According to Lydia Dishman, the ethics of AI is a played-out topic. As the senior editor of growth and engagement, Lydia can expect nearly 200 emails daily, still receiving pitches featuring exhaustive best practices and what-ifs.
Nearly two years after the explosion of AI, theories won’t cut it anymore. In this episode of Politely Pushy, Lydia urges CTOs and leaders to go beyond that and advance the conversation.
Keep up with Lydia’s latest work: https://www.fastcompany.com/user/lydia-dishman
Click to read transcript
00:05
I’m Eric Chemi and this is Politely Pushy. Welcome to Politely Pushy, I’m your host, Eric Chemi. Today, I’m joined by Lydia Dishman, senior editor at Fast Company I I love your LinkedIn post because you said you’re you’re “about me” you said 98% of you are here to pitch me a story or
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an oped and then in all caps you said do not try to call text or DM me just kindly send me a brief email no more than five sentences and I’ll take a look so Lydia thank you for joining me tell me what is your inbox like every day what what have you already been looking
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at this morning uh well first of all thank you for having me and thank you for making a note on that it’s I feel like I can’t disseminate that particular nugget of information widely enough so I appreciate the little shout out to that uh I’ve been on duty since 6:00 AM
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Eastern that is my typical day uh I do a variety of things in my senior editor role but just for anyone who’s listening out there I know my title is a little bit confusing because it’s senior editor of growth and engagement and at other companies other media properties growth
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and engagement usually signals uh email marketing uh consumer marketing any any sort of product that is actually trying to work to get more readers that is not what I do I am an editor first and foremost as in I am looking at pieces and editing them
01:37
for publication so that is sort of the Be all and end all of my job and starting at 6: am the reason is that another part of my job is to drive news stories we don’t have uh an editorial staff that handles breaking news so the way that we do it is we pull from associated press
02:01
and Reuters and the person that’s looking at what is most relevant to our audience every morning to get the freshest stories in there is my personal self so that’s one piece of my job and then we flip over to editing contributed content that is by people across
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Industries I am loathed to use the term thought leadership but it does fall under that bucket and so once I got all of the breaking news stories in the pipeline then I switched over to that part of the job and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last five hours the last
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the last five hours when do you end then I assume you end a little bit earlier then if you started so early uh one would think however one would be incorrect I go pretty much until 5-5:30 Eastern um you know with a minimal break for a sad desk lunch I do not recommend
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this practice to others please set better work life boundaries or is the company making you do this or are you the one saying I’m okay with these hours no uh we have an outstanding culture at Fast Company and Mansueto Ventures in general and people are
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able to be flexible as they need I just know how I work best and this allows me to give myself a little bit of uh time to catch up catch my breath like say on a Friday afternoon when I do not schedule any meetings after uh lunchtime so that I can sort of exhale and figure
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out where I’m going next and that deep thinking work is where I draw the line what’s your breakdown of time you get to spend individually versus time that you are in meetings either that that you’ve set up or someone is someone above you is saying you have to be in this meeting
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what percentage of your day is let’s say let me call it real work versus I’m just sitting in a meeting uh we are actually pretty good as a team to figure out what meetings we need to be in and what are other things that could be an email and we do have a
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standing edit meeting every day but they are very short and very focused uh we do have larger ideas meetings twice a week again that’s kind of held to 30 minutes so you know it really varies from day to day some days it’s just an hour of meetings other days
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it’s back to back with a checkerboard of obligation um but I I try really hard not to schedule things back to back to give myself a little bit of breathing room in between time because got to tackle that inbox that is very important to me how many emails you think you’re getting in
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to day I think in my in my time as reporter I was probably getting just pitches 100 to 200 pitches a day what are you saying yeah it’s it’s pretty much that uh I’ve been really Vigilant at trying to educate people who are pitching me so that I’ll get less stuff
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that is just not something that I would ever consider um when I was a reporter I would get things for example like you know I used to cover travel a million years ago and I managed to stay on someone’s list somewhere and don’t you know 15 years later I’m still
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getting travel pitches so those I will take the time to say I no longer cover this area please take me off your list and that has helped winnow it down so maybe from 200 we’ve gotten down to you know 75 to 100 per day which to me feels manageable given how I’m working and
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you’re nice enough to write that back I would just do a block I would just say block sender or block the entire domain name I wouldn’t spend the time to write back to say don’t write me anymore well I have a little bit of a hack um which is I have a number of templates that
