John Michael Cassetta, BHP 2010, works on the Strategy & Development team at The New York Times. His work has included launching new products and assisting with acquisitions and other strategic investments. He is currently working on an ambitious plan to double digital revenue to a whopping $800 million by 2020. He previously worked as a strategy & operations consultant for Deloitte Consulting.
After you graduated, you went to work as a consultant for Deloitte, with a focus on media and publishing industries. What drew you to those industries and why do you find working in that industry so interesting?
When I started in consulting, I knew I wanted to experience a breadth of industries, but my English major also taught me that I was interested in media and publishing
It took a couple of years to be in a position where I could work with our media group at Deloitte. My first year was less about pursuing my interests than about rounding out the tactical skills I would use for the rest of my career. During that year, I developed good relationships with the partners I worked for, and through conversations with them about my career goals and interests, I was able to transition into doing strategy work in our media practice for my next projects.
Having now moved to the Times, what I find interesting about the media industry is the huge and necessary impact journalism has on the way our society functions. I really believe it’s necessary for us to continue to inform and thereby better the world. But news is expensive, and you have to find a way to make sure that both readers and advertisers continue to want to pay for it. The complexity of that dual-revenue model was intriguing to me, and so is the reward of being part of an institution that uses that money to pay to send reporters safely to war zones, have journalists with law degrees covering the Supreme Court, invest in very expensive investigative journalism, and generally have the financial freedom to independently report the news. That’s very exciting.
How did the projects you had at Deloitte prepare you for what you are doing now?
One of the things you really learn in consulting is the mechanics of influence. On a lot of projects you fight every day to maintain relevance. Just because the project is sold doesn’t mean your answers are going to be immediately accepted and implemented by your client.
In industry, it is a similar thing. The Times has over 3,000 employees and a lot of them are occupied with writing the news every single day. Just the fact you solved a business problem or developed a strategic perspective isn’t enough for those recommendations to become integrated into the way the organization works. In consulting, I learned the extra step of identifying the influencers, communicating my ideas, and thinking about the real impact and tactical execution of the recommendations you make. I think that was the biggest thing in consulting that prepared me for what I am doing now.
How did you end up at the New York Times? Did you seek your position out or did someone come to you with the opportunity?
I sought it out, but I would say it was serendipitous. I was working for a similar media client at Deloitte and realized I wanted to do it full-time. I started talking to people in my network and someone knew someone, who knew someone, and I started the conversation with the Times. Once I did, it seemed like a really natural fit and I was very excited about it. I have now been here seven months.
Doubling digital revenue in five years is an ambitious goal. What pieces of the plan are you responsible for?
Our team is responsible for all of it at a high level. Our executives determine the core of the strategy, but we have a hand in crafting the message and working with people on all levels to execute it.
For instance, we developed a strategy for how our video group will contribute to our revenue growth goals. We want to work with video as a way of storytelling as we move forward, but we have to figure out the mechanics of the business model. So we need to answer questions like how much it costs to send reporters to foreign countries, which advertisers would be interested in being involved in those efforts, and how we ethically and profitably set up those relationships. Then at a higher level, the team has to determine how we make sure the content we create is something our subscribers are interested in. I have a portfolio of two to three different projects at all times. It is similar to the consulting work I did, but more focused, and we work on more things at once.
What do you think will be the biggest challenge in reaching the goal?
The biggest challenge is continuing to be relevant and reinforcing the value of the Times with our readers. It isn’t enough for a newspaper anymore to just publish the news every day. You have to stay in readers’ lives in new and innovative ways. For example by using virtual reality as a new way to tell stories. We recently sent out Google Cardboard VR (virtual reality) units to all of our home subscribers, with which they can watch VR videos on refugees on three continents, political campaign rallies during election season or breaking news during the terrorist attacks in Paris, to name a few. We’re proud at the Times to be able to push the envelope further in that medium, making innovation in the way we tell stories core to our brand. With proliferation of media and content everywhere, we as a news organization can’t take for granted that people are going to come to us every day. It is something we have to work towards.
You majored in BHP, Finance and English. It seems like what you are doing really does combine all three of those very well. Can you talk about how the skills you gained through your UT classes have helped you in your career?
The collaborative skills and strategic frameworks we learned in BHP and Finance classes allowed me to feel comfortable approaching business problems in the real world, so I felt well-prepared in my first year as a consultant to make sense of what I was working on. My English degree, maybe surprisingly, has had a lot of application in the business world. It’s more than just being able to communicate well, it’s the analytical rigor of literary analysis – you are unpacking some of the most difficult literature in the English language every week – that isn’t so different to understanding the mechanics of a complicated business problem.
What advice do you have for current BHP students?
Budget in some time for serendipity. A lot of what you do in college and life is focused on honing skills, but that only amounts to preparation for opportunities. I find that making time to find new opportunities, which can literally mean going out with friends I haven’t seen in a while to ask them what’s new with them, has surfaced new opportunities for growth for me. This false narrative of if you want something, put your head down and work hard for it isn’t true. Sometimes I think if you really want something, go get a drink at a bar alone and see who has some thoughts on it.