Cyndi Stivers, Director of Curation at TED, will speak at the upcoming FIPP World Media Congress in Madrid, Spain, drawing on a media career that spans from hot-type newspaper rooms to digital publishing and global event platforms. According to coverage from FIPP and WAN-IFRA, Stivers began her career in a New York City newsroom while taking programming classes in college, driven by a conviction that traditional newspaper production methods were unsustainable.
Curating Human Magazines and Global Sequencing
At TED, Stivers combines administrative management with editorial sequencing, describing her role as editing a “human magazine.” According to Stivers, TED relies on a smorgasbord approach to content that places diverse speakers—such as a scientist next to a comedian, a poet, and a surgeon—in deliberate sequences. She notes that arranging this flow resembles programming a magazine issue, characterizing the work as “storytelling writ large” on a larger canvas and extended time scale.
When selecting ideas designed to resonate months into the future, Stivers exercises caution regarding short-term metrics like Google Trends, maintaining that data-driven sources cannot predict which talks will succeed six months out. Instead, she asserts that successful curation requires a combination of evidence and editorial instinct. Reflecting on her time launching Time Out New York, she recalls that one of the publication’s best-selling issues following the September 11 attacks focused entirely on sleep to address widespread anxiety and insomnia. Drawing a parallel to current global unease, Stivers suggests that programmers can anticipate audience hungers by responding to the zeitgeist during periods of instability.
Global Audiences and Human Metrics
TED reaches an international audience united less by geography than by a shared outlook. According to Stivers, viewers are primarily curious individuals who care about the future and seek hope, good information, and practical solutions rather than angry diatribes. This shared motivation shapes TED’s content boundaries, excluding rants in favor of constructive wisdom and fresh perspectives.
To measure what travels across borders, Stivers looks to a human metric provided by TED’s volunteer translation community. Operating across more than 100 languages, volunteers independently choose which published talks to translate, subjecting their work to rigorous review before publication. Stivers notes that observing which talks translators select offers reliable insight into global audience interests.
Building on this translation network, TED has introduced AI-driven dubbing to reproduce English-language talks in other languages. According to Stivers, this technology is deployed strictly with the speaker’s consent and relies directly on human-generated or human-approved transcripts in the target language. This approach has driven significant growth in TED’s non-English audience as translation technology continues to advance.
Pandemic Lessons and Trust in Media
The organization’s operational model faced distinct pressures during the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted live event revenues and required a rapid pivot to remote talk production. Stivers notes that while TED possessed deep expertise in live events, remote recording presented entirely new hurdles. The virtual format underscored how deeply audiences missed in-person gatherings, observing that virtual attendees consistently used digital spaces to connect through longstanding community ties.
Looking ahead, Stivers identifies artificial intelligence applications as a vital tool for streamlining media operations, reducing production costs, and sustaining quality information. Simultaneously, she points to the persistent challenge of ensuring information trustworthiness for new generations of media consumers, expressing a hope that emerging innovators will establish reliable standards for verifying digital sources.
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