06:00
that it’s not automated per se but I’m the automator so I will scan it really quickly and then dump in a template and those of you out there who have gotten a template you can tell what it is because it’s pretty generic but I feel like that’s better than just sort of having
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it go into the void not answering because I know that’s a strategy some people use and no judgment there or blocking because you never know down the road if somebody you know comes up with a different angle or something like that like I want to keep my options open yeah
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no it’s it’s good to hear your perspective right it’s good to hear different kinds of perspectives because everyone is operating in a different way and and yeah I would I wouldn’t have had a template I would have just been block that’s it block that’s it and block the
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whole domain and I took the chance that hey maybe someone else at their firm would have had a good story pitch but I’m just not going to deal with this anymore so there was enough you still get 75 others as it is uh that very true but I am always looking for the nugget
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and anybody who has heard me speak on this before is I’m gonna sound like a broken record I’m always trying to advance the conversation and just like it was in Glen Gary Glen Ross where they said always be closing um always be advancing the conversation
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ABA sort of yeah if you want to make it an acronym um I should trademark that or at least hashtag it yeah um but there sometimes is some nugget that will come through for me and it’ll spark another idea or it’ll be the thing that I’m looking for that can do exactly what I’m looking to
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do which is Advance the conversation around a topic that may have been you know beaten to death already at this point can you give an example like today do you have your inbox up right now what’s something that you’ve already seen today that you thought I like this
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this this actually clicked this made sense as something I want to work on uh I don’t that’s I don’t today um but I have a feeling that there are a couple of things in there just scanning the subject lines and honestly I can’t stress enough how important the subject line is to capture
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attention I am what’s your yeah what I want to ask you how often are you how many of them are you opening let’s say of the 7 let’s round to 100 so we use like even percentage of the 100 how many do you even open how many do you read past the first sentence and then how
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many do you respond to like because it’s you know that that pyramid by the end of it is probably very few that that get your full attention uh that get my full attention yes I I look at everything I open everything and I and I respond to everything that I see yes yes that’s um
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uh people say that and I again I just really subscribed to this philosophy that you never know what you’re going to find and it may be just the thing and otherwise it’s an education for somebody on the other end to say I’m all set on this topic for now which is a classic
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template line that I have um and so and so they and so they understand that like okay enough about the ethics of AI for example like we are all the way past that we know we need guard rails we know we need to adopt it responsibly so thanks to all the CTO out
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there who want to get their name in the media we need to go beyond that so what are you looking for get a good example so everyone who’s behind let’s say a couple years on this now say hey my CTO wants to have his ethics of AI whether it’s white paper or quote or thought
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leadership whatever it is and you’re all set but there’s something that you’re looking for right what what are you waiting for someone to say that you would say okay let’s do that at this point with that particular example it makes sense to me to have somebody weigh
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in on the challenges that they had so everybody’s coming in with these broad theories big pronouncements but in practical application how does that work what do those guard rails look like what actually worked for your company how are are you juggling the idea of for example
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generative AI in an application where you might be feeding unknowingly so a lot of your company’s intellectual property so you know I’m it’s an obvious example in media because you wouldn’t for example upload uh you know a journalist’s report into ChatGPT just as it is you know and
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say okay like give me a summary I don’t know I mean I’m just sort of pulling straws here but that’s the kind of thing where I think that people don’t really understand the implications of what maybe individual contributors or first year second year managers might be
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using it for and that’s the piece of the conversation that would be really valuable I think to readers and that appeals to a more General audience than just the Chief Information or chief technology officer you know that’s what trade Publications are for you know we
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have a magazine that more broadly appeals to a variety of leaders at all rungs of that corporate ladder so let’s try to help them understand what to do next based on what you’ve learned I think about yeah if someone said you know we tried guard rails and
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it didn’t work or you know something that we made a mistake at least there’s something it’s actionable specific he are the mistakes that we made but I think a lot of companies they don’t want to share their mistakes for example but I think mistakes would get more coverage
