Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zetron.
Speaker 2: Also on April twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, Geomedia, the
Speaker 2: private equity project best known for running websites like Deadspin
Speaker 2: into the Ground, announced that it was selling satirical news
Speaker 2: newspaper and website The Onion to a company called Global Tetrahedron.
Speaker 2: Though you knew it at the time, Global Tetrahedron was
Speaker 2: an entity run by former NBC News This Information reporter
Speaker 2: Ben Collins, funded by billionaire Jeff Lawson, best known for
Speaker 2: founding Twilio. As a note, global Tetrahedron is a reference
Speaker 2: to the company of the same name from The Onion's
Speaker 2: anthology book Our Dumb Century. In one of the first
Speaker 2: bits of good news I've had to share on this show,
Speaker 2: The Onion is now on by somebody who has not
Speaker 2: only done a job in journalism, written things, researched things,
Speaker 2: and worked in a news organization that didn't burned to
Speaker 2: the goddamn ground. He also cares about the future of
Speaker 2: the newspaper, best known for headlines like study reveals babies
Speaker 2: as stupid, jurisprudence, fetishists get off on technicality and Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg worried Facebook listening to him after being pushed shirt
Speaker 2: that says I just laid off ten thousand employees. Today,
Speaker 2: it's my immense pleasure to be joined by the Onion's
Speaker 2: new CEO, Ben Collins. Okay, so how did this deal
Speaker 2: to buy the Onion actually come together?
Speaker 3: Okay? So I was it was January. I just quit
Speaker 3: my job right for Christmas, and I was writing a
Speaker 3: book about like some of the biggest pieces of shit
Speaker 3: on the planet Earth, right, you know, the Elon Musks
Speaker 3: and the Jim Jordan's of the world. And I was
Speaker 3: like super depressed, and I was like I was platting
Speaker 3: through it, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Having fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, I have no idea. I don't even know
Speaker 3: if it was good. I think it probably was all right,
Speaker 3: but like the process was horrible. And I read an
Speaker 3: ad week that the Onion was aggressively for sale, and
Speaker 3: I had known, and I remembered that Elon Musk had
Speaker 3: once tried to buy the Onion, right he wound up
Speaker 3: poaching a bunch of staff and started this thing called Thud,
Speaker 3: which never really launched. He from what I've heard from
Speaker 3: some lore in the office, by the way, is that
Speaker 3: they after about a year. He didn't think anything that
Speaker 3: these former Onion writers wrote was funny, and this was
Speaker 3: like a peak era of the Onion. So he just
Speaker 3: showed them away off campus, off the Tesla campus where
Speaker 3: he had originally bought them for the SpaceX campus and
Speaker 3: into this like weird remote area and then it just
Speaker 3: died a like a and it died the death of
Speaker 3: like a guy dying in the desert in a video game.
Speaker 3: That's what happened. So I was worried that he was
Speaker 3: gonna try to snap it up or like the AI
Speaker 3: all the people who buy these like websites and turn
Speaker 3: them into like weird zombie AI farms.
Speaker 2: I thought that was Yes, that seems pretty likely.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I really, I really did not want that
Speaker 3: to happen. Like the Onion was a very important part
Speaker 3: of my life grown up and kind of remains that way.
Speaker 3: And it's like the last, the last American news institution
Speaker 3: that has been completely unsullied, I would.
Speaker 2: Say, and also a rare good hit rate for decades.
Speaker 2: There's not really been a.
Speaker 3: Slump, Yeah, exactly, even in the last year when all
Speaker 3: these other news organizations are really fumbling the bag. It's
Speaker 3: like tripping over themselves. They weren't, you know, they were
Speaker 3: very clear about AI and Gaza and all these other
Speaker 3: things that people fell into, like some really weird rhetorical
Speaker 3: traps for themselves that they are now having a hard
Speaker 3: time getting out of the Onion and didn't do that.
Speaker 3: Like one of their headlines from last year was a
Speaker 3: guy who sucks at being a person sees he's huge
Speaker 3: potential in AI, which is just fucking right. It's just
Speaker 3: really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyways, Yeah, so I I'd read in adweek that it
Speaker 3: was very for sale and I put on Blue Sky.
Speaker 3: I said, uh, does anybody want to save the Onion?
Speaker 3: I have like six hundred dollars or something like that, right,
Speaker 3: And uh, my friend Leela Wilson, who lives in Chicago,
Speaker 3: was like, the Onion's like a Chicago institution. Like if
Speaker 3: this thing goes away, it's like a really bad thing.
Speaker 3: Like who do we call to make sure somebody decent
Speaker 3: ends up with this thing? So I was like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, let me just make some calls and I'll
Speaker 3: see what it costs, I guess, or see what it is,
Speaker 3: see what's going on with it, and I just kept
Speaker 3: making phone calls. I just kept going. I just kept
Speaker 3: like being like, how would I like if we were
Speaker 3: to buy this, Like, how would we make money? How
Speaker 3: do they make money? Now? Do they make money? Now?
Speaker 3: What's going on with this thing?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And a couple of weeks later, we were just in
Speaker 3: the thick of it, Like eventually we had we had
Speaker 3: collected enough people who knew a rich guy or you know,
Speaker 3: to get in the equation. And then there was you know,
Speaker 3: there was this guy named Jeff Lawson who had just
Speaker 3: left Twilio just like a company, and he kind of
Speaker 3: felt the same way about it that we did. And
Speaker 3: we had you know, we just kind of like constantly
Speaker 3: were in assurance to each other that neither of us
Speaker 3: was going to mess this up, that we're all going
Speaker 3: to like leave the processes be at the onion, that
Speaker 3: it makes it great. And then it just happened, like,
Speaker 3: I you know, within I think like eight weeks, it
Speaker 3: went from like a hilarious joke in my house, like
Speaker 3: I was telling my girlfriend, I was like I'm gonna
Speaker 3: buy the onion, hah whatever, and then in like two
Speaker 3: weeks it was like I think I'm gonna actually do this.
Speaker 3: I think this might actually happen, and then in eight
Speaker 3: weeks it was pretty much done. Like we were that
Speaker 3: we were fighting off some last second bitterers who were
Speaker 3: particularly grulish, but.
Speaker 2: Like any clarity on who those might be.
Speaker 3: They're in the news. Oh okay, yeah, it's you know.
