Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zeitron.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm just a simple country podcaster, but at my heart,
Speaker 2: I'm a writer. I've been writing since I was sixteen.
Speaker 2: I wrote about video games that are now defunct magazine
Speaker 2: called CVG and then another called PC Zone. And there's
Speaker 2: been one theme, one thing that has hung around my
Speaker 2: entire media career, and that thing is that the people
Speaker 2: running the media do not read or write. And I
Speaker 2: must sound a little dramatic, but really I'm not kidding.
Speaker 2: The majority of the media executives I've worked for and
Speaker 2: the ones I've met, just did not understand or create
Speaker 2: any media of any kind. There were publishers who ran
Speaker 2: games publications who didn't play games, and didn't write, and
Speaker 2: hadn't written, didn't contribute any to the magazines, and they
Speaker 2: routinely made decisions that just made the publications worse. There
Speaker 2: were executive editors at newspapers I've read and worked for
Speaker 2: that hadn't written a word in decades, and they made
Speaker 2: calls about the tone and direction of writers that they
Speaker 2: didn't even bother to read, and they were always looking
Speaker 2: for ways to increase readership. Without actually focusing on what
Speaker 2: made readers read things. When I went into PR in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, which by the way, I did
Speaker 2: to move to America, I didn't really understand the job.
Speaker 2: Pretty good at it now, though, I was still able
Speaker 2: to keep a lot of my media connections, both at
Speaker 2: home and the ones i'd met on various press trips
Speaker 2: to America. And I saw this sudden and dramatic change
Speaker 2: that was happening to the industry, and it was all
Speaker 2: thanks to the advent of mass social media and digital
Speaker 2: publishing and of course digital advertising. And then over the years,
Speaker 2: I saw the same cycles repeat themselves again and again
Speaker 2: and again. These media executives, they'd see a trend, get
Speaker 2: very horny for it, they jump on it, and nothing
Speaker 2: would happen, and so they'd move on to the next one,
Speaker 2: and they'd move on to a next one, and they'd
Speaker 2: keep going, and they'd keep dragging media entities into these vast, unprofitable,
Speaker 2: unsustainable quagmires, all in pursuit of you guessed it, growth.
Speaker 2: They were always chasing growth. But what they were actually
Speaker 2: chasing was the magic of the startup valuation. Startups were
Speaker 2: suddenly being valued at fifty million, one hundred million, a
Speaker 2: billion dollars, and they wanted a little bit of that magic.
Speaker 2: They wanted to get even richer than they already were.
Speaker 2: Practically speaking, this meant that outlets were forced by the
Speaker 2: idiotic executives to chase the dragon of social media and
Speaker 2: search traffic, and they'd optimize their content not for a
Speaker 2: person or a living being of any kind, but to
Speaker 2: please algorithms that they didn't control, run by companies like
Speaker 2: Meta and Google who didn't give a shit about them.
Speaker 2: As a result, it's been a fairly apocalyptic decade in journalism.
Speaker 2: Multiple outlets have grown into these massive, unwieldy, unprofitable businesses
Speaker 2: and then relapsed under the weight of executive malpractice. In
Speaker 2: the last three years, over thirty thousand people have lost
Speaker 2: their jobs in the media industry or while executives received
Speaker 2: these massive paydays for what appears to be accelerating the
Speaker 2: Titanic into the Iceberg. As private equity and venture capital
Speaker 2: money is flown into the media industry, so of the
Speaker 2: rotten demands for eternal growth. Brands that you read as
Speaker 2: a kid, magazines and newspapers that inspired you, they've become
Speaker 2: shells of the former selves. Or because they've chased these
Speaker 2: growth metrics, which naturally ostracize and then eventually lay off
Speaker 2: the journalists that made these outlets famous, until, of course,
Speaker 2: the outlet has to shut down due to unforeseen market conditions,
Speaker 2: which is a euphemism for we are too stupid to
Speaker 2: run a business. Sadly, at this point, you'll probably realize
Speaker 2: that things are not going well in the media industry,
Speaker 2: and indeed, twenty twenty four has been one of the
Speaker 2: darkest years in this industry I've ever seen. The first
Speaker 2: high profile media cas twenty twenty four were Sports Illustrated,
Speaker 2: formerly one of the most important brands in sports journalism,
Speaker 2: and it was slowly choked to death after being sold twice,
Speaker 2: first to Meredith, which acquired it as part of its
Speaker 2: one point eighty five billion dollar acquisition of Time magazine
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen, and then it was sold again when
Speaker 2: the intellectual property was licensed to Authentic Brands Group, which
Speaker 2: is a holding company, which bought it for one hundred
Speaker 2: and ten million dollars. Now you did hear me, Ray,
Speaker 2: They sold the intellectual property, the name Sports Illustrated in
Speaker 2: the logo, and their goal was the insane prospect of
Speaker 2: branding things like medical clinics and gambling businesses. This is
Speaker 2: actually kind of weird precursor to the amount of sports
Speaker 2: betting you'll see in modern sports today now. Meredith Corporation
Speaker 2: would continue to publish Sports Illustrated until about twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: when Authentic Brands Group would license the editorial operations to
Speaker 2: a company called The Maven as part of a ten
Speaker 2: year licensing deal, and then laid off forty people and
Speaker 2: shifted the editorial strategy away from the deep thoughtful analysis
Speaker 2: that people actually gave a shit about, towards focusing on
Speaker 2: breaking news, the things that people could literally get anywhere.
Speaker 2: And while they were doing this, they flooded Sports Illustrated's
Speaker 2: website with this kind of noxious, empty, generic contributed content,
Speaker 2: all from affiliate sites run by these poorly vetted contributing bloggers.
Speaker 2: Now no offense to the world of contributing bloggers. There
Speaker 2: are some good ones out there, but in this case
Speaker 2: this was chop shop work. This was done specifically to
Speaker 2: fill the site, it was not built to inform people.
