How Boston Globe's B-Side Made Its Journalist the Product

Kerstin Hasse sits down with Emily Schario, Head of Content and co-founder of The B-Side, Boston Globe Media's daily newsletter for young Bostonians. What started as an internal pitch at an innovation day in 2021 has grown into a very compelling young audience product in local news: 60,000 subscribers, a 60% open rate, and a paid membership model built around events and community rather than paywalled content.Emily doesn't just run The B-Side, she is The B-Side. She co-writes the content, films videos - and she is the face of the product. Sometimes literally: she once ran a stretch of the Boston Marathon to test whether you can churn butter while jogging. (Turns out: You can.) In this conversation, she talks about building a media product inside a legacy organization with almost no team, what it takes to earn the trust of an audience that has never paid for news, and what happened when the journalist and the brand became the same person.