at RTE, ABC Australia, BBC and she served as CNN’s Head of Social Media. While at CNN, Sam led news coverage of the 2016 presidential election across social platforms.
She received the first ever Edward R. Murrow award for excellence in social media and a Webby award recognising her campaign work.
For more on Samantha
Follow Samantha on Twitter and on Instagram.
Episode credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
Shaunagh Connaire:
Welcome to Media Tribe. I'm Shaunagh Connaire, and this is the podcast that tells the story behind the story. It's an opportunity for you and I to step into the shoes of the most extraordinary media folk who cover the issues that matter most.
Samantha Barry:
We were the first magazine in America to put a Black woman on the cover. We were the first publication to say, "We are pro-choice, that's non-negotiable for us."
Shaunagh Connaire:
This week's guest is the editor-in-chief of Glamour Magazine in the US, Samantha Barry. Samantha has worked at RTÉ, that's the Irish broadcaster, ABC Australia, BBC World, and she served as CNN's head of social media. Sam, how are you?
Samantha Barry:
I'm great, how are you?
Shaunagh Connaire:
I'm great. Yeah, not too bad. Listen, Sam, you have had the most wonderful career. Now, jump in if I get any of this wrong. But you started off in RTÉ Newstalk, Newstalk, you did a stint in Papua New Guinea with the Australian Broadcast Corporation, you then moved to London to work for the BBC, then you went to CNN here in the US, and now you're editor-in-chief of Glamour Magazine. Can you entertain our audience as to how you got there?
Samantha Barry:
I think it's a very zig-zag. I think when they announced that I was taking this job at Glamour, right? Big media job, big female-focused brand, been around for 80-plus years, only six or seven editors before me. I think some people were like, "Wait, who?"
Samantha Barry:
I had zigzagged my way from radio, to TV, to social, and all the way, like... I mean, at the core of it was storytelling, which was super important, but I was always very open to what the medium was. So for me, kind of getting to drill into women's stories at Glamour where I look at it as a media brand. Not a print magazine, but a media brand, and we could talk about the changes I made there.
Samantha Barry:
It was an obvious trajectory for me, but for other people, I think they were like, "Wait, this is..." for other people it was a testament to the changes to our industry, right? I think when I walked into a newsroom in RTÉ when I was doing overnights on 2FM at, like, you'd do the 12:00 in the morning to 6:00 in the morning shift, it was a very clear trajectory of what you would do, right?
Samantha Barry:
You'd graduate to the mornings, you would do some reporting, they would start you on the fluffier stories, maybe the, like, science fair or something. And then you would graduate, and you would do your time and you'd graduate, and you would be... either you would go down the reporter route, or you would go down the editor route.
Samantha Barry:
And you kind of could see, what the trajectory of your next 10, 15 years looks like. I think that has changed so dramatically in the last 20 years, 10 years in particular, and for me to be able to go from radio to working for Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Papua New Guinea, working really with a lot of radio journalists.
Samantha Barry:
To then going to BBC World News, which is [inaudible 00:03:07] amazing squad that was there at the time, and that was TV producing and doing a lot of social and digital. And then going over to a newer job at CNN, which was head of social media. Kind of crazy new, I ran a team, a global team. Hong Kong, London, New York, Atlanta, Washington, for the 2016 election and the first year of Trump's presidency. And then to go into women's media, I don't know, it is a bit of a zig-zag, I suppose. It's not an obvious progression, no.
Shaunagh Connaire:
What's extraordinary about your... I mean, there are so many extraordinary things, but what's really extraordinary is how you jumped from lots of broadcast into what was a print magazine without very much print experience.
Samantha Barry:
No.
Shaunagh Connaire:
From what I understand.
Samantha Barry:
That was a bit scary. Yeah, I didn't really. I mean, it was hilarious when the stories came out and it was like, "No previous publishing experience," and the person that was my editor in University College Cork for the paper was like, "Wait a second, you do have publishing experience, you were the entertainments editor of the University Examiner, so how dare they." Yes, it was new. It was new, it was a different type. I had to learn pretty quickly how to put a magazine together.