Speaker 2: Thanks to this, Sports Illustrated had spend a few more
Speaker 2: years deteriorating until around December twenty twenty three, when they
Speaker 2: published a piece by a man called Drew Autis, except
Speaker 2: Drew didn't exist. He was one of multiple non existent
Speaker 2: pseudonyms given to content generated by AI. While Sports Illustrated
Speaker 2: initially denied the claims of using AI, they'd fire their CEO,
Speaker 2: Ross Levinson a few weeks later. Now Levinson's of real
Speaker 2: piece of shit. He's a scumbag. He had multiple accusations
Speaker 2: of sexual harassment against him when he was at the
Speaker 2: La Times, their CEO, and while he was there he
Speaker 2: quite literally tried to do exactly the same thing. He
Speaker 2: tried to make the La Times take external contributors. Thankfully,
Speaker 2: strong unions and the eventual acquisition of The Times managed
Speaker 2: to get rid of him. He still managed to get
Speaker 2: paid millions. In twenty twenty four, the maven now called
Speaker 2: the Arena Group would lay off most of Sports Illustrated
Speaker 2: staff after failing to pay the licensing fee to Authentic
Speaker 2: Brands Group, which is insane. By the way, you can't
Speaker 2: publish on the website because you didn't pay the dairy
Speaker 2: queen franchise thing. You have to to be called Sports
Speaker 2: Illustrated anyway. The Arena Group claims they'll still keep publishing
Speaker 2: Sports illustrated, but it's not really clear what that's actually
Speaker 2: going to look like considering how unprofitable the Arena group is.
Speaker 2: They had a net loss of fifty million dollars in
Speaker 2: the first three quarters at twenty twenty three, and Sports
Speaker 2: ill Frustrated, well, they fired everyone. What's really pissing me
Speaker 2: off though, and this is this whole subject fills me
Speaker 2: through my veins for unearthly poison. Sports Illustrated used to
Speaker 2: be profitable. It was profitable for decades, and the reason
Speaker 2: it got profitable in the fifties was because the managing
Speaker 2: editor was a sports writer. It was also profitable when
Speaker 2: it was acquired in twenty nineteen, and it stayed that
Speaker 2: way through twenty twenty, a year when pretty much every
Speaker 2: business suffered. Its value. Just to be clear, over one
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars didn't come from the fact that a
Speaker 2: private equity group sold it to another private equity group,
Speaker 2: though I realized the agree in a group probably wouldn't
Speaker 2: like being called that. Its actual value came from writing important,
Speaker 2: meaningful sports writing from writers like George Plimpton, Curry Kirkpatrick,
Speaker 2: and Emma Bachelari. And it died. It died at the
Speaker 2: hands of people that don't read, don't write, and don't
Speaker 2: understand business journalism is being killed by non journalists that
Speaker 2: are desperate to turn it into another shitty startup ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Less than a month after Sports Illustrated started to collapse,
Speaker 2: there was a new media entity that was actually already
Speaker 2: working on dying. The Messenger was a news outlet that
Speaker 2: raised fifty million dollars in VC money and hired about
Speaker 2: three hundred people, many of them were reporters. In many respects,
Speaker 2: it was not really a news outlet, though it was
Speaker 2: focused on churn. It thought that volume, velocity and just
Speaker 2: lots of stuff was the way that you make a
Speaker 2: big media out there, rather of course, than building a
Speaker 2: rapport with readers and adding their trust and making them
Speaker 2: like the writing, you know, writing good stuff for people
Speaker 2: like no, no, no, no. You just need lots of things.
Speaker 2: And despite this hefty war chest, it shut down on
Speaker 2: February first, twenty twenty four. And this is the discussing part.
Speaker 2: Workers were left unemployed and uninsured and they didn't even
Speaker 2: get severance. And it's all because, guess what, the executives
Speaker 2: running it didn't know what they were doing. The Messenger
Speaker 2: was doomed from the beginning. The people behind it were
Speaker 2: just complete idiots. Their CEO, Jimmy Finkelstein, made nine hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year and they spent eight million dollars
Speaker 2: on office space in New York, DC and Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: which is just crazy. This is the year twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Why do you have office space for a thing you
Speaker 2: can do at any computer anyway? Anyway, sorry, let me
Speaker 2: calm down. But what really drove it into the ground
Speaker 2: was that they had this very aggressive and extremely stupid
Speaker 2: editorial strategy, and it was all driven by people who
Speaker 2: didn't know what they were doing. All they thought was
Speaker 2: that traffic was good. This goddamn thing didn't have a
Speaker 2: site map. The Messenger, a modern media property, was run
Speaker 2: by people who barely knew how to use a computer. Well,
Speaker 2: let me give you some insight in to some of
Speaker 2: the rot inside this company. So after the company collapsed,
Speaker 2: Eli Walsh, who love them or hate him, He was
Speaker 2: a writer at The Messenger, and he built his career
Speaker 2: in California journalism, primarily local stuff. He described this constant
Speaker 2: pressure to produce more content with a lot of it
Speaker 2: just actively ripped off from publications like The Daily Mail
Speaker 2: and The New York Post, two routlets I would not
Speaker 2: describe as esteemed. After eight months of working at The Messenger,
Speaker 2: Eli Walsh claimed that he had no usable clips for
Speaker 2: his portfolio as a result of how crap the editorial
Speaker 2: strategy was. Now listeners, if you're wondering why that's so bad,
Speaker 2: even at the worst place I've worked, even the crappiest
Speaker 2: freelance out there, I still get a clip I can use,
Speaker 2: because usually good writing is still published, even if it's
Speaker 2: published and edited in a way that you don't like.
Speaker 2: But what The Messenger would publish was this very bland,
Speaker 2: mass appeal, mass produced journalist didn't really say much. And
Speaker 2: it's funny to steal from the Daily Mail considering how
Speaker 2: much of their stuff is viral content stuff or very
Speaker 2: shittly written headlines. It's actually really weird that The Messenger
Speaker 2: didn't die quicker, and honestly, the Messenger's chop shop mentality
Speaker 2: was completely nonsensical. But seriously, the demise was avoidable had
Speaker 2: the people in charge actually known what they were doing,
Speaker 2: or say, I don't know talked to a journalist about
Speaker 2: how journalism works. When developing the bloody business model. Fifty
Speaker 2: million dollars is actually quite a lot for a media organization.
Speaker 2: You could have done it a really great job. You
Speaker 2: can run an incredible newsroom with ten, fifteen, twenty people
Speaker 2: fifty million dollars. You'll be able to sustain that for
Speaker 2: a long long time. But they didn't understand that. And
Speaker 2: the problem is that none of these media executives really
Speaker 2: understand how great journalism or great anything in media is built.