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I think that and I I I said this at the advertising week panel I was in a couple of weeks ago if we are really going to beat the drum of failure is good mistakes are learning opportunities then we actually have to share those mistakes that we make
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let’s be transparent and say sure I made that mistake here’s what we learned from it and we have had even CEOs weigh in on I tried this and it was terrible and here’s what we learned so you actually do have an opportunity to not only show your people that this is okay that we are
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normalizing imperfection but you have an opportunity to help others I say pay it forward if you can right right I know one of the topics that you work on is work life and from what I can tell I think you’re in a home office and not in an office office I think and in so am I
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and I I think recently about the the the news out of Amazon where they had that employee town hall and it says hey you don’t like this five days a week you can just go work somewhere else yeah how how would how does that play into your mind because sure there’s going to be a buzz
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of stories that that I know you’re already getting and will continue to get and that’s going to be when I could see you saying I’m all set on this topic now what are what are you looking for to advance that conversation is now here we are closing in on five years since the
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pandemic began and have we learned nothing um I am at home I work from home on Mondays generally that is sort of my heads down start the week on the right foot and get as much done with without the distraction as possible and not that the office is an unwelcome distraction I
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really enjoy it I’m an extrovert I know that people feel differently about having people stop by their desk but I love it I also have a very long commute and so it’s really helpful for me to not have to do that at least once a week I’m in the office not because it’s mandated
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um but it’s my choice to go in Tuesday through Friday our employees are Tuesday through Thursday that’s the time where we’re required to be in and that is to increase collaboration and so I think that everyone is sort of in the midst of figuring out what is the best
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thing to do but I think that a lot of top leadership is concerned about productivity again not because there’s been any data showing that there is just a cliff of a drop in productivity no one’s in free fall but I think that there is the nostalgia factor for the
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good old days when everybody was in the office and and this is just my personal opinion I’m not speaking for my employer but I get the suspicion that there is the ROI Factor we are leasing these buildings we offering these spaces which are not an insignificant expense and
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overhead for a company so perhaps there’s a little bit of looking at the balance sheet and wondering what the cost benefit analysis is and so therefore it’s the knee-jerk of let’s just bring everybody back in so we can justify this cost again that’s my
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personal opinion what I would love to advance the conversation is to see some data around that does it really save the company money or increase the ROI if people are coming in instead of a hybrid scheme if they are coming in five days a week what
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happens to the remote people that they hired because during the pandemic a lot of people went other places because they could because they felt safer what’s happening with those people who knows that’s what I’d like to know I would love to know that as a data as a data
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person myself and someone who I think I’m more introverted I think I get a lot more done at home than in an office and for me was people coming to my desk was always a distraction right oh sure yeah but but when you read nothing to do on those quiet those moments let’s say
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where there’s no breaking news just kind of whatever okay let’s go talk to friends and I feel like so many of the friends I know in life in in the New York City area are because I worked with them that at home I don’t think you’re making those friends right I don’t think
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you can make as well of a friend of someone you’ve never seen in person if you’re all remote so so I think even being an introvert there there was a lot of value in being there but I could see the value on okay let’s do it three times a week right from three to five
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okay but again we don’t have the data we’re speculating I sound like someone that is pitching you an oped that has no basis than anyone else’s oped right so I can see how it really quickly devolves into just your opinion my opinion yeah and and I do think
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that there would be some value even if there isn’t a broad study of a thousand people or more which is pretty much the gold standard I think according to Pew you need to have a representative sample it’s usually about a thousand people um there’s the value in the CEO saying I
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did the numbers right and here’s why this works at least at our company at this particular firm we tried it here with our results I I agree yeah absolutely so I’m looking anybody have anyone have anybody brave enough to raise their hand and say yes we tried
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this and here’s the ROI again here’s the mistakes we made here’s what we thought was good here’s where we had to change our approach you could see where over the CEO said I had this belief but our performance indicated that I was wrong or our data indicated that I was wrong
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so I changed even though that’s not what I thought we had those on we had those on uh the four- day work week was a raft of commentary on the 4-day work week and there is data surrounding that and we had people raise their hand and say yeah we tried this experiment here’s