Speaker 2: But so perhaps a very direct question is, so, Jeff Lawson,
Speaker 2: he's a billionaire, ran Twilio, quite rich. How are you
Speaker 2: going to avoid what has happened with a lot of
Speaker 2: tech investor projects, because for the most part, they've been
Speaker 2: pretty good, but generally when they start, like Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: has not really backed the Washington Post, he doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to feed it more money, and the same kind of
Speaker 2: like Benioff buying time and Mark Benioff's CEO of Salesforce
Speaker 2: brought time a few years ago, and he again does
Speaker 2: not seem to have like he doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: messed with it, but he also doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: helped it. What's the plan with Jeff Lawson.
Speaker 3: Well, we're gonna do off a shair and I'm going
Speaker 3: to make sure that the staff, if it does well,
Speaker 3: they get money for us. Like it's just straight up
Speaker 3: what it is. You know, he used this as a
Speaker 3: public like a public interest thing, just as we do that.
Speaker 3: It's an American institution, and if it dies, it sucks.
Speaker 3: Like it's bad for everybody. Need we need somebody to
Speaker 3: just aggressively need all bad people. And like this is
Speaker 3: not his money making enterprise. I think he already did that,
Speaker 3: but like it is to Yeah, the goal of the
Speaker 3: goal of that is to make an environment where writers
Speaker 3: can make money for doing good writing. Like it's just
Speaker 3: a weird idea that we had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So with that in mind, what's the actual plan
Speaker 2: to make money? How does it make money now? And
Speaker 2: what's the plan for the future.
Speaker 3: Okay, cool, I actually want to talk to you about
Speaker 3: this because this like fits with how we talk about
Speaker 3: stuff you and I like when we text abouts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's important.
Speaker 3: So the way the Onion used to make money under
Speaker 3: geomedia is basically one way. It's programmatic advertising. So programmatic
Speaker 3: advertising is this horrible thing that sort of ate the
Speaker 3: Internet and sort of ate our politics in the world.
Speaker 3: It's all those like you know, those like one weird
Speaker 3: trick ads and.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're currently all over the bottom of the page.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when people think of in shitification. This is probably
Speaker 3: what they're thinking about right right, and that's how they
Speaker 3: make money right now. And I now on the other
Speaker 3: side of this, I get it right. If you were to,
Speaker 3: you can run a business like this where it's really
Speaker 3: low margins and you know, you have a small staff,
Speaker 3: and on top of that, basically you just keep running
Speaker 3: websites where that's if you're updating it a little bit,
Speaker 3: you'll remain at the top of Google or whatever. And
Speaker 3: then you get enough of these impressions so that these
Speaker 3: horrible ads just keep, you know, showing up literally tenfolds
Speaker 3: sometimes like one hundredsfold.
Speaker 2: Underneath, and they get paid by the impression rather than
Speaker 2: the click.
Speaker 3: Through, right exactly. So like it's it's like it would
Speaker 3: be like if if every car that drove by a
Speaker 3: billboard there was a you got paid for an eyeball.
Speaker 2: Right, every thousand cars.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, And then you get paid even more obviously
Speaker 3: if somebody clicks on that. So the incentive structure is
Speaker 3: bad to begin with, but then the incentive structure from
Speaker 3: the person selling the thing on your website is even worse.
Speaker 3: So it's just like, can I tell you my favorite Programmac? Advertising.
Speaker 3: Please do Larry Bird Wife ad one.
Speaker 2: Second Larrybirdwife ad dot com. Oh, yes, I know the
Speaker 2: one we're gonna I'll put a link to it in
Speaker 2: the episode notes.
Speaker 3: Okay, I do want to Can I read it to you?
Speaker 2: Please? Don't? Please read it to me.
Speaker 3: It is meet Larry Bird's Repulsive Wife.
Speaker 2: Which is not an onion headline, right, that's an actual
Speaker 2: programmatic clickbait advertising.
Speaker 3: You click on it, that's exactly what says it is.
Speaker 3: It's them making fun of how this woman looks. And
Speaker 3: she's not repulsive, by the way, but that's just.
Speaker 2: One of the most things, and that's an automatic is
Speaker 2: that it's I guess it was before AI generation that
Speaker 2: came out, So there was a guy who was like,
Speaker 2: you know who, you know, I'm gonna take the boots
Speaker 2: to today that reports ugly wife. I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 2: take it down a few pegs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the twenty twenties, you know what it's time for.
Speaker 2: All the strame busted was just Jesus. But that's the
Speaker 2: thing when you get websites and you can even see
Speaker 2: it on big ones like NBC. I have mentioned this before.
Speaker 2: These programmatic ads are everywhere like outbring things. There's on
Speaker 2: CNN as well, so you'll get like international news, international
Speaker 2: news politics, and then the thing about how you're hearing
Speaker 2: age should be better and you can buy them from
Speaker 2: a special website that's full of spyware, and it's just crazy.
Speaker 2: And this is most of the media. But what do
Speaker 2: you what are you gonna do with the onion though?
Speaker 3: Because yeah, and I don't want to say, by the
Speaker 3: way that design language of that sort of thing that
Speaker 3: sort of made itiness and and how how they even
Speaker 3: physically look. You see places like The New York Times
Speaker 3: sort of copy that because people are used to that,
Speaker 3: the design language of trumbox ads. They're called chum boxes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it just makes everything worse. Our politics sort of
Speaker 3: sound like that now. The way people talk sort of
Speaker 3: sound like meat Larry Bird's repulsive wife. Like that's just
Speaker 3: sort of how things. That's how it feels like American life, right,
Speaker 3: And I it can't be good. It just can't be good.
Speaker 3: So how are we gonna make money? Great question in
Speaker 3: a diverse way that is not that like there there's
Speaker 3: a several part strategy that we have. First of all,
Speaker 3: we're gonna I don't want to like blow our load
Speaker 3: here a little bit, but we're gonna have a membership
Speaker 3: that maybe brings back the newspaper. Yeah, it's cool and
Speaker 3: we're excited about it. We're going to sell direct ads,
Speaker 3: so like ads that want to like companies want to
Speaker 3: directly deal with us, We're going to do that. We're
Speaker 3: not going to be like a fifth party vendor to
Speaker 3: some to scaringple on the internet. Companies, I want to
Speaker 3: deal with this. We want to deal with them too.
Speaker 3: And like, uh, that's another thing. There's a thing called
Speaker 3: we're basically we're going to write some ad copy where
Speaker 3: we are also aware that there's there hasn't been a
Speaker 3: funny super Bowl commercial in like fucking fifteen years, so
Speaker 3: like we do want to be in that business too.