Samantha Barry:
And it's interesting, because I had come from a world where it was a decision that had to happen in the minute for something that would be Tweeted out or Facebooked or socialized, and I would have to make split-second decisions. And then I went to a magazine environment where you're planning four months out and five months out, and you see a piece of copy nine, 10 times, and it's doing a circle, it comes back to about nine or ten times.
Samantha Barry:
And that hadn't been a world I'd lived in in the news world before, where it's quick, done, like, "Let's get it up, let's get it out." That was different for me, I had to learn a lot. But what I did learn that I liked was, I think sometimes in the news world and the broadcast world that I had lived in, I always felt I'd given so much to stories, but they were literally up for, like, a minute on air and then they were forgotten about.
Samantha Barry:
So at least at Glamour, if I was giving my heart and my love and my effort and the team was getting behind a story. It could be something that would live for a longer period of time, and something that we allowed ourselves the space and time to do. And I think one of the first examples of that for me when I walked in the door at Glamour was Larry Nasser was on trial, and I had put a lot of TV screens in my office. From a broadcast background, you're used to having five or six screens up in your office. Not something that would happen in publishing necessarily, I think there was a lot of art and beautiful things on the walls and I was like, "Whack a load of tellies up there, I need to see four different things at one time."
Samantha Barry:
Larry Nasser came out, and Larry Nasser was the gymnasts' doctor that was on trial for sexually assaulting and abusing countless young gymnasts. And it was a really gripping trial, and I remember my... I had taught in all the work I had done previously to be like, "Hit it, this is what's happening today, this is what's happening now, this is what's happening," and I realized Glamour is not going to brace you on that noise, but we can do something really special for the survivors of Larry Nasser.
Samantha Barry:
So as the case went on, day by day, we started collecting the transcription of what every girl and woman that had got up in court talked about their experience and said. And by the end of the three weeks we had this, you know, this account. This are the words of the survivors of Larry Nasser, this is the bravery that they showed. And that was, I think, the first example for me at Glamour of, like, you don't need to hit the news moment and break something, you can sit back and be like, "What's going to really make a difference through a lens that I can tell it?"
Samantha Barry:
So that was a bit of a change for us. We were also, like, I think, you know, Glamour, I know... you know, I made the decision to stop monthly print. It just didn't make sense for us anymore, and I look at it as a media title. We're doing documentaries and events digital covers. We're doing all these things, I really do see us as a media title or brand or whatever the language you want to use is, but we're more than just a magazine.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Exactly. And I think what's really important, obviously, you know, in my eyes, Sam, you were so kind of ahead of the cure in terms of the digital landscape and social and you just really got it from the get-go. I remember that from the BBC, but what's also really striking about you and your career is that the journalism seems to be as important to you now as it was back then, as well. Like, that seems to be a really, really integral part of your editorship at Glamour.
Samantha Barry:
Yeah, I mean the journalism and the story is the heart of everything I do. I think number one, you know, I think the thread that carries me through all of my jobs in media has been... the core of it is storytelling, and as an Irish person I think if you're not a good storyteller, it doesn't matter how good looking you are, if you're not a good storyteller, something happened.
Samantha Barry:
And so that's core, but the journalism is really important to me, and I think I've learned also how to tell stories that really matter to me. And I always got excited. Even BBC or CNN, if it was a story that I cared about, I was always the one that was shouting at the 9:00 a.m. meeting, going like, "This is... we need to do this."
Samantha Barry:
And so I guess I'm in the very privileged place where now I get to shout at people to be like, "These are stories we're doing, I really care about them." Yeah, the journalism really matters to me.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah, exactly. And again, kind of backtracking in your career, you spent 18 months, I think it was, in Papua New Guinea. And, you know, Papua New Guinea is a tough old place to operate and I personally haven't been there, but I've set up films there, actually. And, you know, it's dangerous. How was that time for you?
