Slate’s Most Profitable Year Ever with VP of Audio Alicia Montgomery

Alicia Montgomery: We were able to hire, we were able to start new projects, we were able to start new shows. We were able to acquire Death, Sex & Money because we were really thoughtful about how we were investing in our existing business.

Jeff Umbro: This is Podcast Perspectives, a show about the podcast industry and the people behind it. I'm your host, Jeff Umbro, founder and CEO of the Podglomerate. 

This week on the show, we have Alicia Montgomery, VP of Audio at Slate Magazine. For those who follow industry news, you may have seen headlines earlier this year that the 27-year-old Slate Magazine had its most profitable year ever in 2023, which it largely attributed to the success of its podcasts and digital strategy. 

According to an article from Semafor in February, podcasting accounted for roughly 50 percent of Slate's ad revenue with the other 50 percent coming from its website. Revenue from Slate Plus, their membership program doubled in the last two years and increased 33 percent last year. This is in 2023 remember, the year that most podcast publishers were hemorrhaging money, laying off employees, and overall not having a successful run. 

Since then, they've seen slow and steady growth in audio with huge flagship shows like Slowburn, Decoder Ring, icymi, Amicus, and many others.

And though we didn't really get into it today, Slate also has a deep history in the technology side of podcasting. They have deep ties to the former podcast network Panoply, which later became Megaphone, and they own Supporting Cast. 

Alicia has been at Slate for four years, starting as the Executive Producer, now as the VP of Audio at the company. Today, she walks me through Slate's early history and development in podcasting, the content strategy which led to such a successful 2023, and how they plan to move forward in 2024. So let's get to it.

Hey Alicia, how are you?

Alicia Montgomery: I'm well. How are you?

Jeff Umbro: I'm doing okay. I want to ask you about your career and how you got to where you are, but before I do that, I actually think it would be really interesting for us to dive into the history of Slate. Can you walk us through what Slate is and specifically the history of it as it has to do with audio?

Alicia Montgomery: Well, I actually had a history with Slate before I came to Slate. Way back in 1999, in the year 2000, I worked at Salon.com and we had sort of a Jets and Sharks kind of relationship. And I remember specifically this really wonderful lunch that we had. It was the Jake Tapper-era at Salon. And so we had this sort of meeting, lunch meeting in the K Street corridor in Washington, where we met with Jacob Weisberg. And it was, it was the two Jakes era, if you're a real media nerd and a Gen X media nerd. 

But I worked with Slate Podcasts way back in the early aughts, when they had a partnership with the NPR show that I was working on, which was Day to Day. 

But Slate's one of the OGs of podcasting and sort of dates back, you know, about 20 years at this point to the days where people said, let's put microphones in front of smart people and let them talk, and people will buy in and be interested in that. And we still retain a lot of that DNA and some of those shows, including Political Gabfest and Culture Gabfest, which are some of our more storied podcasts. And from that, we've grown to a stable of about 20 shows at this point.

We have all of our Slate produced, owned and operated shows. And then we have Slate Studios, which does podcasting for other entities, and our business team. The thing that we want to do is sort of create a Slate sound and move toward a “Slate-y” sound. We're continuing to sort of evolve in a way so that it can translate over our audio offerings. So people will hear something and they'll be able to hear the “Slatiness” all throughout the body of our work. 

Through that time, we've drawn in so much talent just across the unit. We've just got an amazing past and an amazing future.

Jeff Umbro: Slate is super interesting to me for all of the reasons that you talked about. You all have had people on staff as well, by the way, that have gone on to build the rest of the industry. Just right off the top of my head, Andy Bowers, who founded Megaphone, Gabriel Roth, who's now editorial director for Freakonomics. 

You have been in the audio world for a very long time. So can you walk us through kind of like your audio history and how you got from there to here?

Alicia Montgomery: Yeah, I mean, I am one of those backseat babies. I fell in love with audio journalism and audio reporting, even when I thought I wasn't falling in love with it. You know, your parents keep that stuff on all the time and you're like, uh, I can't wait to get away from this. And then you realize that it's become sort of part of the soundtrack of your life.

