0:02

All Zone Media.

0:05

Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm

0:07

your host ed Zeitron.

0:20

Now.

0:20

Look, I'm just a simple country podcaster,

0:23

but at my heart, I'm a writer. I've

0:26

been writing since I was sixteen. I wrote about video

0:28

games that are now defunct magazine called CVG

0:30

and then another called PC Zone. And

0:33

there's been one theme, one thing that has hung

0:35

around my entire media career, and

0:37

that thing is that the people running the media

0:40

do not read or write. And

0:42

I must sound a little dramatic, but really

0:44

I'm not kidding. The majority of the media executives

0:47

I've worked for and the ones I've met, just

0:49

did not understand or create any

0:52

media of any kind. There

0:54

were publishers who ran games publications who

0:56

didn't play games, and didn't write, and hadn't

0:58

written, didn't contribute any to the magazines,

1:01

and they routinely made decisions that just

1:03

made the publications worse. There

1:06

were executive editors at newspapers I've read

1:08

and worked for that hadn't written a word

1:11

in decades, and they made calls about the tone

1:13

and direction of writers that they didn't even

1:15

bother to read, and they were always

1:17

looking for ways to increase readership. Without actually

1:20

focusing on what made readers read things.

1:24

When I went into PR in two thousand and eight, which

1:26

by the way, I did to move to America, I

1:28

didn't really understand the job. Pretty good at

1:30

it now, though, I was still able

1:32

to keep a lot of my media connections, both at

1:34

home and the ones i'd met on various press trips

1:36

to America. And I saw

1:38

this sudden and dramatic change that was

1:41

happening to the industry, and it was

1:43

all thanks to the advent of mass social media

1:45

and digital publishing and of course digital

1:47

advertising. And then over

1:49

the years, I saw the same cycles repeat

1:51

themselves again and again and again. These

1:54

media executives, they'd see a trend, get

1:56

very horny for it, they jump on it, and

1:59

nothing would happen, and so they'd move on to the next one,

2:01

and they'd move on to a next one, and they'd keep

2:03

going, and they'd keep dragging media

2:06

entities into these vast, unprofitable,

2:09

unsustainable quagmires, all

2:11

in pursuit of you guessed it, growth.

2:14

They were always chasing growth.

2:17

But what they were actually chasing was

2:19

the magic of the startup valuation. Startups

2:23

were suddenly being valued at fifty million, one

2:25

hundred million, a billion dollars, and they

2:27

wanted a little bit of that magic. They wanted

2:30

to get even richer than they already were.

2:33

Practically speaking, this meant that outlets were

2:35

forced by the idiotic executives to chase

2:37

the dragon of social media and search traffic,

2:40

and they'd optimize their content not for

2:42

a person or a living being of any kind,

2:44

but to please algorithms that they didn't control,

2:47

run by companies like Meta and Google who didn't

2:49

give a shit about them. As

2:51

a result, it's been a fairly apocalyptic

2:54

decade in journalism. Multiple outlets

2:56

have grown into these massive, unwieldy, unprofitable

2:58

businesses and then relapsed under the

3:00

weight of executive malpractice.

3:03

In the last three years, over thirty

3:05

thousand people have lost their jobs in

3:07

the media industry or while executives

3:09

received these massive paydays

3:11

for what appears to be accelerating the Titanic

3:14

into the Iceberg. As

3:16

private equity and venture capital money is flown

3:18

into the media industry, so of the

3:20

rotten demands for eternal growth. Brands

3:23

that you read as a kid, magazines

3:25

and newspapers that inspired you, they've become

3:27

shells of the former selves. Or

3:29

because they've chased these growth metrics, which naturally

3:31

ostracize and then eventually lay off

3:34

the journalists that made these outlets

3:36

famous, until, of course, the outlet has to shut

3:38

down due to unforeseen market conditions,

3:41

which is a euphemism for we are

3:43

too stupid to run a business. Sadly,

3:46

at this point, you'll probably realize

3:48

that things are not going well in the media industry,

3:51

and indeed, twenty twenty four has been one of the

3:53

darkest years in this industry I've ever

3:55

seen. The

3:58

first high profile media cas twenty twenty

4:00

four were Sports Illustrated, formerly one

4:02

of the most important brands in sports journalism,

4:05

and it was slowly choked to death after being

4:07

sold twice, first to Meredith, which

4:09

acquired it as part of its one point eighty five billion

4:12

dollar acquisition of Time magazine in twenty

4:14

seventeen, and then it was sold again when

4:16

the intellectual property was licensed to Authentic

4:18

Brands Group, which is a holding company, which

4:20

bought it for one hundred and ten million

4:23

dollars. Now you did

4:25

hear me, Ray, They sold the intellectual property,

4:27

the name Sports Illustrated in the logo, and

4:30

their goal was the insane prospect

4:32

of branding things like medical clinics

4:34

and gambling businesses. This

4:37

is actually kind of weird precursor to the amount

4:39

of sports betting you'll see in modern sports

4:41

today now. Meredith Corporation

4:43

would continue to publish Sports Illustrated

4:46

until about twenty nineteen, when Authentic

4:48

Brands Group would license the editorial operations

4:51

to a company called The Maven as

4:53

part of a ten year licensing deal, and

4:55

then laid off forty people and shifted

4:58

the editorial strategy away from the deep

5:00

thoughtful analysis that people actually gave

5:02

a shit about, towards focusing

5:05

on breaking news, the things that people could

5:07

literally get anywhere. And

5:09

while they were doing this, they flooded Sports Illustrated's

5:12

website with this kind of noxious, empty,

5:14

generic contributed content, all

5:16

from affiliate sites run by these poorly

5:18

vetted contributing bloggers. Now

5:21

no offense to the world of contributing

5:23

bloggers. There are some good ones out there, but in

5:25

this case this was chop shop

5:28

work. This was done specifically to

5:30

fill the site, it was not built

5:32

to inform people. Thanks

5:35

to this, Sports Illustrated had spend a few

5:37

more years deteriorating until around December

5:39

twenty twenty three, when they published

5:41

a piece by a man called Drew Autis, except

5:44

Drew didn't exist. He was one

5:47

of multiple non existent pseudonyms

5:49

given to content generated by AI.

