Rich Idiots Are Killing The Media To Please The Tech Industry

The media industry has laid off over 30,000 people in the last three years as a result of an executive sect that doesn't read, write, or meaningfully contribute to society. Ed Zitron walks you through how the startup mindset destroyed Sports Illustrated, VICE and The Messenger - and how journalism can turn the tide and survive.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
All Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zeitron.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Now.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Look, I'm just a simple country podcaster, but at my heart,
I'm a writer. I've been writing since I was sixteen.
I wrote about video games that are now defunct magazine
called CVG and then another called PC Zone. And there's
been one theme, one thing that has hung around my
entire media career, and that thing is that the people
running the media do not read or write. And I

(00:42):
must sound a little dramatic, but really I'm not kidding.
The majority of the media executives I've worked for and
the ones I've met, just did not understand or create
any media of any kind. There were publishers who ran
games publications who didn't play games, and didn't write, and
hadn't written, didn't contribute any to the magazines, and they
routinely made decisions that just made the publications worse. There

(01:06):
were executive editors at newspapers I've read and worked for
that hadn't written a word in decades, and they made
calls about the tone and direction of writers that they
didn't even bother to read, and they were always looking
for ways to increase readership. Without actually focusing on what
made readers read things. When I went into PR in
two thousand and eight, which by the way, I did

(01:27):
to move to America, I didn't really understand the job.
Pretty good at it now, though, I was still able
to keep a lot of my media connections, both at
home and the ones i'd met on various press trips
to America. And I saw this sudden and dramatic change
that was happening to the industry, and it was all
thanks to the advent of mass social media and digital
publishing and of course digital advertising. And then over the years,

(01:50):
I saw the same cycles repeat themselves again and again
and again. These media executives, they'd see a trend, get
very horny for it, they jump on it, and nothing
would happen, and so they'd move on to the next one,
and they'd move on to a next one, and they'd
keep going, and they'd keep dragging media entities into these vast, unprofitable,
unsustainable quagmires, all in pursuit of you guessed it, growth.

(02:14):
They were always chasing growth. But what they were actually
chasing was the magic of the startup valuation. Startups were
suddenly being valued at fifty million, one hundred million, a
billion dollars, and they wanted a little bit of that magic.
They wanted to get even richer than they already were.
Practically speaking, this meant that outlets were forced by the

(02:35):
idiotic executives to chase the dragon of social media and
search traffic, and they'd optimize their content not for a
person or a living being of any kind, but to
please algorithms that they didn't control, run by companies like
Meta and Google who didn't give a shit about them.
As a result, it's been a fairly apocalyptic decade in journalism.
Multiple outlets have grown into these massive, unwieldy, unprofitable businesses

(02:59):
and then relapsed under the weight of executive malpractice. In
the last three years, over thirty thousand people have lost
their jobs in the media industry or while executives received
these massive paydays for what appears to be accelerating the
Titanic into the Iceberg. As private equity and venture capital
money is flown into the media industry, so of the

(03:20):
rotten demands for eternal growth. Brands that you read as
a kid, magazines and newspapers that inspired you, they've become
shells of the former selves. Or because they've chased these
growth metrics, which naturally ostracize and then eventually lay off
the journalists that made these outlets famous, until, of course,
the outlet has to shut down due to unforeseen market conditions,

(03:41):
which is a euphemism for we are too stupid to
run a business. Sadly, at this point, you'll probably realize
that things are not going well in the media industry,
and indeed, twenty twenty four has been one of the
darkest years in this industry I've ever seen. The first
high profile media cas twenty twenty four were Sports Illustrated,

(04:02):
formerly one of the most important brands in sports journalism,
and it was slowly choked to death after being sold twice,
first to Meredith, which acquired it as part of its
one point eighty five billion dollar acquisition of Time magazine
in twenty seventeen, and then it was sold again when
the intellectual property was licensed to Authentic Brands Group, which
is a holding company, which bought it for one hundred
and ten million dollars. Now you did hear me, Ray,

(04:26):
They sold the intellectual property, the name Sports Illustrated in
the logo, and their goal was the insane prospect of
branding things like medical clinics and gambling businesses. This is
actually kind of weird precursor to the amount of sports
betting you'll see in modern sports today now. Meredith Corporation
would continue to publish Sports Illustrated until about twenty nineteen,

(04:47):
when Authentic Brands Group would license the editorial operations to
a company called The Maven as part of a ten
year licensing deal, and then laid off forty people and
shifted the editorial strategy away from the deep thoughtful analysis
that people actually gave a shit about, towards focusing on
breaking news, the things that people could literally get anywhere.

