Meghan Markle former Editor in Chief of THE TIG ran a lifestyle blog about empowerment, travel, and well being for young women. When she became the Duchess of Sussex working for the British royal family, she had to shut down her lucrative business enterprises. One of my personal faves is Food for Thought or her interview with actor turned business woman with billion dollar company Jessica Alba.
A great void was left in women’s infotainment platform because there are few women’s publication that are at the center of empowering women. Most follow the narrative of male dominated publications. They focus on clothes and miss the substance and impact of events and conversations. We only hope that one day Duchess Meghan will share her insights with young women again on a platform like The TIG.
Women Supporting Women
During the inaugural virtual conference of The 19th News the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle reached out to Emily Ramshaw the Co-Founder of the 19th. The Duchess of Sussex has a reputation of supporting other women. She and best friend Misha Nonoo worked together on The Smart Set capsule collection for her charity Smart Works in London. The Duchess also championed Luminary Bakery.
The Duchess basically said that the issues that we care about are issues that she’s really interested in this moment,” including “super-high-quality media, gender equity, racial justice.
Emily Ramshaw
Racial justice and fight for racial equity in United States
From my standpoint, it’s not new to see this undercurrent of racism and certainly unconscious bias, but I think to see the changes that are being made right now is really — it’s something I look forward to being a part of. And being part of using my voice in a way that I haven’t been able to of late. So, yeah, it’s good to be home.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex
Goals and Purpose
The 19th is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom reporting on gender, politics, and policy. Covering women in politics with empathy and respect.
Attention Economy and Clickbait
What’s so fascinating, at least from my standpoint and my personal experience the past couple of years, is that the headline alone, the clickbait alone, makes an imprint. That is part of how we start to view the world, how we interact with other people.
Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex
Journalism has suffering with the onslaught of technology where anyone with a computer became a tabloid and everyone with a camera a journalist. The market has become crowded and tabloids with their salacious headlines are now controlling news. In the digital media space even once reputable news sources which were once known for investigative reporting and considered authorities actually author articles quoting tabloids such as TMZ, Page Six and the Daily Mail and The Sun.
Salacious vs Truth business model
If you’re just trying to grab someone’s attention and keep it, you’re going for something salacious instead of something truthful. I think that once we can get back to the place where people are just telling the truth in their reporting and telling it through a compassionate or empathetic lens, it’s going to help bind people as a community in a way that I think at the moment we are feeling so much more of a disconnect in a space where I feel we could be feeling more of a connection.
Meghan, duchess of sussex
Business Empowering Storytelling
We want to have trust in journalism and what we’re reading, and (instead) we’re getting all this stuff and it becomes noise as opposed to truth and accurate journalism. Storytelling that lifts up those who are too often underrepresented in the media,’ and ‘what it means to build a media outlet with gender equity, diversity, and community at its core.
Emily Ramshaw Co-Founder The 19th News
Business opportunity in the change
People are craving a change. In the place we’re all in right now, there’s such a moment where people are starting to question the systems, we’ve always believed in.
Meghan , Duchess of Sussex
Purpose and Profit: Business model of 19th
Causes and great work still have to be financed so the 19th team had to come up with a financial sustainability model.
- Revenue stream-Member supported business driven by member fees not advertising
- To increase market share or audience The 19th News allows other news organizations to use their content for free allowing them to expand their reach and inform more women.
- No advertiser-based clicks to enable news team to focus on substance over clickbait.
British royals’ failure to embrace diverse voices
When Meghan and Harry were full time working senior members of the royal family, they requested more diverse pool of reporters to cover their engagements. They were given an emphatic no according to the book Finding Freedom. The Duke and Duchess believe in a free, strong, and open media industry, which upholds accuracy and fosters inclusivity, diversity, and tolerance.
News defined through lens of powerful men
Meghan mentioned the power of one man in England to define and malign women’s movement. The word “suffragette,” which describes a woman who organized for the right to vote, was originally coined as a term of belittlement by a British newspaper in 1906.
What I found so fascinating is that this was before digital media and before the online space and before things could travel around the world with rapid fire. The American women as part of the suffrage movement didn’t want to be called suffragettes, and yet this term coined by one man in 1906 has stuck as part of a movement, and I think when you look at that through that lens, at the power of one person’s influence in the media to be able to shape an entire movement or way of thinking or even an ideology or an identification, if women had their voice as equally, how different that would have been.
meghan, duchess of sussex
Seizing the moment transformation
In the midst of global pandemic, the team at the 19th pushed with their launch and came up with innovative ways to work in this new reality of social distancing.
You just took that jump and you took that leap of faith. And I think there’s so much we can all learn from that, that in those moments where it might feel scary, you just need to trust your gut.
Meghan Markle Duchess of Sussex
Her way of questioning was so super & i say Meghan is a highly intelligent woman who reads & does her research well.
Duchess Meghan is an amazing woman. No wonder the Prince wifed her up real quick. She is good for all women helps all women.