February 17, 2026 • 40 mins
Ann Friedman was running popular blogs, newsletters and podcasts before media people flocked to those mediums. But now that the industry is trapped in a rinse and repeat cycle of rising and falling and consolidating, she's getting off the social media content creator wagon and asking a much different question: What does the long game look like?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
So like, obviously nobody has an attention span anymore, myself included.
I remember when I was writing my book, one of
the notes that I got from very well established publishing person.
I don't want to throw anybody under the bus here,
but they were like, you know, you should make your
paragraphs shorter because when people thumb through a book at
(00:22):
the bookstore and they see long paragraphs, they're less likely
to buy the book. And I was like, it's a
fucking memoir, it's like meant to be a funny, light book.
And they were like, yeah, that's kind of the point,
like you want to make sure it feels accessible. So
that made me like a little bit cynical, and I
was like, geez, even when it comes to like people
who will walk into a bookstore and maybe buy a book,
(00:42):
we still don't have attention spans. And then you know,
jump ahead a couple of years. I've not had Twitter
on my phone for at least two and a half
years and felt a lot better. All of that leads
me to today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Actually, I'm sure you've heard this term and shitification. I
have not, no the termin sittification explains that feeling of
like why did I just open this to happen, like,
who's here anymore? Why did I just see six ads?
And like nothing that matters to me, even though I've
come to associate this as a place where things that
(01:16):
matter to me happen.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Today, I'm sitting down with a proper journalist and a
long form author named Anne Friedman, who has in the
media space always been ahead of her time. She's written
blogs before blogs were hot. She had her own newsletter
before everyone now has a newsletter, and she actually had
a podcast years before the boom in podcasting. Now that
(01:40):
everyone's chasing those same formats and the media industry is
trapped in a rinse and repeat cycle of rising and
falling and consolidating, Anne is getting off the social media
content creator wagon and asking a much different question. She
is asking what does the long game look like?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Here we Go a arm a armed adarm.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Hey, I'm cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Here? You know, for some reason, I can't get into
work with any of my headphones. Heay, cow.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Hey, I'm talking with Anne Friedman, A longtime journalist and essayist.
She has a very popular newsletter called the Anne Friedman
Weekly Newsletter and is the co author of best selling
book Big Friendship, and co hosted a pioneering podcast, Call
Your Girlfriend. I was excited to talk to you about
a number of things, but especially just changing media landscapes.
(02:54):
And I would just love to talk about what got
you going. And I'm wondering if you have a first
memory of writing and kind of deciding, oh, this is
what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm one of those weirdos who does the thing I've
pretty much always wanted to do. When I was a child,
I used to say I wanted to be a children's
book author, and then when I got old enough to
read the newspaper and read journalism, that's what I said
I wanted to be. So I did a family newsletter.
It was probably my first actic journalism. Yeah, did all
(03:25):
the layout myself. I don't mean to brag, you know,
news about what my aunts were like doing for the holidays.
And yeah, my grandma's recipes.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Did you mail them or were they physically distributed at
family events?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I am pretty sure I mailed them. I printed them
and mailed them, you know. There's not that many. It
was a you know, it was a limited distribution it.
You know, do you still have any good question? My
mom might? I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I like going through I have a bunch of I
guess my equivalent of that would have been, you know,
old play programs from when I was a kid and
eighth grade. The reason I asked that question was eighth
grade for me was when I had this aha moment
about performing and changing people's minds through comedy and thought,
these kids hate me, but they love me once I
make them laugh. There's a magic here that I kind
(04:15):
of want to that I never shook, right, So I
always like hearing the origin stories. Do you think when
you look back family newsletter, not necessarily withithstanding, although you're
welcome to use it, do you think there's a through
line or a big idea that connects the decades of
your work? Has it grown in specific ways? Have you
been laser focused and what do you love to write
about the most?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I think I have always been motivated by my values
or what I care about or what I want to
see shift in the world. Yeah, and there are times
when that has been more overt. You know, like I
wrote for a feminist blog in the blogging Heyday, and
I would say that was, like, you know, a real
pinnacle of that aspect of my work. I'm also just
(04:57):
really nosy, and I like to talk to people, and
I like work as an excuse to let me ask
people knows the questions, and so the question of how
is everyone else doing this? How's everyone else answering this question?
Is very interesting to me. And I've always liked being
a journalist because it marries my extrovert tendencies with just
(05:22):
pure love of the written word. And I think a
lot of writers are writers that's a good fit for
them because they're introverts, which I love and respect. Those
are my people. But for me, I could never be
the kind of novelist that like writes in a cabin alone.
You know, there's a reason why I write nonfiction. There's
a reason why I interview people, and so that's been
the kind of the through line of the work I do.
(05:44):
And then you know, I've I've been working as a
journalist for twenty years, which is a time of continual
upheaval in what does it mean to do this work?
And how do we do it? And I think that
I really actually enjoy muddling through some of those questions
(06:06):
I might have. I might have taken refuge in, you know,
copywriting of another kind, or like, you know, just found
a different line of work entirely if I weren't interested
in continuing to change the way I do this work.
But the writing and the talking to people and the
values are the kind of underlying factor of all of this.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
That's I feel like you don't hear that a lot
in a changing media climate, especially if you look at
I mean, I guess it would be rude to name names,
but I can think of a few journalists who, you know,
ten years ago, I think we're generally fairly well respected,
and now maybe are more talking head types or sort
(06:46):
of opinion blending opinion in fact for the clicks sort
of a thing. So it's actually really refreshing to hear that.