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how it worked for us and that’s really crucial because four day work week if you’re just looking at it in very black and white terms just the way that you would look at five days a week in person versus hybrid you, there’s a lot of nuance that goes into it 4-day work week does
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not work for all companies does not work for say a manufacturing line right but what does work on a manufacturing line is the shift scheme so that’s sort of inherently flexible and that’s what we really need to sort of see more of is how are you making the flex with the
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Nuance of your particular company yeah and I do think part of it is we’ll move off this topic but I think it’s personality driven I think if you have a company that’s full oft extroverts you might get different results than a company full of introverts and I think
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different Industries lend themselves to different kinds of personal or different job functions let’s say within those Industries so yeah we we’ll see if anyone hears this and says oh Lydia’s telling me what I can get in with but let’s see if someone listens and
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actually follows that am I allowed to ask maybe it reveals too much I’m I’m outside New York City I’m in New Jersey I think fast companies in New York how far is the commute because I I know people here in Jersey trying to get to Manhattan and it’s just it’s just awful
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if you’re transferring through Secaucus and getting to Penn Station and then you’re taking the subway it just takes take 90 minutes each way every day like are you in that like 90 minute type of world uh I it can it can be uh on the best days I can make it in just over an hour but
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what I thought was hilarious was I live in the Bronx but I’m in the outer reaches of the Bronx so almost the Westchester side of it kind of is uh more towards the water in the Northeast and um there isn’t a subway line immediately near me so it requires a bus
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to get to the subway to get from all the way Northeast to all the way at the bottom of Manhattan so because Fast Company’s offices in at the at 7 World Trade so we’re in the financial district that is a long ride we had an intern one year who was coming from
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Philly who was making it quick quicker than I was like you could live two states away and you know here’s Lydia still chugging along. You’re even in the same city or be in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia person made it quicker than I did yeah absolutely which is on the on the best days I have to laugh and
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I lived outside of New York City and I was a remote employee before remote was a thing um I can say that I really miss being on the subway and missed it during the early days of the pandemic because that is a slice of humanity that I am really grateful to see every day
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with all the good bad and ugly but that’s another conversation for another time so I you’ll never hear me trash the commute just because I just I love it so much um and that’s where I’m at so then talk about how did you get here you know anyone can look you up and see you’ve
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had different experiences right the travel work the CBS work the in South Carolina so you’ve done and freelance so you’ve done a lot of different things how do you think that informs your decision making or maybe your how do I say uh empathy for other people in
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different situations because you know I’ve been there I’ve done that I’ve worked on different kinds of Beats I get what you’re trying to do how do you think you’ve you’ve sort of grown into this role based on those experiences well I’ve had a long and
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very fortunate tenure in this industry I really believe in journalism and I believe in the fourth estate and these are difficult times to be in a journalist uh and be in media but that said we soldier on um I started really as a child um I did my own newspaper um for
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my for my block um in the Bronx and um and I continued on and I was a freelancer for a lot of years simply because I lived in South Carolina and I um I was a stringer for some papers up here and I worked for some state magazines down there and so I kind of
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cobbled it together and being in the industry as long as I’ve had I’m really not a reporter anymore I’m pretty much almost exclusively an editor the empathy piece is so central to everything that I do simply because I understand that it is a very hard thing
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to do to wake up every day and Report the news especially in challenging times such as we’re in so that’s one piece of it the other piece of it is we’re all trying to do a good job and some people are better at it than others no judgment again varying degrees of
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success but I do feel like it’s on me to take the time and offer something that somebody can learn from if I’m able to do it so I can be empathetic so that’s why I answer all those pitches that come across my desk in hopes that it’ll be helpful to somebody that’s not to say
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that I’m always nice about it and I and I can get grumpy and people who know me for a long time can can definitely attest to the fact that I can be a chromogen because I’m like you got one job why aren’t you doing it um and that that is something that people have
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heard me say over and over but I do feel like empathy is is a really important part of it this is this is hard work there’s no way around it and so I feel for you because I’ve been in the trenches myself you know you touched on this just a little bit the changing
