The New Media Consensus
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You look like you're in vacation mode.

Got sunglasses on. You're seemingly outside in a European environment. I'm in Lisbon. Do you like Lisbon? I've had a good time. It's a pretty town. Lots of hills to walk up. The food's from grains. Alex, do you miss that European work-life balance? I mean, I grew up in the Mediterranean, which has a very specific pace of life, which is delightful. But in many ways, I couldn't wait to leave it because I felt I was always moving. Wanted to move a little faster. But now that I'm older, I kind of miss it.

Yeah, we should all retire to Europe. Yeah, well, isn't that what, you know, Europe is America's new Florida? Welcome to People vs. Algorithms, a show about detecting patterns in media, technology and culture. I'm Brian Marcy. I'm joined, as always, by Troy Young and Alex Schleifer. This week, New York Magazine published a terrific feature package on the state of the media industry.

With the simple, if obvious headline, "Can the media survive?" This gave me pause since the rule in journalism is that anytime you have a question headline, the answer is no. Although in this case, I don't think that's actually the answer.

Anyway, many of the themes covered by the 57 power players interviewed, New York calls them the most powerful people in media, will be very familiar to any listeners of this podcast. In fact, they represent something of a new consensus in the media business. The big outstanding question, of course, is what this industry overall looks like in five years. But there is this emerging consensus of the moment that goes something like this.

Subscriptions are the only credible business model for a serious news operation. Niche and specific is far better than mass in general. Media is downstream of tech and it needs to come to terms with the implications of that position. A new class of aggregators is emerging and they will have very different incentives from the last generations.

Lean and highly efficient media models are a must. The past is simply not coming back. And yes, that means print on the homepage, I'm sad to say. The middle is, as always, a perilous position and many legacy players are stuck there. Individuals are trumping institutions and will continue to do so. Micromedia will grow and proliferate, often at the expense of mass media.

You need to diversify if you're in the text content business. Many media companies will end up becoming fronts for other, better businesses. IP is still valuable and there are myriad ways to build a business around it, even if that business doesn't have the same contours as the past.

The New York Times is an outlier. Local news is the hardest problem to solve. Growth hacks never last and can't be a core value proposition. And the competition is not other publishers, but a far broader information space filled with everyone from tech platforms to grocery store chain, ad networks, and anyone with a phone and, oh, by the way, AI bots too.

Maybe all this means is, Troy says in our conversation, that we need a new idea. Or perhaps, as I posit, maybe this fragmentation or decentralization was just an inevitability from when the internet began. And what we're in the midst of is not an end, but something of a new beginning and a morphing. I mean, new models are emerging. They don't look exactly like the old models. They're often smaller.

And I believe that we will see not hundreds, but thousands of these kinds of micro media businesses in the future. It is difficult to operate a much larger business, but I do believe that the future overall is pretty bright for the media industry. Anyway, let me know your position on that. You can email me at [email protected]. Now onto the conversation with Troy and Alex. I wanted to start off because, and Alex, you're going to have to bear with us on this because

You know, the media business loves Naval Gazing and it's just, it's amazing. So New York Magazine came out with a package, which I was disappointed you weren't in it, Troy. I feel like they should have included you. Maybe I was one of the anonymous people in there. Oh, you could have been. I just figured they anonymized. They anonymized all the good stuff. I like how she included Charlotte Klein, I think put it together. A lot of the sort of sniping that is the media business is great.

But I wanted to start off by getting your sort of, what did you sort of take away? Not a ton of surprises in there, you know, subscriptions, niche, et cetera. We talk about a lot of this on the podcast, but give me your vibe check on it. We talk about it so much on this podcast that none of it's really felt, you know, super insightful. We do appear to have a new consensus, right? And I guess it's that,

Earning a direct relationship with the consumers is really the sort of true lingua franca of media. And therefore, subs matter and blah, blah, blah niches are the future. And now Apple News is good, which is, you know, I think something we can debate. And that voices are, you know, a new organizing point for, you know, challenging media brands. All of which says to me that maybe we need a new idea.

Because in media, we stampede, right? Oh, there's a guy up on the balcony here with a falcon to get rid of the pigeons, a killer falcon. Anyway, sorry, folks. So in some ways, Brian, I think that media, in the media, everything old is new. I think we have this kind of digital media notion that everybody could build a media business. But before, it wasn't like that. And it was extraordinarily expensive. The barriers to entry were high and you had to earn in.

And it was extraordinarily difficult to build a flywheel subscription mechanism. My takeaway is there's very few businesses that have meaningful, I mean, other than sort of, you know, micro media businesses like you run, but the very few of them have the sort of subscription flywheel.

