Episode 188

Talking Points Memo's small-boat strategy

Josh Marshall, founder of Talking Points Memo, has spent 25 years steering a small, independent newsroom through every shift in digital media. He discusses how TPM survived the traffic era, why it avoided venture capital, and what he calls the “small-boat strategy” — building for resilience, not scale.

Transcript
Brian:

Welcome to the Rebooting Show.

Brian:

I'm Brian Morrissey.

Brian:

This episode is brought to you by Beehiiv.

Brian:

When you are running a media business, email is usually the backbone,

Brian:

or at least it increasingly is.

Brian:

And getting it right is unfortunately usually harder than it should be.

Brian:

that's where Beehiiv comes in.

Brian:

This is a platform that was built by people who scaled morning brew to

Brian:

millions of readers, and they created the platform that they wish they

Brian:

had when they were in your shoes.

Brian:

So it is no surprise that companies like TechCrunch Time and the

Brian:

Texas Tribune are already running their newsletters on Beehiiv.

Brian:

It is designed for serious media operators, not marketers, bolting

Brian:

on a newsletter as an afterthought.

Brian:

if you are running a publication with more than a hundred thousand subscribers.

Brian:

Beehiiv is built for you.

Brian:

Their team has scaled newsletters at places like the information

Brian:

puck, and as I said, morning Brew.

Brian:

so they understand the challenges that big publishers face, from

Brian:

seamless migration to enterprise grade deliverability and monetization Beehiiv

Brian:

makes it easy to grow, retain, and engage audiences at serious scale.

Brian:

So if you wanna see what the next stage of growth for you could

Brian:

look like, go to Beehiiv.com/trb.

Brian:

That is spelled B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com/TRB and you can meet with, Beehiiv's team

Brian:

of growth and newsletter experts today.

Brian:

I wanna thank Beehiiv for their partnership.

Brian:

They've been great partners.

Brian:

and we're gonna continue this through next year.

Brian:

So you'll be hearing more about Beehiiv.

Brian:

I recently switched over to Beehiiv, so I do encourage you to check it out.

Brian:

I've found the tools that they provide.

Brian:

More powerful, than the ones that I had previously used.

Brian:

And last week we actually partnered on a breakfast where we gathered

Brian:

together a group of product and revenue leaders from leading publishers.

Brian:

And I think the biggest thing that stood out to me is how much these

Brian:

businesses, are in a time of change as they look to rebuild the direct

Brian:

connections to their audience.

Brian:

Now, the wrinkle to this.

Brian:

Is that I found that many of these businesses still have to operate the

Brian:

old traffic based model while they build the new audience focused model.

Brian:

And that is a difficult, burden to, to bear.

Brian:

And that's why I think in many cases, you know, newer, Newer

Brian:

models have a leg up in that.

Brian:

But I think that there are obviously still strengths, with, the more

Brian:

legacy models that are adapting.

Brian:

And it also echoed my conversation that I'd had with Josh Marshall,

Brian:

the founder of Talking Points Memo.

Brian:

Josh is one of the end Talking Points Memo, or one of the last

Brian:

survivors of the blog year.

Brian:

I mean, I remember that moment.

Brian:

You know, in sites like Talking Points, memo, daily Costs, or

Brian:

the Daily Dish, even Gawker.

Brian:

You know, we're forerunners really of this shift from institutions to

Brian:

individuals that we're seeing and has been branded as the creator

Brian:

economy, more than two decades later.

Brian:

TPM is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and you know, most of its peers from that

Brian:

era have either faded away altogether.

Brian:

Or become something unrecognizable as they've entered, what Troy calls the

Brian:

harvesting phase of their lifecycles.

Brian:

TPMS Mere existence is a profitable, stable business, deserves

Brian:

some examination as to why.

Brian:

And Josh was nice enough to, walk me through it.

Brian:

You know, he credits.

Brian:

The choice to forego any dreams of being the next media mogul and a critical

Brian:

decision at the height of the traffic era to get off that treadmill and go down

Brian:

what at the time was an uncommon path.

Brian:

He watched his peers chase scale, you know, raising venture capital and hiring.

Brian:

Giant newsrooms and he saw what he calls the original sin of digital media, and

Brian:

that is confusing the growth patterns of journalism with how technology scales.

Brian:

So TPM made a bold choice in late 2013.

Brian:

It would shift to an audience focused membership business.

Brian:

It would still sell advertising, but the weight of its efforts would go to building

Brian:

recurring revenue, turning its audience into customers rather than the product.

Brian:

That Alignment gave the company critical ballast compared to more volatile ad

Brian:

businesses that depended on the fickle traffic patterns, from tech platforms.

Brian:

And today, TPM gets roughly 90% of its revenue from subscriptions.

Brian:

It probably isn't the most scalable model, but it's far more reliable.

Brian:

And most importantly, I think it gives TPM and and publishers that get on

Brian:

this path, a degree of sovereignty that you simply do not have when you

Brian:

depend on traffic from tech platforms that you're gonna then monetize.

Brian:

Through an ad system that you mostly don't control.

Brian:

So Josh looks at this as a pure practicality, which I

Brian:

really appreciate personally.

Brian:

'cause he describes himself as like a small business

Brian:

owner, not as an entrepreneur.

Brian:

And it's a distinction I greatly appreciate because the media,

Brian:

businesses of today and tomorrow will increasingly look this way.

Brian:

Also, I mostly have read Josh over the years for his political

Brian:

writing, but what always struck me was how precisely he could write

Brian:

about programmatic advertising.

Brian:

It's something we discussed in this because he treated it

Brian:

the way he treats politics.

Brian:

You follow the incentives and you'll understand the system and

Brian:

what he saw, and this was what led to that decision in late 2013.

Brian:

Was that the system was designed really to fail publishers.

Brian:

And so in this episode we talk about what it takes to survive 25 years in digital

Brian:

media, what TPM got right about membership and what everyone else has missed about

Brian:

monetization in the attention economy.

Brian:

I hope you enjoyed this conversation I know I did.

Brian:

if you do, please share it with someone.

Brian:

and also leave a rating and review wherever you get your podcast.

Brian:

Always like to hear your feedback.

Brian:

My email is brian@therebooting.com.

Brian:

Now here's my conversation with Josh.

Brian:

Josh, welcome, to the podcast.

Brian:

Congrats on 25 years.

Josh:

Thank you.

Josh:

Thank you.

Josh:

And, and, thanks for having me.

Brian:

I was joking before we got on that, like anyone in this business who has

Brian:

been running a digital, media operation for 25 years is like the, the World

Brian:

War II veterans that are like produced

Josh:

Yep,

Brian:

a year.

Brian:

you've had, like, you've gone through a bunch of different, of these eras

Brian:

and he started in the blogging era.

Brian:

Right?

Brian:

So I.

Josh:

Yep.

Brian:

I was like reminded, you know, with Curtis Lewa now being talked about

Brian:

a lot, that, like people don't remember a lot of, a lot of things that came before.