(05:09):
And while they were doing this, they flooded Sports Illustrated's
website with this kind of noxious, empty, generic contributed content,
all from affiliate sites run by these poorly vetted contributing bloggers.
Now no offense to the world of contributing bloggers. There
are some good ones out there, but in this case
this was chop shop work. This was done specifically to

(05:30):
fill the site, it was not built to inform people.
Thanks to this, Sports Illustrated had spend a few more
years deteriorating until around December twenty twenty three, when they
published a piece by a man called Drew Autis, except
Drew didn't exist. He was one of multiple non existent
pseudonyms given to content generated by AI. While Sports Illustrated

(05:53):
initially denied the claims of using AI, they'd fire their CEO,
Ross Levinson a few weeks later. Now Levinson's of real
piece of shit. He's a scumbag. He had multiple accusations
of sexual harassment against him when he was at the
La Times, their CEO, and while he was there he
quite literally tried to do exactly the same thing. He
tried to make the La Times take external contributors. Thankfully,

(06:16):
strong unions and the eventual acquisition of The Times managed
to get rid of him. He still managed to get
paid millions. In twenty twenty four, the maven now called
the Arena Group would lay off most of Sports Illustrated
staff after failing to pay the licensing fee to Authentic
Brands Group, which is insane. By the way, you can't

(06:37):
publish on the website because you didn't pay the dairy
queen franchise thing. You have to to be called Sports
Illustrated anyway. The Arena Group claims they'll still keep publishing
Sports illustrated, but it's not really clear what that's actually
going to look like considering how unprofitable the Arena group is.
They had a net loss of fifty million dollars in
the first three quarters at twenty twenty three, and Sports

(06:59):
ill Frustrated, well, they fired everyone. What's really pissing me
off though, and this is this whole subject fills me
through my veins for unearthly poison. Sports Illustrated used to
be profitable. It was profitable for decades, and the reason
it got profitable in the fifties was because the managing
editor was a sports writer. It was also profitable when

(07:22):
it was acquired in twenty nineteen, and it stayed that
way through twenty twenty, a year when pretty much every
business suffered. Its value. Just to be clear, over one
hundred million dollars didn't come from the fact that a
private equity group sold it to another private equity group,
though I realized the agree in a group probably wouldn't
like being called that. Its actual value came from writing important,

(07:46):
meaningful sports writing from writers like George Plimpton, Curry Kirkpatrick,
and Emma Bachelari. And it died. It died at the
hands of people that don't read, don't write, and don't
understand business journalism is being killed by non journalists that
are desperate to turn it into another shitty startup ecosystem.

(08:15):
Less than a month after Sports Illustrated started to collapse,
there was a new media entity that was actually already
working on dying. The Messenger was a news outlet that
raised fifty million dollars in VC money and hired about
three hundred people, many of them were reporters. In many respects,
it was not really a news outlet, though it was
focused on churn. It thought that volume, velocity and just

(08:39):
lots of stuff was the way that you make a
big media out there, rather of course, than building a
rapport with readers and adding their trust and making them
like the writing, you know, writing good stuff for people
like no, no, no, no. You just need lots of things.
And despite this hefty war chest, it shut down on
February first, twenty twenty four. And this is the discussing part.

(09:01):
Workers were left unemployed and uninsured and they didn't even
get severance. And it's all because, guess what, the executives
running it didn't know what they were doing. The Messenger
was doomed from the beginning. The people behind it were
just complete idiots. Their CEO, Jimmy Finkelstein, made nine hundred

(09:21):
thousand dollars a year and they spent eight million dollars
on office space in New York, DC and Los Angeles,
which is just crazy. This is the year twenty twenty four.
Why do you have office space for a thing you
can do at any computer anyway? Anyway, sorry, let me
calm down. But what really drove it into the ground
was that they had this very aggressive and extremely stupid

(09:42):
editorial strategy, and it was all driven by people who
didn't know what they were doing. All they thought was
that traffic was good. This goddamn thing didn't have a
site map. The Messenger, a modern media property, was run
by people who barely knew how to use a computer. Well,
let me give you some insight in to some of
the rot inside this company. So after the company collapsed,

(10:03):
Eli Walsh, who love them or hate him, He was
a writer at The Messenger, and he built his career
in California journalism, primarily local stuff. He described this constant
pressure to produce more content with a lot of it
just actively ripped off from publications like The Daily Mail
and The New York Post, two routlets I would not
describe as esteemed. After eight months of working at The Messenger,

(10:27):
Eli Walsh claimed that he had no usable clips for
his portfolio as a result of how crap the editorial
strategy was. Now listeners, if you're wondering why that's so bad,
even at the worst place I've worked, even the crappiest
freelance out there, I still get a clip I can use,
because usually good writing is still published, even if it's

(10:49):
published and edited in a way that you don't like.
But what The Messenger would publish was this very bland,
mass appeal, mass produced journalist didn't really say much. And
it's funny to steal from the Daily Mail considering how
much of their stuff is viral content stuff or very
shittly written headlines. It's actually really weird that The Messenger

(11:12):
didn't die quicker, and honestly, the Messenger's chop shop mentality
was completely nonsensical. But seriously, the demise was avoidable had
the people in charge actually known what they were doing,
or say, I don't know talked to a journalist about
how journalism works. When developing the bloody business model. Fifty

(11:33):
million dollars is actually quite a lot for a media organization.
You could have done it a really great job. You
can run an incredible newsroom with ten, fifteen, twenty people
fifty million dollars. You'll be able to sustain that for
a long long time. But they didn't understand that. And
the problem is that none of these media executives really

(11:56):
understand how great journalism or great anything in media is built.
They don't understand that trust, reputation, and loyalty are actually
very hard to quantify. What is easy to quantify, though,
is revenue growth and page views. You can look at
page views if you're a colossal Dingus and say, wow,
number go up. Oh, money come in now? Is it profitable?

