Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: We're on vacation with that doesn't mean we don't have
Speaker 2: a great show for you Today. Author John Gans examines
Speaker 2: how we got to our present political moment. But first
Speaker 2: we'll talk to Status News Oliver Darcy about the changing
Speaker 2: media landscape.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Oliver Darcy.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Molly. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1: I wanted to have you on the podcast because I
Speaker 1: read your newsletter every day. Status Well, thank you, You're welcome.
Speaker 1: You are a really smart media reporter and also, you know,
Speaker 1: a lovely human being. But I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about the media, and not just because I
Speaker 1: love to think about myself, but because you know, we
Speaker 1: are heading into Trump two point zero and the media
Speaker 1: is really one of the last checks and balances we
Speaker 1: have left. So can you just paint with a broad
Speaker 1: brush what the media looks like right now?
Speaker 3: Well, unfortunately it's not in the best shape. And the
Speaker 3: broadest way to describe it is I think there are
Speaker 3: a number of outlets either facing financial or business struggles,
Speaker 3: and then there are other outlets that are facing editorial struggles,
Speaker 3: and then their outlets, perhaps like the Los Angeles Times,
Speaker 3: facing both editorial and financial struggles, and so unfortunately at
Speaker 3: a time I think when the fourth estate you would
Speaker 3: want it to be the strongest, in a very strong position,
Speaker 3: it's actually quite vulnerable. And you're seeing that in different signs.
Speaker 3: I guess our symptoms are appearing every day, whether it's
Speaker 3: Joe and Mika maybe going down to Malongo to kiss
Speaker 3: the ring, or whether it's Jeff Bezos and Patrick Sunchion,
Speaker 3: you know, having blocked their newspapers for making endorsements, or
Speaker 3: whether it's CNN putting dishonest MAGA voices like Scott Jennings
Speaker 3: on the air. I think you're seeing throughout the landscape
Speaker 3: troubling signs as Donald Trump prepares to has sent to
Speaker 3: the Oval office once again.
Speaker 1: So there are a number of things happening. One is financial.
Speaker 1: These media companies are having a hard time making money.
Speaker 1: Some of that is because tech companies have really put
Speaker 1: them in an impossible spot.
Speaker 3: Right, yes, one hundred percent, so talk to us about that.
Speaker 3: For a long time. Obviously, these media companies were fueled
Speaker 3: by advertiser dollars and right now in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: advertisers can generally get a lot more bang for their
Speaker 3: buck by advertising with either Google or Meta because they
Speaker 3: allow for extreme targeting. Right if you go on Instagram,
Speaker 3: you will get ads targeted specifically to you, like it's
Speaker 3: actually quite wild. You don't even want to spend money,
Speaker 3: and you get these ads that are like, you know,
Speaker 3: and I'm thinking, I'm getting these ads and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I didn't even know this product exists, but this looks
Speaker 3: like it was built specifically for me. And that targeting
Speaker 3: is really alluding to these advertise And so you've seen
Speaker 3: all that ad money that used to maybe be spent
Speaker 3: in the you know, glossy pages of Vogue or people
Speaker 3: used to advertise on in different number of different areas.
Speaker 3: You've seen a lot of the advertising dollars go to
Speaker 3: the duopoly of Google and Meta, and that's put a
Speaker 3: lot of financial pressure on publishers. And you've seen newspapers
Speaker 3: go under. You know, they really can't make ends meet anymore,
Speaker 3: whether that's the local newspapers that are in the communities,
Speaker 3: because a lot of small businesses now rather spend their
Speaker 3: money online versus in the local paper or whether that's
Speaker 3: on the national level where you're seeing papers like the
Speaker 3: Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post really really struggle
Speaker 3: to make ends meet, and a large part of that
Speaker 3: is because of the advertising environment. It's not friendly to them.
Speaker 1: I want you to explain sort of what is left
Speaker 1: in the media sort of world now, like what it
Speaker 1: looks like for newspapers, magazines, and news more generally on television.
Speaker 3: So I think on the local level, we just it
Speaker 3: cannot be underscored enough how decimated the local news environment
Speaker 3: is a lot of communities no longer have a paper.