Samantha Barry:
Also, I was like, 26. I thought I was invincible. Obviously now I'm just like, "What were you doing, going to...?" I remember my parents live on a farm in West Cork, and at the time they weren't big internet Wi-Fi people, so they really couldn't Google and I called them and I was like, "I'm going to Papua New Guinea to do a project for Australian Broadcasting Corporation." And my mom was like, "That's great, Australian. The Australian Broadcast, that's amazing." She was like, "What? Papua New Guinea, like?"
Samantha Barry:
And I was like, "Oh, tropical island, like." PNG is a very... Port Moresby itself is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, but I learned a lot about myself as a journalist and what I could do and how I could be stretched. I went over to work on a radio project, so when I arrived, radio was king in PNG.
Samantha Barry:
So it was a country that... literacy levels aren't super high, and nobody really had TVs at the time. We're talking about 2008, and so I went to work with 13 different radio stations all the stuff I'd learned at RTÉ in Ireland and Newstalk and other radio stations in Ireland. I was taken, I was bringing to Papua New Guinea, I was going to teach these young journalists how to do radio package and how to get, like, a interview with somebody in a market and do all the things.
Samantha Barry:
But when I arrived, so did dumb phones, right? So, like, mobile phones that there was very limited access to the internet. Digicel arrived at the same time I did, and it changed everything I was doing. So what started as a radio project, really quickly everyone was like, "How do I get on Facebook?" Which was new at the time. "I want to get on Facebook." I was like, "Okay, well, why don't I get every radio station up on Facebook?"
Samantha Barry:
And that started, and then when everybody had phones, they used to have this really rudimentary way of, like... requests would come in, somebody would write something, they would put it in a mailbox outside the station manager's office, and that's how requests went into the radio station. But I had lived... in Irish radio, through people sending text messages to the radio station. So I was like, "Okay, well, we've all got phones now, why don't I go buy a SIM card for each station, and that's the text number you keep reading out on air?"
Samantha Barry:
I remember the first night we did it, we had, like, 200 text messages and the station manager was like, "What is this?" I was like, "They've been waiting to talk to you. They've been waiting to have a conversation with you." And so that was really at the core of... especially when I'm talking about social and digital and storytelling, that is two-way. I do think that time in Papua New Guinea really was like a clarifying moment for me that media was meant to be a communication, not just a preaching, passive, engagement for people. Like, people were meant to engage with, reply, you know, comment, share.
Samantha Barry:
And so I think Papua New Guinea really changed my whole career. Because it would have been very easy to stay in that trajectory of, like, "Okay, well, I'm going to do this now, and then I want to be a news editor, I want to be a correspondent," and what that opened me up to was when I did go to the BBC to work as a television producer, I was really fascinated by, "What do we do on Facebook? What are we going to do, can I go on air and talk about what's happening with the Pope's election? How this is the first social media Pope elect... like, the Pope being chosen when social media was in play, you know?"
Samantha Barry:
Whenever anything was happening, I think we were jumping in on, like, "Well, this is how the world is reacting to it," So I think Papua New Guinea set me up for that.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting and I'm sure at the time there was probably a bit of backlash, you know, from more traditional journalists in saying, "I'm not logging onto the Twitter," or whatever it was. I'm sure you had a lot of people to convince, especially at the BBC, to say, "This is actually quite important, and this is the future."
Samantha Barry:
Well, do you know what? The funniest thing is that I always thought... and I've used this tactic a lot. I remember being BBC and it was like all the journalists, especially the anchors, were on Twitter. And they were like, "No, I don't want to do anymore social media." And I remember, I think it was Stephen Sackur, and I was like, "Will you just do this Facebook Live with me?"
Samantha Barry:
And we did one, and it went... like, everybody was engaging. And I mean, they're a competitive bunch, anchors and talent, and the people in front of the camera. So once they saw another person do it, they were like, "Wait, I want to try that Facebook thing. Can I try that Facebook thing?" So sometimes you just got to get one or two people on your bus, and then everybody else is on board.