(12:21):
Is it actually stuff that people like? Are people returning
after they click it? Or did you just convince them
to do so through Google? Who knows the messenger is
dead now they deleted the whole website. But putting that aside.
Because these people have no active participation in the process
of making journalism or creating media, they don't understand how

(12:45):
media outlets are built. They may have been participants, they
may have been the money, but they were not the writers,
the speakers, the photographers, the illustrators. They had no part
of them. But just to be clear, the people involved
have names. The Messenger was founded and destroyed by a
man called Jimmy Finkelstein. He's a media tycoon with close

(13:05):
ties to Rudy Giuliani. And you know what he did
at the Hill, which he sold for one hundred and
thirty million dollars. By the way, he used to lean
over the shoulder of editors and tell them not to
be so critical of Donald Trump. Fucking gross. It's disgusting
that these people are allowed to get so rich Finkelstein.
And by the way, former staff, when talking to The

(13:27):
Daily Beast, referred to this guy as a sociopath. That
was deliberately cruel. He paid himself nine hundred thousand dollars
a year while running a newsroom like a sweatshop and
not giving people severance. Fuck you, Jimmy, You're a wrinkly scumbag.
I can't legally wish anything upon you, but I'll laugh

(13:47):
if it happens. Sadly, Jimmy Finkelstein isn't the only con
artist choking the life out of the media industry. There
are some much worse freaks out there. I don't know
if you've been looking at and it's quite painful to watch,
but for years I've been watching Vice die. Vice used
to be one of my favorite publications. Motherboard did some

(14:08):
of the best tech journalism out there, and actually four
or four Media is a lot of the former motherblog.
People go pay them money. But on February twenty second,
twenty twenty four, Vice announced it would no longer publish
written content to any of its flagship publications, which included
Vice dot Com, their regional sites, or indeed Motherboard. Hundreds

(14:28):
of people lost their jobs as a result. It's a
disgraceful end to this publication. It was once like this
indie punk magazine built in Montreal. It was something cool,
it was something weird. You could kind of mock it,
you kind of laugh at it. But Ice did cool
share and then over the course of years, it was
infiltrated and rotted out by private equity adjacent freaks that

(14:51):
don't write or read or create anything, and it turned
into this giant, unprofitable, unsustainable, seven billion dollar behemoth. And
you'd think that growth for it would be good, that
more people would be reading Vice's journalism. Yeah, that would
assume that journalism was the product that Vice actually wanted
to sell. Though people do make fun of Vice's kind

(15:13):
of foe gonzo I took drugs and walked down the
street style journalism. Actually a lot of their stuff was
incredible reporting. Simon of Strovsky's coverage of the earliest days
of the Russo Ukrainian War culminated in him being arrested
and held captive by separatists in Dombas. It was really
important work at a time when you really understood what

(15:34):
was going on with that conflict. Ostrovsky's work ended up
getting Vice to Emmy nominations as well as a couple
of webbe awards, and it was seen quite rightly by
the way as a time when digital journalism was finally
challenging broadcasts kind of monopoly over conflict and foreign policy reporting.
It was a really impressive thing that Vice did, and
it was at a time when people, I don't know

(15:56):
what kind of surprised by Vice's ability to do it,
and they shouldn't have been. They were a home to
some amazing journalists. I said, n uncanny ability to get
into some of the world's most isolated and frankly dangerous
places and even make it out alive. Good example is
they did a story on Siberian lumber camps where North
Korean workers were being worked to death to make money
for the country. They did another one on the Syrian

(16:18):
city of Raka, which in twenty fifteen was the capital
of the Islamic States self proclaimed caliphate. Weis did important
work every single day, and then they did fun stuff,
because not all journalists needs to be world changing. It
just needs to be interesting and fun and full of love.
And unlike many so many outlets, ICE actually made money

(16:42):
and it could have been profitable, but it never seemed
to get there. And while there's no single reason why,
it mostly comes down to pursuing growth and executive greed.
Weiss as it grew into this seven billion dollar creature,
it took on all of this debt. It wanted to
be a global media empire and expanded in an aggressive,

(17:03):
deeply unsustainable way, and it made these terrible, awful bets
branded content, shitty video or while doing this ridiculous dance
of paying their executives insane money and laying people off
at the same time. And this was a big problem
for this out there executive compensation was always high, even

(17:24):
when the company was not paying its utility bills or
paying out severance. It would take these deals with investors
where they guaranteed dividends regardless of how the company was doing.
Just to be clear, on a business level, that is insane.
You don't make a deal you can't reliably pay very
basic business unless, of course, you don't really care about

(17:44):
the business succeeding or surviving. And then they would do
these very annoying branded content deals. Good example of one
is they did a twenty fourteen deal with Absolute Vodka,
which kind of made everyone feel a little greasy, and
then they did a partnership with the South Government. It's
not particularly punk rock, and it's definitely not suggestive of

(18:05):
any great editorial independence. To be clear, the people writing
Advice were victims of this. If you're looking for somebody
to blame, you can start with Corey Haike, who is
Vice's chief operating officer. Before joining Vice, she co led
Mike a publication she drove into the ground, and she
did so by moving it away from this kind of hip.

(18:25):
Young really actually beloved journalism. People loved Mike, and then
she took it and said, ah, well, Facebook is saying
that we're getting all of these views and all of
this engagement on video on Facebook, so let's pivot the
entire thing to video. Now, the pivot to video that
Facebook pushed is enough for an entire episode, But the

(18:48):
long story short was that Facebook incorrectly showed massive growth
metrics that did not exist to publishers. This led publications
like Mike and actually Mashable to massively move their traditorial
strategies around to make video content. Now you may think, huh,
couldn't you just avoid this by seeing if it made

(19:10):
any money? And no, she didn't do that. She wrote
an empty headed Vox article about how the future of
journalism was visual, and then she laid off most of
the staff and sold the IP to a company called
bust All that is best known for buying IP and
running crappy journalism on them. There are some good publications

(19:32):
that run on the bus or network. It certainly wasn't
doing what Mike was doing at the time. Corey Hike
is an example of the media world's failure to police itself.
She is a career failure. This is now the second
publication she's driven into the ground because she does not
understand what she is doing, and that op ed I

(19:52):
previously mentioned the twenty seventeen Vox one she claimed that
we were in the early stages of a visual revolution
in journalism. To be clear, Corey Hike is not a journalist.
She's not an editor. She's not a creator. She's not
a creative. She doesn't write things, she doesn't speak things,
she doesn't take photos, and she doesn't draw things. She
is a parasite. And these walking stains on the earth.

(20:15):
They got rich. They got rich as hundreds of people
lost their jobs. Bankruptcy filings showed that Vice executives paid
themselves eleven million dollars between May twenty twenty two and
May twenty twenty three. Corey Hike paid herself over seven
hundred and twenty six thousand dollars, and former chief people
officer Daisy Orga Dominguez made over seven hundred and forty

(20:38):
eight thousand dollars during this period. By the way, writer
Joseph Cox said that he was unable to pay the
ten cent fee to pull a court record because Vice
wasn't paying their bills. If you want to blame someone
for the destruction of modern journalism. People like Corey Haike
and mis Orga Dominguez. They're the people to blame. These

(20:59):
are the people that are being allowed to make the
cause on these vacuous pools of data that don't make sense.
And they don't make sense because they have no connection
to the newsroom. They're not writing anything, they're not reading anything.
They're not part of the media other than the fact
that they are in commanding positions in the media. They
are landlords by another name, and they're rich. They're unfathomably rich,

(21:23):
all because they conned their way into different jobs that
allow them to fail upwards again and again. Worse still,
they don't have any ideas, which is why they so
often do stupid things. It's why they're doing this same
ridiculous cycle again and again where they take a media
out there and they try and run it like a

(21:44):
tech startup, and they don't see the difference between running
an app that sells a service and a media company
that makes content that people consume or creates a relationship
with the audience. Trust, authenticity, These are the things at
the heart of the media, and readers are very sensitive
to changes. They are not stupid, and I think that

(22:05):
these executives believe they are. They believe that readers are
little pigs that will come and click anything that can
be tricked and conned. Executives that believe readers are like
that deserve to not have jobs, by the way, But
what they don't realize is that media outlets are also delicate.
If you mess with the formula of media outlets, you're

(22:26):
going to alienate the people who actually read them, the
people who pay your bills, either by subscribing or by
proxy by clicking and looking at ads. And it sucks.
It sucks because all of this is very obvious. I'm
sure many of you listening are like, Yeah, that makes sense.
Surely you would not run an outlet by making worse
stuff but lots of it. Surely you would make a

(22:47):
good outlet that makes good things. But that's the thing. Look,
if you're no longer concern with loyalty, and you really
only care about people who accidentally find a page by
being tricked by so sure they see a headline they like,
or perhaps they search for something, you don't really care
about alienating readers. You can do whatever you want. You
can experiment Willy nilly. You can underminde editorial standards, you

(23:09):
can lay off people, you can promote your friends, you
can force people to do stupid shit that nobody likes,
because all you care about are analytics. All you care
about is that ephemeral, random, spontaneous traffic that you can
show to your idiot rich friends and say, wow, my
outlet's popping off. And when all you give a shit

(23:32):
about is visits and impressions, all you're really going to
focus on is what's going to please the big tech
firms like Meta, Twitter and Google, and these social networks
have been very clear in how little they care about
news unless it helps them get traffic. And indeed, the
early days of these social networks were heavily dependent on
media outlets creating content for them so that people stayed

(23:53):
on them, and then they choked that traffic the moment
they didn't need anymore. The network effects that these executives
are chasing, the social virality, the Google search positioning, they
make the number go up. And if that's all that matters, well,
you don't really care about having a lasting web presence.