Speaker 3: They're relying maybe on a TV station to cover the news,
Speaker 3: and a lot of those are owned by Sinclaire, which
Speaker 3: is another story. And so in the local level it's
Speaker 3: just really terrible. And so hopefully someone can figure out
Speaker 3: a way to make this work, but right now it's
Speaker 3: not so good. On the national level, you're seeing a
Speaker 3: lot of these one time giants shrink, you know, year
Speaker 3: after year, and so La Conde and Asks is a
Speaker 3: good example. You know that that company has has continued
Speaker 3: to shrink over the years. It was once this huge
Speaker 3: behemoth and now it's it's you know, every other It
Speaker 3: feels like every few months they're doing some sort of layoffs,
Speaker 3: and they're trying to figure out how to transition from
Speaker 3: a print business to a digital business with a digital
Speaker 3: ad environment not being good. I think a good example,
Speaker 3: I guess is Vox Media, which owns New York Magazine,
Speaker 3: but also the Verge ear some of these other Internet brands.
Speaker 3: You're you're seeing Jim Bankoff, who's the CEO over there,
Speaker 3: really look for other revenue streams, whether and generally this
Speaker 3: is becoming a subscription subscription play where they're asking people
Speaker 3: to subscribe directly to their publications. It's not great, I
Speaker 3: guess on the national level either, where these big publishers
Speaker 3: are shrinking and really struggling to I guess, to stay
Speaker 3: alive and find revenue streams that are while. And then
Speaker 3: on the television side, there's another whole issue, which is
Speaker 3: that these also one time giants are facing an existential
Speaker 3: threat in that people are cutting the cord. Every single year,
Speaker 3: millions of Americans are cutting the cord. And what does
Speaker 3: that mean. That means that the revenue stream these these
Speaker 3: cable companies, in particular cable news companies are fueled in
Speaker 3: part by Cape or mostly by cable carriage fees. Their
Speaker 3: business model is collapsing underneath them, and less people are
Speaker 3: watching them, so that means less advertiser dollars because every
Speaker 3: time someone cuts the cord, there goes another potential person
Speaker 3: you can meet with advertising dollars. And so a company
Speaker 3: like CNN or MSNBC or even Fox News, and then
Speaker 3: also there's just a linear channels like ABC News, NBC News.
Speaker 3: They're all losing audience, and so the game really has
Speaker 3: become not whether you can grow your audience, but how
Speaker 3: you can hold on to the audience you have long
Speaker 3: enough to transition to a digital play that will work.
Speaker 3: And of course, as we just discussed on digital, there
Speaker 3: are all these problems because the advertising market's not great either.
Speaker 3: So really what it's coming down to, I think for
Speaker 3: all of these players is how to compel reader's viewers
Speaker 3: to pay for direct to consumer subscriptions. And I think
Speaker 3: at some point it's going to be challenging because people
Speaker 3: will only pay for a subscription to so many things. Right,
Speaker 3: you have a Netflix account, you might have an Hbo account,
Speaker 3: you might have a New York Times subscription, But how
Speaker 3: many subscriptions can you convince people to pay for before
Speaker 3: they're just over it.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm wondering, like when we think about people are
Speaker 1: on line watching news, right, They're watching it in clips,
Speaker 1: they're watching it in the guy with the beanie aggregating
Speaker 1: the news. They're watching news like they want news. It's
Speaker 1: just that cable companies have not figured out how to
Speaker 1: get it to them. Is that correct?
Speaker 3: I think that's partly right in that, like, yes, there
Speaker 3: are models for news and commentary that are certainly working online.
Speaker 3: I think the issue is these cable companies were making
Speaker 3: so much money molly off of these cable carriage fees,
Speaker 3: and so they have They are very large, They have
Speaker 3: large workforces to maintain, you know, like CNN basically has
Speaker 3: a standing army of journalists around the world, something like
Speaker 3: four thousand journalists in the workforce. They're just stationed across
Speaker 3: the world and they're all getting paid whether they go
Speaker 3: on air or not. Right, And you might be able
Speaker 3: to find a model where like let's say, like a
Speaker 3: Kaitlin Collins, you know, can have a let's say five
Speaker 3: ten million dollar business built around her, but that's not
Speaker 3: going to supplant or dig you out of the hole.