Samantha Barry:
So when I went to CNN, Wolf Blitzer is one of the nicest people in media. Like, honestly. And immediately at CNN, we were doing stuff and I was like, "Wolf, will you be a sticker online?" Or "Wolf, can you do this thing for Snapchat?" He would do it in a heartbeat. And the second that one anchor would do it, then they'd all be like, "Wait, wait, I want to do the Snapchat show. I want to do this." So, I mean, there's ways you can get people on board if they want to.
Shaunagh Connaire:
A few early adopters, and then... yeah, as you say, they're a competitive bunch. And you also spent time in Iraq, in Kurdistan, as far as I recall, Sam. In Erbil, isn't that right?
Samantha Barry:
Yeah, I did some time. So I worked on a couple of projects. So one was with the BBC, and it was in and out of Myanmar and Burma. One was in Pakistan, and then the other was like... I did, you know, every now and again for the State Department at the time, the US State Department, they were doing these, like, what they call tech camps, and they would have people... it was very much a soft power play for them. And they would bring trainers into the local embassy and you would train these journalists on whatever tech and journalism.
Samantha Barry:
And I, at the time, was obviously getting to know and kind of getting a reputation as somebody that could teach people social journalism, or how to use Facebook for news gathering or how to tell a story on whatever platform it is. So I actually saw a lot of the world doing that, and it was really interesting to figure out what was happening in different countries and I think I was always blown away with either in Iraq or Burma or Pakistan, I would come in and I would help them tell stories, but these are... in a lot of these countries, massively underpaid journalists that put their lives at risk every day. Day in, day out, they just... journalism is what drives them, and that always kind of... it always impressed me.
Samantha Barry:
Because, you know, I'd go into somewhere for, like, two or three weeks or even, like, two months at a time and work with these people and people are like, "Oh, that's great, I can't believe you're doing that," when the reality is that the people that should be getting the accolades and the praise are the local journalists who live that life every single day.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And with Glamour, you know, people might look at the brand and think beauty and fashion. And that is absolutely something Glamour covers, but it is a really... you know, it is an amazing brand. I think back in the day, the slogan or the caption was, "For the woman with a job," back in the [crosstalk 00:15:54].
Samantha Barry:
"For the girl with a job." In the '40s.
Shaunagh Connaire:
For the girl... in the '40s.
Samantha Barry:
I mean...
Shaunagh Connaire:
Exactly.
Samantha Barry:
The '40s.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That's progressive, eh? And that's you, isn't it?
Samantha Barry:
Look, I think... look, one of the most pleasurable things when I started this job is digging into the archives and the history of Glamour, right? So it's been around since 1939. Yes, absolutely do we talk about fashion and beauty, 100%. But we were the first magazine in America to put a Black woman on the cover, we were the first publication to say, "We are pro-choice, that's non-negotiable for us." We were... back in the early '40s, when I look at those covers and the tagline was, "For the girl with a job," the core of what Glamour appeals to is working women.
Samantha Barry:
We also... if you look at the history of what... especially Ruth Whitney, and if you're interested in media figures, to really dig in to what she did as an editor. You have to take your hat off, because she was amazing. If you have any interest in media figures, like, look at what she did. We did a lot of coverage of Roe v. Wade, still really care about conversations around women's reproductive rights. And, you know, we talked about domestic violence before anybody else did. And women in politics has always been something we care about, no matter what side of the aisle you are.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah.
Samantha Barry:
We love champion women making changes.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Let me move on, Sam. Is there a moment in your wonderful career so far that you can take a step back and say, "Gosh, I'm really proud of what I achieved there?"
Samantha Barry:
Honestly, there's been so many of them. Like, I think I've always been... this is going to sound a bit earnest, but super proud of everywhere I've worked. So I remember, even though it was, like, 12:00 at night and I was walking into the broadcast in RTÉ, I just was like, "Oh, my God, I can't believe I work at the Irish broadcaster. I'm so lucky."