Brian:

And the blogging era was the forerunner.

Brian:

it was a different time and we started obviously in 2000 and,

Brian:

you know, blogs were a thing and.

Josh:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh:

No, they were, and, and, you know, one thing that, as I look back on it now, one

Josh:

of the key things about the blogging era is that it was the pre-social media era.

Josh:

and that was, that was so critical to it because, because, you

Josh:

know, there were some aspects of.

Josh:

blocking existed before, 2000 and 2001.

Josh:

The political blogosphere as,

Josh:

as something that was like a, you know, a, a number of different sites and kind

Josh:

of had a, had a whole valence to it that was, a lot of, that was tied up

Josh:

with the Bush administration, you know, and, and, and people wanting alternative

Josh:

sources of news and stuff like that.

Josh:

a lot of it is people.

Josh:

I think people today have a hard time, even people who were.

Josh:

Around then and operate in, in that context.

Josh:

It's hard, it is hard to remember to put ourselves back in the framework of just

Josh:

how hard it was to find information.

Josh:

and that is one aspect of, of what blogging was about.

Josh:

you know, alternative media, a more, a more informal kind of reader, engaged kind

Josh:

of media, but also pre, pre-social media.

Josh:

A lot of it was, you know, Finding out about news that the big, you know, the big

Josh:

outlets weren't focused on, and that's not just a matter of, Wanting to hear

Josh:

from people who had a different viewpoint.

Josh:

Often it was, oh, you know, this story, this new story is happening in San

Josh:

Diego, or it's happening in Des Moines.

Josh:

And how do you find out about that?

Josh:

Well, blogs because there was a lot of, you know, reader

Josh:

engagement and stuff like that.

Josh:

Often things like that would bubble up, in, in the blog world.

Josh:

So it was a very, It was kind of a, you know, a, a, a crazy time and, and it was

Josh:

just a very, very different environment than anything we have today in so many,

Josh:

you know, in so many different ways.

Josh:

Even though it was in the internet era,

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

And there's kind of, I mean we'll get to it, but there, there is like sort of

Brian:

revival of that, I guess, and the energy around like substack and independent

Brian:

voices, and I think some of that, everything comes back in fashion, right?

Brian:

And a lot of the, a lot of the sort of things is being closer to, to

Brian:

the audience, being more informal.

Brian:

Like a lot of the things like Echo, right?

Brian:

But the incentives are obviously very different in, in, in

Brian:

this, in this environment.

Brian:

and that's something that you've been part of for 25 years, which is responding

Brian:

maybe against your will to the incentives of the systems in which media exists.

Josh:

Well that, you know, that's one thing, and I, I've told people this.

Josh:

Inside TPM at various stages of, of the company's history that there

Josh:

is, you know, there are a lot of downsides to being a very small

Josh:

company and a small organization, but there are also some plus sides to it.

Josh:

And one of them is that you are never under the illusion

Josh:

that you can buck the trends.

Josh:

That are surrounding you.

Josh:

You are a small boat on a big ocean, and you have to navigate that ocean.

Josh:

And when you're really big, you can, you can fool yourself for a long time

Josh:

and with a lot of money to burn, to thinking you are gonna buck the trends.

Josh:

But when you're small, you know, you are not going to buck the trends.

Josh:

You n you have to.

Josh:

The ocean is the reality that you live in and you need to adapt

Josh:

to that and navigate within it.

Josh:

And so that can, if you are.

Josh:

I think if people running media companies are, have their ears open for that,

Josh:

that can give you a certain advantage.

Josh:

I mean, maybe this is a way of, you know, repackaging deep disadvantages

Josh:

as advantages, but you know, you have to take your advantages

Josh:

where you, where you find them.

Josh:

and that can allow you to be more reactive.

Josh:

You know, I think about, know, some of the things that happened to even the big

Josh:

operations, like, like the times and the posts say in the first decade of this

Josh:

century, or that happened with a lot of the big, VC-backed, startup publications

Josh:

in the second decade of, of this century.

Josh:

And a lot of those problems were based on, or, or.

Josh:

Exacerbated by thinking like, well, this is a challenge, but we're

Josh:

gonna outsmart that challenge.

Josh:

Well, no, you're not.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

You're, you're not going to outsmart that challenge.

Josh:

You're gonna need to react to it.

Josh:

So yeah, that has been, something very basic, to us for forever and, you know,

Josh:

that is, there's, I would say there's a number of decisions that, that we

Josh:

made over the course of 25 years that.

Josh:

We're very early and we saw things early, and we started doing things

Josh:

very early because again, you're small,

Josh:

you're not gonna, you're not gonna buck the trend.

Josh:

And so for just, one thing that really jumps to mind to me because it has really

Josh:

just shaped the arc of the last dozen years of our history is that, we started

Josh:

a membership program at the end of 2012.

Josh:

That was way before anybody else was doing it.

Josh:

And actually there were things that I was looking at in 2011 and 2012 that made

Josh:

me think like, this is not gonna work.

Josh:

And not, not just like, it's not gonna work for us, but

Josh:

the whole thing isn't working.

Josh:

The whole scale,

Brian:

The traffic era you're

Josh:

The traffic era basically.

Josh:

And, and the business underpinning of the traffic area with, with a certain kind of

Josh:

ad monetization and so forth?

Brian:

Often programmatic, which is indirect.

Josh:

yes.

Josh:

Both.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Programmatic.

Josh:

Well, the growth of, it's a series of things.

Josh:

One is, the concentration in what was, you know, we used to call direct

Josh:

advertising, the increasing, the ways that programmatic was, being cut into by

Josh:

the social platforms, and, and not just cut into beings like, you know, Borg by

Josh:

the, by the, by the social platforms.

Josh:

and I remember I was, we actually the actual launch of our membership program.

Josh:

Was was very shambling because I, I, I got this idea in like the middle of 2012

Josh:

and I was like, we gotta, I, I have to launch this before the election because

Josh:

if you're in the political news business

Josh:

that the, an election is when you have a, you know, a lot of audience.

Josh:

and so I sort.

Josh:

Did everything I possibly could, and a lot of things I wasn't able

Josh:

to do to get the thing launched before, before the election in 2012.

Josh:

In any case, you know, it took us, it took us another, year or two before we

Josh:

had things lined up in a way that we could really start building that, you

Josh:

know, building that subscription business like around early 2014 and so forth.

Josh:

But.

Josh:

When, when the crisis really hit, which I would say was sort of 20 17, 20 18,

Josh:

we already had like 20,000 subscribers.

Josh:

so we were in a position to not, not that it was easy, it was, it was

Josh:

still desperate, but we were in a position to nav to, to survive that.

Josh:

And that's one of the, you know, that's one of the, you know, kind of key

Josh:

moves that allow us to be here today.

Brian:

Yeah, I mean, 'cause that, that was when, you know, the Facebook

Brian:

traffic hose got turned off and I think it became very clear then that

Brian:

relying entirely on advertising is gonna be a very difficult proposition.