Speaker 3: And uh so.
Speaker 2: Wait, would you be making super Bowl commercials for other people?
Speaker 3: Well, we'll be making ads for other people. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: And and there's several different ways we can go with
Speaker 3: video that we're currently trying to figure out the very
Speaker 3: best one. But all of those ways sort of you know,
Speaker 3: they bring in cash, and then there's, uh, there's just
Speaker 3: a lot of ways to do this. And we're going
Speaker 3: to do a little bit of everything. But like I
Speaker 3: would say, like the number one way you can do it,
Speaker 3: it's like subscribe to us when we launch our membership product.
Speaker 3: But we just want to be really good, So we
Speaker 3: want the staff to own it and be you know, uh,
Speaker 3: and we want we want to hear more feedback of
Speaker 3: what people want in a membership from us in the newspaper.
Speaker 3: So that's where we're that's we're just taking our.
Speaker 2: Time with that. So perhaps this is one you can't
Speaker 2: necessarily speak to yet. But how much time do you have?
Speaker 2: How has Lawson been very clear that this will take time,
Speaker 2: because that feels like the biggest failure of every digital
Speaker 2: failed digital media product that I've seen the last few years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean he's patient with the idea that
Speaker 3: this does take time. You get to build out a
Speaker 3: thing that you can't in what it's been six weeks
Speaker 3: or something. You can't just like completely flip around an
Speaker 3: entire business, and like we have to get out of contracts,
Speaker 3: we have to get out of whole thing. Like there's
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff that we have to do to
Speaker 3: get out of that previous business.
Speaker 2: That also you're actually unbuckling parts of the Geomedia the Hydra.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like you know, we're in their old
Speaker 3: building where there's just a lot of stuff that you
Speaker 3: have to do. We had to set up a whole
Speaker 3: you know, to set up a whole business with health
Speaker 3: insurance and all the other stuff that you would do
Speaker 3: when you buy a business, and and a lot of
Speaker 3: it is unlearning stuff, right where part of part of
Speaker 3: the previous business. Right, If you are doing programmatic advertising
Speaker 3: as your primary business, you're doing slide shows all day.
Speaker 3: You are telling people, you're driving people to a slide
Speaker 3: show and telling them to click the button over and
Speaker 3: over again to get a new, freshly set life, freshly
Speaker 3: created set of ads. Right. And we have to get this,
Speaker 3: you know, it's demoralizing to the staff. We have to
Speaker 3: get them in the mindset that like maybe the best
Speaker 3: joke is a TikTok video, Maybe the best joke is
Speaker 3: is a whole newspaper. Maybe it's a physical object, Like
Speaker 3: how do we actually satirize our current times right now
Speaker 3: and not just you know, the internet from ten fifteen
Speaker 3: years ago. Getting that mindset with the writer's room is important,
Speaker 3: And until six weeks ago, they didn't. They had no
Speaker 3: idea who was going to take over this place, or
Speaker 3: if anybody who was going to take over, it would
Speaker 3: keep them on board. So I think we're, you know,
Speaker 3: part of us just winning their trust and we're well
Speaker 3: on our way.
Speaker 2: That's cool, And you mentioned kind of expanding the media
Speaker 2: side as it's weird. Over the years, the Onion went
Speaker 2: from having probably some of the freshest media content to
Speaker 2: being mostly written. There was a time when you had, like,
Speaker 2: I don't know any listeners who remember this, don't I have
Speaker 2: used for this, but Get Out of My Face was
Speaker 2: one of the best comedy products of the last decades.
Speaker 2: It was a sports show much like Around the Horn,
Speaker 2: except both hosts just completely hated each other and most
Speaker 2: of the sport. But then it went away and it
Speaker 2: felt like The Onion went very writing base, which is fine,
Speaker 2: it's good stuff, but so you're going to expand that then,
Speaker 2: right exactly.
Speaker 3: They Get Out of My Face day a segment where
Speaker 3: I think it was called who should we assassinate? And
Speaker 3: they would just pick a sportsfan athlete to assassinate.
Speaker 2: I just remember one where it was just him screaming
Speaker 2: about how Pennsylvania is a giant. It's a giant abandoned
Speaker 2: parking lot and he couldn't wait to get home and
Speaker 2: shave his entire body. Anyways, multimedia now, so you're going
Speaker 2: to start expanding into video, I hope Again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's important to us because there's two reasons for that.
Speaker 3: First of all, the reason it was it became a
Speaker 3: text heavy thing is because of the business of programmat advertising.
Speaker 3: There's no they were just feeding that beast straight up.
Speaker 3: So we don't want to get out of that and
Speaker 3: do bigger things. Second of all, we've accidentally developed this
Speaker 3: massive fan base among the kids because in the last year,
Speaker 3: if you watched CNN or MSNBC, or if you read the
Speaker 3: New York Times or something and you're twenty two years old,
Speaker 3: you were just getting fucking yelled at by old people
Speaker 3: like that was it? That's just what was that kind
Speaker 3: of a Yeah, it was like your feelings aren't valid
Speaker 3: and literally get off my lawn. That's what they were
Speaker 3: saying to that, right, that was right. That's been the
Speaker 3: last year of coverage. And we weren't like that, like
Speaker 3: we you know, we've we've said, first of all, your
Speaker 3: feelings are valid, you also may be right, and also,
Speaker 3: you know, there are a lot of parallels to previous
Speaker 3: parts in history where the onion also stood up when
Speaker 3: it was unpopular. For example, like during the Iraq War,
Speaker 3: they stood up all the time. You know, they back
Speaker 3: peaked Dixie Chicks era. They were they had the same
Speaker 3: political but they were thankfully the end was a little
Speaker 3: bit funnier, so they got away with it right. And
Speaker 3: that sort of mirrored a lot of the Gaza stuff
Speaker 3: over the last year or two where they stood up
Speaker 3: early on. Can I read you a headline? The headline
Speaker 3: is the Onion stands with Israel because it seems like
Speaker 3: you get in less trouble for that.
Speaker 2: That's is the most cutting media criticism you're rating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like and and by the way, with trans coverage.
Speaker 2: Ahead with guns as well.
Speaker 3: But it was a it is journalism's sacred duty to
Speaker 3: endanger the live of as many trans people as possible.
Speaker 3: This was like in the middle of the New York
Speaker 3: Times every day just being like trans kids don't deserve
Speaker 3: to be alive. Every single day when we do an
Speaker 3: op ed, that.