Samantha Barry:
I remember, you know... when I walked into the doors at BBC where we work, like, you're in this building. The BBC, I work at the BBC? Like, I'm so proud of it. Everywhere, same with CNN, same with Conde. So I think there is these moments in every stage of my career, whether I was the overnight intern to the editor-in-chief, I've been so proud of the places that I work and the people I work with, because in our industry you surround yourself with amazing creative journalists, and I think that is always a pinch me moment.
Samantha Barry:
I do think... I'm just trying to think. I think for me one of the biggest, in this current role at Glamour, one of the biggest moments for me every year that I'm just like, "I can't believe I helped pull this off," is Glamour Women of the Year. So it's a huge event, it's a massive undertaking, it's months in the planning, and then when you get there and I walk out usually at the start of the night and I just am looking at a room full of some of the most amazing creative women and fantastic change makers in the world. I'm like, "I got to host this."
Samantha Barry:
So that's... I think for the last couple of years, Women of the Year have been huge moments. I think at CNN it was any big debate or convention that I had my team that I was there. You felt like you were part of history. I remember the first debate I ever went to in Vegas for CNN. I had never been to Vegas, first of all, and to go to Vegas for a huge debate with the CNN machine and be part of that is... I mean, it's an experience. So I remember being at the Vegas debates and being like, "Wow, this is a moment I will be telling my kids about."
Shaunagh Connaire:
That's brilliant. Actually, that kind of leads on nicely to my next question. If you could pinpoint a rather bizarre experience that you had in your career, and I'm kind of egging you on to tell us about a certain interview you conducted in the men's bathroom [crosstalk 00:19:44].
Samantha Barry:
I know. I know, right? So at CNN I think it was a little bit... CNN ran quite a large team toward the end of it, built an amazing team and it was people from Mashable and Storyful and Sky News and... built a team of the best social journalists in the world and I think they're amazing.
Samantha Barry:
And so we had started off at each debate doing something special for social, so in the Vegas debates we had these Instagram cinemagraphs, portraits, that they actually ended up using all over TV, all the TV coverage. It was when the shadow went across their face.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I remember that.
Samantha Barry:
So we did that with each of them.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah.
Samantha Barry:
Yeah. We did that with each of them, and then we go, and I think it's the second round, and we were like, "Okay, let's do something special for Snapchat, let's do Snapchat interviews." We'd launched CNN on Snapchat at that stage, we wanted to do something special. We got all the Dems, we'd gone to Flint, Michigan, we got all the Democrats that were in the race. It was Bernie and Hillary and Martin O'Malley? Martin O'Malley, and then there was a couple others. We got all them for Snapchat and we had to, obviously, for balance and fairness, get all the Republicans.
Samantha Barry:
So the Republican debate was in Miami. We get there, and always we had been able to do anything social in a space backstage. And we get to Miami, it's the University of Miami that we were hosting the debate. And at this stage there's probably about seven Republicans still left in the race for the Republican nominee, including the current President, Donald Trump.
Samantha Barry:
And we got there and the head of security at CNN and the head of Secret Service that were over the event pulled me aside and they were like, "You can't, you can't set up what you're trying to do here backstage." And I was like, "Okay, well, I need to do it because otherwise it's just Democrats on Snapchat and we got to get the Republicans."
Samantha Barry:
And about five minutes later they came back to me and they were like, "We found a place, it's a couple of minutes from the stage." And myself and Ashley Codianni, who was my number two at CNN, and went on to being the number one, she kind of walked and they were like, walked, walk a couple of minutes from backstage and they were like, "We found a place for you to do it," and they just pointed at the men's toilet. And I just didn't even blink, I was like, "Okay, I just need a black screen, and I need my camera man, and I..." whatever.