5:52

While Sports Illustrated initially denied

5:54

the claims of using AI, they'd fire their

5:56

CEO, Ross Levinson a few weeks later.

5:58

Now Levinson's of real piece of shit. He's

6:01

a scumbag. He had multiple

6:03

accusations of sexual harassment against him

6:05

when he was at the La Times, their CEO,

6:07

and while he was there he quite literally tried

6:09

to do exactly the same thing. He

6:12

tried to make the La Times take external

6:14

contributors. Thankfully, strong unions

6:17

and the eventual acquisition of The Times

6:20

managed to get rid of him. He

6:22

still managed to get paid millions. In

6:25

twenty twenty four, the maven now

6:27

called the Arena Group would lay off

6:29

most of Sports Illustrated staff after failing

6:32

to pay the licensing fee to Authentic

6:34

Brands Group, which is insane.

6:36

By the way, you can't publish on the website

6:38

because you didn't pay the dairy queen franchise

6:41

thing. You have to to be called Sports Illustrated

6:44

anyway. The Arena Group

6:46

claims they'll still keep publishing Sports

6:48

illustrated, but it's not really clear what that's

6:50

actually going to look like considering how

6:53

unprofitable the Arena group is. They

6:55

had a net loss of fifty million dollars in

6:57

the first three quarters at twenty twenty three, and

6:59

Sports ill Frustrated, well, they

7:01

fired everyone. What's

7:04

really pissing me off though, and this is this

7:06

whole subject fills me through my veins

7:08

for unearthly poison. Sports

7:11

Illustrated used to be profitable. It

7:13

was profitable for decades, and

7:15

the reason it got profitable in the fifties was because

7:17

the managing editor was a sports writer.

7:21

It was also profitable when it was acquired in twenty

7:23

nineteen, and it stayed that way through twenty

7:25

twenty, a year when pretty much every

7:27

business suffered. Its value.

7:31

Just to be clear, over one hundred million dollars didn't

7:33

come from the fact that a private equity

7:35

group sold it to another private equity group,

7:38

though I realized the agree in a group probably

7:40

wouldn't like being called that. Its

7:43

actual value came from writing important,

7:46

meaningful sports writing from writers

7:48

like George Plimpton, Curry Kirkpatrick,

7:50

and Emma Bachelari. And

7:53

it died. It died at the hands

7:55

of people that don't read, don't write,

7:57

and don't understand business journalism

8:01

is being killed by non journalists that

8:03

are desperate to turn it into another shitty

8:05

startup ecosystem.

8:15

Less than a month after Sports Illustrated

8:17

started to collapse, there was a new media

8:20

entity that was actually already working on

8:22

dying. The Messenger was a news

8:24

outlet that raised fifty million dollars in VC

8:26

money and hired about three hundred people, many

8:29

of them were reporters. In

8:31

many respects, it was not really a news

8:33

outlet, though it was focused

8:35

on churn. It thought that

8:37

volume, velocity and just lots of stuff

8:40

was the way that you make a big media out

8:42

there, rather of course, than building a rapport

8:44

with readers and adding their trust and making them

8:46

like the writing, you know, writing

8:48

good stuff for people like no, no, no, no. You

8:51

just need lots of things. And

8:53

despite this hefty war chest, it shut

8:56

down on February first, twenty twenty four.

8:59

And this is the discussing part. Workers

9:01

were left unemployed and uninsured

9:03

and they didn't even get severance. And

9:06

it's all because, guess what, the

9:09

executives running it didn't know what they

9:11

were doing. The

9:13

Messenger was doomed from the beginning. The

9:15

people behind it were just complete idiots.

9:18

Their CEO, Jimmy Finkelstein, made

9:20

nine hundred thousand dollars a year and they spent

9:23

eight million dollars on office space in New

9:25

York, DC and Los Angeles, which

9:28

is just crazy. This is the year twenty

9:30

twenty four. Why do you have office

9:32

space for a thing you can do at any computer

9:34

anyway? Anyway, sorry, let me calm down.

9:37

But what really drove it into the ground was that

9:39

they had this very aggressive and extremely stupid

9:42

editorial strategy, and it was all driven

9:44

by people who didn't know what they

9:46

were doing. All they thought was that traffic

9:49

was good. This goddamn thing didn't

9:51

have a site map. The Messenger,

9:53

a modern media property, was run by

9:55

people who barely knew how to use a computer.

9:58

Well, let me give you some insight in to some of the

10:00

rot inside this company. So after the

10:02

company collapsed, Eli Walsh, who love

10:05

them or hate him, He was a writer at The Messenger,

10:07

and he built his career in California

10:10

journalism, primarily local stuff.

10:12

He described this constant pressure to

10:14

produce more content with a lot of it

10:17

just actively ripped off from publications

10:19

like The Daily Mail and The New York Post, two

10:22

routlets I would not describe as esteemed.

10:25

After eight months of working at The Messenger, Eli

10:28

Walsh claimed that he had no usable

10:30

clips for his portfolio as a result

10:32

of how crap the editorial strategy was.

10:35

Now listeners, if you're wondering why that's

10:38

so bad, even at the worst place

10:40

I've worked, even the crappiest

10:42

freelance out there, I still get a clip I can

10:44

use, because usually good

10:47

writing is still published, even

10:49

if it's published and edited in a way that you

10:51

don't like. But what The Messenger

10:53

would publish was this very bland,

10:57

mass appeal, mass produced

10:59

journalist didn't really say much. And

11:02

it's funny to steal from the Daily Mail considering

11:04

how much of their stuff is viral

11:06

content stuff or very shittly

11:08

written headlines. It's actually really

11:11

weird that The Messenger didn't die quicker, and

11:14

honestly, the Messenger's chop

11:17

shop mentality was completely nonsensical.

11:19

But seriously, the demise

11:21

was avoidable had the people

11:24

in charge actually known what they were doing, or

11:26

say, I don't know talked to a journalist

11:28

about how journalism works. When developing

11:30

the bloody business model. Fifty

11:33

million dollars is actually quite a lot for a

11:35

media organization. You could have done

11:37

it a really great job.