Speaker 3: For a billion dollar company. You know, if CNN is
Speaker 3: making let's say eight hundred million dollars a year right now,
Speaker 3: maybe seven hundred and it was making over a billion,
Speaker 3: you know during the Trump years under a former chief
Speaker 3: Jeff Zucker, you know, that's that's a profit. And so
Speaker 3: even if you can build like a ten million dollar
Speaker 3: business around Kaitlin Collins and a ten million dollar business
Speaker 3: around Anderson Cooper doing something on streaming, that is nowhere
Speaker 3: near the profit margin these companies have been operating, and
Speaker 3: so then they need to dramatically downsize. And as they downsize,
Speaker 3: there goes a lot of the reporting that they that
Speaker 3: they're paying for. And so the trick I think really
Speaker 3: is I think you're seeing this with Mark Thompson at CNN,
Speaker 3: is he knows that he needs to really slim down CNN,
Speaker 3: get it much much leaner and focused on digital. And
Speaker 3: the reality is for these companies to survive, they're all
Speaker 3: going to have to get a lot smaller, and that's
Speaker 3: going to be very, very painful over the next few years.
Speaker 3: So I guess the question is, yes, there is a
Speaker 3: way to get news out to people in in a
Speaker 3: profitable way online, It's just not going to replace the
Speaker 3: profits that these companies have been making and so you're
Speaker 3: going to have to cut a lot of journalists in
Speaker 3: the process.
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure. One of the things that happened in
Speaker 1: the nineties, And again I am, I want to say
Speaker 1: a victim of the nineties because that was when I
Speaker 1: started working, and that's when I came of age, which
Speaker 1: makes me sound old, But what I saw in the
Speaker 1: nineties was all of these newspapers and magazines and then
Speaker 1: the Internet, and that they could not make the jump, right.
Speaker 1: They just couldn't figure out how to make the jump,
Speaker 1: and so they didn't and so ultimately what happened was
Speaker 1: they were kind of shrunk and they were kind of
Speaker 1: replaced by things that were not as good or not
Speaker 1: as fulsome but in some ways they were. So can
Speaker 1: you sort of like go along with me and try
Speaker 1: to think of ways in which these news comeanies. Isn't
Speaker 1: there like a way to sort of make this work
Speaker 1: or you think it's really just not suited.
Speaker 3: I think there's a way to make news work. I'm
Speaker 3: bullish on that. I mean, I definitely think there's a
Speaker 3: way to make news work. I just think that the
Speaker 3: current you know, the current dinosaurs, if you will, because
Speaker 3: they're large and they're old, are probably not going to
Speaker 3: make it into the next age in the same way, right,
Speaker 3: And so whether that's the old magazine publishers and losing
Speaker 3: a lot of glamour there, or whether that's the cable
Speaker 3: news companies and some of these big newspapers, like, it's
Speaker 3: going to be really tough. I think the Times, the
Speaker 3: New York Times, has done a really good job of
Speaker 3: offering a very polished premium offering that adds a lot
Speaker 3: of value to people's lie and offers great reporting. I
Speaker 3: think that the issue too, though, to some extent, is
Speaker 3: how many New York Times is do you need? Right, Molly,
Speaker 3: if you subscribe to the New York Times, now, do
Speaker 3: you really need another one? Do you want to pay
Speaker 3: for three or four New York Times is? I don't know.