(24:13):
You don't really care about a sustainable media outlet. You're
just an online marketing company that publishes words or videos,
and frankly, I can't think of a more damaging part
of the media than the chase of these metrics, and
specifically search engine optimization. The allure of search traffic, especially

(24:35):
with the drop of traffic from social media websites, has
just poisoned so much of the media, and now publishers
create content. It's not really there to serve an audience,
per se or build a relationship, but to kind of
get this spurious traffic. The when does the super Bowl start?
What time does this go live? Where can I buy something?

(24:56):
You've probably seen these and wondered why so many out
let's publish the same thing. I'll get to that. So
if you see all of these websites that have like

(25:16):
when's the super Bowl start? And top ten televisions, all
of these things, and you see them, you're like, this
doesn't make sense. I'm used to reading long form things
on here. It's because those have embedded links, sometimes to
Amazon or Walmart or Best Buy. Those outlets get a
slither of money every time you click, and they get
a little more as you browse around the site if
you buy something. Now there are very trustworthy outlets engaging

(25:40):
in this, and it's a way to make money for
the media out there. There are some like the Wirecutter
who actually do a phenomenal job. They do very deep
product testing. Later on in this podcast, I'm actually going
to get into some of the scumbags in the industry,
but there are trustworthy folks that make money on this.
The problem is you can also make money by not
making any effort at all, and I will get to that.

(26:01):
And the result of this chase of metrics is a
media industry and crisis executives and editors that don't really
read or write and don't remember the last time they
published anything. They're twisting reporters coverage to make Google happy,
and all they want to do is improve traffic and
get advertising. That's all there is to it. And yes,
I understand that there's money that needs to be made

(26:25):
to pay people's salaries, but so much of the Internet
is becoming content that looks and sounds the same. And
like I said, those affiliate marketing deals, they make money
even when you just do a half fast effort of
saying I like this TV. And what happens when everyone
chases the same dragon is nobody's really happy. People aren't

(26:46):
really coming to your website for the top ten best apps.
They're not coming to be told, hey, these are the
best deals. They might enjoy those, they might use them,
but that's not what's keeping them there. And yes' seeing
so much of that because those in power are not
actually looking at the outlets. They're not reading these websites.

(27:07):
They're not even really consuming the media. They're not on
social media, they're not on anything other than maybe the
New York Times and CNN. The people running the media
don't participate, not as customers and frankly not as workers.
And these people they only really understand the media as
a series of symbols, shadows on the cave. They don't

(27:30):
really see it beyond the numbers, and they think that
at some point money comes out due to words and
writing and video. Maybe they don't really care well how
that forms, as long as the money keeps coming, even
if the money stops one day. This poor decision making
almost always leads to overstaffing and frankly, general mismanagement. Any

(27:52):
form of creative media, anything you see, any great outlet
you have seen, requires a very basic understanding of audience
and an audience. Takes time, and it takes energy, and
it takes working on this. I am sure in fifteen
episodes I will be a lot better than this. I'm
sure fifteen after that, I'll be better than that. And thankfully,

(28:13):
I hope I'm good enough now for you to listen
to and you'll stick around and hear me get better.
But because of the way that Cool Zone media works,
I will have that chance. I'm not being told I
have to hit a quota. I'm being told to get
in this studio and talk and produce great things, hopefully.
But that's the problem. That's the problem when you don't
create anything, when you're a parasite, when you're someone that

(28:36):
steals from others. The Messengers a great example here, by
the way. So they hired about three hundred reporters, and
a lot of them were very well established, well respected
reporters from like major outlets, and then they took these great, skilled,
wonderful people and they said, please repurpose other people's work.
Mentioned already the Daily Mail, New York Post as examples

(28:58):
of place they took from. This doesn't really make sense
to even a regular person, But when you're a kind
of soft brain media executive, and all you care about
is short term growth, and you want to see number
go up immediately. All you care about is scale, So
all you're going to do is put out masses of chum.
And it sucks. It sucks because they're so wrong. And

(29:20):
what's insane is these executives they're blind to the actual
success stories of the media. I'm thinking of worker owned
outlets like Defector four O four media Aftermath, and I
don't know many of the successful, profitable newsletters like Newcomer
and Platformer that have done incredibly well with incredibly small staffs.
Because guess what, people don't want the same shit in

(29:44):
a different flavor. They want informed opinion. They want it
from fallible, imperfect people. They want to know they're hearing
from a person. They want something that has emotion in it.
That's why people pay for journalism, That's why people read.
While there is a degree of service journalism to tell
you what happened, a lot of great writing is emotional. Defector.