I've been at this for, you know, more than 25 years at this point. I was just about to graduate from college and I was clicking on the NPR – the really crude NPR website every single day to see if there was anything I was marginally qualified to do. And I talked my way into audience research. And a year after that, I made the jump to the news side and worked under the legendary newscaster, Daniel Shorr.

And with the exception of two years at Salon, sort of Slate's ancient frenemy, I had been in public radio ever since then.

Jeff Umbro: So you, I imagine, could have gotten a job anywhere when you took this role at Slate – and your first role at Slate was as the executive producer of the podcast unit. You're currently VP of audio.

Why did you decide to head to Slate at that point in time, which was approximately four years ago, which is the beginning of kind of like this huge consolidation in the space.

Alicia Montgomery: Yeah. So it was the beginning of the pandemic as well. When I think about my journalism career, one of the challenges at NPR – we had a reputation of being polite, but it was also part of our business model. And when the election of Donald Trump kind of changed the way politics operated and was covered, we at NPR, we didn't change with it. And there was so much angst and so many meetings and emails around whether you could say that this thing or that thing was untrue.

And ultimately the way that we had to cover Trump, just as a consequence of some real business imperatives, but also some, I wouldn't call them bad habits, but just old habits. It was really unsatisfying to me and didn't meet the moment. 

And so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to go to Slate, which has a well deserved reputation for saying the hard truth that other people are afraid to say. The chance to work with journalists who I didn't have all of this resistance to saying things that audience members might find out of line with their political orthodoxy. I mean, it was really an exciting and attractive prospect back in 2020.

Jeff Umbro: You've mentioned “Slateyness” as the kind of audio that you're trying to produce. Do you have an ideal listener or a listener that you're catering towards?

Alicia Montgomery: What we want at Slate, or who we think our audience is, folks who are civically engaged, who are curious. And curious in a way that they don't need to necessarily have their particular points of view affirmed in every single conversation or in every single editorial space.

And I think that that's one of the places where not just podcasting, but sort of journalism generally and audio journalism, that's one of the challenges. Which is that I think for a lot of outlets, the best way to build an audience is to pick a group of folks who are going to support you and tell them over and over again, in different formats, exactly what they want to hear. 

I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm stepping onto a soapbox, but I do think that that's what journalism needs. And it needs to have that delivered in a way that doesn't feel like a lesson or a lecture or like you're doing the listening equivalent of eating your vegetables. 

We don't want to be a homework assignment. We want to be a pleasurable listening experience, but a smart one.

Jeff Umbro: It's funny because Slate got into podcasting around the same time as Salon, as you mentioned, as the New York Times, as the Washington Post – the Times in the Post specifically actually like killed most of their podcasts pre-Serial around like 2010ish and then they brought them back and obviously are seeing a lot of success there today. A lot of people, I don't think remember that like pre-Serial, a lot of these bigger publications were kind of like, this is really expensive and time consuming. We're not going to do more of it. 

You guys didn't, you stuck with it. And now fast forward to today, in part, because of that energy that you guys kept for the last 20 years, and in part, because of this journalistic integrity that you have, you all just had the best year of your life after 23 years, around 22. Why is that?

Alicia Montgomery: Part of being an OG in podcasting is that we haven't been as susceptible to the whole idea that this is a get rich quick scheme. Podcasting in a way had a moment that wasn't unlike the dot com boom, where it was a cool thing that certain folks, you know, became fans of, and it was very, very exciting.

There was an opportunity to make cool stuff and the people who were green lighting the making of cool stuff just figured that, you know, the cool stuff fairy was going to wave a wand over their project.

Jeff Umbro: If only they did, by the way, because it was really fun to make the cool stuff.

Alicia Montgomery: It really is, but it's like, part of my villain origin story at NPR – [I had] been part of that project where it's like, this is so cool, what we're doing is so special, we're breaking new ground ,we're, we're bringing new stories, we're creating new sounds. And there wasn't a lot of clear communication with the people who had to make sure that the money kept flowing. So that means a lot of very worthy and exciting projects died. 