11:40

You can run an incredible newsroom

11:43

with ten, fifteen, twenty people fifty

11:45

million dollars. You'll be able to sustain

11:47

that for a long long time. But

11:50

they didn't understand that. And

11:53

the problem is that none of these media

11:55

executives really understand how great

11:57

journalism or great anything in media

12:00

is built. They don't understand

12:02

that trust, reputation, and

12:04

loyalty are actually very hard to quantify.

12:07

What is easy to quantify, though, is

12:09

revenue growth and page views. You

12:12

can look at page views if you're a colossal

12:14

Dingus and say, wow, number

12:16

go up. Oh, money come

12:18

in now? Is

12:20

it profitable? Is it actually stuff

12:22

that people like? Are people returning

12:25

after they click it? Or did you just convince

12:27

them to do so through Google? Who

12:30

knows the messenger is dead now

12:32

they deleted the whole website. But

12:35

putting that aside. Because

12:37

these people have no active participation

12:40

in the process of making journalism

12:42

or creating media, they don't

12:44

understand how media outlets are built.

12:46

They may have been participants, they may

12:48

have been the money, but they

12:50

were not the writers, the speakers, the

12:52

photographers, the illustrators. They

12:55

had no part of them. But just

12:57

to be clear, the people involved have names.

13:00

The Messenger was founded and destroyed by a man

13:02

called Jimmy Finkelstein. He's a media

13:04

tycoon with close ties to Rudy Giuliani.

13:07

And you know what he did at the Hill, which

13:09

he sold for one hundred and thirty million dollars.

13:11

By the way, he used to lean

13:14

over the shoulder of editors and tell

13:16

them not to be so critical of Donald Trump.

13:19

Fucking gross. It's disgusting that these people

13:21

are allowed to get so rich Finkelstein.

13:24

And by the way, former staff, when talking to

13:27

The Daily Beast, referred to this guy as a sociopath.

13:29

That was deliberately cruel. He paid

13:31

himself nine hundred thousand dollars

13:33

a year while running

13:36

a newsroom like a sweatshop and

13:38

not giving people severance. Fuck

13:42

you, Jimmy, You're a wrinkly scumbag. I

13:44

can't legally wish anything upon you, but

13:46

I'll laugh if it happens. Sadly,

13:50

Jimmy Finkelstein isn't the only con

13:52

artist choking the life out of the media industry.

13:55

There are some much worse freaks out there. I

13:58

don't know if you've been looking at and it's quite

14:00

painful to watch, but for years I've been watching Vice

14:03

die. Vice used to be

14:05

one of my favorite publications. Motherboard

14:08

did some of the best tech journalism out there, and actually

14:10

four or four Media is a lot of the former

14:12

motherblog. People go pay them money. But

14:15

on February twenty second, twenty twenty four, Vice

14:18

announced it would no longer publish written

14:20

content to any of its flagship

14:22

publications, which included Vice dot Com,

14:24

their regional sites, or indeed Motherboard.

14:28

Hundreds of people lost their jobs as a result.

14:31

It's a disgraceful end to this

14:33

publication. It was once like

14:35

this indie punk magazine built in Montreal.

14:37

It was something cool, it was something weird. You

14:39

could kind of mock it, you kind of laugh at it. But

14:42

Ice did cool share and

14:44

then over the course of years, it was infiltrated

14:48

and rotted out by private equity

14:50

adjacent freaks that don't write or

14:52

read or create anything, and it

14:55

turned into this giant, unprofitable,

14:57

unsustainable, seven billion dollar behemoth.

15:00

And you'd think that growth for it would be good,

15:02

that more people would be reading Vice's

15:04

journalism. Yeah, that would assume

15:07

that journalism was the product that Vice actually

15:09

wanted to sell. Though people

15:11

do make fun of Vice's kind of foe gonzo

15:14

I took drugs and walked down the street style

15:16

journalism. Actually a lot of their stuff

15:18

was incredible reporting. Simon

15:21

of Strovsky's coverage of the earliest

15:23

days of the Russo Ukrainian War culminated

15:26

in him being arrested and held captive

15:28

by separatists in Dombas. It

15:31

was really important work at a time when

15:33

you really understood what was going on with that conflict.

15:36

Ostrovsky's work ended up getting Vice

15:38

to Emmy nominations as well as a couple of webbe

15:40

awards, and it was seen quite

15:42

rightly by the way as a time when digital

15:45

journalism was finally challenging broadcasts

15:47

kind of monopoly over

15:50

conflict and foreign policy reporting.

15:52

It was a really impressive thing that Vice did, and

15:54

it was at a time when people, I don't know what

15:56

kind of surprised by Vice's ability to do it,

15:58

and they shouldn't have been. They were a home

16:01

to some amazing journalists. I

16:03

said, n uncanny ability to get into

16:05

some of the world's most isolated and frankly dangerous

16:08

places and even make it out alive. Good

16:10

example is they did a story on Siberian lumber

16:13

camps where North Korean workers were being worked

16:15

to death to make money for the country. They

16:17

did another one on the Syrian city of Raka, which

16:20

in twenty fifteen was the capital

16:22

of the Islamic States self proclaimed caliphate.

16:25

Weis did important work every single

16:28

day, and then they did fun stuff, because

16:30

not all journalists needs to be world

16:32

changing. It just needs to be interesting

16:34

and fun and full of love. And

16:37

unlike many so many outlets,

16:40

ICE actually made money and

16:42

it could have been profitable, but it never

16:45

seemed to get there. And

16:47

while there's no single reason why,

16:49

it mostly comes down to pursuing growth

16:52

and executive greed. Weiss

16:55

as it grew into this seven billion dollar

16:57

creature, it took on all of this debt.

17:00

It wanted to be a global media empire and

17:02

expanded in an aggressive, deeply unsustainable

17:04

way, and it made these terrible, awful

17:07

bets branded content, shitty video

17:10

or while doing this ridiculous

17:12

dance of paying their executives

17:14

insane money and laying people off

17:17

at the same time. And

17:19

this was a big problem for this out there executive

17:22

compensation was always high, even

17:24

when the company was not paying its utility

17:26

bills or paying out severance. It

17:29

would take these deals with investors where they

17:31

guaranteed dividends regardless

17:33

of how the company was doing. Just to be clear,

17:35

on a business level, that is insane. You don't

17:38

make a deal you can't reliably pay

17:41

very basic business unless,

17:43

of course, you don't really care about the business

17:45

succeeding or surviving. And

17:48

then they would do these very annoying

17:50

branded content deals. Good example of one

17:52

is they did a twenty fourteen deal with Absolute Vodka,

17:55

which kind of made everyone feel

17:57

a little greasy, and then they did a partnership

17:59

with the South Government. It's not

18:01

particularly punk rock, and it's definitely

18:03

not suggestive of any great editorial

18:06

independence. To be clear, the

18:08

people writing Advice were victims of this. If

18:11

you're looking for somebody to blame, you can start

18:13

with Corey Haike, who is Vice's chief

18:15

operating officer. Before joining

18:18

Vice, she co led Mike a publication

18:20

she drove into the ground, and she did

18:22

so by moving it away from this kind of hip.

