News has become a tiny fraction of that pie chart, but Taylor — a great-grandson of Dayton Daily News founder and Ohio Gov. James Cox — chose Dayton for last week’s large meetings of Cox Enterprises’ board and leadership team, on the 125th anniversary of the company’s (and the newspaper’s) founding.
Taylor, who worked as a Cox executive in the Dayton market over a decade ago, talked extensively with the Dayton Daily News about the company, its long history in Dayton, its continuing involvement in journalism via the Dayton Daily News and its purchase of Axios, and its plans for the future. This interview was edited for length.
Why come to Dayton 125 years after Governor Cox bought the newspaper?
It’s just a big part of our story. … Having us up here to go see the old farm where he was born, go meet with the original business, you and the other folks that are keeping the journalism flame alive, is an important thing to revisit your roots and understand where it all began.
On valuing tradition while being committed to innovation
So the company is a fourth-generation private family business, which is an unusual thing. … Most of them don’t make it to the second generation. Their children don’t want to do what their parents did. About 3% of businesses survive into the fourth generation, for a variety of reasons. And the reason we have (survived) is because we’ve always changed.
Governor Cox was a newspaper man through and through … but his son believed that people wouldn’t be reading newspapers forever. And so he invested in broadcast … and we’re lucky that he did, because if we were solely a newspaper business now, the economics of newspapers have gotten so challenging, we wouldn’t be where we are. And so every generation of the company has tried to evolve from its roots, you know, keep the intent of making the world a better place, doing well by doing good, being a positive contributor to society.
I think that the secret of being around for 125 years is not being so wedded to the past that you can’t change. You can keep who you are and what you’re all about, but do it in a different way and be willing to take risks and experiment for new generations.
What gets you excited, about the company, about your role, about the future?
I love solving problems. So what I always think to myself is, what problem are we solving with any investment? You know, things are often great financial ideas, and if I can’t figure out what problem we’re solving, I’m not usually very excited. The biggest challenge we face now in my mind is climate. ... We have these goals for water, waste and carbon elimination. And we’re on track, we’re actually ahead of plan on all those metrics. And that gets me excited.
You look around, you know, 27 million acres of Canada are burning this year — the smoke, I can see it outside the windows right now. Floods, heatwaves, climate has gotten out of control. And I would love to know before I die, that I’ve done something to put that on a better trajectory. And that gets me really excited.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
On the future of quality journalism
The challenge is, you need people that are steeped in the love of journalism, but also not wedded to those old business models. And so Axios is one of those types of businesses. ... They have created a great business, and we’re now in 30 local markets around the country. We’re quickly going to be in 50. It’s a profitable business in terms of same-store sales, each market is profitable. And we’re trying to scale up. … It doesn’t make as much money as big newspapers did … but it is a sustainable model. And it’s keeping journalism alive. It’s excellent, excellent journalism.
On facts and truth and American politics
This new idea about fake news and sort of, your truth is what you believe; and what network do you watch, CNN or Fox? And what do you want to believe? ... You know, facts are facts, and I’ll just die on that hill. Science is true. You can’t just say something isn’t true because you don’t like it. But I think more and more people don’t care what the truth is, they just, they’re so afraid of the other guy or the other side of the argument that they will basically believe anything they want.
I think what we’re doing with the Dayton Daily News, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Axios is just making sure come hell or high water ... at least the last thing we did was present the world with a big plate full of facts. And you can go do what you want with them, but we hope you do the right thing.
(In local elections) the newspaper or whatever your local news company is, is the best way to find out who these people are, and have a voting guide and just be empowered with facts to go out and make the best decisions you can.
On Cox’s continuing relationship with Dayton
It’s still a beautiful place with an amazing history. And I think places go through cycles like that; there was a big down-cycle in this part of the world, but it’s cool to see it coming back. It’s kind of like Detroit, and what’s happening there, they had a huge down-cycle, but Dan Gilbert and all the reinvestment that was going on there is is a great thing to see. I think Dayton’s going through that. And, you know, we try to be very supportive. The future of the Dayton Daily News will be dependent upon a thriving local economy with ads and everything.
On the 2020 sale then quick repurchase of the DDN
It was kind of a tumultuous time, I think, for the employees of the Dayton Daily News, but once we realized that, we said well, if we can carve it out and take it, we love our newspaper, and we want to keep it. And so we did.
On downtown’s former DDN building, which Cox sold over a decade ago
There’s a point at which you have to just say, you know, let’s find a better use for it, sell it to somebody, and we encourage them to preserve it. But they couldn’t find a use for it either. So it is a beautiful building, but it’s just a building.
We’re investing in making the world a better place. We want to preserve history, but we do it mostly through the way we do business, the way we treat people, the values of the company, not necessarily the building.
