Laurie Segall is betting she can build a new model for true-crime investigations, one that doesn’t have to rely on documentary structures or the hour-long conventions of broadcast TV.
The journalist, who first gained traction at CNN as a technology reporter before leaving to launch her own creator endeavor, will launch “Searching for Mr. Deepfakes,” a 13-part quest to find the owner of a site that creates explicit sexual images of women without their consent. The series debuts on TikTok and breaks many long-held rules.
“I love this idea of creating a new playbook for unscripted content,” says Segall, during a recent interview. “This is kind of a beta test for it.”
The idea, Segall says, is to make sure her story — about probing digital realms for tips about the alleged perpetrator — is available to anyone who wants to see it, especially younger women who are more likely to grapple with this problem. “We really want people who need this the most to see it, “she says.
Segall has allies. Paris Hilton, who suffered from just this sort of violation when she wasn’t even 20 years old, is heavily involved with the series, which is produced by Segall’s Mostly Human, in partnership with BFD and Hilton’s 11:11 Media. Hilton, who appears in the series and does an interview with Segall about the effects of deepfakes, will also promote the project through her own digital and social channels.
“It was just one of the most painful and traumatizing, humiliating, degrading experiences of my life,” says Hilton during an interview with Segall in one of the series’ episodes.
This is the sort of probe that would make for a riveting hour of NBC’s “Dateline” or ABC’s “20/20,” or, in more recent times, a streaming documentary on HBO or Netflix. Segall, however, believes in communicating with modern audiences via platforms they embrace. Many of the TikTok episodes of “Searching for Mr. Deepfakes” last just two to four minutes.
Segall sees other ways to tell the story as well. Her podcast, Mostly Human, recently launched and she will launch a four-part series of “Searching for Mr. Deepfakes” in longer form. This version of the story will debut June 4 and be released on Thursdays for four weeks.
Segall is taking advantage of a creator culture that she was early to see. After a decade at CNN, she left to start her own production company and has never abandoned her interest in chronicling the dazzling innovations spurred by new technology players, as well as some of the problems created by such fast-paced change. For a time, she was a contributor to a new “60 Minutes” concept that played out on Quibi, the short-form content platform that proved to be ahead of its time.
“I saw around the corner,’” she says. “Content doesn’t have to sit in one place.”
Segall launches the effort as more news organizations are opening their arms to alliances with independents. NBC News recently unveiled a partnership with technology journalist Joanna Stern, and Fox News Channel has licensed the popular conservative podcast “Ruthless,” adding to the ranks of opinion contributors.
In the case of “Mr. Deepfakes,” Segall believes the issue she investigates is more important than anything else and hopes a broad audience will interact with the new story. Though she’s long enjoyed covering the innovations spurred by new technology, “I can see a train wreck coming,” she notes, when things move so quickly they slip past old guardrails and people get hurt.