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media landscape how is Fast Company adjusting their business model because we’ve talked to other journalists and it’s like okay well because of let’s say AI we don’t think Google’s going to pick up our stories as much or the way people will find us so we’re focusing more on
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events or on sponsorships or using our brand in different ways what changes have you noticed in the time that you’re there in the time that you’ve been there at Fast Company and how is it maybe affecting we’ll do this kind of story but maybe we won’t do that kind of story
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or maybe you know there’s an advertising partner that we want to keep happy or there these guys are coming to an event that we’re hosting so let’s let’s put there up and like are there things like that that are going on well I mean I would say that Fast Company has always
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covered Innovation and so I like to think that we are Innovative just because we’re following the example of so many brilliant leaders in the field um in various Fields I don’t know I can’t really speak to the business model because that’s not my perview but I do know that just from
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casual observation you could see this from the outside we’ve always been a certain kind of brand and we’ve always been Diversified in print in digital and in events and just like a lot of other properties we do have advertorial so we do have sponsors in that way um I think
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that really the changes really are more subtle and that you know how we do our events for example I know that at the Innovation festival and this was something that I was partly responsible for was to offer our attendees workshops there are a lot of conferences that you go to where it’s
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just a sort of sit back and take the information in kind of experience and we wanted to offer two different kinds we want that but we also wanted to give our attendees the opportunity to really dig into a topic and really work on it brainstorm or or turn to somebody else
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and and kind of figure out how to solve a thorny problem and so we had a bunch of those and I think that you know given the ones that I programmed and ones that I just sat in were extremely successful people are hungry for those kind of experiences and even the introverts I
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think were kind of drawn out in those particular forums because you had an opportunity not just to network at a cocktail party but just to really talk to somebody and say like who are you and what are your problems and how can I help you and that is really resonating
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so how can I help you we I like that phrase because we talk about that with let’s say some of our clients having you know having been reporter I have say to them look reporters and editors they’re not looking to your company as they’re not looking to help your company they’re
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looking for you to help them right they’re looking for you to help them tell a story this like if I’m reporter you’re an editor you’re you’re trying to get someone to help you you know help Lydia write a good story or sign a good story or find a good story not tell
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Lydia to help you get your company coverage right it’s it’s the opposite way and I think a lot of I think a lot of professionals are are missing that that it goes the other way that that you’re the one who’s overwhelmed you’re the one that’s overburdened but but
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you’re pointing at me maybe I’m getting this wrong no I don’t think you’re getting it wrong but I think there’s there’s nuance there and it is really important to talk about this so I’m glad that you brought this up because especially with agencies, PR
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agencies coms execs and journalists I always see this as a symbiotic relationship we just really need each other that’s one two is I would argue again my opinion not that of my employer but given my years of experience I feel justified in this opinion uh I’m in the service business
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servicing who the readers or yeah yes the readers and and I think that it really helps to remind people of that whether they’re journalists readers or agency people we are in the service business we are here to serve information and that comes in a lot of
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flavors so if you come to my ice cream shop of journalism you’re going to be able to get you know a triple float or a banana split with all of these things in it and those things in it are thought leadership gulp we need a rebrand uh first person takes as told to’s, we need
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reporting that is on the news so it’s just the facts and then we also need day two day three context stories longer features these are all the flavors that we are serving to the readers and it is really important that whoever approaches me needs to have that in mind as well
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it’s not just about I’m burdened because I chose this job I make a choice every day I get to come to work and I’m really happy about it but what I am always in service to is what can I give the people who are on the other side of my screen who are eager to consume this
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information and learn something and make informed decisions because of it and that is really at the core I like that I like the way you put that I like the way you put that speaking of I trademark that too say it again should I trademark that too I like that you guys I seeing you know
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the other one you say ABC I think maybe it’s CBA like constantly be advancing maybe so it’s not repeating the a I was thinking about that um speaking of topics like you said you’re all set on certain topics what are a couple of areas that you just feel
