WEBVTT - Rich Idiots Are Killing The Media To Please The Tech Industry 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:03.560 All Zone Media. 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:19.040 Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zeitron. 0:00:20.760 --> 0:00:20.920 Now. 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.720 Look, I'm just a simple country podcaster, but at my heart, 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:27.600 I'm a writer. I've been writing since I was sixteen. 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:29.920 I wrote about video games that are now defunct magazine 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.200 called CVG and then another called PC Zone. And there's 0:00:33.240 --> 0:00:35.720 been one theme, one thing that has hung around my 0:00:35.960 --> 0:00:38.960 entire media career, and that thing is that the people 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.239 running the media do not read or write. And I 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:45.160 must sound a little dramatic, but really I'm not kidding. 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.239 The majority of the media executives I've worked for and 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:51.400 the ones I've met, just did not understand or create 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.120 any media of any kind. There were publishers who ran 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.120 games publications who didn't play games, and didn't write, and 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:01.880 hadn't written, didn't contribute any to the magazines, and they 0:01:02.000 --> 0:01:06.720 routinely made decisions that just made the publications worse. There 0:01:06.720 --> 0:01:09.480 were executive editors at newspapers I've read and worked for 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.360 that hadn't written a word in decades, and they made 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:14.640 calls about the tone and direction of writers that they 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.840 didn't even bother to read, and they were always looking 0:01:17.880 --> 0:01:21.600 for ways to increase readership. Without actually focusing on what 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:25.360 made readers read things. When I went into PR in 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:27.240 two thousand and eight, which by the way, I did 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:29.840 to move to America, I didn't really understand the job. 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.680 Pretty good at it now, though, I was still able 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:34.679 to keep a lot of my media connections, both at 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:36.720 home and the ones i'd met on various press trips 0:01:36.720 --> 0:01:40.680 to America. And I saw this sudden and dramatic change 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.240 that was happening to the industry, and it was all 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:45.679 thanks to the advent of mass social media and digital 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:50.080 publishing and of course digital advertising. And then over the years, 0:01:50.160 --> 0:01:53.200 I saw the same cycles repeat themselves again and again 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.760 and again. These media executives, they'd see a trend, get 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.600 very horny for it, they jump on it, and nothing 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:01.560 would happen, and so they'd move on to the next one, 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:03.600 and they'd move on to a next one, and they'd 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:08.720 keep going, and they'd keep dragging media entities into these vast, unprofitable, 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:14.040 unsustainable quagmires, all in pursuit of you guessed it, growth. 0:02:14.560 --> 0:02:18.400 They were always chasing growth. But what they were actually 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:23.640 chasing was the magic of the startup valuation. Startups were 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.560 suddenly being valued at fifty million, one hundred million, a 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.320 billion dollars, and they wanted a little bit of that magic. 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.239 They wanted to get even richer than they already were. 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:35.720 Practically speaking, this meant that outlets were forced by the 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.920 idiotic executives to chase the dragon of social media and 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:42.440 search traffic, and they'd optimize their content not for a 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:44.960 person or a living being of any kind, but to 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:48.120 please algorithms that they didn't control, run by companies like 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.160 Meta and Google who didn't give a shit about them. 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:55.160 As a result, it's been a fairly apocalyptic decade in journalism. 0:02:55.280 --> 0:02:59.360 Multiple outlets have grown into these massive, unwieldy, unprofitable businesses 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:03.440 and then relapsed under the weight of executive malpractice. In 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.959 the last three years, over thirty thousand people have lost 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.040 their jobs in the media industry or while executives received 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.600 these massive paydays for what appears to be accelerating the 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:17.720 Titanic into the Iceberg. As private equity and venture capital 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:20.360 money is flown into the media industry, so of the 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:23.720 rotten demands for eternal growth. Brands that you read as 0:03:23.720 --> 0:03:27.360 a kid, magazines and newspapers that inspired you, they've become 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.400 shells of the former selves. Or because they've chased these 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.079 growth metrics, which naturally ostracize and then eventually lay off 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.720 the journalists that made these outlets famous, until, of course, 0:03:37.720 --> 0:03:40.800 the outlet has to shut down due to unforeseen market conditions, 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:43.800 which is a euphemism for we are too stupid to 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:48.920 run a business. Sadly, at this point, you'll probably realize 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:51.360 that things are