Speaker 3: And so you know, because The Times has sort of
Speaker 3: taken up the market there, and it's possible that maybe
Speaker 3: like CNN could offer a very differentiated product with with
Speaker 3: live video around the world that would be interesting. Maybe
Speaker 3: that would be a differentiation enough for you just to
Speaker 3: pay for it. But I think that's the challenge as well,
Speaker 3: Like there are only so many subscriptions. I think people
Speaker 3: will pay for and maybe there can be some bundling
Speaker 3: in the future, maybe like at some point we see
Speaker 3: the Newer Times in Journal and CNN bundle, or maybe
Speaker 3: CNN and the New York Times get together. I think
Speaker 3: there's gonna be more consolidation that happens because there's too much,
Speaker 3: just too many offerings, and it's people are going to
Speaker 3: be fatigued. And I also just continue to think that
Speaker 3: these massive companies are going to have to slim down
Speaker 3: dramatically just to survive. And that's not to say, like,
Speaker 3: look like as these companies also slim down, other things
Speaker 3: will grow, Right, So you have newer companies like Pop
Speaker 3: or Axios or these newer age companies that pop up
Speaker 3: and maybe fill a little bit of that void. But
Speaker 3: as as technology progresses, things are disrupted, and I think
Speaker 3: we're just continuing to live through that, right.
Speaker 1: No, agreed, And like there definitely are certainly opportunities to
Speaker 1: rethink the business model, and you've done that really well,
Speaker 1: So talk to me about how you've done that well.
Speaker 3: I think if we go back to this a second
Speaker 3: as well, I think you know, there are a lot
Speaker 3: of companies, again, the big ones that have a lot
Speaker 3: of people there and and whether like CNN goes to
Speaker 3: air in South Korea or you know, and where they
Speaker 3: have someone's station or where they have you know, whether
Speaker 3: they go to air in Africa where they have probably
Speaker 3: someone's station, or maybe they have people station all across
Speaker 3: the world, and a lot of those people if they're
Speaker 3: not going on air, I think that you know they're
Speaker 3: they're gonna mean, they're obviously getting paid regardless. And I
Speaker 3: think that if you're someone like Mark Thompson, you have
Speaker 3: to figure out how to get them to create content
Speaker 3: every single day, even if it doesn't go to air
Speaker 3: and adds something of value, because if you're adding something
Speaker 3: of value, people will I think, pay for it. And
Speaker 3: that's what I've seen with my own company status is
Speaker 3: every single day I wake up and I'm trying to
Speaker 3: add value. I'm trying to tell you something you don't know,
Speaker 3: to give you pieces of information that you were unaware
Speaker 3: of before. Because I think that when you have a
Speaker 3: strong product like that that tells people, it informs people,
Speaker 3: it's interesting to read, they will pay for it. It's
Speaker 3: just a matter of doing that on a consistent basis.
Speaker 3: I also think as well that you have to stand
Speaker 3: for something, Molly. I think people that read me know
Speaker 3: pretty well where I stand on very important issues, and
Speaker 3: you can't be like milk toast. You have to have
Speaker 3: a little flavor, you have to have a little edge,
Speaker 3: and you have to be breaking news. And I think
Speaker 3: if you can create a dish that has those ingredients,
Speaker 3: people will be intrigued by it hopefully pay for it.
Speaker 3: And that's where I've been aiming to do a status Let's.
Speaker 1: Talk about that for a minute, because that's really important.
Speaker 1: So I am an opinion columnist, I would say, very
Speaker 1: very like I would say, I'm center left. If you're
Speaker 1: on the right, you would say, if you write for
Speaker 1: Fox Digital, yes I read it. Thanks guys. I'm a
Speaker 1: far leftist, but obviously if you're any kind of leftist
Speaker 1: you know I'm like quite centrist and I'm pro democracy,
Speaker 1: I think, which is ultimately more important than any political leaning.
Speaker 1: And I try really carefully to when I write, though
Speaker 1: I'm largely on the opinion side and not reporting, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty careful to keep mindful of my values as much
Speaker 1: as possible, which is not always as possible as I
Speaker 1: would like it to be. Sometimes I have to make choices,
Speaker 1: but you are a reporter, so I'm hoping you could
Speaker 1: talk about that because I think it's interesting and I think,
Speaker 1: more importantly than that, it is what is needed right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that there's been a conflation to some
Speaker 3: extent between stating obvious facts and stating an opinion. I
Speaker 3: got into this in one of my recent newsletters, like,
Speaker 3: for instance, the idea of where Cash Patel talks about
Speaker 3: using the FBI to go after members of the media.