(30:07):
They're actually a really interesting one as well. They're successful,
they're profitable, and they cover more than just sports. Despite
being a sports website, their sports and culture and their
staff came from a website called dead Spin. Now, dead
Spin is hilarious. I used to write there. I love
dead Spin. Dead Spin was a sports and culture site.
They wrote about sports and then other things. Drew McGarry

(30:28):
did a famous thing about the time when he collapsed
and something was wrong with his brain. For example, there
were some wonderful things on there that were completely unrelated
to sport. When the private equity shuffles as a result
of Peter Teal's lawsuit against Gorka happened, a company called
Geomedia took over. And they're complete moron of an executive.

(30:50):
Jim Spamfeller he fired Barry to pachet Ski because he
refused to make Dead Spins staff stick to sports. Now,
Jim Spamfeller is a complete moron. And I know you
shouldn't just insult people in the podcast, but he's a
he's a dingus. He's a complete numpty. And you may ask, huh, well,
based on looking at Defector and indeed based on being

(31:14):
able to look at the economics of dead Spin when
he owned it, wouldn't you, spamfella just want to let
them keep writing and doing stuff in the exceedingly popular
way that everyone loved and the answer is that Jim
Spanfeller is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand journalism or business.
And indeed, many times you will see stories like this,
he'd be like, I don't get it. How did it
fall apart? And the answer is usually that Jim Spanfeller

(31:37):
he wanted dead Spin to be like any other sports
out there. Yet the whole reason people read dead Spin,
and indeed read and pay for Defector, was because it
approached sports without the kind of very strong boundaries that
restricted the outlets like ESPN or NBC Sports, which they
have their place now. Jim Spaanfeller and his type of people,

(31:58):
they'll never understand that the well doesn't need another content meal.
We don't need more aggregations of aggregations of aggregations of
another outlet's aggregation. And though this content, when engineered in
the precise way that Google likes, may indeed get traffic
from search, and it may be quote unquote popular, it
doesn't mean that anyone's coming back. You're not building loyalty

(32:22):
another In March, Deadspin was sold again, this time to
a startup called line Up of Publishing. A little bit
painful when you think about the raw economy there, and
they're based in Malta, which is a business retreat for
tax dodgers but also known for cryptocurrency startups and more
worrying in this case, European gambling firms. An investigation by
Sean Keeley over at Tedium found numerous connections between Deadspin's

(32:45):
new owner and various online casinos, which heavily suggests that
it's going to become not a sports website but a
website for affiliate marketing for gambling sites. And what sucks
about that is kind of the way that sports in
general is going. You're going to be able to bet
on MBA games from their app, for example. It's a
terrible press them, but also a terrible thing to happen

(33:08):
to one of the greatest sports websites to ever run. Ever,
but don't worry, Jim Spanfeller still has several other websites
to fuck up, and in this case, he's currently working
on destroying Kataku now. Kataku was previously one of the
most well respected gaming publications of the world, and they
were sold to Geomedia as part of the Gorka lawsuit

(33:29):
last week. As reported by Aftermaths, Gita Jackson and Riley McLeod.
Kataku editor in chief Jen Glennan resigned after Geomedia executives
decided to change Kataku's remit from publishing news and opinions
about video games, the whole thing that made them famous,
to creating and this is the real number, by the way,
fifty game guides a week on a staff of seven people.

(33:52):
Kataku is or I guess was an institution in the
gaming industry, and it was built off the back of
publishing thoughtful, timely about games and very personal personal pieces
about video games, an industry well known and pretty much
the only other one other than sports that can really
have a genuine feeling of nostalgia and the writing. They're

(34:13):
turning away from that, and they're turning it into what
will just become another seo chop shop. And it's all
thanks to Jim Spanfeller, a man who cannot run businesses.
He's going to turn Kataku into just another seo slop dump,
another place where you can answer questions about where to
go in a game when you're stuck, Oh, how do

(34:34):
I make cloud Strife go nude? Oh how do I
beat Sefrov. At some point in FF seven, Jim Spanfeller
has never played a video game at any point, so
I don't think he knows that there is no way
to make cloud nude, but indeed doesn't know anything about gaming.
He doesn't know anything about games. He doesn't know anything
about writing, because like all of these people I've been

(34:55):
talking about, Jim Spanfeller does not actually know anything about
the company he runs, and it's disgraceful. Gaming is a
multi trillion dollar industry. Gaming is something that's so important
to culture. You have the weirdest, most reclusive people and
incredibly popular sports stars who all play the same games.

(35:18):
This is one of the most dominant forces in culture.
And this idiot is taking Kataku, which has had a
crazed history. It has had a lot of controversy, but
it's popular, it's meaningful. Writers from Kataku have gone on
to found things like Polygon, another influential and in this case,

(35:38):
Vox Media owned property. After Math was founded by several
people who have written at Kataku. This outlet created in
some level modern games journalism, and now it's going to
have the same value as game FAQ's, except worse because
people on Gamefaq's actually play games much like sports Illustrated, Darkland, Deadspin.

(36:01):
They're going to become something I call a shit of
theseus situation when an illustrious brand has its guts ripped out,
replaced with the thoughts and the feelings and the ideas
of a huge moron. And it's so stupid, it's so frustrating,
and until something changes, it's only going to get worse.

(36:22):
And I know I'm angry, and you should be angry
to I'm furious these people, those of them who are
not my friends, are just people I've enjoyed reading. People
have lost their jobs because the media industry is being
run into the ground by people that do not know
how to read, write, or even run a business. Every
outlet that you read today that kind of feels like
a shadow of its former self, there's a reason it's

(36:45):
got there because the people in charge don't read, don't write,
they don't contribute. They're not media creators. They are parasites,
as I've discussed, and their remit is not to create
a lasting legacy, to make something that people read for years.
They are trying to turn that outlet into a shitty
startup that they can flog to someone. Except these things

(37:05):
never sell ever. And that's because, on top of being idiots,
they do not understand any kind of business at all.
And the reason that a lot of these executives just
can't understand it and they can't understand why things succeed
and their properties fail is because they don't really want
to accept that. You can't grow a media business like

(37:27):
a startup or like any kind of regular business. You
still need a profit and a loss, but it takes
time and you have to invest that time as much
as you have to invest that money. Media outlets grow
and I'm paraphrasing Coulso Media's Robert Evans, they grow by
hosting the work of journalists that people love and giving

(37:47):
them the time to develop a following and make it,
make that great stuff, to refine their craft to be
great even if they're not quite there. Through mentorship and
through just doing the work. Our sister show, better offline
sister Show, it could happen here. It took years to
develop it into what it is today, which by the way,

(38:08):
it's a profitable podcast and it gets millions of downloads
a month. And it got there because Robert and Sophie
put in the time and the money, and so did
iHeartRadio of course, to give these voices the chance to
grow and to help them grow comfortable, especially with media
that involves you being exposed to the world by talking

(38:28):
or by being on video. So much of that is
growing comfortable with the format and finding what works specifically
for you. And then once you've done that, you have
to build a rapport with the audience. So I hope
I'm doing today, and none of this can be forced.
You can't accelerate this process. Perhaps, as Roberts also said,
you can get these big, unique scoops that get people

(38:49):
through the door, but you have to keep making stuff
and you have to keep refining it too, And none
of these executives like that because you can't tell that
to a private equity firm. You can't tell a private
equity firm to wait and be patient. They're not in
the business of patients. Venture capital doesn't want to hear
that it's going to take a while, and a non

(39:10):
specific while at that to get their money out. They
want money now, money me, money now. And what's really
sick and ironic about this is they're not making money
from this. BuzzFeed went public, it was horrible mess. Vice
has been running too the ground. And sure, these people
have made a bunch of money off of the back
of others, but they've also destroyed something meaningful and this

(39:32):
will color their legacies for the rest of their lives.
Maybe they don't care. I don't know. I hope they do.
Hope they don't sleep at night. Jimmy Finkelstein gets visited
by the ghosts from I'm Up at Christmas Carol, specifically
Maley and Marley. I think that'd be kind of funny
putting that joke aside. Though these people shouldn't be allowed
to walk down the street without geting yelled at in
a perfectly legal way. That I'm not encouraging anything illegal,

(39:53):
of course, but I find within myself a great deal
of poison for them. I find them disgraceful because Motley,
they had a good thing. Had Wece been run sustainably,
had they really focused on making it a profitable out there,
they could have what four O four Media is doing today.
And then some four or four Media is worker owned

(40:15):
business made by people Jessin Kobler and Emmanuel Maiberg who
left Wess, who left Motherboard. Weis used to own four
A four Media. They used to these people used to
work for Vice, and now four o four Media has
had major scoops that are changing the entire tech industry.
They are the ones that published the Google Search is
getting Worse story. They are continually getting these scoops doing

(40:39):
great journalism, and they're going to probably become a very
successful and profitable business. Weiss could have had that Vice
literally had that, Jim Spamfeller had dead Spin. None of
these people realize what they've got even after it's gone.
And maybe they just want that short term bang. May
they just want a little tittle of money so they
can feel rich and nasty and hang around with their

(40:59):
other asshole friends. And I find them despicable. If I
meet any of them, I want to make some very
creative noises in their faces. And it sucks. It sucks
because the real human consequences fall upon the actual people
making them rich, the people creating stuff, the people talking,
taking photos and drawing things and writing things. They are
the victims of this. The people who should be the victims,

(41:23):
the people who shouldn't make a dollar, are the ones
making the money. They are the ones who stay rich,
stay powerful, and will probably fail upwards into another media
job and that's the thing. Thanks to these people, the
media industry is spent over a decade fucking around, and
now they're finding out and the journalists are paying these executives.