Speaker 2: Says and as on the side, listeners, this is a
Speaker 2: pro trans podcast. If you are anti trans, delete this
Speaker 2: podcast go fuck yourself anyway, Just moving on.
Speaker 3: No, I'm in the Yeah, obviously the mass shooting stuff
Speaker 3: where you know this happens to Yeah, there's no way
Speaker 3: to prevent this. As only nation where this regularly happens,
Speaker 3: that is an iconic thing that we obviously repost every
Speaker 3: time there's a major mass shooting, which is like every day,
Speaker 3: and uh like there is nobody else that does this,
Speaker 3: and that's why we wanted this now. It's because when
Speaker 3: all these other places sort of retreated back into being
Speaker 3: really scared to to speak truth to power, they're actually
Speaker 3: go they were like, no, fuck this, We're just gonna
Speaker 3: keep making jokes and we're going to keep standing on
Speaker 3: the side of people who are quite literally sometimes getting
Speaker 3: murdered for no reason.
Speaker 2: Right And it's it's interesting, it's you are tangibly not necessarily,
Speaker 2: it's not even time the true it's just you're not
Speaker 2: making any You're more making statements of comedic effect. But
Speaker 2: it seems to be more bombed and fresh and focused
Speaker 2: criticism than actual journalism right now. Why do you think
Speaker 2: so many journalists are pulling their punches? And I mean
Speaker 2: everywhere tech, politics, business, is it access or is it
Speaker 2: something else?
Speaker 3: I think in a lot of cases, it's just access
Speaker 3: or pleasing their bosses who really care about access. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of these places with the Trump stuff,
Speaker 3: they decided the bosses decided the number one priorities that
Speaker 3: you remain on the plane, that the campaign will keep
Speaker 3: talking to you, that they will that you're not going
Speaker 3: to piss them off enough, that we're not going to
Speaker 3: be blackball or whatever, because the the fifty to fifty
Speaker 3: journalism is to important. I think that's mostly it. And
Speaker 3: I also think, like, I don't think they understand that.
Speaker 3: I think so many times these people think that they
Speaker 3: are the bastions of like purity and equality, and like
Speaker 3: one side is this and this that the other side
Speaker 3: is this, and they cannot be any truth. What they're
Speaker 3: doing is actually really extraordinary, and not in a good way.
Speaker 3: It's extraordinary in the sense that this didn't actually happen
Speaker 3: this way previously. They have been captured. They've been captured
Speaker 3: in a political moment where they they where one side
Speaker 3: has totally issued the concept of the truth. It didn't
Speaker 3: used to work this way. People used to say that
Speaker 3: if it was raining outside, they used to say it
Speaker 3: was raining outside. Now it's right at these networks, whether
Speaker 3: it's tech or it's politics.
Speaker 2: Or anything Walter related weather of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And also you know one one side of
Speaker 3: the government insists it is not raining, right, and that's
Speaker 3: like that that is that's it's new, like that's a
Speaker 3: new kind of reportage in the sense that it sucks
Speaker 3: Previously that didn't happen. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's interesting. It's almost like one side right
Speaker 2: wing side is very aggressively just objective, just they don't
Speaker 2: give a shit, like they can do do and say
Speaker 2: what they want. And then you get towards the centrictye.
Speaker 2: And I hate these terms because I feel like it's
Speaker 2: very hard to actually describe what's going on with them
Speaker 2: but the center left. But let's be honest, it's more
Speaker 2: center than anything. They seem to perceive objectivity, sorry subjectivity
Speaker 2: or sorry objectivity Jesus Christ. That's where I speak English
Speaker 2: as something that requires you to humor every argument, that
Speaker 2: every position is actually fair. Also, I don't think objectivity exists.
Speaker 2: And it's very bizarre to watch this. This is something
Speaker 2: I find with tech as well, very frustrating. But it's
Speaker 2: interesting that I think that the onion is actually doing
Speaker 2: some of the best journalism, but through the most bizarre path. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's like there's this kid on TikTok It was
Speaker 3: like ninety thousand views and she's just like, I'm I'm
Speaker 3: she said in a very gen Z way. She's like,
Speaker 3: I say this with my whole chest, like the Onion
Speaker 3: has had better, has had better coverage over the last
Speaker 3: month and on Israel and Gaza than New York Times,
Speaker 3: the Washington Post, and like she reads through it and
Speaker 3: you couldn't you can't argue with it, like they just
Speaker 3: it's just the truth. I completely I completely agree with
Speaker 3: you on this, man, Like there is like getting there.
Speaker 3: There is a kind of thing that's going on where
Speaker 3: journalism is now insistent on you just getting punched in
Speaker 3: the face all day by fascists. Yeah, okay, it's fine.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's what they punch us. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: it's very it's very important to find out why they
Speaker 3: punched us. While like the actual concept of what's going
Speaker 3: on is completely different. I was on like a you know,
Speaker 3: doing an interview a couple of days ago, and there
Speaker 3: was this whole I was they were having this whole
Speaker 3: conversation that ranged in so many different ways about dissing
Speaker 3: information and like a guy a story A Guy wrote
Speaker 3: in Harper's about the concept of disinformation and how that
Speaker 3: is affected by Jim Jordan, But it's also affected by
Speaker 3: the fact that Katie Kuric gave a speech about something.
Speaker 3: I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 2: What is?
Speaker 3: Who gives it a shit? Like if you the beauty
Speaker 3: of this place, beauty the onion is it? Like you
Speaker 3: can just cut right through the middle of that, Like
Speaker 3: these people can be having this stupid ass conversation on
Speaker 3: each side of it and you can just be like, Nope,
Speaker 3: just sliding on through. And that that, to me, is
Speaker 3: that's valuable. And uh, that's that to me is good reportage.
Speaker 3: That is just ignoring the fucking noise and trying to
Speaker 3: get to the center of what's actually going on.
Speaker 2: Do you consider it a comedy outlet or a journalism outlet?
Speaker 3: I mean it's both. I mean Our Bread and Butters
Speaker 3: is stupid jokes like our I'm asked, Like I.
Speaker 2: Think about a gorilla mother making the gorilla slouch. That's
Speaker 2: one of my favorite recent one.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, exactly like it, like yelling at her child.
Speaker 2: For a night to slouch.