Speaker 2: They don't understand that trust, reputation, and loyalty are actually
Speaker 2: very hard to quantify. What is easy to quantify, though,
Speaker 2: is revenue growth and page views. You can look at
Speaker 2: page views if you're a colossal Dingus and say, wow,
Speaker 2: number go up. Oh, money come in now? Is it profitable?
Speaker 2: Is it actually stuff that people like? Are people returning
Speaker 2: after they click it? Or did you just convince them
Speaker 2: to do so through Google? Who knows the messenger is
Speaker 2: dead now they deleted the whole website. But putting that aside.
Speaker 2: Because these people have no active participation in the process
Speaker 2: of making journalism or creating media, they don't understand how
Speaker 2: media outlets are built. They may have been participants, they
Speaker 2: may have been the money, but they were not the writers,
Speaker 2: the speakers, the photographers, the illustrators. They had no part
Speaker 2: of them. But just to be clear, the people involved
Speaker 2: have names. The Messenger was founded and destroyed by a
Speaker 2: man called Jimmy Finkelstein. He's a media tycoon with close
Speaker 2: ties to Rudy Giuliani. And you know what he did
Speaker 2: at the Hill, which he sold for one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty million dollars. By the way, he used to lean
Speaker 2: over the shoulder of editors and tell them not to
Speaker 2: be so critical of Donald Trump. Fucking gross. It's disgusting
Speaker 2: that these people are allowed to get so rich Finkelstein.
Speaker 2: And by the way, former staff, when talking to The
Speaker 2: Daily Beast, referred to this guy as a sociopath. That
Speaker 2: was deliberately cruel. He paid himself nine hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 2: a year while running a newsroom like a sweatshop and
Speaker 2: not giving people severance. Fuck you, Jimmy, You're a wrinkly scumbag.
Speaker 2: I can't legally wish anything upon you, but I'll laugh
Speaker 2: if it happens. Sadly, Jimmy Finkelstein isn't the only con
Speaker 2: artist choking the life out of the media industry. There
Speaker 2: are some much worse freaks out there. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've been looking at and it's quite painful to watch,
Speaker 2: but for years I've been watching Vice die. Vice used
Speaker 2: to be one of my favorite publications. Motherboard did some
Speaker 2: of the best tech journalism out there, and actually four
Speaker 2: or four Media is a lot of the former motherblog.
Speaker 2: People go pay them money. But on February twenty second,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, Vice announced it would no longer publish
Speaker 2: written content to any of its flagship publications, which included
Speaker 2: Vice dot Com, their regional sites, or indeed Motherboard. Hundreds
Speaker 2: of people lost their jobs as a result. It's a
Speaker 2: disgraceful end to this publication. It was once like this
Speaker 2: indie punk magazine built in Montreal. It was something cool,
Speaker 2: it was something weird. You could kind of mock it,
Speaker 2: you kind of laugh at it. But Ice did cool
Speaker 2: share and then over the course of years, it was
Speaker 2: infiltrated and rotted out by private equity adjacent freaks that
Speaker 2: don't write or read or create anything, and it turned
Speaker 2: into this giant, unprofitable, unsustainable, seven billion dollar behemoth. And
Speaker 2: you'd think that growth for it would be good, that
Speaker 2: more people would be reading Vice's journalism. Yeah, that would
Speaker 2: assume that journalism was the product that Vice actually wanted
Speaker 2: to sell. Though people do make fun of Vice's kind
Speaker 2: of foe gonzo I took drugs and walked down the
Speaker 2: street style journalism. Actually a lot of their stuff was
Speaker 2: incredible reporting. Simon of Strovsky's coverage of the earliest days
Speaker 2: of the Russo Ukrainian War culminated in him being arrested
Speaker 2: and held captive by separatists in Dombas. It was really
Speaker 2: important work at a time when you really understood what
Speaker 2: was going on with that conflict. Ostrovsky's work ended up
Speaker 2: getting Vice to Emmy nominations as well as a couple
Speaker 2: of webbe awards, and it was seen quite rightly by
Speaker 2: the way as a time when digital journalism was finally
Speaker 2: challenging broadcasts kind of monopoly over conflict and foreign policy reporting.
Speaker 2: It was a really impressive thing that Vice did, and
Speaker 2: it was at a time when people, I don't know
Speaker 2: what kind of surprised by Vice's ability to do it,
Speaker 2: and they shouldn't have been. They were a home to
Speaker 2: some amazing journalists. I said, n uncanny ability to get
Speaker 2: into some of the world's most isolated and frankly dangerous
Speaker 2: places and even make it out alive. Good example is
Speaker 2: they did a story on Siberian lumber camps where North
Speaker 2: Korean workers were being worked to death to make money
Speaker 2: for the country. They did another one on the Syrian
Speaker 2: city of Raka, which in twenty fifteen was the capital
Speaker 2: of the Islamic States self proclaimed caliphate. Weis did important
Speaker 2: work every single day, and then they did fun stuff,
Speaker 2: because not all journalists needs to be world changing. It
Speaker 2: just needs to be interesting and fun and full of love.
Speaker 2: And unlike many so many outlets, ICE actually made money
Speaker 2: and it could have been profitable, but it never seemed
Speaker 2: to get there. And while there's no single reason why,
Speaker 2: it mostly comes down to pursuing growth and executive greed.
Speaker 2: Weiss as it grew into this seven billion dollar creature,
Speaker 2: it took on all of this debt. It wanted to
Speaker 2: be a global media empire and expanded in an aggressive,
Speaker 2: deeply unsustainable way, and it made these terrible, awful bets
Speaker 2: branded content, shitty video or while doing this ridiculous dance
Speaker 2: of paying their executives insane money and laying people off
Speaker 2: at the same time. And this was a big problem
Speaker 2: for this out there executive compensation was always high, even
Speaker 2: when the company was not paying its utility bills or
Speaker 2: paying out severance. It would take these deals with investors
Speaker 2: where they guaranteed dividends regardless of how the company was doing.
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, on a business level, that is insane.
