Get Mic’d – Episode 5: The Art of Asking the Right Question with Julie Pace, The Associated Press – Transcript

Below is a transcription of Get Mic’d Podcast Episode 5, hosted by Katie Zeppieri and features Julie Pace, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of The Associated Press. Listen to the full episode here.

Julie Pace is Senior Vice President and Executive Editor of The Associated Press, leading global news coverage from more than 100 countries. Since Pace assumed the role in 2021, AP has significantly expanded its digital news offerings, been awarded three Pulitzer Prizes, and produced an award-winning documentary on the Ukraine war that won an Academy Award and a BAFTA. 

Previously, Pace was Washington Bureau Chief for AP, directing AP’s coverage of the presidency, politics and the U.S. government. 

Before that, Pace was the AP’s White House Correspondent, contributing aggressive news reporting and sharp analysis to the AP news report. In 2013, Pace won the White House Correspondents’ Association Merriman Smith Award for her work explaining the Obama campaign’s complex approach to voter turnout.

She joined AP in 2007 as a multimedia reporter, developing and executing AP’s plans for live video coverage of 2008′s Election Day and President Barack Obama’s inauguration.

A native of Buffalo, New York, Pace began her career as a reporter in 2003 at South Africa’s only independent television network, before spending two years reporting on politics and elections at the Tampa Tribune and its partner television station WFLA. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and lives in New York. You can connect with Julie Pace: LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Katie Zeppieri: Julie, Welcome to Get Mic’d!

Julie Pace: Thank you for having me.

Katie: Thanks so much for being here. You have been a journalist for two decades, 17 years of which have been spent at the Associated Press. I’m curious to know your take on the changes and developments in the role of journalism over that time.

Julie: That’s a great question. There’s been so many, and you were saying that’s about two decades. It’s been a long time. I didn’t realize it had been that long. I still feel like a newbie sometimes.

Sometimes it’s hard to overstate just how much the media industry has changed. It’s important to note that it keeps changing, and it keeps changing faster. So it’s not just that it’s changing. It’s the pace of change, which continues to accelerate. And when I joined AP in 2007 in the Washington Bureau, we were primarily a text-driven news organization.

Now, we talk about ourselves and pride ourselves on being a digital news organization. This means we don’t just ask questions like, ‘Do we have a video with that story? Do we have photos with that story? Do we have audio?’ We think about what the digital audience will need in terms of packaging all of that content together. And that’s a significant shift for us.

That’s just one example of how a media company has changed. I think the other thing that’s shifted is the expectations of the audience’s habits. Audiences now have so many different options for how they can access news, and I think we as news organizations are in a kind of constant battle to make sure that we’re in the mix there. It’s not just us competing against each other for their attention. It’s us competing with TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and other social platforms.

In some ways, I think that’s been helpful for us in terms of learning new storytelling techniques. But again, it also creates a real challenge because there are just so many different demands on people’s attention.

Katie: Also, are you considering how you shape and reshape to appeal to Gen Zs?

Julie: Exactly. And that’s one of the things we talk about all the time because to stay relevant as a news organization, we need to attract new audiences. And you know, those new audiences have just grown up in a world with constant access to information. I think they also have different expectations of a legacy news organization.

They don’t care that the AP is 178 years old; they don’t care that we have this long history. They want to know, ‘How are you relevant to my life?’ How do I trust you to tell me why I need to get my information from you? And I think it’s forced us again, in a positive way, to think about what we bring to the table that’s unique. And how do we pull back the curtain a little bit more and say, it’s not just trust this story, because it’s from the AP, it’s, here’s what that journalist was doing in the field. Here’s the work that went into producing that story; here’s why it’s valuable to get information from a fact-based, independent journalist instead of the number of other places where you can get information on that subject.

Katie: I feel like there’s almost this educational component you must do now because we’re living in a time of misinformation. To your point, we have citizen journalism; we have people posting about stories and posting their opinions on stories, and there’s a war on truth in many ways. What is true? It’s just because we’ll see something when we’re scrolling on social media or stumble upon a story. How do you know that’s true? So I’m sure that that’s something that the Associated Press has to think about.