18:25

Young really actually beloved

18:27

journalism. People loved Mike, and

18:30

then she took it and said, ah, well,

18:33

Facebook is saying that we're getting

18:35

all of these views and all of this engagement

18:37

on video on Facebook, so let's

18:40

pivot the entire thing to video.

18:42

Now, the pivot to video that Facebook

18:44

pushed is enough for an entire

18:47

episode, But the long story short

18:49

was that Facebook incorrectly

18:51

showed massive growth metrics that did not

18:53

exist to publishers. This led

18:55

publications like Mike and actually Mashable

18:58

to massively move their traditorial strategies

19:01

around to make video content. Now

19:04

you may think, huh, couldn't

19:07

you just avoid this by seeing

19:09

if it made any money? And

19:12

no, she didn't do that. She wrote an

19:15

empty headed Vox article about how the future

19:17

of journalism was visual, and

19:20

then she laid off most of the staff

19:23

and sold the IP to a company called

19:25

bust All that is best known for buying

19:27

IP and running crappy journalism

19:29

on them. There are some good publications

19:32

that run on the bus or network. It certainly

19:34

wasn't doing what Mike was doing at the time. Corey

19:38

Hike is an example of the media world's failure

19:40

to police itself. She is a

19:43

career failure. This is now the second

19:45

publication she's driven into the ground

19:48

because she does not understand what she is

19:50

doing, and that op ed I

19:52

previously mentioned the twenty seventeen Vox

19:54

one she claimed that we were

19:56

in the early stages of a visual revolution

19:59

in journalism. To be clear,

20:01

Corey Hike is not a journalist. She's not an

20:03

editor. She's not a creator. She's not a

20:05

creative. She doesn't write things, she doesn't

20:08

speak things, she doesn't take photos, and she doesn't

20:10

draw things. She is a parasite.

20:13

And these walking stains on the earth. They

20:16

got rich. They got rich

20:18

as hundreds of people lost their jobs.

20:21

Bankruptcy filings showed that Vice executives

20:23

paid themselves eleven million dollars

20:26

between May twenty twenty two and May twenty twenty

20:28

three. Corey Hike paid herself over

20:30

seven hundred and twenty six thousand

20:32

dollars, and former chief people officer

20:35

Daisy Orga Dominguez made over seven

20:37

hundred and forty eight thousand dollars during

20:40

this period. By the way, writer Joseph Cox

20:42

said that he was unable to pay the ten cent

20:44

fee to pull a court record because Vice

20:46

wasn't paying their bills. If

20:49

you want to blame someone for the destruction

20:51

of modern journalism. People like Corey

20:54

Haike and mis Orga Dominguez.

20:57

They're the people to blame. These

20:59

are the people that are being allowed to make the

21:01

cause on these vacuous pools

21:03

of data that don't make sense. And

21:05

they don't make sense because they have no connection to

21:07

the newsroom. They're not writing anything,

21:10

they're not reading anything. They're not part

21:12

of the media other than the fact that

21:14

they are in commanding positions in

21:16

the media. They are landlords

21:18

by another name, and they're

21:20

rich. They're unfathomably rich,

21:23

all because they conned their way into

21:25

different jobs that allow them to fail

21:28

upwards again and again. Worse

21:30

still, they don't have any ideas,

21:33

which is why they so often do stupid

21:36

things. It's why they're doing

21:38

this same ridiculous cycle again

21:40

and again where they take a media out

21:42

there and they try and run it like a tech startup,

21:45

and they don't see the difference between running

21:47

an app that sells a service and a media

21:49

company that makes content that people consume

21:53

or creates a relationship with the audience. Trust,

21:56

authenticity, These are the things at

21:58

the heart of the media, and readers

22:01

are very sensitive to changes. They

22:03

are not stupid, and I think that these executives

22:06

believe they are. They believe that readers

22:08

are little pigs that will come and click anything

22:10

that can be tricked and conned. Executives

22:14

that believe readers are like that deserve to not

22:16

have jobs, by the way, But

22:19

what they don't realize is that media

22:21

outlets are also delicate. If

22:23

you mess with the formula of media outlets,

22:26

you're going to alienate the people who actually read

22:28

them, the people who pay your bills, either

22:31

by subscribing or by proxy by clicking

22:33

and looking at ads. And

22:35

it sucks. It sucks because all of this is

22:37

very obvious. I'm sure many of you listening are

22:39

like, Yeah, that makes sense. Surely

22:41

you would not run an outlet by making

22:44

worse stuff but lots of it. Surely you

22:46

would make a good outlet that makes good

22:48

things. But that's the thing.

22:51

Look, if you're no longer concern with loyalty, and you really

22:53

only care about people who accidentally find

22:55

a page by being tricked by so

22:58

sure they see a headline they like, or perhaps

23:00

they search for something, you don't really

23:02

care about alienating readers. You

23:04

can do whatever you want. You can experiment Willy

23:07

nilly. You can underminde editorial standards,

23:09

you can lay off people, you can promote

23:11

your friends, you can force

23:13

people to do stupid shit that nobody

23:16

likes, because all

23:18

you care about are analytics. All

23:20

you care about is that ephemeral, random,

23:22

spontaneous traffic that you can show

23:25

to your idiot rich friends and say, wow,

23:27

my outlet's popping off. And

23:31

when all you give a shit about is visits

23:33

and impressions, all you're really going to focus

23:35

on is what's going to please the big tech firms

23:37

like Meta, Twitter and Google, and

23:40

these social networks have been very

23:42

clear in how little they care about news unless

23:44

it helps them get traffic. And indeed,

23:47

the early days of these social networks were heavily

23:49

dependent on media outlets creating content

23:51

for them so that people stayed on them,

23:54

and then they choked that traffic the moment they

23:57

didn't need anymore. The network

23:59

effects that these executives are chasing,

24:01

the social virality, the Google

24:04

search positioning, they make the number

24:06

go up. And if that's all that matters, well,

24:09

you don't really care about having a lasting

24:12

web presence. You don't really care

24:14

about a sustainable media outlet. You're

24:17

just an online marketing company that publishes

24:19

words or videos, and

24:22

frankly, I can't think

24:24

of a more damaging part of

24:27

the media than the chase of these metrics,

24:29

and specifically search engine optimization.

