Creative 100: Media Innovators

The media field, once defined by glossy magazines and national news broadcasts, is today more accessible and multifaceted than ever, which is also enabling a new breed of media innovators to rise to prominence. Here are this year's media innovators featured on Adweek's Creative 100: Whembley Sewell Editor in chief, Them Community rules: Since Sewell took the reins at Condé Nast LGBTQ+ title Them in September 2020, finding ways to connect with the audience during the pandemic has been a tough nut to crack. “An essential part of the work we do at Them is rooted in community building for queer folks. I knew Them could find new ways to foster connection and create affirming experiences. From our virtual celebrations to new slates of videos and live shows, it's been a joy to offer moments of much-needed levity to our audience.” On culturally necessary storytelling: “It’s not always an easy industry to exist in as a young, Black, queer woman. I love that just by showing up exactly as I am, I can help create opportunities and advocate for other people like me." Opening up access for new talent: "The most profound thing I've seen [from the pandemic] is that opportunities once confined to New York or Los Angeles are now becoming increasingly more available to folks everywhere. That would have made a massive difference to me when I was starting in this field."—Lucinda Southern Benjamin Blank President of media, Warner Music's WEA A massive new role: After a seven-plus year stint as CEO of entertainment and popular culture news website Uproxx, Blank took the title of president of media at Warner Music Group’s newly formed digital advertising and creative content division. The unit unifies the company’s digital advertising firepower under one roof. Here, Blank overseas multiple digital brands, the creative production studio and more than 30 billion streams of video and audio inventory per month. On shaping collective thought through content: “If a film is a statement, digital media is a conversation. I love the idea of holding an audience’s attention through multiple touchpoints over time, digitally.” Counter-culture club: “Being on the creative edge of culture is paramount for a music company. I like the alt content and emergence of DeepTok, AltTok, etc. When anything becomes mainstream, there is always a response, and watching the evolution of that counter-programming as a reaction to popular culture, with its own developing language, is fascinating.” His best advice: “It’s better to have a friend that owns a restaurant than to own one yourself.”—Lucinda Southern Bimma Williams Podcast host, Claima Stories Growing together: Williams merges the passions and driven pursuits of creatives and professionals as the host of Claima Stories, a podcast launched amid the pandemic to help people of color find their dream careers. Claima Stories acts as a network and platform that shares the narratives of those in various fields, including design, creative marketing, media and sound. Making strides: A former Nike marketer, Williams is empathetic to a wide range of barriers to entry that can keep people of color from finding their ideal career paths. Through video conference live panels, podcast episodes and blog content, Claima Stories broadcasts these voices to advise and inspire others experiencing similar situations, led with the honesty of those connecting over successes and failures. Investing with intention: "Now, more than ever, consumers, brands and corporations alike are investing in BIPOC communities with real intention. This, paired with the world reopening, makes me excited about how Claima Stories can assist in preparing our community to best leverage these investments. For Claima, we are set on offering pivotal solutions to emerging and aspiring BIPOC creatives—beyond just storytelling—but through marketing solutions, strategic alliances and funding that will assist our audience in growing their business and profits.”—Samer Khudairi Baratunde Thurston Podcast producer and host, How To Citizen Moving to the forefront: Thurston’s experience in the overlapping worlds of tech, comedy and media has made him a widely recognized cultural commentator, one who advised the Obama White House and wrote The New York Times bestseller How To Be Black. He earned an Emmy nomination for Clarify, his video series created in partnership with Spotify. His wide-ranging credits also include a stint as director of digital for The Onion and as a producer focused on digital growth at The Daily Show. Apple named his How To Citizen podcast as one of its favorite shows of 2020. And now: Episodes of How To Citizen—now in its second season—regularly reflect on past, present and future aspects of race, technology and democracy. Thurston sees the word “citizen” as an active verb, a belief he exemplifies by serving on the boards of Build, an entrepreneurship program for underserved high school students, and the Brooklyn Public Library.—Samer Khudairi Brandon Butler Executive director of Butter.ATL, in-house media channel of Dagger Representing Atlanta: “Instead of simply articulating our philosophy as a blurb in our website, we decided to stand up our own in-house media company, Butter.ATL. The vision for Butter.ATL was that it would become Atlanta’s go-to culture channel, the keeper of all things cool, current and authentic, in a city that has tremendous hometown pride.” Creating demand: Beginning as a media and culture extension of agency Dagger, Butter.ATL quickly became a strong source of business growth as well. "Butter had quickly become the culture channel we intended it to be and, in many ways, a dynamic learning lab for the media company approach. We were all very happy with its quick-turn success. And then something very interesting happened. Marketing clients, the type that would usually hit up Dagger, starting hitting up Butter. 'We love your style of content; think you could apply it to our brand?' became a common ask. And before the paint was even dry on Butter.ATL: phase 1, we were off and running on phase 2, where Butter now had paying clients and was serving as a secondary revenue stream for the agency." The work: A 2020 Webby Award honoree and named the Best Must-Follow Instagram Account in Atlanta Magazine’s Best of Atlanta issue, Butter has become a definitive culture channel for the city. The site's Now Atlanta project, for example, was a text hotline used to help the Atlanta community with questions regarding voting information. Butler has also become a frequent speaker in the region and beyond, participating in events alongside former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Killer Mike, Chubb Rock and other iconic members of the Atlanta community.