Speaker 3: I think that I don't even think, I know, that's
Speaker 3: an Unamerican way to think, and it's it's it's it
Speaker 3: goes every against everything that you know is embedded into
Speaker 3: the country's founding principles. And I don't really think it's
Speaker 3: an opinion for me to to. You know, if I
Speaker 3: was writing a story to describe that as flatly an
Speaker 3: American for some reason, some people would argue that's an opinion,
Speaker 3: and then you get into I guess what is opinion
Speaker 3: and what is fact. I think that there are a
Speaker 3: lot of people in the press corps who are worried
Speaker 3: about being seen as partisan for stating I guess obvious facts,
Speaker 3: and Cash Battel is an extremist. That's another fact. Steve
Speaker 3: Bannon is an extremist, Pete Heg Seth is a conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 3: These are well documented facts, and at times you'll see
Speaker 3: like the Associated Press, I think, had a story many
Speaker 3: months ago that called Cash Battel a conspiracy theorist or
Speaker 3: said that he has a long history trafficking and conspiracy theories,
Speaker 3: which he actually does. But for some reason, news organizations
Speaker 3: shy away from those labels when writing or reporting on
Speaker 3: these figures. And I'm not sure why. I don't think
Speaker 3: it's an opinion.
Speaker 1: No, it's true.
Speaker 3: Well, people are scared, Molly. They're afraid that if they
Speaker 3: call cash Battel an extremist or Pete hegse ethic conspiracy theorist,
Speaker 3: that they're going to be labeled as leftist, partisans and biased,
Speaker 3: and that Fox News will as sail ABC or whoever
Speaker 3: would say some such a thing. And then, I mean,
Speaker 3: look at what happened when when David Mirror fact checked
Speaker 3: Donald Trump a couple times during the debate. You know,
Speaker 3: Sean Hannity gone on air right afterward and attacked Disney
Speaker 3: CEO Bob Iger. And these guys do not want to
Speaker 3: be drawn into the culture wars for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 3: but one because half of the country is still their
Speaker 3: potential customer base. You know, they want Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 3: going to Walt Disney World. News organizations are trying to
Speaker 3: tread softly because I think they want to maintain credibility
Speaker 3: with both halves of the country, and the truth is
Speaker 3: kind of pitting them against each other because I think
Speaker 3: that for a lot of people who lean left, they're
Speaker 3: frustrated not seeing conspiracy theorists called conspiracy theorists, and then
Speaker 3: on the right, if you do do that, then they
Speaker 3: get alienated and think that you're a leftist and you're biased,
Speaker 3: and so it's really a difficult pickle these companies are in.
Speaker 3: I happen to think that as journalists, our job is
Speaker 3: not to think whether the truth will offend people, but
Speaker 3: it's to report things fairly and accurately. And I don't
Speaker 3: think you can tell the story of Cash Betel in
Speaker 3: a fair accurate way without very strongly mentioning, you know,
Speaker 3: in the headlines and the leads of stories that this
Speaker 3: is an extremist who has been appointed or named as
Speaker 3: the potential next FBI director. I don't think that's an
Speaker 3: opinion I think that's a matter of fact, and I
Speaker 3: think news organizations have the duty to tell the public
Speaker 3: what's actually happening. She answer your question when I write,
Speaker 3: I'm just writing these as you know, I'm just writing
Speaker 3: that Cash Betel is an extremist. And so I think
Speaker 3: because a lot of other people don't write like that,
Speaker 3: maybe they think Oller is like an opinion guy or whatever.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's an opinion. I just I'm just
Speaker 3: writing a matter of fact. And when I was at CNN,
Speaker 3: we called Fox News a right wing propaganda network in
Speaker 3: news copy because they are, and if anyone has any
Speaker 3: questions about that, I'm happy to refer to them to
Speaker 3: you know, a large volume of articles and documents from
Speaker 3: the dominion case that very much indicates that is exactly
Speaker 3: what they are. And I think journalists need to actually, frankly,
Speaker 3: have a little more backbone and when they're covering these
Speaker 3: these entities.
Speaker 1: So interesting, so important, And thank you Oliver.
Speaker 3: Darcey, well thank you Molly. This was really fun.