Speaker 3: More like, for example, I was reading a really old
Speaker 3: issue out here our entire archives, and I was just
Speaker 3: plowing through it, and there was a very serious Iraq
Speaker 3: war issue where they were talking about you know, Georgia
Speaker 3: Bbush's timeline to leave or whatever. Uh, and it was
Speaker 3: everything was very heavy. But on the top left, the
Speaker 3: very first story you see on there, it's a Nibisco
Speaker 3: discontinues wheat thics.
Speaker 2: That's that's great. That's the thing there's you really get
Speaker 2: just like people having a bit of fun with that. Anymore,
Speaker 2: it feels like journalism and media in general has got
Speaker 2: so goddamn serious. I mean, that's the time, but also
Speaker 2: serious in a way that doesn't seem to have the
Speaker 2: appropriate seriousness for like police brutality, fascism, but it's just
Speaker 2: serious about everything else.
Speaker 3: You're That's I think that's why like the working like
Speaker 3: there're a substantial swath of the working class in America
Speaker 3: listens to Joe Rogan other than the fact that's like
Speaker 3: very hypnotic and like it's something on in the background,
Speaker 3: is because even they think they're getting the news, which
Speaker 3: is wrong, right, I do think that, But in between
Speaker 3: that it's him like showing you know, videos of gorillas
Speaker 3: and like people punching each other in the face, and
Speaker 3: you know there is like there is a mild like
Speaker 3: through line of joy that goes on there that cannot
Speaker 3: happen on the regular news. It just doesn't. It doesn't happen,
Speaker 3: and like like there was there used to be some
Speaker 3: of that in like the Today Show if people still
Speaker 3: watch that, I really know, but like there's a but
Speaker 3: that's very forced fun, like fake fun. You can't you
Speaker 3: can't see fun to fascism, Like you can't see the
Speaker 3: like the concept of making dick jokes of fascism because
Speaker 3: if you do, it's just gonna win. It's just like
Speaker 3: they're just gonna get every teenager in America, even if
Speaker 3: they're sitting around being like these ideas are fucking stupid,
Speaker 3: Like this doesn't make any sense, Like this is horrible
Speaker 3: the way we're treating people as bad. But like you
Speaker 3: have to have some sense of humor about stuff or it's, uh,
Speaker 3: what's the point of being live?
Speaker 2: Also feels like the very dry objective standard of CNN, NBC.
Speaker 2: NBC's done more opinion stuff, which I appreciate, but even
Speaker 2: then there's only a little bit of it of the
Speaker 2: larger media space just feels very serious. And then there's
Speaker 2: the right wing psychost But if you look at what
Speaker 2: the right wing's doing, it is Fox and Friends is
Speaker 2: a complete joke. It's an insane show. I'm sure if
Speaker 2: you watch it for more than an hour it begins
Speaker 2: to melt your brain. But it's fun in a horrifying way,
Speaker 2: like it's trying to make the fascists watching. Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: sure there are some non fascist who watch Fox News.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's one of them anyway, But nevertheless, it's dorky,
Speaker 2: it's weird, and then everything else outside of the fascis
Speaker 2: sphere is just dry, dry as a b So no
Speaker 2: wonder people are going to the Joe Rogans of the world,
Speaker 2: because it's not like they can open a newspaper or
Speaker 2: magazine these days. In the magazine and the newspaper actually
Speaker 2: speaks directly to them. It doesn't feel like at times
Speaker 2: it's even written as anything else other than a log
Speaker 2: of what happened. And it's so hard for modern journalism
Speaker 2: to escape that. I just I don't know, I worry,
Speaker 2: but also I guess it benefits me that a lot
Speaker 2: of journalism is going to move opinion side. And that's
Speaker 2: assuming that Trump doesn't get in and just shut down
Speaker 2: journalism in general. But that's another problem.
Speaker 3: Right, No, I mean I think that like I, like
Speaker 3: I said, with the kids, I don't think they're getting
Speaker 3: traditional news. I think they use traditional news as like
Speaker 3: in the way that we used to send people a
Speaker 3: PDF to research or something. Right, That's how they use it.
Speaker 3: They're like, I swear to God, this is real. Just
Speaker 3: click on this thing, I can prove it. That's how
Speaker 3: they use it as like I swear this is proof.
Speaker 3: But they don't like read it or ingest it every day,
Speaker 3: and they really don't sit down and watch television news
Speaker 3: because again, why would they. They're just being excoriated for
Speaker 3: being alive. And that's like it's not useful. I think
Speaker 3: that there is. I think both parties are abandoning the
Speaker 3: premise that there should be joy in your life from
Speaker 3: various different angles right, right, like the American right, the
Speaker 3: Trump right is a very joyless vector. It's like very
Speaker 3: like you must support this man.
Speaker 2: Or beautiful Lynn, you must aspire to the traditional life.
Speaker 3: I think that's like that's really humorless, right, and I'm
Speaker 3: not saying like the left has an equivalent, like I
Speaker 3: hate when people do that, but like there is Like
Speaker 3: it's just because it's so scary, right having to like
Speaker 3: it's we're out of making jokes about Donald Trump. We've
Speaker 3: had it didn't work, Like it's ten years later.
Speaker 2: It just now tell you during the trial them showing
Speaker 2: him the tweets, everyone else found that really funny. It
Speaker 2: made me very sad because I don't want people to
Speaker 2: think that this will happen to them. I don't want
Speaker 2: them to think that Trump is going to see their tweets.
Speaker 2: He never will. Wait, please stop, but keep going. Sorry, no, So.
Speaker 3: It is important to have you know, there must be
Speaker 3: wheat thicks, is what I'm saying. Crazy, what is the
Speaker 3: point you have to like get you have to get
Speaker 3: people into this. It's why the New York Times is
Speaker 3: still doing well because they have wordle just the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they and they have some opinion columnist that
Speaker 2: are readable and then many others that aren't. And it's
Speaker 2: very strange. That's what I really don't understand. You've got
Speaker 2: all these esteemed outlets that have become kind of homogeneous. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like what is the like the New York Times, Wall
Speaker 2: Street Wall Street Journal is the more business he won.
Speaker 2: New York Times has business coverage. Chicago Tribune is in Chicago.
Speaker 2: There are the occasional people out there at Boston Clobe.
Speaker 2: They still got here, Arthur Bray doing tech like You've
Speaker 2: still got some voices, but it's almost like they've trained
Speaker 2: them of life, like the people with names.
Speaker 3: There was this big like first of all, that all
Speaker 3: the digital places have died or have been eaten, right,
Speaker 3: so like BuzzFeed died. They had awesome reportage. Anything that
Speaker 3: was like human focused, empathy based journalism is basically gone.