Speaker 2: You don't make a deal you can't reliably pay very
Speaker 2: basic business unless, of course, you don't really care about
Speaker 2: the business succeeding or surviving. And then they would do
Speaker 2: these very annoying branded content deals. Good example of one
Speaker 2: is they did a twenty fourteen deal with Absolute Vodka,
Speaker 2: which kind of made everyone feel a little greasy, and
Speaker 2: then they did a partnership with the South Government. It's
Speaker 2: not particularly punk rock, and it's definitely not suggestive of
Speaker 2: any great editorial independence. To be clear, the people writing
Speaker 2: Advice were victims of this. If you're looking for somebody
Speaker 2: to blame, you can start with Corey Haike, who is
Speaker 2: Vice's chief operating officer. Before joining Vice, she co led
Speaker 2: Mike a publication she drove into the ground, and she
Speaker 2: did so by moving it away from this kind of hip.
Speaker 2: Young really actually beloved journalism. People loved Mike, and then
Speaker 2: she took it and said, ah, well, Facebook is saying
Speaker 2: that we're getting all of these views and all of
Speaker 2: this engagement on video on Facebook, so let's pivot the
Speaker 2: entire thing to video. Now, the pivot to video that
Speaker 2: Facebook pushed is enough for an entire episode, But the
Speaker 2: long story short was that Facebook incorrectly showed massive growth
Speaker 2: metrics that did not exist to publishers. This led publications
Speaker 2: like Mike and actually Mashable to massively move their traditorial
Speaker 2: strategies around to make video content. Now you may think, huh,
Speaker 2: couldn't you just avoid this by seeing if it made
Speaker 2: any money? And no, she didn't do that. She wrote
Speaker 2: an empty headed Vox article about how the future of
Speaker 2: journalism was visual, and then she laid off most of
Speaker 2: the staff and sold the IP to a company called
Speaker 2: bust All that is best known for buying IP and
Speaker 2: running crappy journalism on them. There are some good publications
Speaker 2: that run on the bus or network. It certainly wasn't
Speaker 2: doing what Mike was doing at the time. Corey Hike
Speaker 2: is an example of the media world's failure to police itself.
Speaker 2: She is a career failure. This is now the second
Speaker 2: publication she's driven into the ground because she does not
Speaker 2: understand what she is doing, and that op ed I
Speaker 2: previously mentioned the twenty seventeen Vox one she claimed that
Speaker 2: we were in the early stages of a visual revolution
Speaker 2: in journalism. To be clear, Corey Hike is not a journalist.
Speaker 2: She's not an editor. She's not a creator. She's not
Speaker 2: a creative. She doesn't write things, she doesn't speak things,
Speaker 2: she doesn't take photos, and she doesn't draw things. She
Speaker 2: is a parasite. And these walking stains on the earth.
Speaker 2: They got rich. They got rich as hundreds of people
Speaker 2: lost their jobs. Bankruptcy filings showed that Vice executives paid
Speaker 2: themselves eleven million dollars between May twenty twenty two and
Speaker 2: May twenty twenty three. Corey Hike paid herself over seven
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty six thousand dollars, and former chief people
Speaker 2: officer Daisy Orga Dominguez made over seven hundred and forty
Speaker 2: eight thousand dollars during this period. By the way, writer
Speaker 2: Joseph Cox said that he was unable to pay the
Speaker 2: ten cent fee to pull a court record because Vice
Speaker 2: wasn't paying their bills. If you want to blame someone
Speaker 2: for the destruction of modern journalism. People like Corey Haike
Speaker 2: and mis Orga Dominguez. They're the people to blame. These
Speaker 2: are the people that are being allowed to make the
Speaker 2: cause on these vacuous pools of data that don't make sense.
Speaker 2: And they don't make sense because they have no connection
Speaker 2: to the newsroom. They're not writing anything, they're not reading anything.
Speaker 2: They're not part of the media other than the fact
Speaker 2: that they are in commanding positions in the media. They
Speaker 2: are landlords by another name, and they're rich. They're unfathomably rich,
Speaker 2: all because they conned their way into different jobs that
Speaker 2: allow them to fail upwards again and again. Worse still,
Speaker 2: they don't have any ideas, which is why they so
Speaker 2: often do stupid things. It's why they're doing this same
Speaker 2: ridiculous cycle again and again where they take a media
Speaker 2: out there and they try and run it like a
Speaker 2: tech startup, and they don't see the difference between running
Speaker 2: an app that sells a service and a media company
Speaker 2: that makes content that people consume or creates a relationship
Speaker 2: with the audience. Trust, authenticity, These are the things at
Speaker 2: the heart of the media, and readers are very sensitive
Speaker 2: to changes. They are not stupid, and I think that
Speaker 2: these executives believe they are. They believe that readers are
Speaker 2: little pigs that will come and click anything that can
Speaker 2: be tricked and conned. Executives that believe readers are like
Speaker 2: that deserve to not have jobs, by the way, But
Speaker 2: what they don't realize is that media outlets are also delicate.
Speaker 2: If you mess with the formula of media outlets, you're
Speaker 2: going to alienate the people who actually read them, the
Speaker 2: people who pay your bills, either by subscribing or by
Speaker 2: proxy by clicking and looking at ads. And it sucks.
Speaker 2: It sucks because all of this is very obvious. I'm
Speaker 2: sure many of you listening are like, Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Surely you would not run an outlet by making worse
Speaker 2: stuff but lots of it. Surely you would make a
Speaker 2: good outlet that makes good things. But that's the thing. Look,
Speaker 2: if you're no longer concern with loyalty, and you really
Speaker 2: only care about people who accidentally find a page by
Speaker 2: being tricked by so sure they see a headline they like,
Speaker 2: or perhaps they search for something, you don't really care
Speaker 2: about alienating readers. You can do whatever you want. You
Speaker 2: can experiment Willy nilly. You can underminde editorial standards, you
Speaker 2: can lay off people, you can promote your friends, you
Speaker 2: can force people to do stupid shit that nobody likes,
Speaker 2: because all you care about are analytics. All you care
Speaker 2: about is that ephemeral, random, spontaneous traffic that you can
Speaker 2: show to your idiot rich friends and say, wow, my
Speaker 2: outlet's popping off. And when all you give a shit
Speaker 2: about is visits and impressions, all you're really going to
Speaker 2: focus on is what's going to please the big tech
Speaker 2: firms like Meta, Twitter and Google, and these social networks
Speaker 2: have been very clear in how little they care about
Speaker 2: news unless it helps them get traffic. And indeed, the
Speaker 2: early days of these social networks were heavily dependent on
Speaker 2: media outlets creating content for them so that people stayed
Speaker 2: on them, and then they choked that traffic the moment
Speaker 2: they didn't need anymore. The network effects that these executives
Speaker 2: are chasing, the social virality, the Google search positioning, they
Speaker 2: make the number go up. And if that's all that matters, well,
Speaker 2: you don't really care about having a lasting web presence.