24:33

The allure of search traffic, especially with the

24:35

drop of traffic from social media websites,

24:38

has just poisoned so much of the media,

24:41

and now publishers create content. It's

24:43

not really there to serve an audience, per se

24:45

or build a relationship, but to kind of get

24:47

this spurious traffic. The when

24:49

does the super Bowl start? What

24:52

time does this go live? Where

24:54

can I buy something? You've

24:56

probably seen these and wondered why

24:59

so many out let's publish the same thing.

25:02

I'll get to that. So

25:13

if you see all of these websites

25:16

that have like when's the super Bowl start? And

25:18

top ten televisions, all of these things, and

25:20

you see them, you're like, this doesn't make sense. I'm

25:22

used to reading long form things on here. It's

25:25

because those have embedded links, sometimes

25:27

to Amazon or Walmart or Best Buy. Those

25:30

outlets get a slither of money

25:32

every time you click, and they get a little more as you browse

25:34

around the site if you buy something. Now

25:38

there are very trustworthy outlets engaging

25:40

in this, and it's a way to make money for the media

25:42

out there. There are some like the Wirecutter who actually

25:44

do a phenomenal job. They do very

25:47

deep product testing. Later

25:49

on in this podcast, I'm actually going to get into some of the scumbags

25:51

in the industry, but there are trustworthy

25:53

folks that make money on this. The

25:56

problem is you can also make money by not making

25:58

any effort at all, and I will

26:00

get to that. And the result

26:02

of this chase of metrics is a media

26:04

industry and crisis executives

26:07

and editors that don't really read or write

26:09

and don't remember the last time they published anything.

26:11

They're twisting reporters coverage to

26:13

make Google happy, and all

26:16

they want to do is improve traffic and get advertising.

26:19

That's all there is to it. And yes, I

26:21

understand that there's money

26:24

that needs to be made to pay people's salaries,

26:26

but so much of the Internet

26:28

is becoming content that looks and sounds the same.

26:32

And like I said, those affiliate marketing

26:34

deals, they make money even when you just do a

26:36

half fast effort of saying I like this TV.

26:40

And what happens when everyone chases

26:42

the same dragon is nobody's really

26:44

happy. People aren't really coming

26:47

to your website for the top ten best

26:49

apps. They're not coming to be told,

26:52

hey, these are the best deals. They

26:54

might enjoy those, they might use them, but that's not what's

26:57

keeping them there. And yes'

27:00

seeing so much of that because those

27:02

in power are not actually looking

27:04

at the outlets. They're not reading these

27:06

websites. They're not even really consuming

27:09

the media. They're not on social media, they're

27:11

not on anything other than maybe

27:13

the New York Times and CNN. The

27:15

people running the media don't

27:18

participate, not as

27:20

customers and frankly not as workers.

27:23

And these people they only really understand

27:26

the media as a series of symbols, shadows

27:28

on the cave. They don't

27:30

really see it beyond the numbers, and they

27:34

think that at some point money comes out

27:36

due to words and writing and video.

27:38

Maybe they don't really care well how

27:40

that forms, as long as the money keeps coming, even

27:42

if the money stops one day. This

27:45

poor decision making almost always

27:47

leads to overstaffing and frankly,

27:50

general mismanagement. Any

27:52

form of creative media, anything you see,

27:54

any great outlet you have seen, requires

27:57

a very basic understanding of audience

28:00

and an audience. Takes time, and

28:02

it takes energy, and it takes working

28:04

on this. I am sure in fifteen episodes

28:07

I will be a lot better than this. I'm

28:10

sure fifteen after that, I'll be better than that. And

28:12

thankfully, I hope I'm good enough now

28:15

for you to listen to and you'll stick around and hear

28:17

me get better. But because of the way that

28:19

Cool Zone media works, I will have that

28:21

chance. I'm not being told I have

28:23

to hit a quota. I'm being told

28:26

to get in this studio and talk and

28:28

produce great things, hopefully. But

28:31

that's the problem. That's the problem when

28:33

you don't create anything, when you're a parasite, when

28:36

you're someone that steals from others. The

28:39

Messengers a great example here, by the way. So

28:41

they hired about three hundred reporters, and a lot of them

28:44

were very well established, well respected

28:46

reporters from like major outlets, and

28:49

then they took these great, skilled,

28:51

wonderful people and they said, please repurpose

28:54

other people's work. Mentioned

28:56

already the Daily Mail, New York Post as examples

28:58

of place they took from. This doesn't

29:00

really make sense to even a regular person, But

29:03

when you're a kind of soft brain

29:05

media executive, and all you care about is short

29:08

term growth, and you want to see number go up immediately.

29:11

All you care about is scale, So all you're going to do

29:13

is put out masses of chum. And

29:16

it sucks. It sucks

29:18

because they're so wrong. And

29:20

what's insane is these executives they're blind to the

29:23

actual success stories of the media.

29:26

I'm thinking of worker owned outlets like

29:28

Defector four O four media Aftermath,

29:31

and I don't know many of the successful,

29:34

profitable newsletters like Newcomer

29:36

and Platformer that have done incredibly

29:39

well with incredibly small staffs. Because guess

29:41

what, people don't want the

29:43

same shit in a different flavor. They

29:46

want informed opinion. They want it

29:48

from fallible, imperfect people.

29:50

They want to know they're hearing from a person. They

29:52

want something that has emotion in it. That's

29:55

why people pay for journalism,

29:57

That's why people read. While there is a degree

30:00

of service journalism to tell you what happened,

30:02

a lot of great writing is emotional. Defector.