Speaker 3: It went to like nonprofit work. So I want to
Speaker 3: like the pro publicas of the world or whatever, and
Speaker 3: those have much longer timelines and their focus isn't really impact.
Speaker 3: Their focused is like let's get awards, let's get you know,
Speaker 3: let's get a big, long story that's really comprehensive out there,
Speaker 3: and then hopefully somebody will err it and syndicate in
Speaker 3: a good way. So that that's where a lot of
Speaker 3: that reporting went. In the process, all of the young
Speaker 3: people either left or were let go from like places
Speaker 3: like The Times in the Post for probably ideological reasons.
Speaker 3: I would guess it more had to do with like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to deal with these sniveling children anymore,
Speaker 3: and and it left them with Bill Maher disease that like,
Speaker 3: these places have the same exact kind of get off
Speaker 3: my long brainworms that that you see riddled in a
Speaker 3: Netflix comedy special.
Speaker 2: And you know it's bad when like Bill Burr is
Speaker 2: successfully on the right side of history with Palestine and
Speaker 2: Bill mask being like, well, you you know it's good.
Speaker 2: People get exploded and fucking Bill Burr as there explaining
Speaker 2: to him breathlessly. But the truth is Bill Maher succeeds
Speaker 2: because these papers fail. He succeeds because they need some
Speaker 2: sort of melting candle looking guy to make center right.
Speaker 2: But he'll say left statements. And it's just I wish
Speaker 2: journalism had more of a voice. I wish all of
Speaker 2: it did, because the fear of access is one thing,
Speaker 2: but it's almost.
Speaker 3: It's an ideological statement onto itself, putting access above all,
Speaker 3: putting uh, you know, the interests of gigantic capital above all.
Speaker 3: It does in fact merit an entire editorial strategy. I mean, ed,
Speaker 3: you nailed this with the AI stuff. I saw my
Speaker 3: own newsroom where you know, people were coming in and
Speaker 3: saying and this is the only only kind of AI
Speaker 3: talk you would get on television. They were talking about
Speaker 3: how I was gonna like ruin the world and all
Speaker 3: this stuff and other worldbots were gonna take over and
Speaker 3: the Singularity and all this stuff, and the whole time
Speaker 3: I was like, no, it's not like it's not like,
Speaker 3: it's not it's it's rebranded machine learning, like we we
Speaker 3: know what, we know what's happening, and like accelerate a
Speaker 3: little bit to like really mimic like LinkedIn posts, which
Speaker 3: is really cool job, nice job everybody. And it makes
Speaker 3: a mean power point and does like kind of like
Speaker 3: interesting things with music. It doesn't it seems to.
Speaker 2: Like while stealing as well.
Speaker 3: When it messes up, it gets interesting. But when it
Speaker 3: does the prompt that you want it to, it's horrible.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so but but like that's that's the thing
Speaker 3: is like in these in these newsrooms that like a
Speaker 3: bunch of people with money came into these places and
Speaker 3: were like, this is the next thing. You should be
Speaker 3: scared of it, And that, in hindsight, was just the
Speaker 3: marketing campaign that all of these newsroom leaders fell for
Speaker 3: because they were at the Aspen Institute.
Speaker 2: But also it doesn't seem like any of these news
Speaker 2: organizations are run by people who write or read. That's
Speaker 2: been my continual problem.
Speaker 3: Like there's when I was an NBC you know, there's
Speaker 3: like this, there's this thin layer of that I like
Speaker 3: to call the game of thrones people or at the
Speaker 3: top of the company at NBC News, and they're constantly
Speaker 3: jocking for position and fighting for power and stuff. But
Speaker 3: that's nothing to journalism at all. Like it is considerably
Speaker 3: closer to like the run up to like an eighth
Speaker 3: grade dance than it is to anything to do with journalism.
Speaker 3: It's just a case. And those people, those are the
Speaker 3: highering and firing people, and they're also they they have
Speaker 3: a hard time connecting the dots about like both what's important,
Speaker 3: who's doing the best reporting, how to get the stuff
Speaker 3: out there, what's really going on in the country because
Speaker 3: those people are tied up in you know, the conversations
Speaker 3: those people are having are have nothing to do with
Speaker 3: like a regular American life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know what, let's stalk Ki how well,
Speaker 2: First of all, is the onion going to sell it? Like?
Speaker 2: What is your plan? There? Are you going to make
Speaker 2: any deals with these companies. I'm curious.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, we you know, our stuff was surfacing
Speaker 3: in Google searches as answers a couple of weeks ago. Yeah,
Speaker 3: if you asked it how many rocks you should eat
Speaker 3: per day, it told you you should eat one small
Speaker 3: rocket day. Because we did a bit about how there
Speaker 3: is a headline that said geologists recommend you one one
Speaker 3: small rocket day. It's like a bit industry doing that
Speaker 3: weird pr thing they do, And it's in the Google
Speaker 3: uh developer blog about why they took down that feature
Speaker 3: is because they couldn't figure fully figure out how they
Speaker 3: got in there, like they it got aggregated from a
Speaker 3: it was like a shitification sandwich. It was like it
Speaker 3: got that story, got aggregated from a fake fracking news
Speaker 3: website that was really run by the fracking industry, and
Speaker 3: then that as an answer within within Google. So it
Speaker 3: was like five problems ago all wrapped up into this thing.
Speaker 3: But no, obviously, I don't know, We're not gonna play
Speaker 3: in that game, in part because I feel like it's
Speaker 3: already kind of dying. But second of all, boy, it
Speaker 3: would be funny if we did. It's a bit if
Speaker 3: you're if you're interested as a bit, open a eye,
Speaker 3: give us a ring. Uh, we would love to pollute
Speaker 3: your data set. Sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, with that in mind, if they've already stolen the onion,
Speaker 2: If they have already, would you will there be legal
Speaker 2: action to protect him.
Speaker 3: I mean we thought about it, man, Like we we
Speaker 3: really did think about that, because at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, this stealing our art, stealing our horror. Like
Speaker 3: one of the ones that because that was not even
Speaker 3: close to the only onion article.
Speaker 2: It stole in Google one, and that was just for
Speaker 2: the listeners. That's the Google Search generative experience, popping up
Speaker 2: onion articles and using them as a source for an answer.