Julie: It’s something we think about, and to the point I made earlier, I don’t think it’s something we have always thought about in our history. I think there was an assumption, rightly so, that if the AP said it, people assumed it was true, right? Or they expected that they could believe it. And we now know that every bit of fact-based information will be challenged, mainly around really difficult, sensitive subjects, or very divisive subjects.

US politics, the war in the Middle East, the war in Europe and any major significant election worldwide. We have to go above and beyond. And I think your point on journalism and education is essential here. We have to stop assuming that everyone understands the difference between what we’re doing and what they might be seeing on other platforms.

And I think there’s a lot of value. I mean, I want to be clear: I think there’s a lot of value in citizen journalists and in people having access to platforms that allow them to get their voices out there, particularly for people who come from underrepresented communities or maybe don’t feel like they’ve always seen themselves reflected in a lot of traditional media.

I mean, that’s great. But I do think that we, as independent news organizations, need to be able to say that we can exist here. But here’s what you get by getting this information from a mainstream, traditional fact-based news organization. And that does mean, in some ways, again, lifting the curtain a little bit and showing all that goes into doing that kind of journalism, all the resources it takes, and all of the rigour we put around our process.

And every time we’ve done that, we’ve gotten a positive response from our audience. And so to me, it’s, you know, leaning in more there. And I think it keeps what we see elsewhere. However, it allows us to say that having these types of news organizations in the ecosystem is worth it.

Katie: I liked that approach. It makes a ton of sense. I’ve heard you and other interviewees talk about the importance of education and how it shapes people’s views when encountering something you publish. I’m curious how and when you knew that you wanted to get into journalism in the first place.

Julie: It’s funny. I have always wanted to be a journalist. I was the editor of my fifth-grade newspaper, The Smallwood Elementary School weekly newspaper. It’s one of those things I really can’t tell you exactly when it started. It’s just that I always wanted to do it. And I think it was just because I’m a nosy person. I like knowing what’s going on. I like being able to ask people questions. Now, I can at least claim I do it professionally. It’s just my job. But I always wanted to do it. And, you know, it has been the most incredible, you know, career and ride, the things that you get to see and do and experience, and the people you get to talk to you. I mean, it is everything. I hoped it would be when I was the fifth-grade editor of the Smallwood Elementary School newspaper.

Katie: And you, your first role at the Associated Press was a White House correspondent. You then became the Washington bureau chief. So, there is certainly a political angle and focus. Was that something that came naturally to you, wanting to cover politics?

Julie: No, not at all. It’s funny. I had no intention of ever being a political reporter. When I graduated from journalism school, I tried to make it as a freelance journalist in southern Africa. And that was my real focus; I wanted to be a foreign correspondent.

I spent a semester in South Africa when I was in school, and the story there drew me in. I found it to be so complex and exciting, and it was just this opportunity to immerse myself in a completely different culture and try to explain it to people.

So, I joined the AP in hopes that the AP would send me back to Africa or send me somewhere else as a foreign correspondent. And I thought I would be in Washington for maybe two years. And I ended up staying there for 15. And I think, you know, part of the reason I ended up staying is I found that a lot of the things that I had wanted out of being a foreign correspondent, I was able to get covering politics. It’s an endlessly fascinating, sometimes frustrating story to cover, and you’re trying to translate what’s happening in Washington to people.

At least when you work for the AP, you’re trying to translate what’s happening in Washington to people who are not in Washington, right? How do you make what’s happening there relevant to their lives? How do you try to explain to them when something is going on there that seems kind of crazy? How do you explain it to them? Maybe it is kind of crazy, right? And here’s why. Or, here’s, again, what is relevant to your life. And I loved that challenge of trying to be kind of the insider explaining to the outside audience what was happening.

Katie: How do you describe the Associated Press? How do you define its role and vast reach as new generations emerge?

Julie: It’s an excellent question. I always say the AP is one of those things. You kind of know the AP, but you don’t know the AP. We’re 170 years old. And we operate in 100 countries around the world. We are one of the very few, certainly at our scale, truly independent news organizations worldwide.

Nobody owns us, we don’t have a corporate owner, we don’t have a wealthy benefactor. A government does not fund us; we are genuinely independent. And our job is to provide journalism to other news organizations worldwide. So, in some ways, you know, we are the bedrock of the media industry. You know, wherever you go in the world, there are news organizations that are getting journalism from the AP, and that’s in text, and it’s in photos and video, and it’s audio, and it’s data journalism, and on and on and on. We also have our consumer-facing platform, apnews.com. And that’s relatively new for us.