Josh:

yeah.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Not, not workable at all.

Josh:

And, and you know, it's funny that one of the, one of the things that I think

Josh:

has always been, an advantage to, and just, just for kind of clarity, My, for

Josh:

the first 20 years of the organization's history, I ran every aspect of, of

Josh:

the business side of the organization.

Josh:

Obviously I have people who, who work for me, but I mean, I was, you

Josh:

know, the per, very

Josh:

hands-on running each aspect of it.

Josh:

And it's been a little different over the last five years or so.

Josh:

Well.

Josh:

More than a little different.

Josh:

We, we now have a publisher who would, who, had worked

Josh:

with me for a number of years.

Josh:

I made him, you know, gave him the publisher job.

Josh:

So basically, I, I'm, I'm less hands on today, and for the last four or five years

Josh:

than I, than I was, previous to that.

Josh:

but, I think a big advantage that we had is that if you are deep in

Josh:

the nitty gritty of things like, you know, 20 14, 20 18 ERA programmatic

Josh:

advertising, or for that, for that matter, 2005 ERA programmatic advertising.

Josh:

You see things.

Josh:

That you're not necessarily gonna see, you're certainly not gonna see if you're

Josh:

the vast majority of journalists, but you're also not gonna see if

Josh:

you're like, if you're most media executives because you're, you know,

Josh:

third party or programmatic, you know, that's, that's not where the,

Josh:

that's not where the stars are, right?

Josh:

That's, that's not where the, where the,

Josh:

big money is.

Josh:

You're not looking really close.

Josh:

So being hands-on in the business side and really in the trenches

Josh:

also gives you some advantages.

Brian:

What were you seeing then?

Brian:

Because I mean, you.

Brian:

I, I don't wanna say like turned against programmatic advertising or something,

Brian:

but like, I mean, you, you, you sort of, you know, you made the choices that

Brian:

you made and you saw that you, you saw that advertising was not the path to go

Brian:

down and advertising was at the time the sort of, I guess that was the consensus,

Brian:

sort of like the Washington consensus.

Brian:

I mean, that was the consensus at the time.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Well, and as you say, the consensus also, you know, based on scale,

Josh:

they all, they all go together.

Josh:

I think that, you know, a few of those things were the way the, for

Josh:

direct advertising, we were always in the DC advertising space, which

Josh:

is a very unique, environment.

Brian:

You mean like public affairs?

Josh:

yes.

Josh:

Which is in some ways it's a part of the advertising world.

Josh:

That is it.

Josh:

In effect kind of.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

It's part of the lobbying budgets of corporate America basically.

Josh:

So it's, so it's unique.

Josh:

basically there were a number of ways where that was starting

Josh:

to get very stratified, say in the first Obama administration.

Josh:

Not because I'm just kind of, it had nothing to do with the

Josh:

Obama administration, just

Josh:

kind of lining it up with errors.

Josh:

Became, very stratified.

Josh:

And, at first we actually made a heavy pivot back to programmatic

Josh:

advertising because I had, I had in the, let's say, in the 2000 5, 6, 7 era.

Josh:

The whole thing in digital media was direct advertising and what

Josh:

you didn't sell through direct advertising, you did through third

Josh:

party advertising, you know, kind of,

Josh:

uh, cash on, you know, exactly.

Josh:

Just, just the leftovers.

Josh:

They called it remnant,

Josh:

you know, it's a good, a good sort of, capturing of that.

Josh:

And since we were a fairly undercapitalized business.

Josh:

I really and didn't have, you know, a kind of a big ad staff.

Josh:

I spent a long time focusing on how can you, how can you slice and dice

Josh:

the, the, the inventory so that you can get as high and effective ad. Rate

Josh:

as possible through, through third party or programmatic advertising when

Josh:

it was definitely a secondary thing.

Josh:

And, you know, it's sort of like the way that, you know, homesteaders, right?

Josh:

You kill the animal and you, you harvest every bit of it kind of

Josh:

thing.

Josh:

so in that era, I had really kind of gotten that down to a science,

Josh:

getting, getting a. An effective ad rate that wouldn't mean much

Josh:

to corporate publications, but at our, at our, you know, low cost

Josh:

level was, was, was really good.

Josh:

go forward, you know, half a dozen years.

Josh:

So as we got into direct advertising, we kind of.

Josh:

Devalued, third party advertising.

Josh:

but I still knew a lot about how to do it.

Josh:

So as part of that pivot, we actually pivoted heavily again

Josh:

in that same period when we were starting our subscription business.

Josh:

We actually pivot, pivoted heavily towards, towards third party because I

Josh:

knew there was, there was a lot of money we could, we could recapture there.

Josh:

and we did, you know, using a lot of the same ideas and stuff, but

Josh:

in the same way, but as I did that, and we dramatically increased our

Josh:

revenue, from third party advertising.

Josh:

So those were, you know, it was, it was very successful, but you

Josh:

could see also the same trends.

Josh:

That we're hitting in direct advertising, we're hitting in third party advertising.

Josh:

and a lot of that is just, concentration, you know, really basic things,

Josh:

Concentration of the companies that, that operated in that, in that space.

Josh:

The, the related, you know, takeover of the social networks basically.

Josh:

and Google being sort of a hybrid, being a sort of a hybrid part of that.

Josh:

So, you know, there was a, I would say in, You know, 20 12, 20 13, we

Josh:

had, started making a lot of money again in third party advertising, but

Josh:

it was also clear that it was dying even as we were increasing the money

Brian:

Explain that.

Brian:

What did you, why?

Brian:

Why,

Josh:

Well, could see that again.

Josh:

reduction of players in the space, the increasing dominance of the platforms.

Josh:

and as you know, in the same way that, that when it, when it,

Josh:

when it basically bubbled down to everything going through Google.

Josh:

The effective prices were gonna go down.

Josh:

We know about this, this is

Josh:

basic monopolies and so forth, but I remember, I remember a conversation

Josh:

with my colleague, Joe Rezo, who, who is the publisher of TPM now, but at the

Josh:

time, who I basically hired in large part to manage third party in the way

Josh:

that I, the way that I'm describing.

Josh:

Probably in sometime in 2013 or 2014 or something like that.

Josh:

What I said is, look, here's the way to think about this.

Josh:

There are still, third party programmatic networks coming into

Josh:

this space with lots of VC money.

Josh:

They are gonna lose that money.

Josh:

Maybe a few of them, you know, standard

Josh:

hockey stick.

Josh:

Maybe, maybe one or two of those will succeed, but all of that money

Josh:

is going to be burned in what is basically a dying media space.

Josh:

Because Google's gonna take all this over, and our job is to, is to

Josh:

harvest indirectly as much of that VC

Josh:

money as we can because you, you would, you

Josh:

would

Brian:

like cheap Uber rides to the airport.

Brian:

Get

Brian:

Get 'em.

