This week on The Breaker Pod, we sat down with Caliber co-founder and CEO Ramin Beheshti — the former Dow Jones CPTO who, in 2021, stepped away from legacy media alongside Sir Will Lewis and others to launch a Gen-Z-focused news startup. 

We were lucky to escape yesterday’s scorching heat inside Crevette, a West Village seafood favorite by the same team as Dame and Lord’s. (Cheers to the owners, Ed Szymanski and Patricia Howard, for having us down.) 

Beheshti’s original company, The News Movement, has since evolved into Caliber, a social-first media business encompassing The News Movement, political outlet The Recount, the pop-culture-focused Capsule, a branded-content arm called Caliber Collective, and creator-focused news app SaySo. 

Beheshti is the first to point out that Gen-Z has not, contrary to popular belief, abandoned news altogether.

The idea that “kids don’t want news or that Gen-Z don’t want news is bullshit,” he said, pointing to Caliber’s audience numbers. “150 million people a month are consuming our content, and 70% of them are under 35.”

“If you can create news that resonates with that audience and is delivered in a way that they consume all of their other content, I think there’s no end to the amount that they’ll consume it,” he added.  

The issue, though, he argued, has less to do with the news itself but more with the reality that many younger consumers distrust institutions. 

“They trust people,” he said, referring to social media creators who speak into their iPhone camera over a polished anchor desk package from a legacy outlet.

“I think the U.S. landscape has kind of vilified traditional media,” referencing Donald Trump’s threats to the press. “Also, I don’t think traditional media has done enough to espouse the values of journalism… So why should [Gen-Z] trust it just because it’s The Wall Street Journal?”    

SaySo, Caliber’s newest product, Beheshti explained, gives personalized short-form news digests built around vetted creators and TikTok-style vertical video. The difference: SaySo intentionally discourages the sort of endless doomscrolling we all fall victim to.

“We want you to spend less time,” Beheshti explained. “We’re trying to appeal to a group of people, an audience, that wants to know what’s going on, but they don’t want to be overwhelmed by it.”

The startup world, as Breaker knows well, hasn’t always been smooth sailing. Beheshti admitted that launching The News Movement with five co-founders — including Lewis — came with plenty of friction and “hard yards,” especially as investors and observers constantly compared the company to failed digital media ventures like BuzzFeed and Vice.

Nonetheless, he’s bullish on the future of independent media and even optimistic about Lewis’ eventual return to the industry despite the controversies surrounding his tenure at The Washington Post. As Breaker reported last month, he’s now consulting for the Greek media company Antenna. 

“I think Will’s an incredibly smart person,” Beheshti said. “I hope he does [come back], because I think he’s still got a lot to offer.”

Catch more in this week's episode of The Breaker Pod. Make sure you check us out and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods.