tuesday report # 13 // buzzfeed news is dead, and the future of media is still just the new york times; twitter vs. substack launches influencer arms race; a storm of fire links
I’ve never seen a company commit suicide before yesterday...but I don’t what else you call what Fox News did.
To some degree MSNBC and CNN have it easy because the Dem party is an ideological monolith, so it’s a one-size-fits-all news style. Everyone is easily replaceable with any other Lib talking head.
However, the GOP is split at least three ways: between the hardline MAGA, the non-MAGA populists and the traditionalist neocons. Tucker was so critical to them bc he was the only person who could speak to that middle group. Without him, Fox has no one to speak to them and they will simply fade away. Fox will be left with the other two groups which are largely boomers. And that’s best case scenario for Fox.
Worse case is that Tucker starts his own media company (maybe VC backed?) and fills the other MAGA/traditionalist roles and explicitly picks off the Fox viewers.
After listening the the All-In pod over the past few months, with all the money on the sidelines bc of the unknowns with AI and the economy as a whole, I have to imagine someone would be interested in investing in Tucker who has a massive built in audience in the key demo that they could build a media platform around.
I think at some point a backlash is coming against subscriptions creeping into virtually every area of online life. We get it -- everyone wants to be their own SaaS now. I think people understand why that is happening, but from a consumer perspective, the number of subscriptions that people are generally interested in having at one time is quite low. This is even more the case when the content provided is the product of one writer (not the case for all Substacks, of course, but it is the case for many).
I think there are limits to how much the subscription model grows going forward, due to the tendency people have to not want to overburden themselves with subscriptions in general. There certainly is money to be made with subscription content, especially for high-end publications that are perceived, rightly or wrongly, to have unique content which justifies the cost (examples are not only the NYT, but also the WSJ, Bloomberg News (not the terminal), The Economist, The FT, etc ... and, in truth, only a truly tiny portion of people subscribe to more than one of those publications at the same time) ... for publications that don't have that, it's much less compelling, because for "general news" there are general news aggregator sites that provide that for free (like Google News). For individual content, as noted above, it's a harder sell beyond a few subscriptions from favorite writers, because beyond that it really starts to add up in cost.
I also think Musk is very hard to read and is prone to mercurial acts. I don't think he would have blocked Substack at all if it weren't for Notes (which, let's face it, is an in-house Twitter), which piqued him. I have my doubts that it's part of a master plan he has cooked up to monopolize media moving forward by isolating Substack or anything like that. In truth, he seems more focused on turning Twitter into a kind of Western version of WeChat.
I think Elon bought Twitter for purely cultural reasons and while I suspect it’s obvious as to why it feels rude to say it.
Also, just apropos of nothing aside from this maybe enabling the autistic future of adjudication I want, I really wish Twitter did something to enable user generated ads. That could actually bring in some money as we head into a downturn and also maybe drive one actual sale of something from Twitter, since I don’t even know anyone who has ever bought anything from Twitter. That would be a great way to make money and I just hate all video ads I see there today. He could even become the ad farm that feeds other platforms, so they’re all reliant upon him.
He could start with a proof of concept by having user generated ads for Twitter on Twitter and then use that as the selling point.
I really want to make an ad where I’m hunting with a bow in the middle of the woods, talking about nature and the importance of working for what you eat, and then spin suddenly only to bulls-eye a DiGiorno’s pizza which I then heroically “gut” and cook over a little campfire.
And I refuse to give up on this dream and I would really just like a world where there are lots of funny commercials for things.
"[O]nce you’re everything for everyone you’re nothing."
This is the source of everyone's malaise. Our unquenchable march towards tearing down every border, boundary, and limit leaves us with 1) endless, paralyzing array of choices - both the variety and the burden of "choosing wisely" when we "could be anything" and 2) lack of cohesion with others, when there's nothing that needs to define us, then what do we have in common with others?
This is my concern and my beef with so much of Western civilization, and my reservation with anything from transgenderism to transhumanism. At some point, we must accept some constraint from being biological beings affixed in this place and time, sharing this globe with other beings and with each other. The less we see constraints, the less we see a responsibility to each other.
[Shameless plug - that's part of "the borderline" idea of my nascent Substack.]
THE NEW FOURTH ESTATE-mostly substacks and a few indie newsletters. NO FAKE NEWS, JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE MONEY. Only truth in substacks, I love that. As Gordon said, Fox committed suicide, oh they can hang on for a little while with Hannity and Laura lol. Hannity has gone rogue-globalist. I used to see him as Trump's biggest supporter, now ehh globalist. Laura I have no idea. They stupidly don't use her much, but a black girl Harris Faulkner (I think I got the name right, haven't watched Fox in years) is right up there, maybe ahead of Hannity and Ingraham.
We are the media now. Look forward to seeing you and other comrades this afternoon.
I’ve never seen a company commit suicide before yesterday...but I don’t what else you call what Fox News did.
To some degree MSNBC and CNN have it easy because the Dem party is an ideological monolith, so it’s a one-size-fits-all news style. Everyone is easily replaceable with any other Lib talking head.
However, the GOP is split at least three ways: between the hardline MAGA, the non-MAGA populists and the traditionalist neocons. Tucker was so critical to them bc he was the only person who could speak to that middle group. Without him, Fox has no one to speak to them and they will simply fade away. Fox will be left with the other two groups which are largely boomers. And that’s best case scenario for Fox.
Worse case is that Tucker starts his own media company (maybe VC backed?) and fills the other MAGA/traditionalist roles and explicitly picks off the Fox viewers.
After listening the the All-In pod over the past few months, with all the money on the sidelines bc of the unknowns with AI and the economy as a whole, I have to imagine someone would be interested in investing in Tucker who has a massive built in audience in the key demo that they could build a media platform around.
Thoughts from the peanut gallery on that?
I think at some point a backlash is coming against subscriptions creeping into virtually every area of online life. We get it -- everyone wants to be their own SaaS now. I think people understand why that is happening, but from a consumer perspective, the number of subscriptions that people are generally interested in having at one time is quite low. This is even more the case when the content provided is the product of one writer (not the case for all Substacks, of course, but it is the case for many).
I think there are limits to how much the subscription model grows going forward, due to the tendency people have to not want to overburden themselves with subscriptions in general. There certainly is money to be made with subscription content, especially for high-end publications that are perceived, rightly or wrongly, to have unique content which justifies the cost (examples are not only the NYT, but also the WSJ, Bloomberg News (not the terminal), The Economist, The FT, etc ... and, in truth, only a truly tiny portion of people subscribe to more than one of those publications at the same time) ... for publications that don't have that, it's much less compelling, because for "general news" there are general news aggregator sites that provide that for free (like Google News). For individual content, as noted above, it's a harder sell beyond a few subscriptions from favorite writers, because beyond that it really starts to add up in cost.
I also think Musk is very hard to read and is prone to mercurial acts. I don't think he would have blocked Substack at all if it weren't for Notes (which, let's face it, is an in-house Twitter), which piqued him. I have my doubts that it's part of a master plan he has cooked up to monopolize media moving forward by isolating Substack or anything like that. In truth, he seems more focused on turning Twitter into a kind of Western version of WeChat.
I think Elon bought Twitter for purely cultural reasons and while I suspect it’s obvious as to why it feels rude to say it.
Also, just apropos of nothing aside from this maybe enabling the autistic future of adjudication I want, I really wish Twitter did something to enable user generated ads. That could actually bring in some money as we head into a downturn and also maybe drive one actual sale of something from Twitter, since I don’t even know anyone who has ever bought anything from Twitter. That would be a great way to make money and I just hate all video ads I see there today. He could even become the ad farm that feeds other platforms, so they’re all reliant upon him.
He could start with a proof of concept by having user generated ads for Twitter on Twitter and then use that as the selling point.
I really want to make an ad where I’m hunting with a bow in the middle of the woods, talking about nature and the importance of working for what you eat, and then spin suddenly only to bulls-eye a DiGiorno’s pizza which I then heroically “gut” and cook over a little campfire.
And I refuse to give up on this dream and I would really just like a world where there are lots of funny commercials for things.
I guess you've never heard of white washing 😐 that wasn't clown posting... now Netflix cleopatra... that's funny
"[O]nce you’re everything for everyone you’re nothing."
This is the source of everyone's malaise. Our unquenchable march towards tearing down every border, boundary, and limit leaves us with 1) endless, paralyzing array of choices - both the variety and the burden of "choosing wisely" when we "could be anything" and 2) lack of cohesion with others, when there's nothing that needs to define us, then what do we have in common with others?
This is my concern and my beef with so much of Western civilization, and my reservation with anything from transgenderism to transhumanism. At some point, we must accept some constraint from being biological beings affixed in this place and time, sharing this globe with other beings and with each other. The less we see constraints, the less we see a responsibility to each other.
[Shameless plug - that's part of "the borderline" idea of my nascent Substack.]
THE NEW FOURTH ESTATE-mostly substacks and a few indie newsletters. NO FAKE NEWS, JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE MONEY. Only truth in substacks, I love that. As Gordon said, Fox committed suicide, oh they can hang on for a little while with Hannity and Laura lol. Hannity has gone rogue-globalist. I used to see him as Trump's biggest supporter, now ehh globalist. Laura I have no idea. They stupidly don't use her much, but a black girl Harris Faulkner (I think I got the name right, haven't watched Fox in years) is right up there, maybe ahead of Hannity and Ingraham.