not going well in the media industry, 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:53.480 and indeed, twenty twenty four has been one of the 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:58.880 darkest years in this industry I've ever seen. The first 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.160 high profile media cas twenty twenty four were Sports Illustrated, 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.200 formerly one of the most important brands in sports journalism, 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.360 and it was slowly choked to death after being sold twice, 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:10.800 first to Meredith, which acquired it as part of its 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.720 one point eighty five billion dollar acquisition of Time magazine 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:16.480 in twenty seventeen, and then it was sold again when 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:19.600 the intellectual property was licensed to Authentic Brands Group, which 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:21.839 is a holding company, which bought it for one hundred 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:25.920 and ten million dollars. Now you did hear me, Ray, 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.479 They sold the intellectual property, the name Sports Illustrated in 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:33.040 the logo, and their goal was the insane prospect of 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:37.200 branding things like medical clinics and gambling businesses. This is 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:39.559 actually kind of weird precursor to the amount of sports 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:43.800 betting you'll see in modern sports today now. Meredith Corporation 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.640 would continue to publish Sports Illustrated until about twenty nineteen, 0:04:47.960 --> 0:04:51.279 when Authentic Brands Group would license the editorial operations to 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:54.000 a company called The Maven as part of a ten 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.719 year licensing deal, and then laid off forty people and 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:01.479 shifted the editorial strategy away from the deep thoughtful analysis 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:05.120 that people actually gave a shit about, towards focusing on 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:08.400 breaking news, the things that people could literally get anywhere. 0:05:09.480 --> 0:05:12.039 And while they were doing this, they flooded Sports Illustrated's 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.960 website with this kind of noxious, empty, generic contributed content, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.600 all from affiliate sites run by these poorly vetted contributing bloggers. 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.960 Now no offense to the world of contributing bloggers. There 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:26.400 are some good ones out there, but in this case 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.000 this was chop shop work. This was done specifically to 0:05:30.080 --> 0:05:33.680 fill the site, it was not built to inform people. 0:05:35.520 --> 0:05:38.000 Thanks to this, Sports Illustrated had spend a few more 0:05:38.080 --> 0:05:41.560 years deteriorating until around December twenty twenty three, when they 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:44.880 published a piece by a man called Drew Autis, except 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.440 Drew didn't exist. He was one of multiple non existent 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:53.400 pseudonyms given to content generated by AI. While Sports Illustrated 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.880 initially denied the claims of using AI, they'd fire their CEO, 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.960 Ross Levinson a few weeks later. Now Levinson's of real 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:04.080 piece of shit. He's a scumbag. He had multiple accusations 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.040 of sexual harassment against him when he was at the 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.880 La Times, their CEO, and while he was there he 0:06:09.000 --> 0:06:12.000 quite literally tried to do exactly the same thing. He 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:16.120 tried to make the La Times take external contributors. Thankfully, 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:20.440 strong unions and the eventual acquisition of The Times managed 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.400 to get rid of him. He still managed to get 0:06:23.400 --> 0:06:28.159 paid millions. In twenty twenty four, the maven now called 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.200 the Arena Group would lay off most of Sports Illustrated 0:06:31.240 --> 0:06:34.440 staff after failing to pay the licensing fee to Authentic 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.840 Brands Group, which is insane. By the way, you can't 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.279 publish on the website because you didn't pay the dairy 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:43.400 queen franchise thing. You have to to be called Sports 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:48.360 Illustrated anyway. The Arena Group claims they'll still keep publishing 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:51.119 Sports illustrated, but it's not really clear what that's actually 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.680 going to look like considering how unprofitable the Arena group is. 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.400 They had a net loss of fifty million dollars in 0:06:57.440 --> 0:06:59.719 the first three quarters at twenty twenty three, and Sports 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:05.120 ill Frustrated, well, they fired everyone. What's really pissing me 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.000 off though, and this is this whole subject fills me 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:12.360 through my veins for unearthly poison. Sports Illustrated used to 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.080 be profitable. It was profitable for decades, and the reason 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:18.320 it got profitable in the fifties was because the managing 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:22.360 editor was a sports writer. It was also profitable when 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:24.520 it was acquired in twenty nineteen, and it stayed that 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.680 way through twenty twenty, a year when pretty much every 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:31.800 business suffered. Its value. Just to be clear, over one 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:35.040 hundred million dollars didn't come from the fact that a 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:38.000 private equity group sold it to another private equity group, 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.680 though I realized the agree in a group probably wouldn't 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:46.360 like being called that. Its actual value came from writing important, 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:50.800 meaningful sports writing from writers like George Plimpton, Curry Kirkpatrick, 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.000 and Emma Bachelari. And it died. It died at the 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:58.119 hands of people that don't read, don't write, and don't 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:03.280 understand business journalism is being killed by non journalists that 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:15.680 are desperate to turn it into another shitty startup ecosystem. 