The Digiday Podcast

In the age of disrupted digital audiences, media companies are incentivized to constantly be counting clicks, pageviews and engagement — all while optimizing for how those metrics can be best monetized. But Long Lead, a long-form journalism production company, wants to redefine the journalism business model to bring art back into the craft of journalism. Launched in 2020 by founding editor and longtime journalist John Patrick Pullen and hedge fund manager Bill Perkins, Long Lead’s mission is to give journalists the ability to tell their story in the most effective way possible — not the most efficient way possible. So rather than publishing stories as quickly as possible and monetizing them with advertising or paywalls, a freelance journalist can come to Long Lead with a pitch and work with the team to determine its best format: be it a documentary, a podcast, a book or a performance piece. Long Lead then provides the journalist with the technical resources, staffing, time and — most importantly — funding to