And that to me is the kind of, you know, the watermark that you want to get above. That's not to say that you're not augmenting the subscription revenue with other things, you know, advertising events, whatever, but the flywheel is essential if you want resilience and you want to do real reporting. And yeah, we all look kind of longingly at the New York times because they have a subscription flywheel that is, you know, very resilient and, and defensible.

And it enables them to create a better product. And very, very few media brands have that. Let's call that a, like a $50 million subscription business or even a $20 million subscription business as material.

And in that switch, you know, local is clearly the big casualty because local media businesses have not been hugely successful in generating sub-revenue. Two-thirds of the jobs are gone in the last decade. And this is an interesting stat. The New York Times employs 7% of newspaper employees.

So if you can't make that subscription flywheel work and increasingly being purely ad-led is just, it just feels like it's getting harder and harder. You need to have a media adjacent business, right? And is that a marketplace business, an affiliate business, a licensing business, lists, you know, maybe IP based video businesses, but you're sort of adjacent to, you know, a core publishing proposition. Yeah.

I was reminded of it, Brian, and we had a little back and forth on this. I'm in Lisbon and this is in 2014, I think. The first timeout market started in Lisbon. Yeah, it was there. And now they have them in a bunch of places, including in Brooklyn. And it was packed, really big market. I think there's...

I agree with you that there can be a kind of a food court vibe. It's a food court. It's a food court. Like what are we doing here? None of the food is really that good or that distinguished, but it's fun. You know, it's lots of people. There's a vibe there. Now they're doing, it forced me to look up their business, which is publicly traded in London. It's I think a little under $150 million and loses money and has a bit of debt and a bit of a tight spot.

And they're trying to expand to multiple markets, right? They had one in Miami. They're doing one. I think they're doing one. The one in Miami closed. Didn't work. Okay. So they're doing one in Dubai. They got a whole bunch of markets on tap. Yeah. Cape Town. And they're going to stamp it. I think I always liked the original one.

I remember I talked, I did a couple of podcasts with Julio Bruno, who was leading that effort to change that business. And I think that's a great example of a lane that has developed where the media has lost its original core.

core economic purpose, right? Like timeout. You don't pick up timeout to figure out what's going on in the city around you. I don't. It was under half the revenue when I looked. Yeah. And so they built out a marketplace business, which is really not a marketplace business. They

They built out a market business really hard. It's capital intensive. They took on a ton of debt. Julio left a couple of years ago. The pandemic hit them. Actually, that's why the Miami thing didn't work. They were just opening it at that time.

And, you know, they're soldiering through. But I think that that is these lanes are developing. I think when I was reading the packages, thinking about like our conversations, it seems pretty clear. There's the escape velocity lane, which is, you know, the New York. It's very small. It's like the New York Times. That's everyone goes to the same examples or it's business publications like Bloomberg, which also, by the way, has a terminal business.

FT, Wall Street Journal, they're going to be fine. And then you've got some like what I consider DTC cultural, like The Atlantic. The Atlantic, it looks like they have a model. They were able to make the turn on subscriptions. It's not going to be a massive. It really has become a bit of a doomsday publication, right? It is, but it works. Is there anything more depressing than leading in?

Well, did you see Trump shared a... No, Elon Musk shared... Same thing. Shared a fake Atlantic story. And it was plausible that it could have been an actual story, but we're in this sort of post-truth world. But that's...

And the New Yorker. I think the New Yorker has done a really good job. And there are a few of those, and that's a lane, that's fine. But the reality is most people are not going to get that lane. The middle is going to get crushed. So you need to be either extremely small and focused. And I read within that piece a sort of

I guess nostalgia for the way this business used to be because there was a dismissiveness to, you know, in the anonymous comments to the idea of having, why do these people just want to have like a profitable business with like 9,000 like paying readers? Because that's business. That tells me that this person, one, has never built anything in their life. I'm positive they never built anything.

And two, that they've probably been stewards of money-losing businesses constantly. And three, think that this is not actually a business. You have to run profitable businesses. Wow. Go figure. And a lot of the previous models, they didn't work in a different era and they're not working now. And so then the other lane that opens up is you become what I consider like a front operation for a different, better business. Media is good business.

Good to get attention, right? But the reality is, if you look at advertising spending and you go through these reports, advertising on publishers is now in the other category. It doesn't even warrant a section. And that's not coming back. I don't see that changing exactly. There's only so much subs to go around. So yeah, the most resilient models are going to be smaller, right? Yeah.

And you know what? For all, I mean, for all of the sort of hang ringing news might be a good and okay, you know, segment to be in. News might be okay if you can find the path. Why do you say that? How many of these beers have you had? I say that because it's always new. Because we are in a moment where...

One entire category of news is dying, which was all the local stuff.

where there's one big successful liberal media organization called the New York Times and then there's a few business pubs because news needs to be made every day. And if you can figure out your own formula, which helps people navigate the world better, they'll subscribe to you. I'm not sure it's easy to build a subscription proposition around fashion unless it's B2B fashion.