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:18.720 Less than a month after Sports Illustrated started to collapse, 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:21.760 there was a new media entity that was actually already 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.920 working on dying. The Messenger was a news outlet that 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:27.840 raised fifty million dollars in VC money and hired about 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:31.960 three hundred people, many of them were reporters. In many respects, 0:08:31.960 --> 0:08:35.080 it was not really a news outlet, though it was 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:39.160 focused on churn. It thought that volume, velocity and just 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:41.240 lots of stuff was the way that you make a 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:43.960 big media out there, rather of course, than building a 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:46.559 rapport with readers and adding their trust and making them 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.839 like the writing, you know, writing good stuff for people 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:52.760 like no, no, no, no. You just need lots of things. 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:56.800 And despite this hefty war chest, it shut down on 0:08:56.840 --> 0:09:00.480 February first, twenty twenty four. And this is the discussing part. 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.760 Workers were left unemployed and uninsured and they didn't even 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:09.840 get severance. And it's all because, guess what, the executives 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.120 running it didn't know what they were doing. The Messenger 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.160 was doomed from the beginning. The people behind it were 0:09:17.200 --> 0:09:21.520 just complete idiots. Their CEO, Jimmy Finkelstein, made nine hundred 0:09:21.559 --> 0:09:24.360 thousand dollars a year and they spent eight million dollars 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:27.280 on office space in New York, DC and Los Angeles, 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:30.960 which is just crazy. This is the year twenty twenty four. 0:09:31.400 --> 0:09:33.439 Why do you have office space for a thing you 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:36.160 can do at any computer anyway? Anyway, sorry, let me 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.280 calm down. But what really drove it into the ground 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.120 was that they had this very aggressive and extremely stupid 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.960 editorial strategy, and it was all driven by people who 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.680 didn't know what they were doing. All they thought was 0:09:48.679 --> 0:09:51.640 that traffic was good. This goddamn thing didn't have a 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:55.520 site map. The Messenger, a modern media property, was run 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:58.840 by people who barely knew how to use a computer. Well, 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:00.680 let me give you some insight in to some of 0:10:00.679 --> 0:10:03.720 the rot inside this company. So after the company collapsed, 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.480 Eli Walsh, who love them or hate him, He was 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.080 a writer at The Messenger, and he built his career 0:10:09.160 --> 0:10:14.120 in California journalism, primarily local stuff. He described this constant 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:16.840 pressure to produce more content with a lot of it 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:20.360 just actively ripped off from publications like The Daily Mail 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:23.240 and The New York Post, two routlets I would not 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:26.960 describe as esteemed. After eight months of working at The Messenger, 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.760 Eli Walsh claimed that he had no usable clips for 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.840 his portfolio as a result of how crap the editorial 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:38.600 strategy was. Now listeners, if you're wondering why that's so bad, 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:42.520 even at the worst place I've worked, even the crappiest 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:45.040 freelance out there, I still get a clip I can use, 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:49.480 because usually good writing is still published, even if it's 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:51.680 published and edited in a way that you don't like. 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:56.720 But what The Messenger would publish was this very bland, 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:01.960 mass appeal, mass produced journalist didn't really say much. And 0:11:02.040 --> 0:11:04.440 it's funny to steal from the Daily Mail considering how 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:08.360 much of their stuff is viral content stuff or very 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:12.000 shittly written headlines. It's actually really weird that The Messenger 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:17.840 didn't die quicker, and honestly, the Messenger's chop shop mentality 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:23.480 was completely nonsensical. But seriously, the demise was avoidable had 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:25.800 the people in charge actually known what they were doing, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:28.720 or say, I don't know talked to a journalist about 0:11:28.760 --> 0:11:33.120 how journalism works. When developing the bloody business model. Fifty 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.160 million dollars is actually quite a lot for a media organization. 