Samantha Barry:
So it ended up all the Republicans, including the current President, I interviewed for Snapchat in the men's toilet after they came off stage. But at the time, as I'm sure you have been in situations like this, you just don't even blink. You're just like, "Oh, this is where I could do it? Okay." You just go, and then when you're out the back of it, you're like, "Did I just interview Donald Trump in a toilet?"
Shaunagh Connaire:
That's a brilliant story, Sam. And I know you have a ton of them. Yourself and myself did a panel probably a year ago now, jeez, and you had some very, very funny story about one of your first days in some type of meeting where... I can't remember if you were doing the front cover and you didn't really understand what was going on, but...
Samantha Barry:
Oh, yeah. Money.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yes.
Samantha Barry:
Oh, so, listen. One of the things before I walked through the door at Glamour and... you know, something I probably learned more in my 30s than I knew in my 20s is how much financial independence, and financial... and figuring out money and finances and investment and negotiations. It is... for me, it's the ultimate feminist issue because we earn less and we... you know, we live longer, and we save less and we invest less.
Samantha Barry:
So like, money's always been something... especially in the last couple of years, that I really cared about. And I've really got much better at negotiating for myself, but money's always... I think, you know, front and center in some of the covers that we do and the financial covers, but I remember walking in the door at Glamor and it was my first day, and my assistant turned around and was like, "You got to go do a run-through on the 38th floor of World Trade Center."
Samantha Barry:
And I was like, "What? What's a run-through?" And my assistant, who had obviously worked in publishing and magazines for a long time, was like, "Who is this person that is our editor doesn't know what a run-through is?" A run-through is made, I suppose, infamous and famous in Devil Wears Prada is when the creative directors, the photographers, the stylists, everybody behind a shoot and it's off to the cover, comes in with racks of clothes and they're trying to pick the looks for the cover, what goes with what, like, what do you want on the cover?
Samantha Barry:
So this was January, and we were picking the look for a cover that was about to be shot, I think, the next day, and it was the April cover. And I went up to the 38th floor, and I'm looking amongst a sea of... I don't know, there must have been 10 or 12 people in that room, and there was racks and racks of clothes.
Samantha Barry:
And it was a cover we were shooting, and they were... you know, ultimately the editor-in-chief get to pick what the look looks like, and I was like, "I have never been in this situation before." So the only question I knew how to ask was when they brought out this... and I can't remember was it like a Valentino or a Gucci or something look and they held it up and they were like, "We think this goes with what we're trying to get across in this cover."
Samantha Barry:
And I just was like, "How much is it?" And the faces went blank, and it was like, "What?" And I was like, "How much does it cost?" And they... it was obviously kind of a newer question that they hadn't got in a run-through, and I was like, I had done enough research on Glamour, I know how much money the Glamour reader earns, I know how much she spends on clothes, I understand the different types of Glamour readers out there, and I was like, "I'm just trying to understand, is this, like, her big, one luxury, budget spend on style this year?" I was like, "But how much is it?"
Samantha Barry:
And then I challenged the team for my first fully made issue to make everything in it for fashion to be less than $500. When you work in a fashion building, like, that is... you're asking a lot of them. Because they love, like, they love design and luxury.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And how much was that outfit, then, that they were proposing you put on the front cover?
Samantha Barry:
It was definitely a couple of thousand dollars.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Oh, really? That's so funny. It's so Irish of you as well, Sam, because you're like, "Eh, can we not just get a rack from Penney's?"
Samantha Barry:
Yeah, the funniest thing about it, for a month afterwards, and they still know it now, they know when they come in to me that I need to know the prices of everything. For months afterwards we'd be doing run-throughs, and we'd be the only magazine in the building that the fashion team would come in and they would have a Post-It note of the cost of every single piece that they would bring into me.
Samantha Barry:
And it became, obviously, known in the industry so much so that a fashion house gifted me something, like, a couple of things. I think I was about three months in. They sent me some clothes, which is a lovely perk of the job, and as a joke, they put yellow Post-Its on everything that they sent me and told me how much they were, because it was obviously known that I was asking the price of everything in each and every run through.