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like are overly saturated in terms of service to the readers what are things that you just find the readers are they’re maxed out on this I don’t want to give them anymore what do you think are some topics that you think the readers are all said let’s just move on
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from these things but but yet the media continues to keep puming them with it well I think certainly the the question of implementing AI and fearing AI taking our jobs I was writing about that I don’t know seven to 10 years ago obviously in the last couple of
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years we’ve seen a tsunami of generative AI that is a little bit unsettling to people who feel like that might take their job so sure we can talk about that but again it’s like okay we know this already what do we do about it so enough with the don’t fear AI it’s not going to
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take your job it’s going to give you time to be more creative fine now what that’s that’s a huge one the the other one is that we’ve had um and you know this is more of a timely peg is people are nervous about talking about politics in the workplace and I would
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say there’s been no fewer than seven reports that all found the same thing is that you know people are nervous to talk about politics in the workplace leaders are nervous to take a stand it’s like okay we get it it’s challenging we’ve always been nervous about challenging conversations
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you got that eighth report that tells you the same thing then I’m I’m gonna put my head in that wall over there just boom but yeah I mean I got one on Friday it was literally the seventh or eighth report on that and I’m like okay the election is is what two weeks away like
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what what are we doing now we need to sort of look beyond that do we talk about politics after the election is over are we going to have a conversation about what that’s going to mean for our business sure that’s an interesting way to advance the conversation have you
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thought about what the different leaders would look like if they were president what is that going to mean for your for your people the customers you serve what and now on the flip side and as you’re touching on here what you want to see what are some areas maybe in the
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verticals that you work on that you feel like there’s not enough being talked about or I’m not seeing enough pitches or I wish I could see more of X um it’s a kind of a tough one sometimes I don’t know it until I see it but I am very interested in the concept
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of how the climate crisis is impacting underrepresented communities and I think that there’s a whole sort of subset that isn’t being addressed on and when I say subset I mean angles on what does this mean for underrepresented and underserved communities and we saw this play out in
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horrific terms with the last couple of hurricanes and you can see what got pummeled and who actually lost their homes and how long it’s taking for those communities to be rebuilt um I’m thinking about Asheville in particular because I used to live near there but
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you’ve had that River Arts District you know the the people the artists in the community are always looking to move into a space that they can afford and sometimes that means they’ll move into like a warehouse space or something like that and all of that got wiped away what
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happens next and so that’s a piece of the climate crisis I don’t think is being discussed enough is what does it mean for underrepresented and underserved communities that’s a good that’s a good right I saw the the reports the visuals and they went and
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they’ve shown here’s what happened to the Riverarts community and it’s completely it’s just it’s zero it’s just nothing there right so that’s not going to get fixed this year that’s going to be a multi-year or they just all move and just go somewhere else right who
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knows what the answer is there that’s a good point I I was going to end it but I feel like that’s sort of a downer way to end it okay so let’s let’s go for something forward looking what are you most excited about this week what’s on your on your hot burner
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right now of this is a story we’re working on right now that I I can’t wait to to get out the door uh well again a difficult question I I mean look I think more broadly the thing that excites me and gets me going in the morning is change and that is truly the only constant and
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many sages have said that before me but I think with change comes opportunity and as long as you have opportunities you have room for growth and room to change the world if I’m going to sound idealistic and we want to end on a high note but I really do believe this I’m a I’m a cautious
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optimist but I do believe in people and I believe that change can bring about good things for people and there are any number of people working on the world’s most intractable problems right now who can make a difference and change the world for the better so that’s that’s
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what I’m excited about let’s see let’s go let’s go you read all about them you can read all about these world change makers in Fast Company yes you can L thank you so much this is great I I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of of how you’re approaching this job
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and how you’re doing it so thank you for spending the time with me today thank you for having me [Music] me thank you to my guest and thanks for listening subscribe to get the latest episodes each week and we’ll see you next time [Music]