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:40.960 You could have done it a really great job. You 0:11:40.960 --> 0:11:44.800 can run an incredible newsroom with ten, fifteen, twenty people 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:47.600 fifty million dollars. You'll be able to sustain that for 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:53.000 a long long time. But they didn't understand that. And 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.160 the problem is that none of these media executives really 0:11:56.240 --> 0:12:00.679 understand how great journalism or great anything in media is built. 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:05.720 They don't understand that trust, reputation, and loyalty are actually 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:09.360 very hard to quantify. What is easy to quantify, though, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.600 is revenue growth and page views. You can look at 0:12:12.640 --> 0:12:15.760 page views if you're a colossal Dingus and say, wow, 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:21.119 number go up. Oh, money come in now? Is it profitable? 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.880 Is it actually stuff that people like? Are people returning 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:27.360 after they click it? Or did you just convince them 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.520 to do so through Google? Who knows the messenger is 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:36.040 dead now they deleted the whole website. But putting that aside. 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.880 Because these people have no active participation in the process 0:12:40.920 --> 0:12:45.320 of making journalism or creating media, they don't understand how 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.439 media outlets are built. They may have been participants, they 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:51.720 may have been the money, but they were not the writers, 0:12:51.840 --> 0:12:56.160 the speakers, the photographers, the illustrators. They had no part 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.200 of them. But just to be clear, the people involved 0:12:59.200 --> 0:13:02.200 have names. The Messenger was founded and destroyed by a 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.520 man called Jimmy Finkelstein. He's a media tycoon with close 0:13:05.640 --> 0:13:08.120 ties to Rudy Giuliani. And you know what he did 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:11.000 at the Hill, which he sold for one hundred and 0:13:11.000 --> 0:13:14.000 thirty million dollars. By the way, he used to lean 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.760 over the shoulder of editors and tell them not to 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:21.280 be so critical of Donald Trump. Fucking gross. It's disgusting 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.480 that these people are allowed to get so rich Finkelstein. 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.040 And by the way, former staff, when talking to The 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:29.400 Daily Beast, referred to this guy as a sociopath. That 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.720 was deliberately cruel. He paid himself nine hundred thousand dollars 0:13:33.760 --> 0:13:38.719 a year while running a newsroom like a sweatshop and 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:43.960 not giving people severance. Fuck you, Jimmy, You're a wrinkly scumbag. 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:47.240 I can't legally wish anything upon you, but I'll laugh 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:52.520 if it happens. Sadly, Jimmy Finkelstein isn't the only con 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:55.320 artist choking the life out of the media industry. There 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.000 are some much worse freaks out there. I don't know 0:13:59.040 --> 0:14:01.600 if you've been looking at and it's quite painful to watch, 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:05.400 but for years I've been watching Vice die. Vice used 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.520 to be one of my favorite publications. Motherboard did some 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:10.600 of the best tech journalism out there, and actually four 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:13.320 or four Media is a lot of the former motherblog. 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:16.679 People go pay them money. But on February twenty second, 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.800 twenty twenty four, Vice announced it would no longer publish 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:23.600 written content to any of its flagship publications, which included 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:28.840 Vice dot Com, their regional sites, or indeed Motherboard. Hundreds 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:31.560 of people lost their jobs as a result. It's a 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.560 disgraceful end to this publication. It was once like this 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.720 indie punk magazine built in Montreal. It was something cool, 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:40.800 it was something weird. You could kind of mock it, 0:14:40.840 --> 0:14:43.240 you kind of laugh at it. But Ice did cool 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:46.440 share and then over the course of years, it was 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:51.840 infiltrated and rotted out by private equity adjacent freaks that 0:14:51.920 --> 0:14:55.360 don't write or read or create anything, and it turned 0:14:55.400 --> 0:15:00.800 into this giant, unprofitable, unsustainable, seven billion dollar behemoth. And 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:02.880 you'd think that growth for it would be good, that 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.560 more people would be reading Vice's journalism. Yeah, that would 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.760 assume that journalism was the product that Vice actually wanted 0:15:09.800 --> 0:15:13.360 to sell. Though people do make fun of Vice's kind 0:15:13.360 --> 0:15:15.880 of foe gonzo I took drugs and walked down the 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:19.040 street style journalism. Actually a lot of their stuff was 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:24.000 incredible reporting. Simon of Strovsky's coverage of the earliest days 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:27.760 of the Russo Ukrainian War culminated in him being arrested 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.800 and held captive by separatists in Dombas. It was really 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.720 important work at a time when you really understood what 0:15:34.760 --> 0:15:38.240 was going on with that conflict. Ostrovsky's work ended up 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.440 getting Vice to Emmy nominations as well as a couple 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:43.360 of webbe awards, and it was seen quite rightly by 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:46.360 the way as a time when digital journalism was finally 0:15:46.440 --> 0:15:52.200 challenging broadcasts kind of monopoly over conflict and foreign policy reporting. 