When Sarah Wick AB ’10 graduated from Harvard during a recession, she says that, “the entertainment industry was already starting to shift… you could feel the TV and film business contracting.” On the positive side, digital media was starting to unfold as a newly viable path. “YouTube was becoming a real platform, and the idea that content could be created and monetized outside of traditional systems felt new and exciting,” Sarah recalls. “It had an early, almost ‘old Hollywood’ energy to it.”

That’s how Sarah ended up at Maker Studios, which was later acquired by Disney. At Maker Studios, she ran one of the largest verticals in the company and realized that she was pulled towards startup environments, where everything is messy and it’s a lot of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks. That propensity for problem-solving led her to join Crooked Media after the 2016 election. “I joined the company as COO and the first non-editorial employee.” There, she helped scale the company across audio, subscriptions, and community. “During that time, I became increasingly focused on local news and the role it plays in shaping how people understand the world around them.” Once she left Crooked Media, Sarah found herself returning to the same question over and over: how could she make a city like Los Angeles easier to understand?

The answer was L.A. Material: a new digital news outlet that aims to make Los Angeles legible. L.A. Material launched this March, led by Sarah and her co-founders, Julia Wick (her sister), who won a Pulitzer at the LA Times, Hayes Davenport AB '08, a close friend who Sarah met on the Harvard Lampoon and Julia Turner, who has a background running Slate and serving as a masthead editor at the LA Times. "Our hope is that we are combining editorial strength with a new, digital-first business model designed to actually sustain itself.” Sarah says. She and her team want to make the city “legible,” and addressing the gap of understanding what’s actually happening in L.A. is the organization’s goal. The team encompasses “some of the best journalists” (several of whom have Pulitzers or have overseen newsrooms that have won similar awards).  

“The information exists, but it’s fragmented, buried, or shaped by incentives that don’t always serve readers,” Sarah notes. “At the same time, I had seen firsthand how local news ecosystems were collapsing. Publications are shrinking, consolidating, or disappearing altogether. When I was growing up, L.A. had a thriving media landscape. That’s no longer the case, and I believe you can profoundly feel the absence. It impacts accountability, civic understanding, and even community.  I think about how much people like Jonathan Gold made the city feel full of energy and possibility and how vital that collective feeling is for a healthy, thriving city.” Sarah has a background in venture capital, which she feels sharpened how she thinks about focus, capital efficiency, and the importance of creating a strong company narrative. Combining this past experience in VC with her time at Crooked Media, which was formative in learning how to create a modern media company, positions her and L.A. Material well for a future of success. “It’s not only a newsletter,” Sarah says. “It’s a platform that will extend into reporting, audio, events, and community.”

All of those aspects mean that Sarah’s everyday life consists of a mix of programming, operational, and strategic work. She wants to ensure that everything they’re publishing hits two key goals: clear and useful. Sarah says of the future: “The goal is to become a core information source for Los Angeles, something people rely on to understand the city in a clear and consistent way. That includes expanding the newsroom, increasing coverage, and building out additional formats. We’re launching a podcast and considering other audio products, which makes sense in a city where people spend so much time commuting.”

The goal ultimately is to expand into in-person experiences as well, with events and community-building engagement. In a world where there is such an influx of polarization in the media, Sarah says that “Clarity and trust are the antidote.” Sarah wants L.A. Material to be a transparent source for news, elevating strong journalists and attaching real accountability to the work she and her team are doing. 

In terms of her advice for others looking to make their start in journalism and media, Sarah has advice that she tries to live by every day and was key to the foundation of L.A. Material. “Work with people who are better than you in specific areas and trust them to lead in those areas,” she states. “That requires being clear about what you don’t know and giving people the space to do their jobs well. When you build a team like that, you get better outcomes and a stronger organization overall.”