A big reason why we’ve stepped into that space is that we feel what we do is unique. The idea of being a global but independent news organization that’s fact-based is that we are fiercely nonpartisan. We want to ensure we reflect all sides of a debate, not on a side that says this. We want people to feel like we’re not coming at this with any perspective other than telling you the facts and where the facts take us is where we will go.

We’ve stepped into that consumer space. And the reaction has been positive. I mean, we’ve seen our audience grow. We’ve seen our newsletter audience and subscribers grow; we see real interest in the kind of work that we do. And to me, that’s heartening. I mean, it’s a big challenge. But it’s heartening in this very divisive and partisan climate that we live in, in the US and globally, that there is interest in an independent and nonpartisan outlet. So again, a lot of room to grow there. But we’ve been excited by what we’ve done over the last 18 months or so.

Katie: Just even hearing you describe the AP like that. It feels so refreshing. I think that’s why you’re seeing such growth.

Julie: It is one of those things. I’m happy to hear what you say. It is one of those things I’ve been frustrated over the years because when you do talk to people, they’ll say to you, ‘Look, I just want the facts. I want somebody to tell me what’s going on and what it means and not try to sway me and push me to vote in a certain way, but just help inform me.’

And I’ve always said, ‘Hey, we’re the AP over here. We’re doing that.’ But honestly, we’ve been doing that in ways that haven’t always been visible to people because we’re putting our news into other places and forums. So this was our way of saying, ‘ We’re going to see the need, and we’re going to try to answer it. ‘ 

Again, it is validating to see that when people say yes, we just want fact-based independent journalism without an agenda, right? We don’t have an agenda other than to inform people and help them understand what’s happening in the world and why people aren’t gravitating toward it. And that is, again, fun and challenging but also really validating.

Katie: Walk us through a day in your life. I want to start back a bit because you’ve had a remarkable rise in leadership, from correspondent to bureau chief to executive editor of the AP. Take us through those different stages and roles, what a week in your life looks like, and your rise to leadership with an AP.

Julie: It’s a good question. My first job in authentic leadership was as bureau chief in Washington, and it was a tricky time. It was the first year of the Trump presidency, which upended Washington in every way, including the media industry. It was incredibly competitive and nonstop. And so, in that role, I felt like I was very close to the news, very hands-on with what we were putting out every day.

You know, it was a lot of conversation around standards, a lot of discussion around fact-checking, combating misinformation, and how to do that, again, in ways where you’re trying to remain nonpartisan. Still, I also want to clarify when something is not rooted in fact, and I think we got much better.

I got a lot better during that time and figuring out that balance. But I’ll be honest, that first year was very challenging and demanding. You know, the other thing you learn in leadership, especially when managing people, is that people management is complicated. And you have to invest a lot of time in it. And I think for me, my job became that natural balance between the day in and day out of ‘What are we gonna do with that tweet? Are we gonna do a fact-check there? Do we have a live shot over there?’ To, ‘Hey, let’s sit down and talk about your career,’ or ‘Let’s sit down and talk about how you manage stress in this challenging environment.

So that was a pretty, flat-out four years there. But again, we got better at it, right? We also figured out the systems and processes to make it work. Now, my job is global. I manage teams all over the world. As I said, we’re in 100 countries, so my days start very early. I’m usually up by five. And I typically have some kind of call on the books at six or 6:30, just because my team stretches from Asia to the United States West Coast.

And it’s just a combination of engaging in the most prominent stories, right? I mean, I’m engaged, engaged on the biggest stories that we’re doing on any given day. Also, still the people management aspect of it. And I think the other element is trying to focus on AP strategy. Where are we going as a news organization? What are the things we need to build toward so that we’re not just essential now but really like were necessary in five years?

That involves a meeting about our direct-to-consumer offering, AI, on any given day and the work we do in the philanthropic space with Grant partners. It’s kind of that balance between what’s happening now immediately and then really trying to think about, you know, where we’re going to be in five years.

Katie: What role does AI play and what role will AI play at AP?