And I think that part of the, I don't want to call it a luxury, but part of what made Slate a place where we could sustain good audio was that we weren't jumping on the bandwagon late. You don't jump in when the thing is already hot. A lot of people jumped into podcasting at a time when the market was getting glutted, it was getting jam packed. There were more shows than people had time to listen to. The consequence of that was that you had bigger and bigger spaces fighting over fewer and fewer listeners and spreading out ad dollars across more offerings. And the business model for the shows just didn't work anymore. 

At Slate, a lot of our podcasts were really modest and lean in the way that we were producing them. And so we didn't get out over our skis a lot with our shows. And so that means that we were able to hire, we were able to start new projects, we were able to start new shows, we were able to acquire Death, Sex, & Money, because we were really thoughtful about how we were investing in our existing offerings.

Jeff Umbro: You all in part have been so profitable because of the membership that you have on the website. Can you walk us through what that consists of and what it looks like for a listener or a reader?

Alicia Montgomery: For Slate, the membership program is Slate Plus, and this allows for unlimited reading on the site side, unlimited access to our quizzes. On the audio side, it allows for ad-free listening, and for several of our shows, it also includes sort of bonus episodes and content. And we've been very focused on making sure that we're maximizing the investment of our listeners, letting our listeners know that this is another way to support the journalism.

It's a different model because we don't have the equivalent of the paywall that they have on the site side.

Jeff Umbro: I know that you have a very robust ad business because I'm a buyer of some of those ads. It sounds like you also have a very robust membership portal. I don't want to ask about numbers, but approximately, percentage wise, would you have an idea of how many of your listeners have opted into the membership side? Like how successful is that from your point of view?

Alicia Montgomery: The success is increasing, which is really wonderful and gratifying considering the year that the industry has had. We grew Slate Plus 33 percent year over year, which is remarkable and exciting for us. 

And on the audio side, a lot of that was driven by our narrative offerings. Yes, Slow Burn and Decoder Ring, but also it was really wonderful to see that same kind of growth with Amicus, which is our court and legal podcast led by Dahlia Lithwick, where we had sort of a massive increase in the number of listeners who opted into membership. We have been offering some special bonus pop up content for that podcast based around breaking news, especially in the Trump trials stories.

But for last year, a lot of that was just based on listeners really valuing the free content. And just having sort of encouraging listeners to support the journalism without bells and whistles, without sort of tote bags and coffee mugs. Across the industry, not just the audio side of the industry, getting people to pay for content that [a] whole generation of people expect to get for free is the big equation that everybody's trying to solve for, and we've been able to do it just by offering quality.

That speaks volumes, not just about the quality of the work that we're putting out, but the quality of our audience.

Jeff Umbro: You guys have kind of solved the puzzle that everybody is trying to solve today in terms of building a diverse revenue stream with podcasting. And then on top of that, a lot of the shows that have the biggest audiences, that are probably generating a lot of this revenue, are older shows. They've been around for a long time. And you guys don't publish tons of new shows. I mean, you'd publish a lot of new seasons of existing shows. So how do you think about new show development? What makes it a Slate show?

Alicia Montgomery: It has to be unafraid, you know, it's got to be sort of intellectually curious and courageous.

I think that sometimes we think of that as loud and confrontational, but it doesn't have to be. I think that the acquisition of Death, Sex, & Money… Death, Sex, & Money, in a lot of ways is such a public radio DNA kind of show. But the mission of the program is to take the topics that we're always thinking about, but never talking about, and bringing that conversation forward.

And that is the Slate mission. Saying not just the quiet part loud, but the uncomfortable part loud sometimes. Having that idea sort of at the center of the development of all of our new shows is really valuable. 

Since I've been at Slate, we started half a dozen new shows. We are interested in sort of building new conversations and sort of spreading that Slate DNA past what I think people think of sort of as traditional news and journalism, but into conversations that kind of touch our lives where we do need somebody to say the unorthodox thing, or explain the holes in conventional wisdom, about relationships, about parenting, about health and wellness, and not just about the news.

Jeff Umbro: How do you measure success? It's one thing to say that this is our goal and like, this is the kind of show that we want to put out in the world. But like, when you're looking at your P&L, what are you trying to mark down and say like, okay, this worked or this didn't?

Alicia Montgomery: I want growth. I want to be steadily building listenership.

