You Might Also Like: Cold Call

**Brian Kenny** (0:01)
Hi, it's Brian Kenny, host of Cold Call, the chart-topping management podcast from Harvard Business School. In each episode, I explore the real-world business case studies taught at Harvard, with the professors who wrote them, and often the executives and innovators who lived them. From the history of Hershey's to today's biggest AI case studies, Cold Call breaks down the decisions, trade-offs and leadership lessons behind some of the most fascinating organizations. In this specific episode, you'll hear from Pulitzer Prize-winning HBS professor Caroline Elkins on the Atlantic's partnership with OpenAI. Together, we explore the question, is AI creative? And how the answer affects not only journalism as we know it, but considerations for whether we can harness AI to enter an age of increased creativity for humankind. Before we play the full episode, be sure to follow Cold Call on your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the full episode.
Welcome to Cold Call, the podcast where we dive deep into the groundbreaking case studies used in the classroom at Harvard Business School. In an era where artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how information is created, distributed and consumed, few industries feel the tension more acutely than journalism. In today's case, we explore a landmark partnership between a storied media organization and one of the world's leading AI companies. The deal promises new revenue, expanded reach and a chance to help shape the future of AI. But it also raises difficult questions about intellectual property, newsroom independence and the long-term value of human creativity. Inside the organization, leaders see a pragmatic response to industry-wide economic pressure. Many journalists, however, see an existential threat as AI systems trained on their work begin to compete for the same audiences. Beyond this single partnership lies a broader debate about fair use, innovation and whether the economic foundations of the Internet are being fundamentally rewritten. This is not just a story about one company. It's a window into the future of knowledge, creativity and trust in the digital age. Today we're joined by Professor Caroline Elkins to discuss her case, The Atlantic and OpenAI.
I'm your host Brian Kenny and you're listening to Cold Call on the HBR Podcast Network.
Carrie Elkins research focuses on empire, violence, liberalism and insecurity with a particular focus on Africa and various regions of the former British Empire and you are a repeat guest on Cold Call. Welcome back, Carrie.

**Caroline Elkins** (2:21)
Thanks so much for having me, Brian. What a thrill.

**Brian Kenny** (2:23)
It's great to have you here. Now this case has nothing to do with any of those things that I just read. So you've moved into some new eras.

**Caroline Elkins** (2:29)
I have. And in some ways, Brian, it was a little bit of a journey of self understanding, right? In other words, I write a lot in trade presses and try to connect with audiences. And my world was changing, right? And this is what I call the business of ideas, right? And was changing. And sort of what do I mean by this business of ideas? Because it situates our case today. It's really the business of creating ways of thinking, right? Spreading them and capturing value from them, and capturing the value and the intention and the influence from them, right? And so how do we start thinking about that? And once I started getting into it, I was hooked. I mean, it is a massive business. I mean, we think about the relationship between idea and meaning and scale and value. And if you think of the ideas as the raw material, right? And then the business is everything that's built around them.
And the one person I started really getting into this who gets it, who really gets it, is Laurene Powell Jobs, the owner of The Atlantic.

**Brian Kenny** (3:24)
How did you hear about this? What made you want to write a case about it?

**Caroline Elkins** (3:27)
Yeah, well, look, I began sort of thinking about some of this about three or four years ago, and as we know, if you wait a nanosecond, the AI field is changing, right? And so, at that time, and certainly this has snowballed, many of the major legacy media organizations are suing AI.
OpenAI, Anthropic and the rest, and The New York Times is a famous case, the Authors Guild, John Grisham and the rest, and they're suing them for IP violation. Basically, they're saying, this is not fair use, you need to pay us, we need to talk about some of that. But Laurene Powell Jobs says, she comes at this from both somebody who has a deep appreciation for literature. She forms something called the Emerson Collective, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson. And it's an LLC, it's not a non-profit, and she's buying up various aspects, including The Atlantic, one of the most storied magazines in the history of the United States. But she's also somebody who clearly embraces technology. And when she buys this from Bradley, she says to him, this is both a literary magazine, but it's gonna be a technology company. And she looks at this and says, we think about those classic from the strategy playbook, S-curves, right? We think about things like Kodak and Blackberry and all those who failed to get on the next S-curve. Laurene Powell Jobs looks at Legacy Media and says, I'm going to look to the next S-curve. That's precisely what she does with this magazine.