Julie: I’m shocked we’ve gotten 10 minutes or so and have yet to talk about AI. It’s the first question I feel like I get asked constantly. First, we’ve been using AI at the AP for about 10 years, not the more modern generative AI that’s become more popular over the last year or so.

But we’ve been using automation to automate sports scores and stock tables. That has allowed us to take the journalists doing that work and put them into positions that allow them to do higher-value reporting, independent reporting, deeper analysis, and unique work. We still want to do those basics, but we can automate that.

And you can focus over here. We have this excellent track record of showing you can add automation AI to your newsroom and not have to lay off a bunch of journalists if you make that choice, right? If you say, I’m going to find another higher-value bit of journalism for you, we’ve done that. And so that’s the same approach that we’re taking right now. So, we’ve been experimenting with our Spanish language translation. For example, we have an excellent translation desk. Our customers have an endless appetite for more of our content translated into Spanish. Can we use AI to boost that volume, using the tool to do the initial pass on the translation and then having the editors come in and do the final edit headline prompts?

This is something a lot of newsrooms are working on. Can you get a tool to prompt you on a headline, again, with a human editor going in and doing the actual final version of the headline? So, are there some of those basics that we’re focusing on right now? There’s a lot in terms of just newsroom efficiencies, things that are not public journalism facing, but things like, can we use automation to help do schedules and to help with some of our back end processes, that could save a lot of time again so that journalists can do journalism.

But then there’s this whole other category of stuff that we and others are not using publicly, but I think could be exciting. You know, things about personalization, right? How do you make it? We talked about young audiences, right? How do we make it so that when young news consumers come to the AP site, they have a personalized experience based on what they are interested in and what we think they might be interested in? ‘Hey, here’s a suggestion for you.’ Or here’s how to catch up on the news since you were last here.

That is exciting because it’s about making the news relevant to people. And if you could use automation to do that, we as an industry benefit from it. And I get, I should always say with AI, I get the concern over the scary use cases, right, the deep fakes and the misinformation, but again, if we are focused on how we can validate what’s real and what’s not and how do we can put ourselves in the center of that. Again, I think we can remain essential, probably even more essential than before.

Katie: How much do you think about your brand? As a journalist? Was that ever something you thought about regarding the stories you write, how you report, and the questions you ask about those components?

Julie: I would say it’s changed that, right? So when I was a reporter, the White House correspondent, for the AP, Washington was one of those places where journalists—not just journalists but journalists—are part of the culture, right? Individual journalists are part of the culture.

And so you spend time thinking about my role, not just the AP’s. What is my role? And so I did think a lot about what I wanted people to think about when they thought about Julie Pace. I wanted to ensure their thoughts reflected who we were as an organization. So, sometimes, there would be a question at a White House news conference that I might want to ask. Still, I wasn’t sure if it fit what I wanted my brand to be and what I wanted the AP’s brand to be.

Now that I’m in this job, it becomes a lot less about me and more about the organization. Right. And I think that’s essential, right? I mean, I am a reflection of the organization. I want to make sure that anytime there’s any focus on me, it’s really about me amplifying AP and the work that the AP does, and I think if it becomes too much, and this is the case, I think in any sort of large company, or even small companies. If it becomes too much about the person, the individual who’s running the company, or the news or the newsroom, you’re taking away from your company’s brand. So again, I think there’s a difference between when you’re an individual reporter and when you’re an individual reporter in certain circumstances. And again, Washington is one of those verses versus the role that I’m in that I’m in now.

Katie: I want to talk about the art of the question. We have an extensive listener base of entrepreneurs. And I feel like asking outstanding questions is an art. It’s such a skill. It’s the ability to cut through potentially a bunch of BS. To put it quite bluntly, just get to the heart of the matter. And I feel like entrepreneurs use that in many conversations, business meetings, and opportunities where they need to get the truth or get to the bottom of things. What’s your take on good question-asking and how to get to the heart of an issue?

Julie: Ideally, you want to go into it knowing something about the person you’re asking the question to. Because that impacts the way you act, the type of questions you ask, and the way you ask them. And I’ll give you an example of this. When I covered the Obama White House, I could ask President Obama, and I did many times a sort of multi-part three questions embedded in one question, and he would answer it and go through all of that. He would go through it. So, I could ask a long, drawn-out, complex question because his style was to give those long answers so I could throw a lot in there.