And I think that one of the traps that we have avoided in the industry is thinking of every podcast launch as a moonshot. The days of the podcast that jumps in and sort of automatically and predictably can dominate a conversation, those are past and part of why that's past is because a lot of those podcasts date from a time where there were, you know, one, two or three options in the space. We're not there anymore. The marketplace isn't there anymore. 

And so what I want is for our shows to be set up for financial success, whether it's a modest success as far as listenership, or it turns into a blockbuster. And what I want are things that are buildable. What I want is for all of our shows to be at the top of their journalism game, and also the magic of the audio production process. Right now, at Slate Audio, we're staffed so everybody is kind of a true believer in that, and is not just a fan of that kind of audio, but is a fan of creating it.

Jeff Umbro: Do you guys have dedicated producers for every show or are there people who work across multiple shows?

Alicia Montgomery: Not every show has dedicated producers. We do have some shows that are produced by one producer. We have some shows that have production teams. Our narrative side has three or four producers for each show. But there is a feeling of, ownership isn't quite the word that I want, but there's a feeling of responsibility and investment from the people who are conducting the interviews.

And that's also something that we have in the people who are producing the tape and cutting the tape as well.

Jeff Umbro: Within that process, like how do you work with the rest of the website or magazine? Is there a process in place for you to work across the aisle there? Like if you have a really great reporter, are you thinking about giving them a show? Do they come to you with ideas for shows? What does that ecosystem look like?

Alicia Montgomery: Oh, yes. I mean, Slowburn is kind of a great example of that, where we had Joel Anderson, who's part of the text side, who's done I think three seasons of Slowburn at this point. And Josh Levine, who did our David Duke Slowburn season and is also at work on our season 10. We're doing two Slowburns this year, just because the news environment and the storytelling opportunities are right for us. 

Sort of the gold standard for us when it comes to sort of continuing the partnership with the text side is Amicus and Jurisprudence, which is our justice coverage where our columnists are regular guests, or fill in hosts on Amicus, and the whole Amicus team on the host side is writing Jurisprudence. It's sort of a 50-50 split where half of the journalism is being featured on the audio platform and the other half is on the text side.

Jeff Umbro: We talked a little bit about the Death, Sex & Money acquisition. Do you believe that will be part of your game plan moving forward in terms of acquiring other existing shows? Or was that a one-off situation where it was just too perfect of a fit not to have that conversation?

Alicia Montgomery: Oh, no, we've got our eyes open and we're having conversations with other shows that we think would have the same kind of shared DNA and perspective between their audience and just the same kind of sensibility.

I mean, one of the great things for us and the way that the market [has] shook out in the last year, 18 months, is that there are these wonderful shows that did not have the right kind of support or the right kind of structure to make them sort of commercially successful and viable. And the good work that we've done in sustaining our podcasts is a signal to people in the marketplace, and in the creative part of the marketplace, that Slate's a good home for your show.

And so, yes, we're open to having conversations and are having conversations with other creators and other shows.

Jeff Umbro: That's amazing. And maybe I will send you an email shortly. So how will the audio team at Slate top 2023, like what are your plans for 24 and beyond?

Alicia Montgomery: Oh, well, we've got two Slow Burns cooking, Slow Burn [season 9], which is focused on the Briggs Initiative, and we've got our Slow Burn [season 10], which is focused on that moment when Fox News kind of stepped into another level as an influential player in politics back in the early aughts. 

We have expanded the number of episodes that we're releasing for some of our key shows. The one that leaps to mind is Slate Money, but we've also changed Decoder Ring from a seasonal show to a year-round show.

So we're delivering more episodes and higher quality sort of across our podcast family. So yeah, we're very excited about 2024.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you again to Alicia for joining us. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter at amontgomer_998. For more from Slate, you can visit slate.com where you can find all of their print and audio content. 

For more podcast related news info and takes, you can follow me on Twitter @JeffUmbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate. If you are looking for help producing, distributing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at the podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com or follow us on all social platforms @podglomerate. 

This episode was produced by Chris Boniello and Henry Lavoie. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Vanessa Ullman. And a special thanks to Dan Christo and Katelyn Bogucki. Thanks for listening and I will catch you next week.