It's very difficult. Lifestyle categories are really difficult. That's why. Where are you going to find that? So, Tim, one of the great examples to discuss in terms of that, one that's very difficult. I mean, listen, you could easily, I'm talking about Time Magazine. You could easily put that into the, like, okay, we're going to harvest it for IP, right? Right.

And we're going to do Time Studios, and we're going to do documentaries. That's what they are doing now. Well, that's part of the business. The other part of the business is essentially a list brand, right? You know, the top people. By the way, that's Newsweek. Newsweek is very successful. I think we should have Dev on here because they've actually been successful with this model. What brands have kind of emerged that maybe have a shot? Does Puck have a shot?

Is that news? Kind of news, right? Does Semaphore have a shot? Does Axios? Is Axios a business? Is Panicblower a business? These are all news businesses. It's sort of

I mean, in the magazine category, lifestyle businesses were always ad-led. They're always ad-led businesses. And I'm struggling to figure out how that model is going to last long. Everybody just said, well, if our advertising isn't growing, we'll offset it with affiliate. To me, affiliate is under, particularly product affiliate, is under tremendous pressure.

Google doesn't like the category anymore. I mean, it seems to me it's pretty clear that most magazine brands will end up in that sort of front business category. It'll be a front for something, whether it's brand activations, whether it's a lists and rankings business that these brands still have.

value to be rung. Isn't the problem then like how do you retain people? Because do people who've dreamt of becoming writers all their life want to work on a front activation for a... Well, you don't tell them that, Alex. And you don't hire them. Well, but that's what I'm saying. Like, where does the talent go? I think that's often missed.

Well, I mean, I think that's a good, because that's the doom loop scenario. I don't want to get negative. You know, I think counter to that, and I think it sort of glossed over this, is there's a lot of people developing really successful solo type businesses downstream of news. And whether that's podcasting or newsletters, yeah, these are small.

Some of these are really profitable. You know, Matt Iglesias. Yeah, but let's not put, those aren't real media businesses, dude. Matt Iglesias, he's got a couple million bucks. That's not a business. Right, but you have a hundred of those. It's better than any of the others. It's a hot dog stand. But you put a hundred of those. First of all, it's not a hot dog stand. I actually looked this up because a pizzeria, they usually top out at like 600,000. Okay, it's a pizzeria. It's a pizzeria.

There's a lot of pizzerias out there. There's a lot of pizzerias. It's like, you know... Excuse me, Papa John's. Yeah, I mean, does this thing... I'm not saying you can't, Brian. Let's not take this personally. I'm offended. I feel attacked. No, Brian, I think that you're... I mean, without disclosing anything, you probably... I have a front business and a newsletter business. And a burgeoning podcast business, I would say. Yeah. Guys, get off my lawn. What?

I'm happy for you, Brian, but a couple million dollars is not a big business. But here's the thing, right? You have these organizations that used to hire hundreds of people, live in an excellent business that is advertising, huge margin. And now that's exploded. And it means maybe instead you have 200 businesses with one person that makes $2 million a year. 200? There's going to be thousands of them. Thousands. Thousands.

There's going to be so many of these businesses and they're not necessarily going to stay where they start. Eric Newcomer left Bloomberg and he just did his four-year anniversary post.

He generated $2 million. He's going to generate $2 million this year with 50% margins. So he's going to keep hiring, and that will become a smaller version. Maybe Eric can get that to a giant business. I don't know. But at worst, I think it becomes a smaller version of this era's tech crunch. He's right between VCs and startups at a time of a gold rush into AI, so he's making a ton of money off of them.

We're seeing these media organizations no longer breaking the scoops or having the big interviews, right? There's hardly... I mean, they might be a $2 million business, but to the consumer, it hardly matters. Hey, guys, it's all good. It's all good. I'm very happy for the journalist that used to make 200 that's now making 80 and is cleaning the dishes and writing the stories. It's great. I don't know. I feel like...

It's great. No, I honestly think it's great. It's not a scaled business. No, it's not a scaled business. Absolutely. Yeah. Maybe that's what we're saying. Yeah. I mean, the selection isn't being run by like scaled media business. How big is Joe Rogan's business? I don't know.

It's at least $100 million. Okay, yeah, because he's got that $250 million deal with Spotify. And that's a good... Is that a scale business? Yes, it's Papa John. How are the margins on that? They're killers. Yeah, they're killers. Just some dude in a chair.

Basically, a lot of the media businesses are caught between being upstreamed and downstreamed. And that like tech is upstream of media. They take most of the value because they control the distribution. They're the commanding heights, et cetera. And then downstream, you have particularly in the news industry,

People are making lots of money without doing the really hard reporting work that is not economically feasible. I mean, we always talk about these podcasts. We talk about people who are doing the reporting, and they're just providing the raw materials for an entire... These might be hot dog stands or pizza parlors, but they're profitable, unlike a lot of news companies. Yeah.