When I asked Donald Trump questions or interviewed Donald Trump, it was much more a series of short questions, which were short answers and that ability to say, ‘Okay, I know I’m gonna have to interrupt here and get it. Okay, nope. Let’s focus over here. Nope, I’m gonna ask you this now.’

So, it was much more about the style of the person that I was asking the question about. Because you always want to think about what is most important is the answer, right? What’s most important is the information that you’re eliciting. And so sometimes you have to think about it. My style would be to ask the question this way, but if that’s not going to work to get the information I need for this person, then you need to modulate, right? You need to adapt to it.

So ideally, you want to think about how the person would answer this again. Am I giving them an out to avoid half questions? Should I break that question down into four separate questions, I will ask back to back as we go through the conversation? I think being very specific and strategic in how the person is likely to respond is the best advice I would give there.

Katie: Do you have any memorable Q&A? I think of a really good question you asked that just elicited this fantastic response. Is that good or bad?

Julie: You know, there was a moment early in the Trump presidency when, in a press conference in the East Room, I asked a question that ended up being one of those questions and answers that got played back nonstop. CNN called it the “Julie Pace” question in their production meetings. And I was asking him a question about ties to Russia. And at one point, it gets back to what I was saying earlier, at one point, I had to say to him because there’s a little bit of a back and forth, I had to say like, ‘yes or no’ trying to get him down into a yes or no.

It was an impactful moment, just in terms of getting him on the record. And getting through the spin of, say, yes or no, did you have these ties to Russia? And I thought I might have to do that. I went into the press conference thinking I might have to do that if I got a question. And I was glad I was able to do it. And again, it became sort of one of those clips that got played repeatedly, you know, I always don’t like it when it’s me in it, necessarily. But it was an important moment. And I’m glad I was able to do it.

Katie: The Associated Press is known for calling the US election, and there’s a ton of responsibility that comes with that. But take us to election night. What does it feel like to be on the other side, getting information, calculating, and knowing the results before everybody else?

Julie: It’s an incredible process. An astonishing amount of effort goes into calling races. We call races up and down the ballot. We call the presidency, governors, Senators, and House races down to these local races. It’s just this unbelievable feat of journalism, and it involves a lot of expertise.

It involves a lot of technical knowledge and technical support, and it’s a tremendous responsibility. You know, we quite simply can’t get that wrong, right? I mean, we cannot get that wrong. And that’s not because of our reputation, though. Indeed, it would impact our reputation if we did, especially, I think, in the current moment that we’re in, in the United States.

It’s about democracy. It’s about people’s trust in the process. And it’s about the integrity of elections. I just can’t state enough how seriously we take that and how much work goes into it. Some race calls are easy and the results are evident, and some are very stressful. And some, you really don’t know. There have been so many moments over the years. You know, most recently, obviously, in the last presidential election where you’re looking at the numbers and you’re saying, ‘I don’t see the way that this is gonna go and it’s gonna come down to this county, and it’s gonna come down to the absentee vote here and mail-in vote’ and you don’t know. And the thing I always want to make sure people understand is we don’t have a dog in the fight.

We are truly following the numbers. Where do the numbers take us? We will say that the only responsibility we feel we have is to call the race accurately and explain to people why we did it. We’re not trying to angle for anybody to win. And if you look at our track record, you can see that whoever wins, we call it, and we call it with speed.

We want to ensure accurate information is out there as quickly as possible. The one thing that we’ve tried to emphasize over the last couple of years, though, is again, the transparency around those calls. This gets back to what we were saying before. It used to be enough for us to say the AP has declared X candidate the winner. I don’t think that’s enough anymore. I think we have to say AP has declared this candidate the winner. And here’s why. Right? Let’s show our work a little bit. Let’s help people trust these race calls by giving them the information they need to understand what’s behind the call.

Katie: The US election is in November this year; what do the next few months look like regarding AP preparations?

Julie: It’s a lot of preparation around the race-calling process. It’s a lot of rehearsals; we rehearse, practice, feed numbers into our decision desk, and have them practice calling races. We practice our workflows and communication a lot because we want to ensure again that what we’re putting out to the world gives people trust in it.