Speaker 2: You don't really care about a sustainable media outlet. You're
Speaker 2: just an online marketing company that publishes words or videos,
Speaker 2: and frankly, I can't think of a more damaging part
Speaker 2: of the media than the chase of these metrics, and
Speaker 2: specifically search engine optimization. The allure of search traffic, especially
Speaker 2: with the drop of traffic from social media websites, has
Speaker 2: just poisoned so much of the media, and now publishers
Speaker 2: create content. It's not really there to serve an audience,
Speaker 2: per se or build a relationship, but to kind of
Speaker 2: get this spurious traffic. The when does the super Bowl start?
Speaker 2: What time does this go live? Where can I buy something?
Speaker 2: You've probably seen these and wondered why so many out
Speaker 2: let's publish the same thing. I'll get to that. So
Speaker 2: if you see all of these websites that have like
Speaker 2: when's the super Bowl start? And top ten televisions, all
Speaker 2: of these things, and you see them, you're like, this
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense. I'm used to reading long form things
Speaker 2: on here. It's because those have embedded links, sometimes to
Speaker 2: Amazon or Walmart or Best Buy. Those outlets get a
Speaker 2: slither of money every time you click, and they get
Speaker 2: a little more as you browse around the site if
Speaker 2: you buy something. Now there are very trustworthy outlets engaging
Speaker 2: in this, and it's a way to make money for
Speaker 2: the media out there. There are some like the Wirecutter
Speaker 2: who actually do a phenomenal job. They do very deep
Speaker 2: product testing. Later on in this podcast, I'm actually going
Speaker 2: to get into some of the scumbags in the industry,
Speaker 2: but there are trustworthy folks that make money on this.
Speaker 2: The problem is you can also make money by not
Speaker 2: making any effort at all, and I will get to that.
Speaker 2: And the result of this chase of metrics is a
Speaker 2: media industry and crisis executives and editors that don't really
Speaker 2: read or write and don't remember the last time they
Speaker 2: published anything. They're twisting reporters coverage to make Google happy,
Speaker 2: and all they want to do is improve traffic and
Speaker 2: get advertising. That's all there is to it. And yes,
Speaker 2: I understand that there's money that needs to be made
Speaker 2: to pay people's salaries, but so much of the Internet
Speaker 2: is becoming content that looks and sounds the same. And
Speaker 2: like I said, those affiliate marketing deals, they make money
Speaker 2: even when you just do a half fast effort of
Speaker 2: saying I like this TV. And what happens when everyone
Speaker 2: chases the same dragon is nobody's really happy. People aren't
Speaker 2: really coming to your website for the top ten best apps.
Speaker 2: They're not coming to be told, hey, these are the
Speaker 2: best deals. They might enjoy those, they might use them,
Speaker 2: but that's not what's keeping them there. And yes' seeing
Speaker 2: so much of that because those in power are not
Speaker 2: actually looking at the outlets. They're not reading these websites.
Speaker 2: They're not even really consuming the media. They're not on
Speaker 2: social media, they're not on anything other than maybe the
Speaker 2: New York Times and CNN. The people running the media
Speaker 2: don't participate, not as customers and frankly not as workers.
Speaker 2: And these people they only really understand the media as
Speaker 2: a series of symbols, shadows on the cave. They don't
Speaker 2: really see it beyond the numbers, and they think that
Speaker 2: at some point money comes out due to words and
Speaker 2: writing and video. Maybe they don't really care well how
Speaker 2: that forms, as long as the money keeps coming, even
Speaker 2: if the money stops one day. This poor decision making
Speaker 2: almost always leads to overstaffing and frankly, general mismanagement. Any
Speaker 2: form of creative media, anything you see, any great outlet
Speaker 2: you have seen, requires a very basic understanding of audience
Speaker 2: and an audience. Takes time, and it takes energy, and
Speaker 2: it takes working on this. I am sure in fifteen
Speaker 2: episodes I will be a lot better than this. I'm
Speaker 2: sure fifteen after that, I'll be better than that. And thankfully,
Speaker 2: I hope I'm good enough now for you to listen
Speaker 2: to and you'll stick around and hear me get better.
Speaker 2: But because of the way that Cool Zone media works,
Speaker 2: I will have that chance. I'm not being told I
Speaker 2: have to hit a quota. I'm being told to get
Speaker 2: in this studio and talk and produce great things, hopefully.
Speaker 2: But that's the problem. That's the problem when you don't
Speaker 2: create anything, when you're a parasite, when you're someone that
Speaker 2: steals from others. The Messengers a great example here, by
Speaker 2: the way. So they hired about three hundred reporters, and
Speaker 2: a lot of them were very well established, well respected
Speaker 2: reporters from like major outlets, and then they took these great, skilled,
Speaker 2: wonderful people and they said, please repurpose other people's work.
Speaker 2: Mentioned already the Daily Mail, New York Post as examples
Speaker 2: of place they took from. This doesn't really make sense
Speaker 2: to even a regular person, But when you're a kind
Speaker 2: of soft brain media executive, and all you care about
Speaker 2: is short term growth, and you want to see number
Speaker 2: go up immediately. All you care about is scale, So
Speaker 2: all you're going to do is put out masses of chum.
Speaker 2: And it sucks. It sucks because they're so wrong. And
Speaker 2: what's insane is these executives they're blind to the actual
Speaker 2: success stories of the media. I'm thinking of worker owned
Speaker 2: outlets like Defector four O four media Aftermath, and I
Speaker 2: don't know many of the successful, profitable newsletters like Newcomer
Speaker 2: and Platformer that have done incredibly well with incredibly small staffs.
Speaker 2: Because guess what, people don't want the same shit in
Speaker 2: a different flavor. They want informed opinion. They want it
Speaker 2: from fallible, imperfect people. They want to know they're hearing
Speaker 2: from a person. They want something that has emotion in it.
Speaker 2: That's why people pay for journalism, That's why people read.