Only the companies that have the subscription flywheel can do the reporting, the real reporting. Because the reporting isn't

It needs support of hundreds of thousands of subscribers because it's not an economic affair. Yeah. And unfortunately for reporting, it's not something you can copyright or truly own. So it's very easy to just pick up and recontextualize for an audience, right? So these tiny businesses with tiny cost structures have like their field reporters are

you know, the two or three large news outlets, social media, and then, you know, they don't need that infrastructure anymore. That's kind of what's tragic, right? If you spend money on reporting, you can't really protect it. But that's always been the issue with news is that it's like a

The second you gave everyone else the infrastructure to publish, then they had free access to content. And maybe you got it three minutes later, but you could essentially rebuild your news program. Yeah, I had a question for Brian around this, Alex, that I put in the text thread and he didn't really answer it. I either missed it or I didn't know the answer. Well, I'll ask it to the audience and I'll ask it to Brian. But I'm getting frustrated with these sort of

It's not that they're news. They're sort of these new centrists. They're like Bill Maher and our buddy Shane Smith patting each other on the back saying, oh, we like to get information from both sides. We're tired of liberal media bias. You know, you got to dig deeper and we know how to dig deeper. Yeah.

And we're not just going to go along with what the liberal media says because we need to see the other side of the story. And to me, underneath, when I peel it back, part of it is the sort of, it's the all-in, the Lex Friedman, the Joe Rogan, the Shane Smith, the Bill Maher. They're all trying to grab power from the sort of what was previously...

kind of this protected media elite that had a lock on kind of the one point of view, right? The reported point of view. And this is a kind of a power grab, right? And they too have, and part of it is kind of funny because they want to say, we don't like Kamala and we don't,

can't say that we like Trump, but we kind of like Trump. And some of them just say they like Trump, but they're these kind of new center-right group. But they challenge mainstream media, but they use mainstream media to back up their points of view. We've said that before. And I don't know where it goes. It's just like,

You know, and people listen, you know, they have huge audiences, right? But there's nothing underneath of it from a reporting perspective. It's just like us, a couple of fucking idiots talking about something and pretending they know something on a podcast. Yeah. You know what I mean? Where's the facts? Information space.

Well, I mean, I would say a few things. One is, I think this is just a normal sort of toting up to new power centers, right? I mean, this is like the reverse of David Brooks. I mean, David Brooks was always the guy who would be like, oh, I'm a Republican, but I'm the kind of Republican that progressives can tolerate. And so, you know, signaling that you're not about-

Yeah, you're not about the wackos, et cetera. There's always, because I feel, and we'll see what happens in the election. I have no idea. But it feels like there has been a shift from- You don't want to be a Republican in high school. It's the worst. Well, no. I mean, we've seen those statistics. Like, young women will-

absolutely out of hand not date someone who is a Trump supporter. A lot of them. It's not sexy. That's a tough call. I wonder why. For a young man, I gotta say.

You might want to make a business decision. I'm just saying. You know what I love about speaking about the news just for a second? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but it's the way all these people with sprayed faces discuss these statistics and then they're like, oh, that is an interesting statistic. Why is that happening? And then you're like, well, I don't know. Maybe it's because he's a sex offender and

Yeah. Well, that's also a common thing. Maybe that's why women are pissed off. I don't know. That's common in like the Joe Rogan kind of thing where he's like, no, no, no. And he goes, look it up. And then they look it up and they're like, no, it's totally different. He's like, yeah, but those statistics are not. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, okay, well, it's a lot of virtue signaling because the pendulum has swung a little bit. We've seen this in the political discourse and society in general. We went through a little bit of a wacky period where things went too far. I think it got branded as woke and whatever. And a lot of news organizations are trying to pull that back. I mean, the LA Times this week, the owner

And this is how screwed up these businesses. You know, the owner wanted to like get them out of, which is kind of interesting because his daughter apparently is like super progressive, but wanted to get them out of the endorsement business, which I mentioned in this podcast, I'm very in favor of newspapers getting out of the political endorsement business. I mean, focus on government accountability, not endorsements. Don't tell people that.

