More and Less

I’m gutted by the recent layoffs at The Washington Post, especially the complete elimination of a sports section that’s been part of my daily life since I started to read. Call it a murder. Rank it “among the darkest days in the history of one of the world’s greatest news organizations.” Choose to skip the nostalgia and go directly to anger. Whatever. I just know it sucks.

I also know this is a tired narrative. Newspapers are endangered species. It’s not the first institution I grew up with to essentially cease existing. Change is inevitable. Etc.

That’s why I choose to focus on a different story reported the same day as the Post’s demise: multifaceted creators Hank and John Green announced they were donating their multimedia company to the public and making it a nonprofit.

“Part of what Complexly’s trying to do is create good information on the internet,” Hank told the Associated Press. “Let’s actually just say that this is our goal. Like, our goal isn’t to build a big company and sell it someday.”

“There’s never been more information and yet there’s never been less information that you feel you can trust,” John added. “Our goal at Complexly has always been to make trustworthy content. And making Complexly a public good, for me, is the next step in that process.”

The list of admirable things Hank and John have done and continue to do is staggering¹. Turning Complexly, a production studio that posts free educational content to an audience of 32 million (!) on YouTube, into a nonprofit is just the latest example. The staff will remain the same. The long list of shows they create—like Crash Course (16.9 million subscribers²), SciShow (8.36 million subscribers) and my personal favorite, Study Hall (a newer channel launched in partnership with Arizona State University that helps you navigate college, including online courses that are eligible for college credit)—is expected to actually expand.

The main changes? John³ steps back from day-to-day stuff and becomes “founder emeritus.” Hank⁴ takes a seat among a new board of directors and continues to host some shows. Both brothers relinquish any equity they had in Complexly.

“We’ve always been a mission-driven company,” they explain on their new .org website. “Becoming a nonprofit means we will be able to lean into public support, supercharging our mission to make content the world needs, not what is optimized for advertisers.”

What a novel way of thinking for a media organization.

1. A very incomplete list includes The Project For Awesome, The Foundation to Decrease World Suck, The Awesome Socks Club (proceeds benefit global health), The Awesome Coffee Club (also global health), and The Good Store (independently made and ethically sourced items, the sales of which have allowed Hank and John to distribute more than $10 million to various causes). ↩︎
2. Just for comparison, The Washington Post peaked in 2021 with 3 million subscribers. ↩︎
3. You might know John from his bestselling novels, like The Fault in Our Stars or Turtles All the Way Down. He’s an incredibly successful and prolific writer. But, like his brother, he’s also relentlessly thoughtful and creative. It makes me exhausted and envious. My favorite example of his limitless ingenuity: he loves soccer and enjoys playing EA’s soccer video game. He’s famous enough that when he plays the video game and streams it online, he generates ad revenue. John turned that ad revenue into a sponsorship of his favorite club in England, the perpetual underdog Wimbledon AFC. “It’s the greatest fairy tale in the history of sports, as far as I’m concerned,” he says. That sponsorship started more than a decade ago as a patch on the back of the team’s shorts (he thought that’d be funny—and cool to see while playing the video game) and has grown every year since. He now helps the team financially compete in the transfer window by retaining players or acquiring new ones. Again, this primarily happens from him PLAYING A VIDEO GAME. ↩︎
4. Hank comes up with more ideas than any person could ever possibly capitalize on—yet he tries. Like his brother, he’s also authored novels (two, so far). He’s the co-founder of VidCon, a major content creator conference now owned by Viacom; the co-founder of DFTBA Records, which supports YouTube creators and musicians; hosts a bunch of Complexly shows; helps launch a bunch of really cool apps and games (I’m a big fan of Gubbins; his latest is Focus Friend), etc. You get the idea … ↩︎