—Samer Khudairi Stephanie Jenz Vp of new series, Wondery More than true crime: Jenz's role at Wondery has been to develop fresh and upcoming series for the podcast network, which was acquired by Amazon in December 2020. Known for its gritty true-crime series like Dirty John, Dr. Death and Man in the Window, the platform has expanded to include everything from calming content (Meditations for the Day) to children's programming (Imagine Life Family). Wondery's partnership with NBC News has added titles like Kamala: Next in Line with Joy Reid, Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes and The Rachel Maddow Show podcast. Expanding into new realms: As some Wondery shows have been adapted for television, notably Dirty John on Bravo, Jenz’s curation on expanding its library has helped Wondery increase the scope of its fandom and expand its availability, including on various airlines' in-flight media. On the connective power of storytelling: “Through our stories and voices, we connect with each other. I’m excited to see how that plays out. It’s as limitless as our imaginations."—Samer Khudairi Max Foster Anchor and London correspondent, CNN Recent work: Foster’s recent assignments for CNN include reporting from Sweden and Iceland on how different countries are handling the Covid-19 pandemic, and from the U.K. on the world’s first mass-vaccination program. Foster also covers the royal family for CNN. He launched CNN’s weekly Royal News newsletter and is working on the relaunch of his show, CNN Newsroom With Max Foster. Using TikTok to tell important stories: Foster is a prolific TikTok user whose account has more than 300,000 followers. “The only thing I can compare TikTok to is the buzzer round of a talent contest. Your video will either sink unceremoniously or swim towards audiences you never thought you would reach. If you get it right, you can watch a story you care about go viral and have real impact." Reaching new audiences: Foster says he often gets comments asking who he is and where they can see him on TV. “I love that because it builds my CNN audience too, and it means they will come to us for breaking news instead of some bedroom blogger who hasn’t verified any of their information. Many young people aren’t engaged in traditional news formats, but that doesn’t mean they’re uninterested in facts. They just want them presented in a compelling and relatable way.”—A.J. Katz Nilay Patel Editor in chief, The Verge Tech transformed: Over the past decade, as the tech industry has transformed into the predominant force shaping modern life, Patel has covered it all. In doing so, the co-founder and editor in chief of The Verge has shepherded the publication through its own evolution, from niche sub-brand to authoritative voice on modern technology. Growing prestige: Last year, the House Judiciary Committee cited The Verge's reporting 40 times in its October antitrust report, and the site surpassed a key milestone––1 billion annual pageviews––as readers turned to its award-winning reporting for an intelligible explanation of life on the internet. Under Patel, the publisher received a Webby Award and a Sidney Award last year, and The Verge was named as a finalist for the National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. On eccentricity: “The Verge is one of the few publications at its scale that delights in being extremely strange. I hope we get even stranger.”—Mark Stenberg Sherrell Dorsey Founder and publisher, The Plug Black-powered: For five years, Sherrell Dorsey has made The Plug the premier destination for data and insights about Black innovation in tech and finance. The subscription-based platform embraced a paywall years before doing so became standard practice because Dorsey knew the value of the information she was offering. The free weekly newsletter spotlights valuable job openings and identifies trends affecting the Black technology community, while the paid version offers deeply researched, original data reporting. New management: Alongside former Quartz journalist Annaliese Griffin, Dorsey also co-writes Free Radicals, a newsletter in the Every bundle about the changing nature of management. Together, the two have published interviews with luminaries in the leadership world, including the head of DEI at Airtable, Albrey Brown, and Mary Pryor, co-founder of Cannaclusive. On the power of patterns: “For too long, the narrative of Black genius has been erased from journalism, business and the tools that shape how our society builds the future,” Dorsey says. “What drives my work is making it clear that the fabric of what we are becoming is rooted in the data and trends we often ignore.”—Mark Stenberg Fadia Kader Head of media partnerships and creators, Clubhouse A background in audio: Kader came to Clubhouse in March from Instagram, where she had been leading music partnerships. Prior to that, she held a similar role at Twitter after coming from Def Jam Recordings, where she was senior director of brand partnerships. “It's a privilege to support strategic partners across entertainment, music, lifestyle and brands who are using Clubhouse to tell their stories and build meaningful connections." How she joined Clubhouse: Just about everyone on the social audio application was invited by an existing user, but how many people can say that the existing user was John Mayer? Kader can, and she obviously liked what she saw after that invite. “When I decided to leave two months ago, it was with the intention of taking on another amazing opportunity," she wrote in an Instagram post about her departure. "But as life would have it, [what’s] meant for me was right in front of me this whole time, and in the past two weeks, my life took another turn." What she’s doing now: Clubhouse described Kader’s role as working with brands and creators in the entertainment and music ecosystems and educating industries on the best way to use the app. “Clubhouse is removing barriers to social connection through the power of voice. It’s a powerful and raw medium where people can be themselves. Every day, there are hundreds of thousands of rooms where you can connect and have authentic conversations with people from very different lived experiences and walks of life."—David Cohen Check out Adweek’s Creative 100 for 2021 by category: Agency Leaders | Agency Talents to Watch | International Agency Leaders | Branded Content Innovators | TV and Streaming Innovators | Visionary Directors | Artists and Authors | Icons and Influencers | Cover Star: Amber Ruffin

The Creative 100

Creative 100: Media Innovators

Introducing the broadcasters, publishers and podcasters rising to prominence in an ever more multifaceted field

Whembley Sewell

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