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.560 It was a really impressive thing that Vice did, and 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:56.560 it was at a time when people, I don't know 0:15:56.600 --> 0:15:58.760 what kind of surprised by Vice's ability to do it, 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:01.320 and they shouldn't have been. They were a home to 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:05.400 some amazing journalists. I said, n uncanny ability to get 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:08.160 into some of the world's most isolated and frankly dangerous 0:16:08.240 --> 0:16:11.400 places and even make it out alive. Good example is 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:13.920 they did a story on Siberian lumber camps where North 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:16.360 Korean workers were being worked to death to make money 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:18.800 for the country. They did another one on the Syrian 0:16:18.840 --> 0:16:22.000 city of Raka, which in twenty fifteen was the capital 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:26.840 of the Islamic States self proclaimed caliphate. Weis did important 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.800 work every single day, and then they did fun stuff, 0:16:30.040 --> 0:16:33.480 because not all journalists needs to be world changing. It 0:16:33.640 --> 0:16:36.640 just needs to be interesting and fun and full of love. 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.760 And unlike many so many outlets, ICE actually made money 0:16:42.640 --> 0:16:45.400 and it could have been profitable, but it never seemed 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:49.400 to get there. And while there's no single reason why, 0:16:49.760 --> 0:16:53.280 it mostly comes down to pursuing growth and executive greed. 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:58.000 Weiss as it grew into this seven billion dollar creature, 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:00.480 it took on all of this debt. It wanted to 0:17:00.520 --> 0:17:03.720 be a global media empire and expanded in an aggressive, 0:17:03.800 --> 0:17:07.840 deeply unsustainable way, and it made these terrible, awful bets 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:12.920 branded content, shitty video or while doing this ridiculous dance 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.960 of paying their executives insane money and laying people off 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:20.679 at the same time. And this was a big problem 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.440 for this out there executive compensation was always high, even 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:27.320 when the company was not paying its utility bills or 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:30.800 paying out severance. It would take these deals with investors 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:34.760 where they guaranteed dividends regardless of how the company was doing. 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:37.480 Just to be clear, on a business level, that is insane. 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.160 You don't make a deal you can't reliably pay very 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.840 basic business unless, of course, you don't really care about 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:49.119 the business succeeding or surviving. And then they would do 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.520 these very annoying branded content deals. Good example of one 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:55.040 is they did a twenty fourteen deal with Absolute Vodka, 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:58.280 which kind of made everyone feel a little greasy, and 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.480 then they did a partnership with the South Government. It's 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:04.960 not particularly punk rock, and it's definitely not suggestive of 0:18:05.040 --> 0:18:09.040 any great editorial independence. To be clear, the people writing 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:12.320 Advice were victims of this. If you're looking for somebody 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:14.680 to blame, you can start with Corey Haike, who is 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:19.240 Vice's chief operating officer. Before joining Vice, she co led 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.399 Mike a publication she drove into the ground, and she 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.040 did so by moving it away from this kind of hip. 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:30.439 Young really actually beloved journalism. People loved Mike, and then 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.679 she took it and said, ah, well, Facebook is saying 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.119 that we're getting all of these views and all of 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:40.560 this engagement on video on Facebook, so let's pivot the 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.080 entire thing to video. Now, the pivot to video that 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:48.080 Facebook pushed is enough for an entire episode, But the 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:52.560 long story short was that Facebook incorrectly showed massive growth 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:56.320 metrics that did not exist to publishers. This led publications 0:18:56.400 --> 0:19:00.480 like Mike and actually Mashable to massively move their traditorial 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:06.280 strategies around to make video content. Now you may think, huh, 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:10.240 couldn't you just avoid this by seeing if it made 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:14.800 any money? And no, she didn't do that. She wrote 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:17.600 an empty headed Vox article about how the future of 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:22.440 journalism was visual, and then she laid off most of 0:19:22.560 --> 0:19:25.160 the staff and sold the IP to a company called 0:19:25.200 --> 0:19:28.200 bust All that is best known for buying IP and 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:32.000 running crappy journalism on them. There are some good publications 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.880 that run on the bus or network. It certainly wasn't 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.800 doing what Mike was doing at the time. Corey Hike 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:41.720 is an example of the media world's failure to police itself. 