Speaker 3: But like one of the ones was can any white
Speaker 3: liquid be considered milk? It had like the exact beats
Speaker 3: of a joke. It was like yes, and here's an example.
Speaker 3: It was like, uh, one of it was like something
Speaker 3: it was it was like glue, particularly white water, clam juice.
Speaker 3: But it was the exact beats of our joke implanted
Speaker 3: in the answer. I actually don't like landly yeah, and
Speaker 3: like even if it is, it's still theft, even if
Speaker 3: it's wrong.
Speaker 2: But that's the thing. It's right. Now, We're in this
Speaker 2: very strange world where you've got writers like the Atlantic,
Speaker 2: this just happened. You've got writers who are like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: stealing all the journalism is very bad. We don't like it.
Speaker 2: And then Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, formerly of Wired,
Speaker 2: who did a very glossy thing on one of the
Speaker 2: Kushner investments, Oscar Health. Anyway, my agrievmances aside. He did
Speaker 2: this big announcement and said, hey, open AI is going
Speaker 2: to train on the Atlantic day, big big day for us.
Speaker 2: And Damon barrass Over at the Atlantic, God bless him.
Speaker 2: Immediately had an articles been like this, sugs matched just this,
Speaker 2: sugs bro. I don't like this one bit. But what
Speaker 2: do you think of these deals? Are they good for
Speaker 2: journalism or are they just kind of troll toll bullshit.
Speaker 3: It's bad. It's like there is a massive pollution of
Speaker 3: the Internet happening to obfuscate good information because I can
Speaker 3: ne'er do wells benefit from that as a concept. The
Speaker 3: more narrow the path it is to get good information
Speaker 3: on the Internet, the only people who benefit from that
Speaker 3: are rich people. Like if the people have good access
Speaker 3: to information are rich people. Those rich people get richer
Speaker 3: from the good information. Like that's once once there is
Speaker 3: information scarcity, the people who will hoard it are the rich,
Speaker 3: right right. They have no problem paying for like a
Speaker 3: like a Bloomberg terminal. They don't care. They'll pay for
Speaker 3: the information or whatever, won't the costs or whatever, like,
Speaker 3: they will do that well, whereas everybody else is just
Speaker 3: like searching around for scraps. They're searching, you know, they're
Speaker 3: type of yeah, they're like it's red, it's probably yeah,
Speaker 3: Like that's the thing is, like we're now in a
Speaker 3: situation where it would it's hard. It's probably harder to
Speaker 3: get good answers if you have a new pet, if
Speaker 3: you have a baby, just basics, stuff that regular people
Speaker 3: go through is being robbed of these people, but from
Speaker 3: these companies for no reason. Google didn't have to ruin
Speaker 3: their whole product for this. They're doing it to like
Speaker 3: satisfy shareholders and to get in on this fad that
Speaker 3: exists to prop up the idea of progress in the
Speaker 3: American economy. But it's not progress. It's actually like several
Speaker 3: steps back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So with that in mind, how do you actually
Speaker 2: save journalism business wise, what is the thing? I know,
Speaker 2: just a small question for you, what's the plant? But seriously, though,
Speaker 2: what do you do now? Because online advertising feels like
Speaker 2: it's dying. It feels like it's folding upot is it?
Speaker 2: And how do you how the hell does free journalism
Speaker 2: even survive?
Speaker 3: Okay, so first of all, we have to do all
Speaker 3: the things that worked over the last ten years, right
Speaker 3: instead of just like loading up everything behind this like
Speaker 3: infinite growth, more and more traffic, competing for what or
Speaker 3: probably at the end of the day, completely fake eyeballs, right, right,
Speaker 3: Remember some of the stories that I got, like at
Speaker 3: the Daily Beast had millions of views, like like a
Speaker 3: ridiculous amount in a couple hours. And now it kind
Speaker 3: of feels fake or wrong. It just doesn't feel Yeah.
Speaker 2: It feels a million people didn't see it.
Speaker 3: Right, Like, I don't know exactly what happened there, but
Speaker 3: this it just doesn't feel right. And what we're gonna
Speaker 3: do is we're going to take some of those pieces
Speaker 3: that worked so right now it's working in tradition in
Speaker 3: media that I like is profitable. So it's like four
Speaker 3: or four media defector aftermath. These are all like narrow
Speaker 3: writer co ops that really worked and like this place
Speaker 3: got decimated to the point where it's really a small place,
Speaker 3: so we can work off that. Also in the comedy world,
Speaker 3: there's this thing called dropouts. Do you know what drop
Speaker 3: out us?
Speaker 2: No, I'm done, okay.
Speaker 3: So it's a lot like that. It used to be
Speaker 3: called College Humor. It was owned by I A. Barry Dillar.
Speaker 3: Barry Diller got sick of having it.
Speaker 2: And IC owns most of the dating sites, right.
Speaker 3: Most of the dating sites I think, like Expedia, just
Speaker 3: like if they owned Daily Beasts. I used to work
Speaker 3: at ice Se. They owned lots of different stuff. So
Speaker 3: Barry Diller got sick of having it. It used to
Speaker 3: run on that old model that we're talking about. They
Speaker 3: sold it back to the original founders of the company
Speaker 3: for like, I don't know, a couple a few hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars, and then those people were like, all right,
Speaker 3: we'll just start fresh, like but what do we actually
Speaker 3: want this to be? And they made a subscription model
Speaker 3: of just you know, improv comedy and like some stuff
Speaker 3: they like to do, like D and D or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's called Dropout, and it has I think like somewhere
Speaker 3: like near a million subscribers at six dollars a month,
Speaker 3: and they just sold out two nights in a row
Speaker 3: at Massive Square Garden.
Speaker 2: That's wild.
Speaker 3: This is one of their shows. And this this happened.
Speaker 3: They were sold from Barry Diller in like peak early pandemic,
Speaker 3: like twenty twenty one or round of that, and that
Speaker 3: took what, that's what three years or something. They knew
Speaker 3: how to do it right and they put a lot
Speaker 3: of work into it. But that's sort of the space
Speaker 3: that we want to play in as a baseline. And
Speaker 3: then we're gonna do this other stuff. You know, we're
Speaker 3: going to do direct ads, we're gonna do all these
Speaker 3: we're gonna do more traditional media stuff, video stuff. But
Speaker 3: we want to get into the membership game.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 3: If they like us, we will send them cool ship
Speaker 3: in the mail and also in their email, and they'll
Speaker 3: pay us a sum of money and then like on
Speaker 3: top of that, we'll use make TV shows and stuff like.