Speaker 2: While there is a degree of service journalism to tell
Speaker 2: you what happened, a lot of great writing is emotional. Defector.
Speaker 2: They're actually a really interesting one as well. They're successful,
Speaker 2: they're profitable, and they cover more than just sports. Despite
Speaker 2: being a sports website, their sports and culture and their
Speaker 2: staff came from a website called dead Spin. Now, dead
Speaker 2: Spin is hilarious. I used to write there. I love
Speaker 2: dead Spin. Dead Spin was a sports and culture site.
Speaker 2: They wrote about sports and then other things. Drew McGarry
Speaker 2: did a famous thing about the time when he collapsed
Speaker 2: and something was wrong with his brain. For example, there
Speaker 2: were some wonderful things on there that were completely unrelated
Speaker 2: to sport. When the private equity shuffles as a result
Speaker 2: of Peter Teal's lawsuit against Gorka happened, a company called
Speaker 2: Geomedia took over. And they're complete moron of an executive.
Speaker 2: Jim Spamfeller he fired Barry to pachet Ski because he
Speaker 2: refused to make Dead Spins staff stick to sports. Now,
Speaker 2: Jim Spamfeller is a complete moron. And I know you
Speaker 2: shouldn't just insult people in the podcast, but he's a
Speaker 2: he's a dingus. He's a complete numpty. And you may ask, huh, well,
Speaker 2: based on looking at Defector and indeed based on being
Speaker 2: able to look at the economics of dead Spin when
Speaker 2: he owned it, wouldn't you, spamfella just want to let
Speaker 2: them keep writing and doing stuff in the exceedingly popular
Speaker 2: way that everyone loved and the answer is that Jim
Speaker 2: Spanfeller is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand journalism or business.
Speaker 2: And indeed, many times you will see stories like this,
Speaker 2: he'd be like, I don't get it. How did it
Speaker 2: fall apart? And the answer is usually that Jim Spanfeller
Speaker 2: he wanted dead Spin to be like any other sports
Speaker 2: out there. Yet the whole reason people read dead Spin,
Speaker 2: and indeed read and pay for Defector, was because it
Speaker 2: approached sports without the kind of very strong boundaries that
Speaker 2: restricted the outlets like ESPN or NBC Sports, which they
Speaker 2: have their place now. Jim Spaanfeller and his type of people,
Speaker 2: they'll never understand that the well doesn't need another content meal.
Speaker 2: We don't need more aggregations of aggregations of aggregations of
Speaker 2: another outlet's aggregation. And though this content, when engineered in
Speaker 2: the precise way that Google likes, may indeed get traffic
Speaker 2: from search, and it may be quote unquote popular, it
Speaker 2: doesn't mean that anyone's coming back. You're not building loyalty
Speaker 2: another In March, Deadspin was sold again, this time to
Speaker 2: a startup called line Up of Publishing. A little bit
Speaker 2: painful when you think about the raw economy there, and
Speaker 2: they're based in Malta, which is a business retreat for
Speaker 2: tax dodgers but also known for cryptocurrency startups and more
Speaker 2: worrying in this case, European gambling firms. An investigation by
Speaker 2: Sean Keeley over at Tedium found numerous connections between Deadspin's
Speaker 2: new owner and various online casinos, which heavily suggests that
Speaker 2: it's going to become not a sports website but a
Speaker 2: website for affiliate marketing for gambling sites. And what sucks
Speaker 2: about that is kind of the way that sports in
Speaker 2: general is going. You're going to be able to bet
Speaker 2: on MBA games from their app, for example. It's a
Speaker 2: terrible press them, but also a terrible thing to happen
Speaker 2: to one of the greatest sports websites to ever run. Ever,
Speaker 2: but don't worry, Jim Spanfeller still has several other websites
Speaker 2: to fuck up, and in this case, he's currently working
Speaker 2: on destroying Kataku now. Kataku was previously one of the
Speaker 2: most well respected gaming publications of the world, and they
Speaker 2: were sold to Geomedia as part of the Gorka lawsuit
Speaker 2: last week. As reported by Aftermaths, Gita Jackson and Riley McLeod.
Speaker 2: Kataku editor in chief Jen Glennan resigned after Geomedia executives
Speaker 2: decided to change Kataku's remit from publishing news and opinions
Speaker 2: about video games, the whole thing that made them famous,
Speaker 2: to creating and this is the real number, by the way,
Speaker 2: fifty game guides a week on a staff of seven people.
Speaker 2: Kataku is or I guess was an institution in the
Speaker 2: gaming industry, and it was built off the back of
Speaker 2: publishing thoughtful, timely about games and very personal personal pieces
Speaker 2: about video games, an industry well known and pretty much
Speaker 2: the only other one other than sports that can really
Speaker 2: have a genuine feeling of nostalgia and the writing. They're
Speaker 2: turning away from that, and they're turning it into what
Speaker 2: will just become another seo chop shop. And it's all
Speaker 2: thanks to Jim Spanfeller, a man who cannot run businesses.
Speaker 2: He's going to turn Kataku into just another seo slop dump,
Speaker 2: another place where you can answer questions about where to
Speaker 2: go in a game when you're stuck, Oh, how do
Speaker 2: I make cloud Strife go nude? Oh how do I
Speaker 2: beat Sefrov. At some point in FF seven, Jim Spanfeller
Speaker 2: has never played a video game at any point, so
Speaker 2: I don't think he knows that there is no way
Speaker 2: to make cloud nude, but indeed doesn't know anything about gaming.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know anything about games. He doesn't know anything
Speaker 2: about writing, because like all of these people I've been
Speaker 2: talking about, Jim Spanfeller does not actually know anything about
Speaker 2: the company he runs, and it's disgraceful. Gaming is a
Speaker 2: multi trillion dollar industry. Gaming is something that's so important
Speaker 2: to culture. You have the weirdest, most reclusive people and
Speaker 2: incredibly popular sports stars who all play the same games.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most dominant forces in culture.
Speaker 2: And this idiot is taking Kataku, which has had a
Speaker 2: crazed history. It has had a lot of controversy, but
Speaker 2: it's popular, it's meaningful. Writers from Kataku have gone on
Speaker 2: to found things like Polygon, another influential and in this case,
Speaker 2: Vox Media owned property. After Math was founded by several
Speaker 2: people who have written at Kataku. This outlet created in
Speaker 2: some level modern games journalism, and now it's going to
Speaker 2: have the same value as game FAQ's, except worse because
Speaker 2: people on Gamefaq's actually play games much like sports Illustrated, Darkland, Deadspin.