Brian:

Get 'em while they're, while you have

Josh:

Exactly.

Josh:

And frankly, you could see it because you know you You have, say your effective rate

Josh:

is, you know, a a dollar 50 per ad slot.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

And each few months you get some new entrant with a bunch of VC money

Josh:

come in and they're offering too.

Josh:

'cause they need to buy up space.

Josh:

They need, you know, they need market share.

Josh:

Great.

Brian:

Yeah.

Josh:

it on.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

And,

Brian:

Trust me, I spent those years at Digiday.

Brian:

I mean, like we, I would stand up on that stage and be like, and thank you to our

Brian:

partners, and then it would be like one slide of logos and then another slide of

Brian:

logos, and then another slide of logos.

Brian:

I was like, I kept joking.

Brian:

I was like, the Matthew McConaughey, like I keep getting older with the logos.

Brian:

Just keep changing, like, you know.

Josh:

yeah, yeah.

Josh:

And, and, and again, I, you know, we were in, in a lot of ways what we were, what

Josh:

we were doing in that period was again.

Josh:

Harvesting the VC money, trying to buy market share in a, in an industry

Josh:

space that was being devoured by the big social networks and Google.

Josh:

And, and look, I, I don't wanna, obviously, it's not

Josh:

that I had perfect visibility

Josh:

into this, at the time, but we had basic visibility, into it.

Josh:

And, And again, that, that was, that was, why I was so desperate to grow,

Josh:

the subscription business because I, I mean, I, I didn't, there was a,

Josh:

you know, I, I don't know, in the.

Josh:

Once you get to around the pandemic and just after, I mean, the fact that it, it,

Josh:

it bottomed out quite as much as it did.

Josh:

I didn't expect it, you know, I didn't expect quite that, but I could see

Josh:

it was, I could see it was dying.

Josh:

Because again, if you, if you, we were one of the, we were one

Josh:

of the beta slash launch partners of what was you, you'll know GAM

Josh:

Google Ad Manager.

Josh:

Right?

Josh:

The, the, the,

Brian:

successor to double click.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

The, well, this was, well that was before Google Ad Managers,

Josh:

before they bought Double Click

Josh:

and then Google.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

So, GAM, Google, Google Ad Manager

Josh:

was

Brian:

hands on.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Was the, was the, yeah, exactly.

Josh:

Well, when you, when you, when you need to, when you need to cover payroll,

Josh:

you gotta be hands on, right?

Josh:

so yeah, so, so GAM was first, and then in pretty short order, they bought

Josh:

double click, and that's where, you know,

Josh:

double click, you know, became the in-house version of it.

Josh:

but if you had, if you had, been there from the beginning of it and watched

Josh:

how it evolved and how their role.

Josh:

It evolved and as the dominant role of it, you, you see it happening.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

And I, I remember, I, I, I wrote occasionally.

Josh:

I, I've obviously most of what I write about is politics, but occasionally

Josh:

I've written about the business of media

Brian:

I like those.

Brian:

I'm like, I like the politics stuff, but I'm like, okay, this

Brian:

guy's getting the details too.

Brian:

I'm reading.

Josh:

you know, it's funny, I, I, in a lot of ways, I, in some ways I've,

Josh:

I've

Brian:

people who come to TPM looking for politics and all

Brian:

of a sudden they're in gam.

Josh:

Well, well, you know, it's funny that, that I, I have always, in a lot of

Josh:

ways I've enjoyed that stuff more because in the politics space, you know, I think

Josh:

about, well, there's a million people who know what I'm saying about, you know,

Josh:

there's just, but, but there, there are.

Josh:

Along the way, there were certain things about, the the digital media

Josh:

infrastructure that I certainly wasn't the only one who knew about, but often

Josh:

I was in this, in this somewhat unique, sorry, grammarian, somewhat unique

Josh:

space in that I really did know the details and I could write about it.

Brian:

Right, that's the D Like there's a lot of people that

Brian:

know the details, but they're

Josh:

exactly, exactly.

Josh:

There's a lot of people in the, in that space who,

Brian:

They almost know too many of the details 'cause they're not able to like

Brian:

sort of see the forest for the trees.

Brian:

A lot of times, you know, they

Josh:

you know, it.

Brian:

it's a plumber's convention arguing about PVC piping and whatnot,

Brian:

and it's like, wait a second.

Josh:

You know, it's funny, I actually had, there was one time, I don't know,

Josh:

it was probably, two or three years before the pandemic, something like that.

Josh:

And, a couple of the guys who, were, you know, very, very high up

Josh:

people in the Google, programmatic advertising, double click.

Josh:

Hive, right.

Josh:

Who worked out of the, worked out of their New York space, and were

Josh:

actually both TPM subscribers.

Josh:

So these were, you know, these were kind of TPM people.

Josh:

And I had written, a few pieces basically explaining Google's mono monopoly

Josh:

power over the advertising space.

Brian:

We can say that now.

Brian:

It's a

Josh:

yeah.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Now it's, now it's, it's a formal

Brian:

I used to always say dominant, like, like all these sort of

Josh:

exactly.

Josh:

it's a formal, formal legal finding now.

Josh:

and again, you know, as monopolists go, there's, you know, some monopolists,

Josh:

get in by just some kind of.

Josh:

Nasty acquisitions.

Josh:

Google did it to a great extent by a lot of forward thinking and, and, and

Josh:

really pretty effective products and all that kind of stuff.

Josh:

Anyway, so I

Brian:

with the greatest like economic engine ever created

Josh:

of

Josh:

course,

Brian:

search,

Josh:

yes.

Josh:

yes.

Josh:

But, so anyway, so I, I had written a couple pieces saying, you know,

Josh:

here's, here's how it works.

Josh:

Here's how,

Josh:

here's the big sort of picture of this and these two guys, very

Josh:

nice guys, you know, subscribers to the site, readers of the site.

Josh:

Basically invited me to come in.

Josh:

'cause like, you know, we're not, we're not monopolists, you know, it's,

Josh:

it's not, it's not what you think.

Josh:

and so, so I went over to meet with them and it's funny, I actually had

Josh:

this, you know how they do, you go into a place like Google, you have

Josh:

to basically sign an NDA to sign

Brian:

Oh yeah, you have to say you're not from North Korea and Cuba and stuff.

Josh:

All just, you know, and I will never divulge

Josh:

anything I see in this building

Brian:

I'm like, I would always do this a report.

Brian:

I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.

Brian:

I was like, I'll sign this thing.

Brian:

I'm not gonna be some, you know, guy who lights himself on fire in

Brian:

the lobby, but I'm not, I'm, I'm not

Josh:

Well, I was one of those guys, right?

Josh:

Because, but not in this, but the reason was, is that, you know, I

Josh:

think most people are going to Google because there's a business deal

Josh:

on the line and they need to, and I remember I saw the thing and I

Josh:

was like, I'm not signing this.

Josh:

And she's, well, you have to.