Speaker 3: That's that's our that's our goal, and we'll have better
Speaker 3: merch and we'll just try to serve people directly and
Speaker 3: hope that this, like you know, this very old timey
Speaker 3: way of doing it works.
Speaker 4: Like that's that's reage almost yeah, I mean like there's yes,
Speaker 4: I think I think we can do that. And like
Speaker 4: if fucking Samsung wants to launch their Galaxy phones.
Speaker 3: Galaxy No.
Speaker 2: Seven, little little Dan nine and drugged for the list.
Speaker 3: For us Dan nine and heads baby Jesus, But yeah,
Speaker 3: if they want, if they want to launch their exploding phone.
Speaker 3: What is that joke again?
Speaker 2: It's just really good for the listeners here who loved
Speaker 2: this stuff. It was Dan nine and a clean comedian
Speaker 2: whose joke was, Oh, that really blew up. Someone must
Speaker 2: have plugged in their Samsung Galaxy Note seven classic phone
Speaker 2: that just started exploding because it's pattery. Anyway, what were
Speaker 2: we talking about? I don't know.
Speaker 3: But we want to be weirdos and we want to
Speaker 3: be able to like, we want to be able to
Speaker 3: h you know, say the things that people are all
Speaker 3: thinking we can't say. And then when it happens, we
Speaker 3: want them to, you know, pay us money and we'll
Speaker 3: send a newspaper in the mill like, but.
Speaker 2: There will still be free content.
Speaker 3: Oh. The whole the site is the Onion is a
Speaker 3: public service. So we're gonna we're gonna make sure everything's
Speaker 3: you know, our journalism's free.
Speaker 2: One final question, are you going to start pushing bylines ever?
Speaker 2: Because the one thing that the Onion doesn't have right
Speaker 2: now is names and maybe that's good.
Speaker 3: So you know, we've had this. I had this conversation
Speaker 3: because like it's been uh, it does protect people, but
Speaker 3: it's also a pain in the ass of like you know,
Speaker 3: y like a writing job or something. But like the
Speaker 3: process here is like so beautiful that I don't really
Speaker 3: want to mess with it. Like that's the number on
Speaker 3: thing I didn't want to do. I don't I'm never
Speaker 3: gonna write a headline. I'm never gonna select any I
Speaker 3: don't want to do that. I'm just like I'm here
Speaker 3: to make it. So if they want to make a
Speaker 3: video out of something, they can do it. Or if
Speaker 3: they want to make up newsaper or something, they can
Speaker 3: get it. Here's their process. Every day. They have like
Speaker 3: a couple hundred contributors who are all like a lums.
Speaker 3: Some of them are like famous people that I can't
Speaker 3: reveal Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker 3: America's funniest people, all of them, but they all They
Speaker 3: and our ten staff writers and editors all send completely
Speaker 3: anonymously headlines into this bucket. They're anonymized in a Google form.
Speaker 3: They those get winnowed down by whoever. There's a person
Speaker 3: who wins down the list, who brings it into the megeinting.
Speaker 3: Then there's like a couple hundred headlines that remain. Those
Speaker 3: are all those are spoken out loud. If they're funny,
Speaker 3: and if they're laughed at, they generally they might have
Speaker 3: a chance. That gets down to eight or ten a day,
Speaker 3: and then from there they write them up and if
Speaker 3: they don't really work, then they throw them away. And
Speaker 3: that's say you get to this, like you know, so
Speaker 3: you get to the half dozen headlines that you get
Speaker 3: a day on the onion. Every day, this process happens
Speaker 3: and then they go back and they're like they figure
Speaker 3: out who wrote it after all that, and that is
Speaker 3: like the most egalitarian way anything works in journalism or
Speaker 3: or writer's rooms or anything at all. And why would
Speaker 3: have any mess of that. It sucks that there's no
Speaker 3: bolines involved in that, and maybe there's a way to
Speaker 3: do that, but like sometimes it's like a huge team effort,
Speaker 3: and part of the beauty is not knowing who it's from.
Speaker 2: I've read The Onion Infinity twenty years and I'm so
Speaker 2: happy to see it in the hands of somebody who
Speaker 2: actually cares, who loves writers and writing and creating interesting
Speaker 2: things that readers love. It's really frustrating that this is
Speaker 2: the exception rather than the rule. But I believe that
Speaker 2: sites like The Onion, along with worker owned co ops
Speaker 2: like Defecta and Aftermath making sports journalism and games journalism, respectively,
Speaker 2: are the future of journalism itself. Institutions that empower great
Speaker 2: writers that deeply care about the subject matter, building sustainable,
Speaker 2: lasting businesses and relationships with their readers. And I really
Speaker 2: am serious when I say this is the future better offline.
Speaker 2: It could happen here behind the bastards, great shows and
Speaker 2: cool Zone media sixteenth Minute of Fame. These are all
Speaker 2: things built by building real relationships with you, the listener,
Speaker 2: with people actually consuming this stuff, making cool stuff with
Speaker 2: a longer time horizon then I don't know, six months
Speaker 2: making great things and hoping people will pay for them.
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems obvious, but journalism has been almost
Speaker 2: completely swallowed, kind of like when Kirby eats something and
Speaker 2: he poops it out and he turns into it. Kirby
Speaker 2: isn't that thing, He just stole it. And that is
Speaker 2: the modern state of journalism. Journalism can be saved by
Speaker 2: people like Ben Collins. It can be saved by people
Speaker 2: like Defector and Aftermath. It can be saved by people
Speaker 2: who make this stuff. And it must be put back
Speaker 2: in the hands of those who make these things. It's
Speaker 2: time to stop building big, ugly, unsustainable journalism with insane
Speaker 2: startup valuation goals. It just isn't possible anymore. What is
Speaker 2: possible is giving great people enough of a chance to
Speaker 2: build a real audience and a great product. And I
Speaker 2: think you'll agree. A better world is possible for digital media.
Speaker 2: I promise you. It just has to be built by
Speaker 2: and for the writers themselves. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 2: Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline
Speaker 2: theme song is Matasowski. You can check out more of
Speaker 2: his music and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M
Speaker 2: A T T O, S O W s ki dot com.
Speaker 2: You can email me at easy at Better offline dot com,
Speaker 2: or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
Speaker 2: links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend
Speaker 2: you go to chat dot where's youreaed dot at to
Speaker 2: visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline
Speaker 2: to check out our reddit. 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,
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