This month's edition focuses on how stories create value when ownership, alignment, and incentives are designed to reward the creative team behind them.
Our Feature looks at THE RIP as a lesson in shared upside, exploring how trust, structure, and long-term thinking determine who benefits when a story succeeds.
Our Media Lens examines what happens when public media stops functioning as civic infrastructure, and why that failure creates downstream consequences for creators and communities.
In our What You Missed section, we share two recent LinkedIn newsletter pieces that reinforce core STORYSMART® principles - a topic is not a story, and the importance of control and trust in telling a true story.
Our work is about building enduring story assets that reward all.
Thank you for being here.
1. Feature Article
The RIP:A Lesson in Shared Upside
When I first noticed The Rip climbing Netflix’s charts, I assumed it would be another well-made, star-driven crime thriller. I expected it to be entertaining, topical, and quickly absorbed into the ever-moving current of streaming content. Here today, gone tomorrow.
That assumption wasn’t wrong. But it also wasn’t the point.
What makes The Rip worth paying attention to isn’t just the story it tells on screen, or even the fact that it draws inspiration from real events. What makes The Rip notable is what happened behind the scenes. The business story behind the storytelling is what made me want to watch the film and write this.
I’m talking specifically about how the film was financed, structured, and compensated. Quietly, without fanfare, The Rip has become a test case for something the streaming era has largely stripped away: shared upside for creators.
When we decided to get into making documentary films, my first instinct was not to chase streamers, foundations, or private backers.
Instead, I reached out to Nine PBS, the local public television station in St. Louis.
From my point of view, PBS represents the gold standard of documentary excellence.
If we were going to do this work seriously, I wanted to understand the bar we needed to reach. I needed to understand the ethical, editorial, and structural expectations before anything was filmed.
In October 2024, I met Aja Williams, Vice President and Chief Content Officer at Nine PBS, for lunch.