30:07

They're actually a really interesting one as

30:09

well. They're successful, they're profitable, and

30:11

they cover more than just sports. Despite

30:13

being a sports website, their sports and culture

30:16

and their staff came from a website

30:19

called dead Spin. Now, dead Spin is hilarious.

30:21

I used to write there. I love dead Spin. Dead

30:23

Spin was a sports and culture site. They

30:26

wrote about sports and then other things. Drew

30:28

McGarry did a famous thing about the time when

30:30

he collapsed and something was wrong with his

30:32

brain. For example, there were some wonderful

30:34

things on there that were completely unrelated

30:37

to sport. When the

30:39

private equity shuffles as a result of Peter

30:41

Teal's lawsuit against Gorka happened,

30:44

a company called Geomedia took over. And

30:47

they're complete moron

30:49

of an executive. Jim Spamfeller he fired

30:52

Barry to pachet Ski because

30:54

he refused to make Dead Spins staff

30:57

stick to sports. Now, Jim Spamfeller

31:00

is a complete moron. And I know you shouldn't

31:02

just insult people in the podcast, but he's a he's

31:05

a dingus. He's a complete numpty. And

31:08

you may ask, huh, well,

31:10

based on looking at Defector

31:12

and indeed based on being able to look at the

31:15

economics of dead Spin when he owned it, wouldn't

31:17

you, spamfella just want to let them keep

31:20

writing and doing stuff in the exceedingly popular

31:22

way that everyone loved and the answer is that Jim

31:24

Spanfeller is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand

31:27

journalism or business. And indeed,

31:29

many times you will see stories like this, he'd

31:31

be like, I don't get it. How did it fall apart?

31:33

And the answer is usually that Jim

31:36

Spanfeller he wanted dead Spin to

31:38

be like any other sports out there. Yet

31:41

the whole reason people read dead Spin, and

31:43

indeed read and pay for Defector,

31:46

was because it approached sports without the kind

31:48

of very strong boundaries

31:51

that restricted the outlets like ESPN or NBC

31:53

Sports, which they have their place now.

31:56

Jim Spaanfeller and his type of people,

31:58

they'll never understand that the well doesn't need

32:01

another content meal. We don't need more

32:03

aggregations of aggregations of aggregations

32:05

of another outlet's aggregation. And

32:08

though this content, when engineered

32:10

in the precise way that Google likes, may

32:12

indeed get traffic from search, and

32:15

it may be quote unquote popular, it

32:17

doesn't mean that anyone's coming back. You're

32:20

not building loyalty another

32:22

In March, Deadspin was sold again, this

32:25

time to a startup called line Up of Publishing.

32:27

A little bit painful when you think about the raw economy

32:30

there, and they're based in Malta, which is a business

32:32

retreat for tax dodgers but also known for cryptocurrency

32:35

startups and more worrying

32:37

in this case, European gambling firms.

32:40

An investigation by Sean Keeley over

32:42

at Tedium found numerous connections

32:44

between Deadspin's new owner and various

32:47

online casinos, which heavily suggests that it's

32:49

going to become not a sports website but

32:51

a website for affiliate marketing for gambling

32:54

sites. And what sucks about

32:56

that is kind of the way that sports

32:58

in general is going. You're going to be able

33:00

to bet on MBA games from their app,

33:02

for example. It's a terrible press

33:04

them, but also a terrible thing

33:06

to happen to one of the greatest

33:09

sports websites to ever run. Ever, but

33:12

don't worry, Jim Spanfeller still

33:14

has several other websites to fuck up, and

33:16

in this case, he's currently working on destroying

33:19

Kataku now. Kataku

33:21

was previously one of the most well respected gaming

33:24

publications of the world, and they were sold to Geomedia

33:27

as part of the Gorka lawsuit last

33:30

week. As reported by Aftermaths, Gita

33:32

Jackson and Riley McLeod. Kataku

33:35

editor in chief Jen Glennan resigned

33:37

after Geomedia executives decided to change

33:39

Kataku's remit from publishing news and

33:41

opinions about video games, the whole thing that

33:43

made them famous, to creating and this

33:45

is the real number, by the way, fifty game

33:48

guides a week on a staff of seven

33:51

people. Kataku

33:53

is or I guess was an institution

33:55

in the gaming industry, and it was built off the back

33:58

of publishing thoughtful, timely about

34:00

games and very personal personal

34:02

pieces about video games, an industry

34:05

well known and pretty much the only other one other

34:07

than sports that can really have a

34:09

genuine feeling of nostalgia and the writing.

34:13

They're turning away from that, and

34:15

they're turning it into what will

34:17

just become another seo chop

34:20

shop. And it's all

34:22

thanks to Jim Spanfeller, a man who cannot run

34:24

businesses. He's going to turn Kataku into

34:27

just another seo slop dump, another

34:29

place where you can answer questions about

34:32

where to go in a game when you're stuck, Oh,

34:34

how do I make cloud Strife go nude? Oh

34:37

how do I beat Sefrov. At some point in

34:39

FF seven, Jim Spanfeller has never played

34:41

a video game at any point, so I

34:43

don't think he knows that there is no way to make

34:45

cloud nude, but indeed doesn't know anything

34:48

about gaming. He doesn't know anything

34:50

about games. He doesn't know anything about

34:52

writing, because like all of these

34:54

people I've been talking about, Jim

34:57

Spanfeller does not actually

34:59

know anything about the company he runs,

35:02

and it's disgraceful. Gaming is a multi

35:05

trillion dollar industry. Gaming

35:07

is something that's so important to culture. You

35:10

have the weirdest, most reclusive

35:12

people and incredibly popular sports

35:14

stars who all play the same games. This

35:18

is one of the most dominant forces in culture.

35:21

And this idiot is

35:23

taking Kataku, which has

35:25

had a crazed history.

35:28

It has had a lot of controversy, but

35:30

it's popular, it's meaningful. Writers

35:33

from Kataku have gone on to found things like

35:35

Polygon, another influential and

35:38

in this case, Vox Media owned property.