Not only that, but like literally who cares what the LA Times thinks. Yeah, that's what I mean. You're not even having an impact. Like nobody's voting based on the LA Times. Like they can barely review a movie. What other business? And then the union protested this and there was like, how can an owner, you know, be instructing how, pushing them how to like actually make the product? And it was, well, I

How do you operate these businesses if you own them but can't actually operate them? It's a very screwed up situation. But I think it's part of a larger... And really, the Times is part of this. The Times has been trying to claw its way back from...

frankly going too far, I think. And now it's interesting because in the run-up to the election, I would never see this. You see super progressive people claiming that the New York Times is biased against progressives. It's like, oh my God, what is going on here? I mean, I don't think the New York Times is, but when you see some of the reporting, I think the thing that's driving

people and honestly me crazy like me crazy is is the way the reporting is framed where

you know, there's one side saying things in a reasonable manner. He might disagree with them even strongly. And then the other side is just some rambling lunatic. And you can see all the gymnastics to put that into an article that makes it sound sane. And that is, to me, like that is, I'm so angry at the news right now. I just like, I could watch this whole shit burn down. The horse racing stuff, there's nothing substantive. And then they'll literally pick a tweet where there's like,

37 words that made no sense next to each other. And they'll recontextualize it. So it makes, it makes somebody who's doing his homework. And that feels like the New York times constantly doing that. Just like going across the middle, trying not to offend anyone, you know, I don't know that that's kind of, I think frustrating for me. It's a hard time to cover the GOP. No, no doubt about it. Cause they're insane. It's a fucking clown car.

And I don't know how, to your point, I totally agree, Alex. How do you make, how do you try to kind of be a little more balanced but not point out that this is like unhinged behavior? Everybody kind of like immediately flares up to like 100%, but it's...

To use the word of the moment, I think it's just the New York Times being demure. Like, well, we can't stoop this low. So even though he stood up and vomited on his audience, we're just going to say he had strong words against Trump.

you know, the current immigration climate or something, you know, but isn't it like maybe this like old ways of doing things and reporting the news in the way that feels like kind of gracious, right? Where they don't want to be mean or overly biased. And it comes across as just completely edited and sanitized for their audience. So it's really- And yet there's nowhere for a good conservative, like a conservative with the kind of

kind of liberal point of view like cultural and liberal there's nowhere to go where do you go is that the lane that the free press is trying to occupy a little bit sure the dispatch it's the road that i personally travel uh but you know you were more of a pirate wires guy

I mean, I find PirateWire's to be amusing, to be honest with you. They're, you know, cynical and strident and they admit that, you know, that Trump is Pete and Barnum, but they're, you know, they're good conservatives.

They're cutting. They're nasty. Yeah, that's fine. The dispatch actually is trying to occupy that lane. I think they got, they end up getting, they try not to have the TDS as you call it, as everyone calls it. But at the same time, they are, they're Republicans who just cannot abide by Trumpism and MAGA.

I think the centrist lane is one that so many people are trying to get to, and I think it's going to be really difficult. I mean, I think the culture has changed, but I don't know if there's a tremendous market. And if Trump wins this election, I think we're going to go back to craziness. We're going to miss the last four years. Go back to craziness?

It hasn't been crazy the last four years. No, I mean, it hasn't, but the media landscape has, it's funny, right? Because a lot of it, if you look at where we started four years ago, there's been this shift towards whatever tone the Rogans, et cetera, have, you know, kind of kept amplifying, which is kind of the pseudo fake intellectualism, pragmatism,

both sides, leaning slightly right, anti-woke. It's just being cranked up. And I do think that if the election is actually going to, for a lot of them, dictate where they end up, right? A lot of it is masked in some sort of... It got amplified when he lost because then it works very well with the victim mentality. Bill Maher, I can't listen to because he is like...

He has turned into kind of like this constant victim mindset. And you see it in the way things are phrased. Same thing with Joe Rubin. No, we love him. Bill Maher is now the quote unquote most trusted journalist in America. Yeah, sure. I mean, no offense to Dan Abrams, but I don't know.

These are just the facts. What happens when one or the other side wins and you can no longer play the victim? I do think there's going to be some tonal shifts, whoever wins. It's going to be interesting to see. But do you think that, let's just say Trump wins, and I think that is completely a possibility just based on... Should we keep the podcast going, Alex?

Just based on the actions of the campaigns, I think that is a... I'm just having a panic attack here. It's kind of like investing where you assume that other people have more information and you just follow them. I assume that campaigns with a billion dollars have more information on what is going on in this election than 538. And if you look at the actions that they're doing, I think it's pretty clear the direction that this is going. Now, let's just assume for a minute that Trump wins.

Does will it mean that we pay less taxes? Depending on how you're doing. Finally, I can dump that toxic sludge I've been holding into the river. This is this is a good time for those holding toxic sludge or crypto. Well, it was all generated by all the crypto I've been mining.

Does the news media, quote unquote, do they return to like hashtag resistance or do they continue this like awkward kind of dance of trying to occupy the middle?