Speaker 2: They're going to become something I call a shit of
Speaker 2: theseus situation when an illustrious brand has its guts ripped out,
Speaker 2: replaced with the thoughts and the feelings and the ideas
Speaker 2: of a huge moron. And it's so stupid, it's so frustrating,
Speaker 2: and until something changes, it's only going to get worse.
Speaker 2: And I know I'm angry, and you should be angry
Speaker 2: to I'm furious these people, those of them who are
Speaker 2: not my friends, are just people I've enjoyed reading. People
Speaker 2: have lost their jobs because the media industry is being
Speaker 2: run into the ground by people that do not know
Speaker 2: how to read, write, or even run a business. Every
Speaker 2: outlet that you read today that kind of feels like
Speaker 2: a shadow of its former self, there's a reason it's
Speaker 2: got there because the people in charge don't read, don't write,
Speaker 2: they don't contribute. They're not media creators. They are parasites,
Speaker 2: as I've discussed, and their remit is not to create
Speaker 2: a lasting legacy, to make something that people read for years.
Speaker 2: They are trying to turn that outlet into a shitty
Speaker 2: startup that they can flog to someone. Except these things
Speaker 2: never sell ever. And that's because, on top of being idiots,
Speaker 2: they do not understand any kind of business at all.
Speaker 2: And the reason that a lot of these executives just
Speaker 2: can't understand it and they can't understand why things succeed
Speaker 2: and their properties fail is because they don't really want
Speaker 2: to accept that. You can't grow a media business like
Speaker 2: a startup or like any kind of regular business. You
Speaker 2: still need a profit and a loss, but it takes
Speaker 2: time and you have to invest that time as much
Speaker 2: as you have to invest that money. Media outlets grow
Speaker 2: and I'm paraphrasing Coulso Media's Robert Evans, they grow by
Speaker 2: hosting the work of journalists that people love and giving
Speaker 2: them the time to develop a following and make it,
Speaker 2: make that great stuff, to refine their craft to be
Speaker 2: great even if they're not quite there. Through mentorship and
Speaker 2: through just doing the work. Our sister show, better offline
Speaker 2: sister Show, it could happen here. It took years to
Speaker 2: develop it into what it is today, which by the way,
Speaker 2: it's a profitable podcast and it gets millions of downloads
Speaker 2: a month. And it got there because Robert and Sophie
Speaker 2: put in the time and the money, and so did
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio of course, to give these voices the chance to
Speaker 2: grow and to help them grow comfortable, especially with media
Speaker 2: that involves you being exposed to the world by talking
Speaker 2: or by being on video. So much of that is
Speaker 2: growing comfortable with the format and finding what works specifically
Speaker 2: for you. And then once you've done that, you have
Speaker 2: to build a rapport with the audience. So I hope
Speaker 2: I'm doing today, and none of this can be forced.
Speaker 2: You can't accelerate this process. Perhaps, as Roberts also said,
Speaker 2: you can get these big, unique scoops that get people
Speaker 2: through the door, but you have to keep making stuff
Speaker 2: and you have to keep refining it too, And none
Speaker 2: of these executives like that because you can't tell that
Speaker 2: to a private equity firm. You can't tell a private
Speaker 2: equity firm to wait and be patient. They're not in
Speaker 2: the business of patients. Venture capital doesn't want to hear
Speaker 2: that it's going to take a while, and a non
Speaker 2: specific while at that to get their money out. They
Speaker 2: want money now, money me, money now. And what's really
Speaker 2: sick and ironic about this is they're not making money
Speaker 2: from this. BuzzFeed went public, it was horrible mess. Vice
Speaker 2: has been running too the ground. And sure, these people
Speaker 2: have made a bunch of money off of the back
Speaker 2: of others, but they've also destroyed something meaningful and this
Speaker 2: will color their legacies for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2: Maybe they don't care. I don't know. I hope they do.
Speaker 2: Hope they don't sleep at night. Jimmy Finkelstein gets visited
Speaker 2: by the ghosts from I'm Up at Christmas Carol, specifically
Speaker 2: Maley and Marley. I think that'd be kind of funny
Speaker 2: putting that joke aside. Though these people shouldn't be allowed
Speaker 2: to walk down the street without geting yelled at in
Speaker 2: a perfectly legal way. That I'm not encouraging anything illegal,
Speaker 2: of course, but I find within myself a great deal
Speaker 2: of poison for them. I find them disgraceful because Motley,
Speaker 2: they had a good thing. Had Wece been run sustainably,
Speaker 2: had they really focused on making it a profitable out there,
Speaker 2: they could have what four O four Media is doing today.
Speaker 2: And then some four or four Media is worker owned
Speaker 2: business made by people Jessin Kobler and Emmanuel Maiberg who
Speaker 2: left Wess, who left Motherboard. Weis used to own four
Speaker 2: A four Media. They used to these people used to
Speaker 2: work for Vice, and now four o four Media has
Speaker 2: had major scoops that are changing the entire tech industry.
Speaker 2: They are the ones that published the Google Search is
Speaker 2: getting Worse story. They are continually getting these scoops doing
Speaker 2: great journalism, and they're going to probably become a very
Speaker 2: successful and profitable business. Weiss could have had that Vice
Speaker 2: literally had that, Jim Spamfeller had dead Spin. None of
Speaker 2: these people realize what they've got even after it's gone.
Speaker 2: And maybe they just want that short term bang. May
Speaker 2: they just want a little tittle of money so they
Speaker 2: can feel rich and nasty and hang around with their
Speaker 2: other asshole friends. And I find them despicable. If I
Speaker 2: meet any of them, I want to make some very
Speaker 2: creative noises in their faces. And it sucks. It sucks
Speaker 2: because the real human consequences fall upon the actual people
Speaker 2: making them rich, the people creating stuff, the people talking,
Speaker 2: taking photos and drawing things and writing things. They are
Speaker 2: the victims of this. The people who should be the victims,
Speaker 2: the people who shouldn't make a dollar, are the ones
Speaker 2: making the money. They are the ones who stay rich,
Speaker 2: stay powerful, and will probably fail upwards into another media
Speaker 2: job and that's the thing. Thanks to these people, the
Speaker 2: media industry is spent over a decade fucking around, and
Speaker 2: now they're finding out and the journalists are paying these executives.