At the same time, you have all this prep happening over here, and at the same time, you start to get the actual campaign ramping up. It’s been a weird election year. I’ve covered a lot of elections. It’s been a weird election year in that you have these two candidates, Biden and Trump, who are extremely well known, and both have been President.

You kind of know what you’re getting, right? It’s not like you’re going to learn something new. I say this a lot. Like in our newsroom, it’s not like we’re gonna dig something up that Joe Biden said as a senator in the 1970s. And it suddenly changes the whole race dynamic, but it is what it is. As a result, it’s been a bit of a sleepy start to the campaign in terms of the traditional campaign rallies, travel, and things like that.

But when we get to the conventions, which are the summer, the Republican and Democratic conventions, that really kind of kicks it off, and I think we’ll see the candidates travel a lot more, and they will see them out there more. And I think the public will start to focus more because I think there’s been a bit of avoidance, I think, from the public in this campaign, in part. After all, they know these two guys so well, but I think we will start to see the public tune in in mid to late summer.

Katie: As executive editor on election night this coming November, what does it sort of look like? Paint the picture for us, the scene. I imagine headphones, a bunch of different phones going off, and people texting. What does that look like? And where are you going to sort of be planted, and all of it’s very chaotic?

Julie: Well, I will say we’re looking forward to a much more normal election night because the last presidential election was in the middle of the pandemic. We were all in person in our Washington bureau, wearing masks and face shields and trying to keep six feet away. As the week went on, those six feet started to shrink, and the mask became somewhat optional.

So we’ll be in Washington, where we set up our election headquarters, and we have people coming from all over the country and all over the world to help support the operation. And it’s from the news. And it’s from technology. And it’s from the business side, our customer engagement teams, it’s this really massive team effort. And I find it the most fun night in journalism because there’s just such energy around it. My focus will be on our race calls and how we’re explaining them.

That’s the core of what I will be doing, really making sure that those race calls, again, are fast and accurate and that we’re able to explain to the public what is happening. And also, the other thing we’ve talked about a lot is if we get into a situation as we did in the last presidential election, if we can’t make a race call, for some reason, on the night of the election, explaining to people why we haven’t been able to. Still, there’s no conspiracy; it’s simply the process playing out, being ready to go, and being clear and transparent about that.

Katie: You’ve had a unique view of politicians. And to me, politicians are such an exciting case study for personal brands. They’re in the spotlight. They’re constantly being asked difficult questions. They’re putting forward their platform. They’re putting forward new ideas of how they want things to be. What lessons have you learned from watching, interviewing, studying, and reporting on politicians these last two decades? That will be helpful to perhaps an entrepreneur or somebody thinking about crafting their personal brand.

Julie: It’s a good question. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot because you’re right. I’ve seen and dealt with a lot of politicians over the years. And I sometimes think about what makes someone successful in politics. And what makes someone who may seem to have a lot of potential because politics is full of people who seem to have a lot of potential and then start to fade out?

I think there are two things, one that’s sort of in your control, and then one that’s sometimes not, and I’ll start with the one that’s not, as you know, sometimes there’s just a moment, right? And you either hit at the moment or you don’t, and that moment might not come back around, you know. I think about somebody like Beto O’Rourke, who had a real moment and got very close in Texas to winning a Senate campaign and running for president. And the magic just wasn’t there. And like that was when he had a moment, right? And if he had won that Senate campaign, the history, his history, US politics could be very different. But he didn’t and didn’t pull it together at that moment.

I think about somebody like Barack Obama, who also had a moment in the 2008 campaign when many people said, don’t run against Hillary Clinton. And he said, This is the moment, and his advisors say that you don’t know if that moment will return. So you have to go for it. And I think, whether you’re in business or whatever, kind of, you know, the industry you’re in, if there’s an opening, you just don’t know, when the door is going to open again, you don’t know for sure, if you’re gonna be able to walk through that door, but you kind of have to seize it.

