Vineet Malhotra, Veteran Journalist & Founder, A Few Good Minds
Perhaps we’ve never had so many chances to be heard, yet perhaps we’ve never had so little time to listen.
Each and every day, we navigate our way through a vast amount of information. News tickers battle for attention against video reels, podcasts against blogs, opinions against reactions, and dialogue is increasingly being reduced to clips designed to catch the eye in just a few seconds. Short form information isn’t necessarily bad. It’s done wonderful things for accessibility and democracy.
As someone who has spent years working as a journalist and a television news anchor, I can tell you that the most interesting part of the interview usually comes right after answering the first obvious question.
A person’s first response may give you information. The second question gives you context. But it is often the third or fourth question, when the rehearsed answer has run its course, that tells you how someone actually thinks.
That realm is becoming more and more critical.
Nowadays, anybody has the opportunity to voice their opinions, and any company has all necessary means to create its own narrative. However, audiences have grown adept at noticing when something was created artificially. While an absolutely polished message might grab the viewer’s attention, credibility is not so easy to create artificially.
And that is why true dialogue is crucial.
A dialogue is not always the loudest or the most controversial one. It does not require having viral moments every few minutes. A dialogue requires curiosity, disagreement without aggression, and most of all, time for the thought to ripen.
The role of the interviewer in this sense, then, cannot simply be to read through a list of questions. Rather, it must be to listen carefully enough to spot when the answer provides the key to a new door. Some of the most enlightening interviews come when you are able to skip the next question in favor of exploring the last answer.
It is precisely this approach that made me conceive of A Few Good Minds.
The thought behind A Few Good Minds was not to generate yet another outlet of content in the increasingly cluttered world of the internet. Rather, it was to make space for individuals who deserved more than just the soundbite treatment. There are fascinating minds in business, culture, technology, sports, and politics who can provide their most interesting insights only when they are asked.
Perhaps the future of content will not even consist of this conflict between short form and long form. They both have their places. The important thing here is whether what we have is content that keeps our attention or conversations that keep us thinking after they are finished.
In a time where there is an abundance of content everywhere, it may seem that the currency is our attention itself. But trust, curiosity, and depth take much more effort to earn than anything else.
Sometimes, all we need to do is let a good mind complete his thoughts.