Josh:

And I, and

Josh:

I said, I'm happy to leave.

Josh:

Your guys invited me here.

Josh:

Like, whatever.

Josh:

Anyway, I got in.

Josh:

So, but the, but the reason I bring this up is we had a great conversation.

Josh:

They kind of, you know.

Josh:

Whatever, but he talked about seeing the forest for the trees.

Josh:

I don't think they thought they were a monopoly.

Josh:

These were people who were admirers of the website,

Josh:

you know, knew me through reading about politics.

Josh:

I don't think they were trying to spin me like, why do they care?

Josh:

They don't care.

Josh:

You

Brian:

But it, it effectively doesn't really matter.

Brian:

Also like, you know, it doesn't, it's like I think about this a lot of times

Brian:

in the political world of the sort of people who used to be more traditional,

Brian:

I guess conservatives who are now like deconstructing the kabbala or whatever.

Brian:

I'm like, it doesn't really matter if they truly believe it or not, like,

Josh:

yeah.

Josh:

No, no, no.

Josh:

Yeah,

Brian:

incentives.

Brian:

The end

Josh:

to totally.

Josh:

But I, but I, but to your point that, A lot of the big trends,

Josh:

and this applies to all of us.

Josh:

It's hard for, it's hard for any of us to see the big trends that we are

Josh:

governed by and and, and part of, right.

Josh:

so yeah, so all of those things were, all of those things were coming together

Josh:

and we were in a period sort of in the last, you know, three or four years

Josh:

before the pandemic, when we were.

Josh:

Trying to build the membership business as quickly as possible

Josh:

to manage the, the, you know,

Brian:

Yeah.

Josh:

catastrophic decline of the advertising business.

Josh:

And, and it was, you know, I don't need to tell anybody in, in the space

Josh:

at the time it was very difficult, but we did have this advantage.

Josh:

We'd, we'd gotten a four or five year jump on the subscription

Josh:

thing, and that's what saved us.

Brian:

Okay, so now tell me about where subscription slash memberships are.

Brian:

I mean, they're the overwhelming majority of the revenue, right?

Josh:

I mean, they're,

Josh:

they're.

Josh:

Yeah, in the nine, in the 90, in the 90%, range.

Josh:

So basically it's an entirely a subscription business.

Josh:

we, you know, we still do, programmatic advertising, but it's, it's, you

Josh:

know, it's a minor part of the minor part of the revenue picture.

Josh:

In practice, it is a completely subscription driven business,

Brian:

And that gives you more.

Josh:

revenue sources.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

That gives you more stability, right?

Brian:

I mean, you, you know, I know as someone who relies on indirect for the

Brian:

most part, like it's really not great.

Brian:

You go into the year starting from zero.

Brian:

I mean, you have partners that will renew.

Brian:

I'm like rubbing my neck right now 'cause I'm in like, sort of renewal season.

Brian:

But, it's, it's definitely, there's a lot of advantages to.

Josh:

it's night and it is just on the, just on the.

Josh:

Quality of life front, frankly.

Josh:

I, I mean we, you know, say back in any time between like, you know, 2010 and

Josh:

2015, you know, go into the, go into the year with a, with a, with a budget.

Josh:

Having to bring in upwards of $3 million.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

and, that would, that was basically all advertising.

Josh:

Now, programmatic is somewhat predictable, right?

Josh:

You have a general sense since it's a commodity business, but

Josh:

basically go into the year.

Josh:

Not knowing where, you know, with the payroll there, it's

Josh:

a payroll business, right?

Josh:

It's overwhelmingly payroll

Josh:

and, and rent.

Josh:

and, and not knowing where the money is coming from.

Josh:

And the difference is there is that if you are a bigger publication, you maybe don't

Josh:

have guarantees, but you have advertisers.

Josh:

They may advertise more or less, but you have advertisers, a small

Josh:

publication without an endemic advertising space, which we are.

Josh:

We're not tech where you've got ga, you know, gadget advertising and stuff like

Josh:

that.

Josh:

You have no advertisers.

Josh:

You don't have advertisers.

Josh:

You may have people who advertise more than in more than one year,

Josh:

but you don't have advertisers.

Josh:

So you're basically having to, to, build an advertising book.

Josh:

From scratch each year, and that was so damn stressful.

Josh:

I can't, I can't, I, I can't, I can't even describe because again, I wasn't,

Josh:

I wasn't an ad seller per se, but I was the one running our strategy and,

Josh:

and all the stuff, and, and the thing with subscriptions is, and this is, you

Josh:

know, look, this is, we know this is why the, you know, Everybody wants you to

Josh:

put down for recurring monthly payment.

Josh:

It's like having an annuity or something like that, right?

Josh:

I mean, you go into, when you're a subscription based business, you go

Josh:

into the year basically having almost total certainty of nine, where 90% of

Josh:

the revenues coming from, and that's, believe me, that is so different from 0%

Brian:

Yeah.

Josh:

of the revenue.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

at the same time, right, like, I mean, there's, there's a lower ceiling.

Brian:

I.

Josh:

Yes, absolutely.

Josh:

Abso there is a lower ceiling.

Brian:

I think all of these, these shifts are, are very good.

Brian:

If you think about like just the, the blogging era, you know, it was

Brian:

going to be, it was in the, you know, content must be free time and

Brian:

very few people were behind paywall.

Brian:

Even doing a paywall was extraordinarily difficult.

Brian:

Technically,

Josh:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Brian:

not used to paying online even, but much less for paying for content.

Josh:

And they're also beyond, beyond pay, beyond the, the mechanics of a paywall,

Josh:

even the mechanics of how you would.

Josh:

Harvest subscription payments was,

Brian:

was no stripe,

Josh:

yeah.

Josh:

There was no, and, and the, you know, the other part that's, that's, that is worth,

Josh:

kind of making clear for people who, who weren't, you know, kind of in the mix at

Josh:

this time, is that for most of what people consider like the blogging era, there was

Josh:

no, there was no business model at all.

Josh:

There were people asking for tips, at a certain point,

Josh:

blog ads, which was a specific

Josh:

company which really kind of pioneered,

Josh:

um, the kind of Oh, yeah.

Josh:

Oh yeah.

Josh:

You know, that was a big part of the early, period for us, but I, I guess

Josh:

it's, it's, it, it's important to realize that, again, this sort of what

Josh:

people remember as the, as the height of

Josh:

the blogging era

Brian:

was no business model.

Brian:

People didn't

Brian:

think about it.

Brian:

It was a hobbyist, it was CB radio, in many ways.

Brian:

And then, you know, Nick Denton was sandbagging it all the time

Brian:

saying, this is no business.

Brian:

This is no business.

Brian:

While he was building business,

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

He, you know, Nick always used to, I remember used, he always used to have

Josh:

this line about anything, you know, in anything we do that, that, you know.

Josh:

Might be called journalism.

Josh:

You tell me and I'll get rid of it.