I mean, what from a business perspective, I don't know if it's going to be as effective to get subscriptions by taking the hashtag resistance. Oh, I actually think completely the opposite. There'll be a huge part of the population, probably a majority, right? That I don't think will tolerate this kind of middling.

like down the middle reporting on what's going on. Like, I think... Okay, so we're going backwards. I think it's going to get ramped up. Like, we keep saying it's kind of like all entertainment. Entertainment is comfort, right? Life is difficult. And I think if people are just like so bummed out, they just want to turn the news and hear somebody say, you're right, this is fucked. Look at this idiot. Like, you know, like people seek comfort. And when...

you know, everything looks like it's going the wrong direction. The last thing you want is to have somebody gives you like the pragmatic view of what's happening. Like I, I, I, you know, I don't think there's, there's any other way than, than things ramping up. Don't you think?

You think the opposite? I think there is going to be a return to a little bit of the democracy dies in darkness stuff. I think that's a lane to occupy. I just don't know from a business perspective. I know I'm talking about the business and it's all about the impact. Sure, but I mean, the business is what's going to keep those things running. Well, look, the reality is...

Pivoting to being oppositional in 2017 was a great short-term business decision for publishers. And you can't divorce that from the fact that they took it. Trump was amazingly good for the bottom line of these companies because...

Oh yeah, he was like a tornado or a war in the Middle East. Like he's just, you know, there's just like something going on. I wonder though if the whole sort of system, like the system kind of flips over. Meaning it's sort of like our connection, the only time these days it seems that our connection to reality really matters is when someone like gets hurt or gets killed, right? When someone's fundamental rights are taken away.

But like everything else, it's just like, well, what did he say? Oh, that was a lie. Everything has kind of been virtualized. We live in this kind of fictitious play world where we all kind of use, you know, self-reinforcing truths to help us feel better about what we already believe. And nothing, I mean, it was so much easier when there was, even if it was biased, there was some kind of like, you know, connection to...

an authoritative truth dictated by, admittedly, a small group of people. But these sort of overlapping points of view of a kind of global cacophony of creators and different opinion leaders and the people that are more clownish somehow win out in this world. It's like, what the fuck? Like, does it just, what's the natural end of that process? That's what I don't understand.

Yeah. Are you reading the Yuval Hariri book? Because I just started getting into it. He talks about the sort of naive view of like, and which was peddled, frankly, by like Facebook and a lot of Silicon Valley. What's the name of the book? Nexus. Nexus. He talks about how, you know, this, the basic that more information means like we'll, we'll agree on quote unquote truth, you know, which is different than facts that we will come to an agreement on truth and we'll be more enlightened and

It clearly has not happened. We have more access to information now than any time at all on Earth. And it has actually had seemingly the opposite impact in that there is less of a center of gravity around what is true and not. And even...

If truth matters, I mean, you see this a lot with the they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, basically a defense of the fact that this is not true. I love that. I love that. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if this thing is quote unquote true. But this is why the moment the Elon moment is so weird and beguiling, right? Because physics is true.

Right. We'll agree that like catching a rocket ship out of thin air is true. That's crazy. Like electric cars are true. Connectivity through satellites. That's true. Like physics is true. We applaud the creations of a mad innovator. Right. But like the rest of it.

like what does it matter it's like does Elon just appreciate something that that Alex doesn't that the world where truth just is just like whatever story you want to make up but he can still like make rockets physics matters we

We can make things. We can get to Mars. Does that make any sense? We're going back to post-modernism. This is like Clinton. It depends on the meaning of the word is. Well, I think... No, but Trump... Elon Musk is a very confounding person. Oh, confounding. But it also shows like one of our, you know, as a species, one of our weaknesses, which is when we kind of find something attractive about a person that we immediately want to find everything attractive. And what's happened with like

you know, where everyone's media, we're noticing that, yeah, Elon, like that rocket stuff is, is really impressive. And there's obviously like a lot of intelligence in the man, but also like really deeply flawed, you know,

needing to be loved kind of energy. That's okay. Hasn't this always been the case? No, but I think what's happened actually, I was thinking about that. What's happened over the last decade, maybe 15 years, is that like we've really have to come to terms with like not...

Not getting too close to our heroes. I mean, there was definitely me too, where just like, you know, people that had been kind of revered for so long just were completely destroyed. Yeah, but that's demented violent behavior, but we're talking about stuff that's not. But I think his is demented violent behavior. Like, I mean, I don't know how you guys feel about it, but like a lot of that rhetoric, it will hurt people.

So for me, it's not just like there's a character that has quirks and throws a guitar out of a hotel room and has crazy parties. These are genuinely people that want to pass regulation that is going to impact people in a really physical way. So I don't see it as just quirkiness.

And so when that happens, I think we're kind of like, it kind of breaks our brains. And I think we're getting too much. What's weird about it though, Alex, is that at this point, even the supporters can't take half of what Trump's saying seriously. And they're just like, okay, yeah, he's going to say that shit. But when he gets into power, it'll all be moderated.