35:40

After Math was founded by several people who

35:42

have written at Kataku. This

35:45

outlet created in some level modern

35:47

games journalism, and now it's going

35:49

to have the same value as game FAQ's,

35:51

except worse because people on Gamefaq's

35:54

actually play games much

35:58

like sports Illustrated, Darkland,

36:00

Deadspin. They're going to become something I call

36:02

a shit of theseus situation when

36:04

an illustrious brand has its guts ripped

36:07

out, replaced with the thoughts and

36:09

the feelings and the ideas of a

36:11

huge moron. And it's

36:13

so stupid, it's so frustrating,

36:17

and until something changes, it's only going

36:19

to get worse. And

36:23

I know I'm angry, and you should be angry to I'm

36:25

furious these people, those

36:27

of them who are not my friends, are just people I've enjoyed

36:30

reading. People have lost their

36:32

jobs because the media industry is being run

36:34

into the ground by people that do not know how

36:36

to read, write, or even run a

36:38

business. Every outlet that you read

36:41

today that kind of feels like a shadow of its former

36:43

self, there's a reason it's got

36:45

there because the people in charge don't read,

36:47

don't write, they don't contribute. They're not

36:50

media creators. They are parasites,

36:52

as I've discussed, and their remit is

36:54

not to create a lasting legacy, to

36:57

make something that people read for years. They

36:59

are trying to turn that outlet into

37:01

a shitty startup that they can flog to someone.

37:04

Except these things never sell ever.

37:07

And that's because, on top of being idiots,

37:10

they do not understand any kind of business

37:12

at all. And the reason that a

37:14

lot of these executives just can't understand

37:17

it and they can't understand why things

37:19

succeed and their properties fail is

37:22

because they don't really want

37:24

to accept that. You can't grow a media

37:26

business like a startup or

37:28

like any kind of regular business. You

37:31

still need a profit and a loss, but it

37:33

takes time and you have to invest that time

37:35

as much as you have to invest that money. Media

37:39

outlets grow and I'm paraphrasing Coulso

37:42

Media's Robert Evans, they grow by

37:44

hosting the work of journalists that people love

37:47

and giving them the time to develop

37:49

a following and make it, make

37:51

that great stuff, to refine

37:53

their craft to be great

37:56

even if they're not quite there. Through

37:58

mentorship and through just doing the

38:00

work. Our sister show,

38:02

better offline sister Show, it could happen

38:04

here. It took years to develop it into what it

38:06

is today, which by the way, it's a profitable

38:09

podcast and it gets millions of downloads a month.

38:12

And it got there because Robert and Sophie

38:15

put in the time and the money, and

38:17

so did iHeartRadio of course, to

38:19

give these voices the chance to grow and to

38:22

help them grow comfortable, especially with

38:24

media that involves you being exposed

38:27

to the world by talking or by being on video.

38:30

So much of that is growing comfortable with the format

38:32

and finding what works specifically

38:34

for you. And then once you've

38:36

done that, you have to build a rapport with the audience. So I hope

38:39

I'm doing today, and none of this can

38:41

be forced. You can't accelerate this

38:43

process. Perhaps, as Roberts

38:45

also said, you can get these big, unique scoops

38:48

that get people through the door, but you

38:50

have to keep making stuff and you have to keep refining

38:52

it too, And none

38:54

of these executives like that because you

38:57

can't tell that to a private equity firm.

39:00

You can't tell a private equity firm to wait

39:02

and be patient. They're not in the business

39:04

of patients. Venture capital

39:07

doesn't want to hear that it's going to take a

39:09

while, and a non specific while at that to

39:11

get their money out. They want money now,

39:14

money me, money now. And what's

39:16

really sick and ironic about this is

39:19

they're not making money from this. BuzzFeed

39:21

went public, it was horrible mess. Vice

39:24

has been running too the ground. And sure, these people have made

39:27

a bunch of money off of the back of others, but they've

39:29

also destroyed something meaningful and this

39:32

will color their legacies for the rest of their lives. Maybe

39:34

they don't care. I don't know. I hope they

39:36

do. Hope they don't sleep at night. Jimmy

39:39

Finkelstein gets visited by the ghosts from

39:41

I'm Up at Christmas Carol, specifically Maley

39:43

and Marley. I think that'd be kind of funny putting

39:45

that joke aside. Though these people shouldn't

39:48

be allowed to walk down the street without geting yelled

39:50

at in a perfectly legal way. That I'm not encouraging

39:52

anything illegal, of course, but I find

39:55

within myself a great

39:57

deal of poison for

39:59

them. I find them

40:01

disgraceful because Motley,

40:04

they had a good thing. Had Wece been run

40:07

sustainably, had they really focused on making

40:09

it a profitable out there, they could have what four

40:11

O four Media is doing today. And then

40:13

some four or four Media is worker owned business

40:15

made by people Jessin Kobler and Emmanuel

40:18

Maiberg who left Wess,

40:20

who left Motherboard. Weis

40:23

used to own four A four Media. They used

40:25

to these people used to work for Vice, and

40:28

now four o four Media has had major scoops

40:30

that are changing the entire tech industry. They

40:33

are the ones that published the Google Search

40:35

is getting Worse story. They are continually

40:37

getting these scoops doing great journalism, and

40:40

they're going to probably become a very successful

40:42

and profitable business. Weiss could

40:44

have had that Vice literally had that, Jim Spamfeller

40:47

had dead Spin. None of these people

40:49

realize what they've got even after it's gone.

40:51

And maybe they just want that short term bang.

40:54

May they just want a little tittle of money

40:56

so they can feel rich and nasty and

40:59

hang around with their other asshole friends. And

41:01

I find them despicable. If I meet any of them, I

41:03

want to make some very creative noises in their

41:05

faces. And

41:07

it sucks. It sucks because the real

41:10

human consequences fall upon the

41:12

actual people making them rich, the people

41:14

creating stuff, the people talking, taking

41:16

photos and drawing things and writing things. They

41:19

are the victims of this. The

41:21

people who should be the victims, the people who shouldn't

41:23

make a dollar, are the ones making the money.

41:26

They are the ones who stay rich, stay

41:29

powerful, and will probably fail upwards

41:31

into another media job and

41:33

that's the thing. Thanks to

41:35

these people, the media

41:37

industry is spent over a decade

41:39

fucking around, and now they're finding out and

41:42

the journalists are paying these

41:44

executives. They've spent this time

41:46

and they built this foundation, this

41:49

massive search and social

41:51

based foundation, and it's made on top

41:53

of sand. And they're desperate,

41:56

so they change strategy, and they change strategy

41:58

again, and they do so to please algorithms,

42:01

not people. They've completely

42:03

forgotten or maybe they did not know

42:07

that every success, every previous

42:09

success in the media has pretty much

42:11

come from a small group of opinionated people

42:14

with good ideas who create cool shit.