Speaker 2: They've spent this time and they built this foundation, this
Speaker 2: massive search and social based foundation, and it's made on
Speaker 2: top of sand. And they're desperate, so they change strategy,
Speaker 2: and they change strategy again, and they do so to
Speaker 2: please algorithms, not people. They've completely forgotten or maybe they
Speaker 2: did not know that every success, every previous success in
Speaker 2: the media has pretty much come from a small group
Speaker 2: of opinionated people with good ideas who create cool shit.
Speaker 2: And really that's the only salvation for journalism. Mon Journalism
Speaker 2: can be rebuilt, but rebuilding it will take reinforcing the
Speaker 2: relationship between writers and their audiences, and media properties need
Speaker 2: to help foster that and empower that relationship instead of
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of that, instead of turning everything
Speaker 2: into a brand to be sold to private equity. We
Speaker 2: can work back. We can get back what has been
Speaker 2: lost by supporting unions in newsrooms, by supporting and paying
Speaker 2: for worker owned journalism, you can bring back great journalism.
Speaker 2: You can turn this tide the private equitis will eventually
Speaker 2: lose because at some point that right now they're exceedingly
Speaker 2: dependent on Google Search. Everyone chasing search engine optimization is
Speaker 2: dead in the water. Eventually, Google and Facebook they turned
Speaker 2: on the news before. You don't think they'll do it again.
Speaker 2: You don't think that Google will eventually tweak the algorithm
Speaker 2: in some obscene way to turn away from this generic slop.
Speaker 2: When that happens, sadly, once again, journalists will be the
Speaker 2: ones that suffer, which is why right now journalists should unionize.
Speaker 2: It's tough, but if it possible, they should join worker
Speaker 2: owned co ops like Flaming Hydra. They should join these
Speaker 2: great organizations. Look up to things like Defecta and see
Speaker 2: the wonderful journalists and they're doing day in, day out,
Speaker 2: People like Ray Rato. He's a fantastic journalist, an esteemed
Speaker 2: Bay Area reporter, and he's done some of the best
Speaker 2: work of his career at Defector and he's done so
Speaker 2: because it's owned by him and the rest of the writers.
Speaker 2: The people building are the people that should own stuff. Now.
Speaker 2: I feel we are a bit crazy whenever I talk
Speaker 2: about this subject, and I think it's because great journalism
Speaker 2: and great writing is foundational the culture. Hearing an informed
Speaker 2: opinion doesn't matter where they're at, if they're at a blog,
Speaker 2: if there are a newspaper, if they're on TV. Hearing
Speaker 2: someone who actually knows what they're talking about, speaking from
Speaker 2: the heart, who's developed a relationship with you as a reader,
Speaker 2: is transformational. It changes people's lives, and great opinion journalism does.
Speaker 2: On top of that, and everything that I am doing
Speaker 2: my PR firm, my newsletter, my podcast is a result
Speaker 2: of having great mentors in journalism like Will porter Over
Speaker 2: at PC Zone and log and Steve Hogarty, people that
Speaker 2: were there to help me as an early writer, to
Speaker 2: help me, encourage me to develop my voice, the voice
Speaker 2: you were hearing today. None of this crazed confidence comes
Speaker 2: from myself. It comes from having great mentors like Sophie
Speaker 2: and Rob Over at caols OH Media, like David Roth,
Speaker 2: a defector. These people are the reason that people read websites.
Speaker 2: It's the reason they listen to podcasts. It isn't because
Speaker 2: of virality or search engine optimization or any other little
Speaker 2: bits of bullshit that people like Jim Spanfeller and Corey
Speaker 2: Height claim is the case. The answer to fixing journalism
Speaker 2: is simple. It's just annoying to growth at all cost. Catalysts.
Speaker 2: Profitable sustainable journalism or any content really is built off
Speaker 2: the back of letting people with defined voices build and
Speaker 2: sustain an audience. Every single success story, every single great
Speaker 2: newspaper and website was the result of letting great creators
Speaker 2: create great things and giving them the space and platform
Speaker 2: and time and funding to do so. If you want
Speaker 2: the next great media outlet, it isn't going to come
Speaker 2: through tricking Google or Twitter or Facebook or Instagram into
Speaker 2: reading your stories. It's about making great shit and getting
Speaker 2: people to see it, and making sure that the people
Speaker 2: making it feel supported and mentored and helped to make
Speaker 2: more of it. I believe there is an absolute mountain
Speaker 2: of money right now in journalism for investors capable of
Speaker 2: thinking more than six seconds ahead of course, give writers
Speaker 2: the space and the time, and that time may be
Speaker 2: measured in years, to build audiences and develop relationships with
Speaker 2: their readers. Embrace their individuality and pay them well for
Speaker 2: the privilege of having them speak on your behalf. Build
Speaker 2: for readers, not investors, and you will make way more
Speaker 2: money than you ever would licensing a brand like a
Speaker 2: god damn Denny's franchise. Things can get better for journalism.
Speaker 2: I promise you they will if only the money and
Speaker 2: the power is put in the hands of actual writers
Speaker 2: and actual creators rather than career failures and private equity dipshits.
Speaker 2: But until there is a significant realignment, that something meaningfully
Speaker 2: changes in media, one that puts the power back in
Speaker 2: the hands of the people actually creating stuff and focuses
Speaker 2: on the things that they create, We're gonna see this
Speaker 2: cycle repeat again and again and again, and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get angry. And you should be angry too. I hate
Speaker 2: to tell people to be angry. I hate anger in general,
Speaker 2: but in this case it's justifiable. This is a singular
Speaker 2: force damaging culture and enriching assholes. Do not believe them,
Speaker 2: Do not trust them that any of this was caused
Speaker 2: by market forces or anything other than the mass incompetence
Speaker 2: of assholes running media into the ground. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and
Speaker 2: composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You
Speaker 2: can check out more of his music and audio projects
Speaker 2: at Matasowski dot com. M A T T O s
Speaker 2: O W s KI dot com. You can email me
Speaker 2: at easy at better offline dot com or check out
Speaker 2: better offline dot com to find my newsletter and more
Speaker 2: links to this podcast. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.