Why are young men being failed?

Good morning.

A while back I wrote in a notebook that the hardest part of building anything is not the idea. The idea is cheap. The hard part is finding people who will carry the thing with you when it stops being exciting and starts being work. Last week I finished hiring six of them, full-time, for Common Sense.

It took longer than I planned. It cost more than I budgeted. I sat through interviews that went nowhere and read applications that made me question my job description more than the applicant. What I have now is a founding team that starts properly this month, and the strange feeling of having handed pieces of something I built alone to people I have known for a matter of weeks.

That is the part nobody warns you about. Hiring is not a resourcing exercise, it is an act of trust with a payroll attached. I will write more honestly about the mistakes later this year, because I made a few and they were instructive.

For now, the practical bit. If you have been reading me for a while and have never subscribed to Common Sense, this is the moment to fix that. The next six months will look nothing like the last six. New shows, live events, documentaries, and a proper newsroom rhythm rather than me and a small crew holding it together with goodwill. Get on the list before it all starts moving, because watching a thing get built is far more interesting than arriving after it is finished.

I am looking for a YouTube editor for my personal channel.

Not for Common Sense, this one is mine. I need someone who understands pacing, who can take a long-form conversation or a video essay and make it hold attention without turning it into noise. Someone reliable, with taste, who has opinions about their own work.

If that is you, email me. (hello@mikeomoniyi.com) If you know someone, send them my way or send me their showreel. Good editors are usually found through recommendation rather than job boards, which is why I am asking you rather than posting an advert.

I have just released a reaction to the manosphere documentary, and it is probably the most careful thing I have made this year.

The easy version would have been a takedown. Point at the worst voices in that world, laugh at them, collect the applause from people who already agree with me. The uncomfortable truth is that those voices are answering a question young men are actually asking, and the rest of us have mostly responded by telling them the question is illegitimate.

Young men are lonely, they are behind in education, they are dying by their own hand at rates we would treat as a national emergency in any other group, and the loudest people offering them a story about themselves are often the ones least equipped to be trusted with it. That is not a culture war point. That is a pastoral failure, and I include the church, the school system, and my own industry in it.

So the video spends less time on who is wrong and more time on what would actually help. Real relationships, real responsibility, real standards held by people who stay. I would genuinely like to know whether you think I got it right, so watch it and reply to this email with your honest view.

More soon.

M.T Omoniyi