Shaunagh Connaire:
But that's just so indicative of you, isn't it? You know, you have a mission, you've kind of... you're trying for money not to be a taboo subject among women, but it really is, isn't it? Like, nobody talks about salaries and you're trying to break down those barriers, just so we can all get equal pay.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And, no, I think it's brilliant, but that's a really, really funny story and I can just imagine you in that room. Before I let you go, looking at the state of journalism now, we've all, of course, pushed towards digital journalism.
Samantha Barry:
Yeah.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Could you predict the future in the next three years? Like, where on Earth are we going to be? Have you any advice for, you know, aspiring journalists, especially?
Samantha Barry:
Okay. For well-covered things. So where's the future of journalism? I think what's been interesting for me to watch, because we lived through it all is the move away, and I'm really happy, the move away from clickbait mass-scale audience to super-loyal valuable brand-aware media consumers. So I like to think one of the things I really care about at Glamour is, like, loyal... I call them high-worth audiences.
Samantha Barry:
It doesn't mean that they loads and loads of money, it means they're high-worth because they watched two videos and three times a month they'll share something from our social, and they'll also deep-dive into a cover. I think I have liked seeing that in the world that we've lived in, especially the digital world of journalism, that title and brand and quality matter.
Samantha Barry:
So that's been lovely to watch, and I think we will continue. People... whether it's the books that you buy, or the things that you subscribe to, or the music you listen to, or the things that you share, or the things you say in WhatsApp, I think people are much more conscious consumers that whatever they're sharing is a reflection of who they are as a person.
Samantha Barry:
So brand and title is more important than ever. For young journalists, I think you've never been as lucky that you have all these places to publish without me or you ever employing them yet. So, like, what I mean by that is, when I was in college, like, you had to go in to a media company in order to get a byline, a podcast, a TV show. You have the ability earlier in your career to really show things you care about and publish on Medium, or do a podcast, or get something going.
Samantha Barry:
One of the things that I look at, first of all, one of the first things I look at when young journalists come through the door is, have they shown me, through their digital trail that they really are interested in what they're interested? They come into me and say, "I really care about women in politics," Like, am I seeing breadcrumbs of that all over the internet of what they've done?
Samantha Barry:
Because if I'm not, I feel like it's disingenuous, because they have all these places. I want you arguing on Twitter about the state of whatever, I want you publishing, maybe, like, an Instagram on... let's say you're really interested in culture and food and the intersection of that. Do you have an Instagram account that shows me that?
Samantha Barry:
So I think that's really important, how you self-publish. What digital footprint you put out there, even before you get a job. I think number two, your job does not define you, I've never been defined by the perimeters of my job, I've always... as have you, pushed further past the boundaries of what our job description allows us to do and done more and thought bigger. And then third of all, it's not a straight line.
Samantha Barry:
And you may have rejections. I just did a documentary, actually, I started in RTÉ, we just did a documentary for RTÉ, and it's based on Glamour Women of the Year, and me. And in the documentary, I talk about the fact that for three years I worked at RTÉ freelance, which means, like, freelance, and I worked every hour that God gave me and twice I went for a staff job, and twice the place that I worked day in, day out, rejected me and never made me staff.
Samantha Barry:
And at the time I was devastated, but you know what? It was the best thing that ever happened to me. So don't get discouraged by those knocks in life, because 15 years later RTÉ is doing a whole hour documentary on the person that they twice refused to make staff.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That is serendipity for you. Sam, that's absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Shaunagh Connaire:
It's such a pleasure to chat to you, as always, and hopefully we'll catch up when you get back to New York.
Samantha Barry:
Definitely.
Shaunagh Connaire:
If you liked what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, tune in next week as I'll be dropping new shows every week with all sorts of legendary folk from the industry. And if you could leave me a review and rating, that would be really appreciated.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Also, get in touch on social media @shaunagh on Twitter or at @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram. And feel free to suggest new guests. Right, that's it. Until next week, see you then.