(41:45):
They've spent this time and they built this foundation, this
massive search and social based foundation, and it's made on
top of sand. And they're desperate, so they change strategy,
and they change strategy again, and they do so to
please algorithms, not people. They've completely forgotten or maybe they
did not know that every success, every previous success in

(42:09):
the media has pretty much come from a small group
of opinionated people with good ideas who create cool shit.
And really that's the only salvation for journalism. Mon Journalism
can be rebuilt, but rebuilding it will take reinforcing the
relationship between writers and their audiences, and media properties need

(42:30):
to help foster that and empower that relationship instead of
trying to get rid of that, instead of turning everything
into a brand to be sold to private equity. We
can work back. We can get back what has been
lost by supporting unions in newsrooms, by supporting and paying
for worker owned journalism, you can bring back great journalism.

(42:53):
You can turn this tide the private equitis will eventually
lose because at some point that right now they're exceedingly
dependent on Google Search. Everyone chasing search engine optimization is
dead in the water. Eventually, Google and Facebook they turned
on the news before. You don't think they'll do it again.

(43:14):
You don't think that Google will eventually tweak the algorithm
in some obscene way to turn away from this generic slop.
When that happens, sadly, once again, journalists will be the
ones that suffer, which is why right now journalists should unionize.
It's tough, but if it possible, they should join worker
owned co ops like Flaming Hydra. They should join these

(43:37):
great organizations. Look up to things like Defecta and see
the wonderful journalists and they're doing day in, day out,
People like Ray Rato. He's a fantastic journalist, an esteemed
Bay Area reporter, and he's done some of the best
work of his career at Defector and he's done so
because it's owned by him and the rest of the writers.
The people building are the people that should own stuff. Now.

(43:59):
I feel we are a bit crazy whenever I talk
about this subject, and I think it's because great journalism
and great writing is foundational the culture. Hearing an informed
opinion doesn't matter where they're at, if they're at a blog,
if there are a newspaper, if they're on TV. Hearing
someone who actually knows what they're talking about, speaking from
the heart, who's developed a relationship with you as a reader,

(44:22):
is transformational. It changes people's lives, and great opinion journalism does.
On top of that, and everything that I am doing
my PR firm, my newsletter, my podcast is a result
of having great mentors in journalism like Will porter Over
at PC Zone and log and Steve Hogarty, people that

(44:44):
were there to help me as an early writer, to
help me, encourage me to develop my voice, the voice
you were hearing today. None of this crazed confidence comes
from myself. It comes from having great mentors like Sophie
and Rob Over at caols OH Media, like David Roth,
a defector. These people are the reason that people read websites.

(45:07):
It's the reason they listen to podcasts. It isn't because
of virality or search engine optimization or any other little
bits of bullshit that people like Jim Spanfeller and Corey
Height claim is the case. The answer to fixing journalism
is simple. It's just annoying to growth at all cost. Catalysts.

(45:27):
Profitable sustainable journalism or any content really is built off
the back of letting people with defined voices build and
sustain an audience. Every single success story, every single great
newspaper and website was the result of letting great creators
create great things and giving them the space and platform
and time and funding to do so. If you want

(45:50):
the next great media outlet, it isn't going to come
through tricking Google or Twitter or Facebook or Instagram into
reading your stories. It's about making great shit and getting
people to see it, and making sure that the people
making it feel supported and mentored and helped to make
more of it. I believe there is an absolute mountain

(46:14):
of money right now in journalism for investors capable of
thinking more than six seconds ahead of course, give writers
the space and the time, and that time may be
measured in years, to build audiences and develop relationships with
their readers. Embrace their individuality and pay them well for
the privilege of having them speak on your behalf. Build

(46:34):
for readers, not investors, and you will make way more
money than you ever would licensing a brand like a
god damn Denny's franchise. Things can get better for journalism.
I promise you they will if only the money and
the power is put in the hands of actual writers
and actual creators rather than career failures and private equity dipshits.

(46:56):
But until there is a significant realignment, that something meaningfully
changes in media, one that puts the power back in
the hands of the people actually creating stuff and focuses
on the things that they create, We're gonna see this
cycle repeat again and again and again, and I'm gonna
get angry. And you should be angry too. I hate
to tell people to be angry. I hate anger in general,

(47:18):
but in this case it's justifiable. This is a singular
force damaging culture and enriching assholes. Do not believe them,
Do not trust them that any of this was caused
by market forces or anything other than the mass incompetence
of assholes running media into the ground. Thank you for listening.

(47:50):
Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and
composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You
can check out more of his music and audio projects
at Matasowski dot com. M A T T O s
O W s KI dot com. You can email me
at easy at better offline dot com or check out
better offline dot com to find my newsletter and more

(48:10):
links to this podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.