42:18

And really that's the only salvation

42:20

for journalism. Mon Journalism

42:23

can be rebuilt, but rebuilding it will

42:25

take reinforcing the relationship between writers

42:27

and their audiences, and media

42:29

properties need to help foster that and empower

42:32

that relationship instead of trying to get rid

42:34

of that, instead of turning everything into

42:36

a brand to be sold to private equity. We

42:39

can work back. We can get back what has

42:42

been lost by supporting

42:44

unions in newsrooms, by supporting

42:47

and paying for worker owned journalism,

42:51

you can bring back great

42:53

journalism. You can turn this tide

42:55

the private equitis will eventually lose

42:58

because at some point that

43:00

right now they're exceedingly dependent on Google

43:02

Search. Everyone chasing search

43:05

engine optimization is dead in the water.

43:07

Eventually, Google and Facebook

43:10

they turned on the news before. You

43:12

don't think they'll do it again. You

43:14

don't think that Google will eventually tweak the algorithm

43:17

in some obscene way to turn away from

43:19

this generic slop. When that happens,

43:22

sadly, once again, journalists

43:24

will be the ones that suffer, which

43:27

is why right now journalists should unionize.

43:31

It's tough, but if it possible, they

43:33

should join worker owned co ops like

43:35

Flaming Hydra. They should join these

43:37

great organizations. Look up to things like

43:39

Defecta and see the wonderful journalists

43:41

and they're doing day in, day out, People like Ray

43:44

Rato. He's a fantastic

43:46

journalist, an esteemed Bay Area reporter,

43:49

and he's done some of the best work of his career at Defector

43:51

and he's done so because it's owned by

43:53

him and the rest of the writers. The people

43:55

building are the people that should own stuff.

43:59

Now. I feel we are a bit crazy whenever I

44:01

talk about this subject, and I think it's because

44:05

great journalism and great writing

44:07

is foundational the culture. Hearing

44:10

an informed opinion doesn't

44:12

matter where they're at, if they're at a blog, if there are

44:15

a newspaper, if they're on TV. Hearing

44:17

someone who actually knows what they're talking about, speaking

44:19

from the heart, who's developed a relationship

44:21

with you as a reader, is transformational.

44:24

It changes people's lives,

44:27

and great opinion journalism does. On top

44:29

of that, and everything that I am

44:31

doing my PR firm, my newsletter,

44:34

my podcast is a result of having

44:36

great mentors in journalism like

44:39

Will porter Over at PC Zone and

44:41

log and Steve Hogarty, people

44:44

that were there to help me as an early writer, to

44:46

help me, encourage me to develop

44:48

my voice, the voice you were hearing today. None

44:51

of this crazed confidence comes from myself.

44:54

It comes from having great mentors like Sophie

44:56

and Rob Over at caols OH Media, like

44:59

David Roth, a defector. These

45:02

people are the reason

45:04

that people read websites. It's

45:07

the reason they listen to podcasts. It isn't

45:09

because of virality or search

45:11

engine optimization or any other

45:13

little bits of bullshit that people like Jim

45:16

Spanfeller and Corey Height claim is the case.

45:20

The answer to fixing journalism

45:22

is simple. It's just annoying to

45:24

growth at all cost. Catalysts. Profitable

45:28

sustainable journalism or any content

45:30

really is built off the back of letting people

45:32

with defined voices build and sustain

45:35

an audience. Every single

45:37

success story, every single great

45:39

newspaper and website was the result of

45:41

letting great creators create great

45:44

things and giving them the space and

45:46

platform and time and funding

45:48

to do so. If you want

45:50

the next great media outlet, it isn't

45:53

going to come through tricking Google

45:55

or Twitter or Facebook or Instagram

45:57

into reading your stories. It's about making

46:00

great shit and getting people to see

46:02

it, and making sure that the people making

46:05

it feel supported and

46:07

mentored and helped to

46:09

make more of it. I

46:12

believe there is an absolute mountain

46:14

of money right now in journalism

46:17

for investors capable of thinking more than six

46:19

seconds ahead of course, give

46:21

writers the space and the time, and

46:23

that time may be measured in years, to build

46:25

audiences and develop relationships

46:28

with their readers. Embrace their individuality

46:30

and pay them well for the privilege of having

46:32

them speak on your behalf. Build for readers,

46:35

not investors, and you will make way

46:38

more money than you ever would licensing a

46:40

brand like a god damn Denny's franchise.

46:43

Things can get better for journalism.

46:46

I promise you they will if only the money

46:48

and the power is put in the hands of actual

46:50

writers and actual creators rather than

46:53

career failures and private equity dipshits.

46:56

But until there is a significant realignment,

46:58

that something meaningfully changes in media,

47:01

one that puts the power back in the hands of

47:03

the people actually creating stuff and focuses

47:05

on the things that they create, We're gonna

47:08

see this cycle repeat again and again

47:10

and again, and I'm gonna get angry. And

47:12

you should be angry too. I hate to

47:14

tell people to be angry. I hate anger

47:17

in general, but in this case it's

47:19

justifiable. This is a singular

47:21

force damaging culture and

47:24

enriching assholes. Do

47:26

not believe them, Do not trust

47:29

them that any of this was caused by market

47:31

forces or anything other than

47:34

the mass incompetence of assholes running

47:36

media into the ground. Thank

47:39

you for listening. Thank

47:50

you for listening to Better Offline. The editor

47:52

and composer of the Better Offline theme song is

47:54

Matasowski. You can check out more

47:56

of his music and audio projects at Matasowski

47:59

dot com. M A T T O

48:01

s O W s KI dot

48:04

com. You can email me at easy at

48:06

better offline dot com or check out better

48:08

offline dot com to find my newsletter and

48:10

more links to this podcast. Thank you so much

48:12

for listening.

48:14

Better Offline is a production of cool Zone

48:16

Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit

48:18

our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or

48:21

check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple

48:23

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.