Or I mean, when he gets into power, the people we don't like won't be and that's the price worth paying, you know? What do you mean? Well, I think a lot of people look at it as like, it's not really about whether Trump wins or loses, but whether the other side loses, you know, and whoever gets into power.

I mean, he literally called Ted Cruz's wife ugly and Ted Cruz is licking his boots. It's incredible what people will do to get close to power. I think there was something of a backstory to that, though. Really? What would it be? I'll have to go back and check and get it. Yeah, there was something of a backstory. But, you know... Well, I mean, we have the leader of the free world saying that, like... Well, he wasn't the leader at that time. I'm not defending... Like, Trump's...

He's Trump. I guess my hope is, and then we'll move on to another topic, is at least this time around, I think that a lot of news organizations have learned a little bit, right? And I think getting caught up in the dumb leak drama, I just hope that does not happen again. Who's fighting with who? Who said, like...

This is playing into, like, Trump is a carnival barker. He understands programming. And he programmed this reality show, White House, that we don't hear any of that stuff with Biden. None of it. Like, none of it. I never hear about people fighting and whatnot. Like, didn't for the last four years. And that was, like, tremendous. And I don't think it illuminates the public at all. And I think it all ends up just creating...

just this swirl of

that it's impossible for a normal person to understand what is important. And the histrionics and the hysterical tone... You mean the coverage of the Trump White House? Yes. I think they played into his hands as a carnival barker. And I think it led to a public that was less illuminated on real issues. And then when there was issues, they got...

They got so hysterically covered that everything, everything was like the collapse of civilization. And most people, I think when you look at like why the trust in media is so low and it has actually accelerated with Trump and granted he's out there delegitimizing them.

is because a lot of people looked at it and were like, well, wait, this Russia stuff didn't turn out really to anything. Like all these things didn't, at least in the view, I think, of a large group of the population, a lot of the hysterics were not warranted. And so it's the typical- But the ratings were through the roof, right? When you're turning political coverage into the Kardashians. So was Al Capone's vault. I watched that thing. The what? You didn't get that in Cyprus. Al Capone's vault.

No, no. Fox and early Fox, early Fox, quote unquote, found Al Capone's vault in Chicago. And they had a primetime special to open the vault. It got a ton of people to watch. I watched as a kid. Nothing was in it. The difference here is though, that like you're, if that happens again, of course, all the worst parts are going to be amplified because much of the news media is even more desperate. So they're not going to all of a sudden say, well,

Now is when we're going to start making the right calls that are just not trying to just drive, you know, engagement through enragement. Right. I mean, that's the hack. Like, you know, Facebook taught everyone this is how you do it. And there's no reason not to do it. You know, and so I think unless people people's interface to media is

fundamentally changes their media diet, I think all of that stuff is still going to be created and pushed towards you because that's what we gravitate to. Let's move on from this. Let's talk about the new aggregators. Perplexity is raising at a $9 billion valuation, News Corp suing them. Meanwhile, Tolde, which we've talked about here before, they raised $24 million. They help

They help publishers understand who is crawling their sites and scooping up their data with the idea that they'll at least be able to set up something of a toll booth and get paid for all of those crawlers.

And I think what we're seeing is we're going to see a really interesting year as Google pushes out AI overviews and search changes quite a bit. Troy, what do you think about News Corp going after perplexity? I think it's essential. I hope they see their eyes on it. Wow. I mean, it's just so clear that these are the sort of unchanging agreements into a business that they'll sort of genuflect to...

equitable relationship with media. But this is, let's be honest, this is just kind of reprocessed intellectual property for the most part. And I find this new generation of aggregators to be very compelling from a consumer perspective. Like I've been testing the new news aggregator particle. It uses all the sort of expected AI techniques to make

the aggregation of news more compelling for the consumer and it works. And they too will go out and say, we don't mean any of our media here. We'll do a little deal with you. But, you know, I mean, the market will work it out and the tool bits of the world will try to create a tool booth in the middle. And maybe that revenue looks like something that's the new programmatic, assuming that there's enough revenue on the aggregator side to parse up to like,

parse between 100 different providers and actually be meaningful. But it's troubling, man. The revenue stream for most folks from small media brands or mid-sized media brands, for example, Complexity is going to be really tiny unless they have enormous scale.

And for them to kind of evolve to be the central bank of the media industry seems scary to me from a business point of view. And what they're doing right now does pretty much amount to IP theft. So I think that I get why it's a good product. I use it. I think it's interesting. I like the interstates ideas. But they wouldn't exist without your hard work.

And they just wouldn't. They would not exist. And unless there's alignment of incentives... You know what was also a great product? Napster.