Josh:

You know, Nick is a,

Josh:

is a, a provocative and transgressive guy.

Josh:

but yes, it was all, it was all without a business model.

Josh:

And, and, you know, Henry Cope, Copeland had a big role in kind of making it,

Josh:

opening up one, you know, one real revenue stream, which was a, which was a big deal.

Brian:

So compare it to today where, you know, the energy, I think during the

Brian:

pandemic particularly shifted to like Substack and I think Substack is a, you

Brian:

know, it's an important company, right?

Brian:

Like it far beyond, its like revenue and business itself.

Brian:

In that it has created an entirely different, digital

Brian:

economy for content that is.

Brian:

Primarily direct payments from its audience.

Brian:

Now

Brian:

it doesn't only, there's Beehiiv, there's just sponsoring this podcast.

Brian:

There's other places that you can do these, these things now.

Brian:

But, you know, I think when I think of TPM, if it was going to

Brian:

start 20 years later, it would probably start as a substack, right?

Josh:

yeah, no, it absolutely, I mean, there's a lot of things like, you know.

Josh:

Since we started doing a lot of things before, there were good

Josh:

industry solutions for them.

Josh:

We built a lot of things ourselves.

Josh:

and so there are certain things that if you were starting now and you say, okay,

Josh:

you know, we gotta 20% off the top for, you know, for the provider and all, you

Josh:

know, all, all these kind of things, you know, we can't do that because we

Josh:

already, we already own that money.

Josh:

And so,

Josh:

you know, when you're talk, when you're talking about, You

Josh:

know, X millions of dollars of.

Josh:

Revenue.

Josh:

You, you can't really do that.

Josh:

But yes, that would be, that would totally be the way that we do it.

Josh:

We even have a couple of our newsletters, a semi on Substack.

Josh:

They're still completely within the TPM ecosystem, but we also, do

Josh:

versions of them on Substack to take some of their, you know, their finding

Josh:

algorithms and stuff is a, a place to be.

Josh:

So we even dabble with it, even though we don't, we don't, you know, all of our,

Josh:

you know, kind of business fulfillment stuff is based on our own software.

Josh:

You know, often built

Josh:

on, on public libraries and stuff, but not, we don't, we don't

Josh:

deal with any of the, any of the companies that will basically.

Josh:

you know, provide a subscription, you know, the, the sort of

Josh:

the, the, the back office of a subscription service as a, as, as,

Josh:

a, as service to you.

Josh:

But yeah, we absolutely would.

Josh:

And, and, you know, the other part that's important to say is that the,

Josh:

you know, the arrival of Substack is.

Josh:

Partly because they have this great finding algorithm that allows people to,

Josh:

you know, to find you and stuff like that.

Josh:

And they've really, gotten the business fulfillment side

Josh:

down really well at a relatively, you know, a relatively, easy percentage.

Josh:

but the other flip side of it is everything we were just talking

Josh:

about, about the collapse of digital journalism between like 2015 and 2020.

Josh:

You've got lots of journalists who've decided that, it, it is the

Josh:

preferable thing to, to, you know, put out their own shingle and be

Josh:

like busking or not quite busking.

Josh:

You know, there's everything from people who are just doing it kind of individually

Josh:

to what, you know, the free press and, and some of the tech substack do.

Josh:

but you know, it's, it, not everybody wants to do that.

Josh:

So some of it is of necess.

Josh:

I mean, a lot of it is of necessity,

Brian:

Yeah, a lot of reluctant entrepreneurs out there.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

And, and that is, you know, it's funny, I remember there's

Josh:

a, a New Yorker journalist.

Josh:

I, I, I remember just a lunch we had, I don't know, a decade

Josh:

ago or something like that.

Josh:

And this is a very successful journalist, right?

Josh:

Would be, you know, a very prominent and saying like, I don't know how you do it.

Josh:

I just want a paycheck.

Josh:

I don't wanna worry about all

Josh:

that crap.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

And, you know, people are character logically different, but the, but the,

Josh:

the crisis in the industry, you know, forced a lot of character, logically

Josh:

different people to say like, I, this

Brian:

Well also the, the

Josh:

is what I'm gonna do this.

Brian:

the risk profile flipped almost, right?

Brian:

Like, I mean, like it used to be it's higher risk to be like independent.

Brian:

It absolutely like is in some ways.

Brian:

But then like, do you wanna be sitting at CBS news right now?

Brian:

I mean, that's pretty high risk.

Brian:

They got, they got 2000 scalps.

Brian:

They're gonna like take.

Josh:

Yep,

Brian:

so, you know, this industry has compressed quite a bit, but

Brian:

like, tell me about like the sort of substack ification, if you will, of

Brian:

politics, like in particular in your, in your space, because there are tons.

Brian:

Now of independent voices, journalists, non journalists, comedians, I, you know,

Brian:

I get most of my Middle East news from comedians, it seems like these days.

Brian:

You know, comic Dave Smith tells me what's going on.

Josh:

you know, there, there's, there's always been this, this, this pattern

Josh:

that we have existed in with, with other players becoming more like us.

Josh:

And I think that this was a lot of our, this was a big thing

Josh:

that we dealt with, say between, you know, the, the 2000 6, 7, 8.

Josh:

period to, you know, to a decade later that there was a certain point when the

Josh:

big news organizations were still in some cases, still at once a day publication

Josh:

or still operating totally in the, you know, kind of, high school journalism

Josh:

class idea of what a newspaper article is.

Josh:

And we could just kind of.

Josh:

Run circles around those people.

Josh:

And now we were still like a tiny little organization, but in the

Josh:

sense of for people who wanted for news, for political news junkies who

Josh:

wanted to know what was happening.

Josh:

Now we had these formats that we worked in that we not, we obviously

Josh:

weren't, you know, doing kind of, one publication a day, but able to,

Josh:

customize our mode of publication.

Josh:

To the content, sometimes two sentences is the news, and can you front two sentences

Josh:

that you're not locked into an article?

Josh:

this is look, an easy way of explaining this is the way that it is, that it is

Josh:

totally natural to us now to know that the Times and the Post and all the other

Josh:

similar organizations will have live blogs

Josh:

of all sorts of, of moving stories.

Josh:

That didn't used to be the case, and that's certainly not.

Josh:

Just a matter of, of copying us, literally copying us, but a little,

Josh:

you know, we started a, you know, we're, we're in the group of

Josh:

publications that started those things.

Josh:

So you have to, you have to get used to like, oh,

Brian:

Yeah,

Josh:

we're not the only ones doing

Brian:

there's no moats.

Brian:

There are

Josh:

Yeah, exactly.

Brian:

not a moat.

Brian:

Like it's like, oh, that looks good.

Brian:

I'm gonna do that.

Josh:

Exactly, exactly.

Josh:

so you have things like that and, and, so now we are.