On the potential conflict of tradition and innovation
As we’ve grown from a small business … into a large conglomerate, I always worry that we become bureaucratic. We have all these big divisions — we have big financial operations, big HR functions, big operational functions. And, you know, at our heart, we should be entrepreneurial, willing to take risks, quick to change and maneuver.
If you buy a small business ... can you take risks that big companies don’t want to? I look at it like Cox Enterprises is the mothership. And then you have all these other businesses that you tack on to it. And you want to make sure that their association with the mothership doesn’t slow them down, but provides them all the resources they want. … That’s the balance I find myself walking — running a big, multibillion-dollar conglomerate with controls and systems in place, but trying to make sure those systems are flexible enough to bring on new entrepreneurial things … that are small and grow them to be large.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
On the challenge of being future-thinking
I think that you have to take bets on people. I meet people all the time, some of whom I don’t trust, and some of whom I think, now I want to be doing something with that person. You know, on the media side, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen are just great journalists. And I believe in them. They’re passionate about this, they care, their heart and soul are in the right place. That’s why we bought Axios. It wasn’t because it was a news company. There’s a bunch of them out there. But I don’t necessarily like all the people that are running all of them. I like our people. And I think that’s what you really have to invest in.
On the importance of taking risks
That’s become a message in our corporate vision is to empower our people to make the world better for the next generation. And you know, the reason we picked that, it wasn’t just make the world better, it was empower people to do that. … Because we can’t do it for you. It’s just, we all have to reinvent our jobs all the time.
Can you give an example of a risk you took that played out great?
In a family-owned business like this, things don’t really play out for decades. But the big seeds that we planted thus far have been into controlled environment agriculture. We’re now the nation’s largest operator of advanced greenhouses in North America, north of the Mexico border.
Hopefully, our investments into new forms of journalism are going to result in a journalism of the future that will be sustainable and provide facts to people that’s not social media-based and affinity group-based.
On convincing younger generations that news subscriptions are worth it
People say, you know, kids just don’t read anymore. But they actually read and write more than any kids in the history of humanity. They’re reading and writing all day, they’re just doing it with people that they perceive to be their friends or some personality that they want to be like, or be more closely associated with. And I think the challenge for media businesses is to be less of an institution that sits above the world, and sort of presents itself as the purveyor of fact, and more individuals, personalities, and people that are trusted. And if they can be brought together under a brand, like Dayton Daily News, or Axios, or whatever, and that’s an identity that people want to be a part of, they will.
Younger people … they want to hear things from their friends, they don’t want to hear it from grandpa’s old institution or whatever. And so I think we have to invest in personalities and be fun and humorous and human. I think one of the failings of media businesses is being un-human — “there is no bias here, there are no humans here, we are simple facts.” … It doesn’t mean you bring bias back into it. But you have to bring personality.
On being a fourth-generation CEO, and his young kids maybe following some day
I would love it if they worked at our family business, but I just want them to be kids that are able to grow up and take care of themselves. … I do think in my head I try to invest in things that that next generation will care about, like sustainability, climate change — if all we were doing was buying old media companies, I don’t think that they would identify with that.
And what if he had started that fly-fishing business he considered in his 20s instead?
I don’t ever regret coming to the family business. I do have to take vacations from time to time to go fishing and get out into the woods, because that’s where my heart is. But I love what we do. I’m proud of what we do.
Where do you see Cox Enterprises in 10 or 25 years?
We’ve got large multibillion-dollar businesses that we’ll be investing in and nurturing. Their growth trajectories are slower, but they’re sort of the goose that lays the golden egg and allows you to invest in other things. So we’ll be investing in our big businesses as much as we can, helping them grow and then diversifying into areas like particularly sustainability and climate, health care and education, to try to make the world more sustainable and healthier for the people that come after us. Maybe one day, the fifth or sixth generation of the company will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of the company. Who knows.
Final thoughts
I think if there’s any attention being drawn to the 125th anniversary of Cox Enterprises and the Dayton Daily News and what was started here a long time ago, it’s that we should all focus on more than just making businesses or about more than just making money. They’re about the original intent of Governor Cox, when he was just Jimmy Cox leaving the farm, he wanted to go out into the world and make a difference. On making money, he didn’t have, like, a financial target. He wanted to just be the master of his own destiny and to have a company and to make a difference in the world. And we’re still trying to do that. We’re still trying to solve problems. And hopefully, we can all take a lesson from all that. Life is about more than just making money and squeezing profitability out of people and cranking out widgets. It’s about understanding what’s happening in our world and investing into a better one. And that’s what the Dayton Daily News and ultimately, Cox Enterprises is all about.
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