The other bit is more within people’s control but can become harder. I think, for people, sometimes, authenticity is the one through line between all of the successful politicians I have covered. They are who they are, right? If you are Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or anyone else, Joe Biden. They are who they are, good and bad. And they are okay with that, right? Yes, of course, they spin. Yes, they’re always trying to put their best foot forward, but they know what their brand is. They lean into that brand. And you don’t wake up and say, Wait a second, like, Who are you here, right? And I look at so many other politicians who have just wholly flip-flopped, not only on issues but some kind of where presenting. And I think the public sees through that. I think the public is willing to do so, and this is one of the lessons of the Trump presidency. I think the public is, at least in the US, much more forgiving of personal flaws and character flaws and mistakes and missteps. If they feel you are authentic right, they are more likely to embrace that, as opposed to someone who wants to be super polished all the time. And so I think that authenticity through the line is the most important.

Katie: What are some of your goals for the future of AP?

Julie: I have so many. Look, I want, and I think about this a lot, to ensure that the AP, which is 178 years old, remains just as essential going into the future as it has been. So, I’m really trying to make sure that our news report looks like a digital-first news report. If I leave this job, I can look at our report and say this is a truly digital-first news organization.

I’ll feel good about what we’ve done. I’m focused on making sure that we are helping fill some of the news deserts that we see in the US and that fact-based information is still getting into those communities, even when the business model for it is very challenging. I’m focused on shining the spotlight on parts of the world where very few independent news organizations are operating.

I mean, there’s a very small, less than five news organizations in the world who are on the ground in Gaza, and Israel and Ukraine and Russia. In all four of those places, we are on the ground, making sure that that’s something that we can sustain, and trying to grow that grow our audience, making sure that younger audiences see the value in AP and that we’re also adjusting for them helping give them what they need to be informed citizens no matter where they are, no matter where they live.

Katie: That’s exciting.

Julie: I hope so.

Katie: Julie, we’re moving into the lightning round portion of our conversations. I have five quick questions for you to get actionable takeaways for the audience. First up, complete this sentence: To me, building a notable brand means…

Julie: …being authentic.

Katie: What has been a memorable MicDrop moment in your career?

Julie: Don’t know if this is a MicDrop moment, but I was proud. The first big story that I ever was the lead reporter on was the night that the US killed Osama Bin Laden. I was on my own on a Sunday night at the White House, and I was so intimidated and unsure if I could do it. And I did it, and I was proud of it. And it still stands out as one of my career’s most fun, exciting and challenging moments.

Katie: What’s one brand you admire and why?

Julie: Okay, this is gonna maybe be kind of cheesy, but I genuinely mean it. I admire Taylor Swift as a brand. She has owned her brand wholly and become not just a musician everybody knows but an absolute business powerhouse, taking control of many things other artists haven’t done before. And I think there are so many lessons, and you are taking control of your brand there.

Katie: What resources would you recommend to someone looking to build their personal or company brand?

Julie: It’s an excellent question. I spend a lot of time, you know, on my early weekend mornings, reading a range of different business and news sites. I think there are great things in Harvard Business Review and the editorial pages of various news organizations.

I try to have a global mix. Then I would say, just find the brands you admire and figure out what you admire about them. And sometimes, you can just ask people. I mean, I’ve done this before, too. Sometimes, people may say Taylor Swift will not answer my email, correct?

How did you build your brand? But you’d be surprised by the number of people if you say, hey, I admire this about you. I’d love to have a conversation. Sometimes, people just respond. And I’ve done that myself. And I’ve responded to other people as well. So, being fearless about tapping brands you admire is a resource.

Katie: I like that a lot. What’s up and coming for you, Julie? And where can people connect with you?

Julie: What’s immediately up and coming? I know this will be over by the time you know this airs. I’m going to Collision, the big tech conference in Toronto, to discuss the US elections.

I have a couple of other big things coming up for me. We have the Olympics at the AP, which is a huge endeavour. So I’ll be in Paris with our team. Then, it’s the lead-up to the US election that’s going to be so much of my focus.

You can connect with me on a range of social platforms. I am less engaged on social media than I used to be, but I’m on X, Instagram, and Facebook for those still on Facebook and trying to dabble in all the other new things that are popping up. But follow the AP accounts. They’re really. Our Instagram and TikTok accounts, particularly, are pretty fun these days.

Katie: Julie, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

Julie: Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.

Katie: Thank you for tuning in to Get Mic’d. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and leave us a review. I look forward to bringing you more engaging conversations with thought leaders sharing their insights on building a notable brand.