Josh:

We are in a space where a lot of, a lot of people who used to work for the big

Josh:

publications are setting up shop, you know, places like, you know, the Bulwark

Josh:

has a little different since their founding people were mainly people out

Josh:

of politics as opposed to journalism.

Josh:

But I, they've obviously hired up a lot of journalism now,

Josh:

all sorts of places like this.

Josh:

So, so there are a lot of, you know, we are not that unique as a, as an

Josh:

organization of around 20 people.

Josh:

You know, doing this stuff.

Josh:

And that's, you know, that's how media works and that's great as far as I'm

Josh:

concerned because we have, we have an audience that likes what we do.

Josh:

And I can honestly say that, that, that our business is more, robust

Josh:

and stable than it's ever been.

Josh:

not just, you know, so not just surviving as you say.

Josh:

It's not, we're not gonna have hockey stick growth.

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

This is the size of the business.

Josh:

but a lot of the people who had hockey stick growth didn't realize that they

Josh:

weren't actually having hockey stick

Josh:

growth.

Josh:

It was kind of an illusion, and there were very specific reasons

Josh:

why, why we did not get in on that very aggressive, VC backed period.

Josh:

It was a decision I made.

Josh:

not, and not one 'cause like, oh, you know, journalism needs to remain pure.

Josh:

I, there, there was, there was, you know, TPM was a hot thing

Josh:

at the time when that money was flooding in.

Josh:

And, at a certain point I was, it wasn't even a matter of, I had to be persuaded.

Josh:

I was so.

Josh:

I was so busy running things that I actually had a number of sort of prominent

Josh:

Silicon Valley VCs trying to get in touch with me and that other people that I just,

Josh:

I can't even explain to myself, now, like, why didn't I respond to these people?

Josh:

And it

Brian:

Well, you could just say that you were wise.

Josh:

You know, well,

Josh:

I got wise a little later at that, at, at that point, I wasn't wise though.

Josh:

I was just, I was just so, I was just so full on doing it.

Josh:

day after day.

Josh:

In any case, what happened was eventually I got persuaded like,

Josh:

all right, you should do, you take some investment money, whatever.

Josh:

And one of the things I've always been very happy about

Josh:

is that I, as I was, as I was.

Josh:

Walking through how these deals would work and stuff, I realized very

Josh:

quickly all the ways that you can lose control of a company while still

Josh:

being the majority owner of a company.

Josh:

And for reasons that are just characterological, I

Josh:

could never accept that.

Josh:

I couldn't handle the idea that someone could, could take the company

Josh:

away from me.

Brian:

and it's, it's, it's kind of like hard to like.

Brian:

Looking back, but I mean, that was the sort of default for a lot

Brian:

of people who reached like, you know, the, you, you, you, like you

Brian:

said, you were like a hot property.

Brian:

Whereas I feel like now it's normalized, you know, bootstrapping

Brian:

is the assumption in media.

Brian:

Like,

Brian:

I don't think nobody's like out there like raising money for the most part,

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Why would you?

Brian:

sites.

Brian:

It's like, get to.

Brian:

You know, particularly you, you can do, and you look at like, I think particularly

Brian:

in the political landscape, like there's some really profitable, like small

Brian:

and particularly around personalities.

Brian:

Now they don't have a ton of, of enterprise value, right?

Brian:

But like amazing businesses.

Josh:

for you in the, if you're, if you're running it, it's, it's,

Josh:

I, look, I've been, I've been, you know, in, in incredibly fortunate

Josh:

with, with, with TPM, it's great.

Josh:

It's, it's, it's doing well.

Josh:

You know, I did a, we, we have this, We are publishing this 25th

Josh:

anniversary series where we basically went to 25 people in every kind of

Josh:

part of the digital media history in present and just say, what's, what's

Josh:

an essay about the hist, about the last 25 years of digital media that

Josh:

you're sort of itching to write?

Josh:

And we commissioned all those, and

Josh:

I wrote an introduction for it and the sort of the after sort of thanking

Josh:

everybody and all that kind of stuff.

Josh:

I said the, the, the, the original sin of digital media.

Brian:

there are many since I read it, but

Josh:

Well, okay.

Josh:

Yeah.

Josh:

Well, there's, this is the, the, the, the core one in

Josh:

my Yeah, you're absolutely right.

Josh:

There is, there is one is that people thought digital media was part of the tech

Josh:

industry.

Josh:

That it was, that it was tech and it was not.

Josh:

and when you talk about moats, you know, this is, this is, this is very basic

Josh:

for anybody who, who knows, Silicon Valley or VCs or tech world, you, know,

Josh:

you, you, you you intentionally blow a lot of money fast because you're trying

Josh:

to build scale and network effects and lock in and you know, let alone losing

Josh:

nine out of 10, you can lose 19 out of 20 and you get locked in, you are

Josh:

gonna make all your money back.

Josh:

That's the whole game.

Josh:

And there was this weird.

Josh:

inability to see that there, there are no network effects in news.

Josh:

There are certain,

Josh:

certain little parts of news distribution that have network effects, but

Josh:

publications have no network effects.

Josh:

You're not gonna be the stripe of news and suddenly like, wow,

Josh:

I, you know, it's so big now.

Josh:

You can't not get your news from Stripe.

Josh:

That makes no sense and a huge, huge amount of, of, of everything that

Josh:

happened and the whole collapse was, was that playing out and you had, you

Josh:

know, added to the fact that the whole, the whole, the whole business model

Josh:

was sort of destroyed by the, by the, you know, concentration of, of the.

Josh:

Of the tech you know, platform monopolies.

Josh:

but that's another thing that again, sort of allowed us some

Josh:

visibility is that if you were running a media business, and, and

Josh:

had a really hands-on sense of how the money worked, you could see that

Josh:

all of these hotshot publications of a decade ago were not making money.

Josh:

You just, you, you know the space.

Josh:

You look at, you look at the numbers and you say like, you're, obviously, you,

Josh:

you're, you're telling, you know, you're not gonna fool Morrissey, but you're

Josh:

gonna fool half the other people in the media press that you're, that you're

Josh:

making money, you're not making money.

Josh:

You know, you may have some sort of Wall Street creative,

Josh:

creative accounting and stuff.

Brian:

Community adjusted ebitda.

Josh:

Yeah, all these kind, you know, it's funny, I was telling something recently.

Josh:

They talk about, you know, the, the fact that you're in a space where

Josh:

there's a difference between are you solvent and are you cash flow positive?

Josh:

You're not, you know, I, for those listeners, I know, I know accounting,

Josh:

I know the difference.

Josh:

But in practice, in this business where there is no, inventory, where

Josh:

there is, there is very little, intellectual property that, that,

Josh:

that can, can be done anything with.

Josh:

if you are not cashflow positive, you are, there's someone who's

Josh:

fooling you about your job security.

Brian:

So let me, let me ask you this then the final topic, but it's a

Brian:

little bit like broad, but I have this theory about like, we're operating

Brian:

in the information space, right?

Brian:

And it's, there's, the media industry is, is a small part of a larger.