0:19:42.400 --> 0:19:45.639 She is a career failure. This is now the second 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:48.879 publication she's driven into the ground because she does not 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.200 understand what she is doing, and that op ed I 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:56.040 previously mentioned the twenty seventeen Vox one she claimed that 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.000 we were in the early stages of a visual revolution 0:19:59.119 --> 0:20:02.880 in journalism. To be clear, Corey Hike is not a journalist. 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:05.520 She's not an editor. She's not a creator. She's not 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:08.560 a creative. She doesn't write things, she doesn't speak things, 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:11.080 she doesn't take photos, and she doesn't draw things. She 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:15.560 is a parasite. And these walking stains on the earth. 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.160 They got rich. They got rich as hundreds of people 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:23.720 lost their jobs. Bankruptcy filings showed that Vice executives paid 0:20:23.720 --> 0:20:27.480 themselves eleven million dollars between May twenty twenty two and 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.880 May twenty twenty three. Corey Hike paid herself over seven 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.480 hundred and twenty six thousand dollars, and former chief people 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.040 officer Daisy Orga Dominguez made over seven hundred and forty 0:20:38.080 --> 0:20:41.600 eight thousand dollars during this period. By the way, writer 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:43.800 Joseph Cox said that he was unable to pay the 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.720 ten cent fee to pull a court record because Vice 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.639 wasn't paying their bills. If you want to blame someone 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:54.400 for the destruction of modern journalism. People like Corey Haike 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:59.120 and mis Orga Dominguez. They're the people to blame. These 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:01.320 are the people that are being allowed to make the 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:05.200 cause on these vacuous pools of data that don't make sense. 0:21:05.640 --> 0:21:07.760 And they don't make sense because they have no connection 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:11.080 to the newsroom. They're not writing anything, they're not reading anything. 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:14.120 They're not part of the media other than the fact 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:17.639 that they are in commanding positions in the media. They 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:22.960 are landlords by another name, and they're rich. They're unfathomably rich, 0:21:23.680 --> 0:21:27.000 all because they conned their way into different jobs that 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:31.080 allow them to fail upwards again and again. Worse still, 0:21:31.480 --> 0:21:34.399 they don't have any ideas, which is why they so 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:38.720 often do stupid things. It's why they're doing this same 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.400 ridiculous cycle again and again where they take a media 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:44.200 out there and they try and run it like a 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:47.320 tech startup, and they don't see the difference between running 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:49.920 an app that sells a service and a media company 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:54.240 that makes content that people consume or creates a relationship 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:58.919 with the audience. Trust, authenticity, These are the things at 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.080 the heart of the media, and readers are very sensitive 0:22:02.119 --> 0:22:05.040 to changes. They are not stupid, and I think that 0:22:05.160 --> 0:22:08.560 these executives believe they are. They believe that readers are 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.199 little pigs that will come and click anything that can 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.639 be tricked and conned. Executives that believe readers are like 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:19.359 that deserve to not have jobs, by the way, But 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:23.240 what they don't realize is that media outlets are also delicate. 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:26.600 If you mess with the formula of media outlets, you're 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:29.040 going to alienate the people who actually read them, the 0:22:29.119 --> 0:22:32.359 people who pay your bills, either by subscribing or by 0:22:32.400 --> 0:22:36.000 proxy by clicking and looking at ads. And it sucks. 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:38.560 It sucks because all of this is very obvious. I'm 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:40.800 sure many of you listening are like, Yeah, that makes sense. 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:44.560 Surely you would not run an outlet by making worse 0:22:44.640 --> 0:22:47.159 stuff but lots of it. Surely you would make a 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:51.680 good outlet that makes good things. But that's the thing. Look, 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:53.760 if you're no longer concern with loyalty, and you really 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:56.800 only care about people who accidentally find a page by 0:22:56.880 --> 0:22:59.560 being tricked by so sure they see a headline they like, 0:22:59.760 --> 0:23:02.880 or perhaps they search for something, you don't really care 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:06.040 about alienating readers. You can do whatever you want. You 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.680 can experiment Willy nilly. You can underminde editorial standards, you 0:23:09.720 --> 0:23:12.600 can lay off people, you can promote your friends, you 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:16.240 can force people to do stupid shit that nobody likes, 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:20.600 because all you care about are analytics. All you care 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:24.719 about is that ephemeral, random, spontaneous traffic that you can 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:27.520 show to your idiot rich friends and say, wow, my 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:32.240