Napster was a great product. You could get all this. And I think it's just, but here's the thing. I, I worry like if it doesn't, but if it doesn't, Napster died, so Spotify could live, right? Right. And if it, and, and, you know, some would say that Spotify wasn't a great deal for a lot of artists. I think we always get better at trying to get information and people's work out of them for free, whether it's to promise them exposure by them creating content or, you

by allowing Google to kind of siphon off their content and expose it on search results. The Google trade was easy. But the Google trade was a step, a single step in the same direction, right? And then it kind of like...

adjusted the norms, everybody, you know, so you're looking at the open web and you're looking at, wait a second, like, there's no reason we send these people there because we already have all that information. And

Unless that gets legislated, it's hard to see how any non-subscription-based content survives or gets monetized in an efficient way. Yeah, I think with Napster, it's interesting because let's just stick with that. There's no RIAA of publishing. No. I mean, News Corp can't do it on its own. And publishing, I think Spotify is imperfect, but the music industry is doing all right.

Like, I mean, I think if you look at the life of artists now, it's very different. You can't just go into the studio and like cut an album and sell a bunch of CDs and make a ton of money. You got to be touring like 150 days a year and it's a grind, but you know, the, the,

the industry changed at the end of the day. Yeah. And I mean, I think that's the big difference. And that's why you're seeing a lot more activity with, with kind of these music generators like Suno is that the music industry is ready for that fight. Oh yeah. They've got a playbook. The film industry, I would say is the same. And then, I mean, if media had the same thing, it would be such a different landscape. Now these, you know, these businesses would, would, would really have to struggle to try to,

you know, generate it to kind of, you know, build their LLMs off that content. I mean, I wonder how much of that is also that's because it's text, you know? Well, that's what we talked about last week. I mean, text is a bad position to be in in some ways. It was the first thing that we could generate quickly. It's easy to distribute. Most people can put something together quickly.

And so it's very hard to defend, unfortunately. One final thing. Guys, I got a good product in the chamber. It's going to be Portugal. I was at a friend's house the other day. I got a couple of good products here. I got a good media product. So my friend has one of those Rivians and it got the Halloween update.

And when he pressed the button to open the car, it made the Halloween sound, which was like an owl coo. And then he's like, get in. And he shows me the screens and there's all these crazy Halloween graphics and the lights outside and inside the car go multicolor. And it's kind of crazy.

and then he's like check this out and he puts on the kit the you know like night rider thing and everything all the dash changes into like all these analog gate or these you know old computer gauges like kit and the soundtrack starts playing and i thought what a fun way to bring a brand to life you know like having that surface area for you know surprise and delight and assignment that

the cars are becoming less about mechanics and more about software and entertainment. So I thought that was cool. You guys can chat about that. But the other thing I wanted to mention is that sometimes I look at my dog

And I feel guilty. And I wonder if my dog is bored. And I'm like, oh, my dog is so fucking bored. And I feel like I need to entertain the dog. You know, the dog's sleeping or laying for hours on the sofa or whatever. I'm like, what? She's bored.

And, you know, we'll never know. But I was thinking about the dog because I watched this great movie on the airplane from Ben Benders and it's called Perfect Days. And I think it's a great movie.

it's about this character named Hirayama and he, you know, there's obviously a backstory. There was some sort of life tragedy, fall from grails. You know, he was a corporate man or married or whatever, but they don't get into any of that. It doesn't get into any of that. He's a toilet cleaner in Tokyo, the remarkable bathrooms of Tokyo.

And the movie is, and he's happy, is the thing. He seems very, very happy. You want to know if he's lonely, but what keeps him going? But really his life is in like the sort of, he's much more than what he seems because he takes great joy in the craft of his work every day and the rhythm of life and the simplicity of his life.

And, you know, he cleans toilets. He looks at the trees. He loves trees. He reads books and he listens to great iconic American rock like we read. There's a great soundtrack. And the movie has this kind of rhythm of life with Tokyo as the backdrop and the Tokyo architecture. It's just the light and the buildings and the character. I think he won at...

who won Best Actor, and it's nominated for an Academy Award in the International Film Academy Award. Anyway, the movie's called Perfect Days. It's definitely a good product, and I was really surprised by it, so I hope you watch it. All right. I'm going to check it out. Let's leave it there. This was a compact episode for us. I'm good with that. All right.

Really? What about the Rivian? Do you like the Rivian? I nearly bought the Rivian. It just wouldn't fit in my garage in San Francisco. So I'm getting something else, but it's a great, great, great software. Thank you very much for all the birthday wishes. Oh, it's your birthday. Oh, wow. Happy birthday. Wow. Happy birthday. I wasn't going to bring it up. Well, now you have. It's not every day. Are we, are we doing next week's episode in costume? Yeah.

by the way unrelated oh maybe let's try it let's let's let's try it let's do it um i need to find a costume all right okay bye