Brian:

Space in which everyone's jostling for attention,

Josh:

Mm-hmm.

Brian:

and people have different business models Talking point talking points.

Brian:

USA to me or talking points, what am I saying?

Brian:

Turning point USA was was a media organization

Josh:

Mm-hmm.

Brian:

purpose about it.

Brian:

And we have that.

Brian:

All across this information space.

Brian:

a lot of the energy seems to be in personalities, in creators, like,

Brian:

and there's no moat really in media.

Brian:

I think we've gone through this at this point.

Brian:

and so I think you end up.

Brian:

Defaulting to personality because you know, you have different,

Brian:

different personalities and you can develop a parasocial bond.

Brian:

And we've seen that, within the, the, the contours of the information

Brian:

space that, that is rewarded.

Brian:

Is this do, first of all, how do you, we evaluate that and then is,

Brian:

is that like a permanent condition as we move beyond mass media?

Josh:

Right.

Josh:

It's a good question.

Josh:

I, I, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're catching me before

Josh:

I say I, I knew everything in retrospect because I, I don't have a,

Josh:

I don't have a clear sense of that.

Josh:

You know, I, I think if we look at, if we, well, let's look.

Josh:

There is.

Josh:

We have a lot of things that have happened just in the last six months.

Josh:

That point to a, a lot of media concentration that is, that is,

Josh:

you know, kind of tied to the government and stuff like that.

Josh:

So there may be forms of lock in there that we're, that we're already seeing.

Josh:

I think that, I, I could see us being in this space, the sort of the influencer

Josh:

personal connection space for a long time.

Josh:

I think if we look at the broad scope of history that you, you, society

Josh:

and economies, work their way into somewhat stable, institutionally stable

Josh:

moments, but we're certainly not.

Josh:

we're not there yet.

Josh:

it could also be, you know, it, it could be something that our society is still,

Josh:

you know, it could be something about the internet, the sort of the parasocial

Josh:

intimacy that is, that is, Seems to go naturally with the internet that maybe

Josh:

you are going to have something.

Josh:

I will, I will say this, that, you know, we're all talking

Josh:

about, how AI will affect media.

Josh:

Will, you know, will, will, will, dis intermediate

Josh:

journalists and stuff like that.

Josh:

And I do think that there's, there's a pretty big contradiction here because

Josh:

the entire coin of the realm about.

Josh:

Influencers and parasocial relationships is about a person.

Josh:

It's about a person.

Josh:

that is, I do you, you can fool someone.

Josh:

You know, you could, you could, you could have a,

Josh:

an influencer using AI to, to produce their stuff.

Josh:

but this is something that I have, I've given a lot of thought to,

Josh:

partly because I'm in this business.

Josh:

I doubt just generationally whether, whether it'll affect me a lot

Josh:

personally, but like, you know, will, will serious news coverage

Josh:

and let me amend that a little bit.

Josh:

Very straightforward wire stuff I could see being done by ai

Josh:

and, and that's very important stuff.

Josh:

It just, it's different, it's very kind of specific and factual, but,

Josh:

people doing opinion journalism.

Brian:

What it means.

Brian:

Connecting the dots.

Brian:

Yeah.

Josh:

think there was a lot about the era of major metropolitan

Josh:

newspapers that we did not understand until the internet destroyed.

Josh:

And I think there is something similar about the re potential relationship

Josh:

between AI and journalism, and I think the key is that even though

Josh:

we haven't had to think about it, if you read opinion pieces, it is only

Josh:

relevant or compelling to you because the idea that a another person.

Josh:

An entity like fundamentally, like you, a human being,

Josh:

came up with these ideas and wrestled with them.

Josh:

If it is by a machine, I don't think the vast majority of people

Josh:

will be interested to read it.

Josh:

That's not to say that AI couldn't fool a lot of people or fool some

Josh:

people into thinking a person did it.

Josh:

But the idea.

Josh:

I think people only want to read that kind of journalism if it

Josh:

originates with a human being.

Josh:

so, and I, I,

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

And that, that would argue that this would accelerate and would be something of emo

Brian:

like that would be because like the, the.

Brian:

Just the humanity of it would then be the differentiator.

Brian:

And you can't give up your differentiator.

Brian:

And that's why I sort of, you know, I think, look, there's a lot of pressure on

Brian:

the news industry to get more efficient

Brian:

and AI is a

Josh:

Mm-hmm.

Josh:

Mm-hmm.

Brian:

et cetera.

Brian:

at the same

Brian:

time, you can't give up like your, your strength.

Brian:

And maybe this is me sort of whistling by the

Josh:

No, I, I, I think, I think that is true.

Josh:

I mean, I was thinking of moats in different ways.

Josh:

There's, there's, there's moats for the influencer era,

Josh:

and I think there is a moat there.

Josh:

the, the, the, the moat for individual companies, that's

Josh:

different because obviously individual influencers, come and go.

Josh:

But no, I, I, I do think, I do think that is the case.

Josh:

I think people want to hear what another person, thinks.

Josh:

And the more creative that person is, the more whatever, the more kind of attractive

Josh:

they are as someone, as someone to read.

Josh:

But I think even for listeners, think about yourself.

Josh:

Think about if you, if wherever you read your opinion, journalism,

Josh:

if it's, you know, the Time's Up ed page or, or your favorite site.

Josh:

If you read something knowing that it was something produced by an algorithm,

Josh:

you know, produced by ai, would you be interested in what it had to say?

Josh:

And I don't think most people would.

Josh:

So I do think that is,

Brian:

Yeah, I think the big, the big unknown is, and we could

Brian:

go on this forever, we could do one of those four hour podcasts.

Brian:

I think the big unknown is whether that generationally changes,

Brian:

like we're too far into it.

Brian:

Like we grew up like analog.

Brian:

I mean, all, all the internet stuff is

Josh:

My, my, my bet is that it doesn't, that it is something that

Josh:

is something actually fundamental to, to, to why we read, why we

Josh:

consume, why we consume things.

Josh:

But yeah, we,

Brian:

Well that's assuming people are gonna be reading.

Josh:

Well, why you consume, why you, why you consume well, why you

Josh:

read, why you listen to podcasts.

Josh:

You

Josh:

know, podcasts is another example.

Josh:

You could, obviously, you could, you could certainly engineer

Josh:

a podcast with, with ai.

Josh:

Would you want to hear it?

Josh:

But it's also true that would, it's very hard for us to, to, for

Josh:

any humans to think beyond their generational, you know, beyond

Josh:

their generation, beyond their time.

Brian:

Okay.

Brian:

Awesome.

Brian:

Thank you so much, Josh.

Brian:

This was, uh, really great.

Brian:

Congrats

Josh:

really appreciate it.

Josh:

I had a great time.

Josh:

Thank you.

Josh:

Thank you so much.

All Episodes Previous Episode

About the Podcast

Show artwork for The Rebooting Show
The Rebooting Show

Listen for free