So when you decide to launch your newsletter, which is
now called the An Friedman Weekly.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Always has always has been, Yeah, the newsletter's always been
the End Freeman Weekly. I made that choice because in
the blogging years, a different iteration of media change. I
noticed that the people who were able to really use
their newsletters to help them maintain a career. Were typically men,
typically white men, who just named their blog after themselves,
(07:21):
and for women and people of color who were blogging
in collectives or blogging under pseudonyms, it was a lot
harder to transition to a more like a better paid
version of doing that job. So I need my newsletter
after myself very deliberately.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
What I love about that is so when my book
came out, I remember there were a couple of people
who work in book publishing or book consulting, and I
hadn't necessarily like hired, you know, big powerhouse people to
get you placed on the New York Times bestseller list.
That wasn't important to me, So I didn't hire those consultants,
(07:54):
but there were a couple of people who were friendly.
The point of all this is I heard time and again, Hey,
it's great that you have a Hollywood publicist who's doing
the traditional press for your book. Very seldom does going
on the Tonight Show translate into book sales. So one
of the things that you should do is think through
if you know anybody that has a large distribution format newsletter,
(08:16):
the vouching that that has for direct book sales, because
an embedded click. If the person is subscribing to newsletter,
they love and trust that person who's newsletter they're reading,
and it is literally one click, and that's what sells books.
And I didn't There were a couple of people I
knew who had newsletters and I could see that move books,
(08:38):
But yours is wildly popular newsletters generally. Are you know
this for people who don't know who are listening an
alternative source of distribution that are very much competing with
traditional media outlets. Can you walk me through the events
that led you to launch the newsletter and correct me
if I'm right? Did it launch in twenty thirteen?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Twenty Yeah, twenty thirteen, that's correct, spring of twenty thirteen.
So the inciting event is that I was laid off
in twenty twelve, and I spent maybe six months thinking
I would try to get another editing job. I had
been a magazine editor and realized pretty quickly that would
involve moving to New York. And I really like living
(09:20):
in Los Angeles and I like my life here, and
so I was figuring out how to have some stability
and consistency in my life as a writer. While I
was writing for a lot of different publications and doing
a lot of different things, and I thought, if I
have a newsletter, that's one place where I every week
(09:42):
compile the things I've written for other people, compile the
things that I'm reading. Just kind of almost like a
ship's log for my for my early career as a
self employed writer. And it has definitely evolved since then,
but it still remains like, you know, my little home
on the stormy seas.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
You are credited with kind of being at the forefront
of cultural shift. And also I'm very impressed by the
array of outlets that you've worked for, worked with, written for,
and so just to have that perch with so many
cultural shifts going on, I think it's fascinating. You were
(10:25):
like early podcast I was.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
A podcaster from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Was that a business decision, meaning like on purpose you
saw this coming and went I'm going to get in
early or was there another reason you decided to go
that road?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
No, I mean, like a lot of my choices in
my career, it just sounded like fun, Yeah, like a
new thing to try, you know. I mentioned I like
talking to people, and I like interviewing and so it
felt like an interesting challenge to learn how to interview
people for audio, which is quite a different skill set
(11:00):
than interviewing them for a written article. I had a
very good friend, I mean ATISO, who I later co
wrote a book with, and she and I agreed it
would be fun to try hosting together. And we had
another friend who at the time was not as close
but has since become a very good friend, Gina Delvack,
who was an audio producer, and she was like, you know,
(11:22):
you guys would be great on a podcast. Let's just
try it. Yeah, and let's just try it is really
the ethos that has underpinned a lot of my professional choices.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Very cool and yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And so it was not like, oh, this seems to
be an emerging field, let's get into it. It was
more like, I'm going to try a new thing with
some friends.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
When I hear that that you actually have this love
of connecting with people, what does it mean to do
that through journalism? And then what do you feel like
you're chewing on? Like are there realizations that you've had
when you talk to people? Given the shift in media
culture itself, how do you stay true basically to what
(11:59):
you want to do.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, it's tricky. I mean I think that. So, you know,
I went to journalism school, where I got like a
very i would say, traditional last century media education. And
there's some really good things about that, like there's some
hard skills about how you put together a piece of
writing and how you conduct an interview that were great,
But there are also some things about that that are
really toxic, Like I think that every journalist is extractive
(12:26):
in some way. Like, you know, if you're interviewing a source,
like you are using their story, you are using their
lived experience for your own nimes, which is to you know, tell,
subsume it into whatever story you're trying to tell or explain.
Your goals are not always going to be aligned with
the person you're interviewing. And I have really come around
(12:47):
to accepting that that is inherent in being a teller
of other people's stories. Yeah, but I do think you
can be honest about it. And so like, right now,
I'm working on a book about milestones in modern adulthood,
and I'm interviewing a lot of people who are not
public figures, and at the beginning of our interview, I
always say, here's how I expect to use our conversation.
(13:08):
You are free to decline to answer any question at
any time. I'll be in touch to fact check. I mean,
all this kind of like one oh one stuff that's
about how I work, because I don't think we can
take for granted that sources understand what a phrase like
on or off the record means.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Oh yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I think it's also a sign of respect to just
be like, I'm going to tell you how I am
going to use your personal life story, just like cop
to stealing, not stealing, but taking.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, when you say a great last century journalism education,
were there are things you felt like you had to
unlearn in crafting your own career path.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh that's a fun question. Yeah, I am still unlearning
lots of things from that training, Like what I am
unlearning the myth of objectivity? Oh yeah, I mean that's
something that I thought I had done away with pretty
early on the idea that anyone can you know, find
(14:12):
some sort of neutral truth I think is quite false.
But finding like figuring out how to set that standard
and where that standard should be for Okay, six scientists
say this is true, or this paper says it's true,
or like you know what are you how many people
do you need on site to say that this thing happened?
(14:32):
I mean, rashamont Rahamant is a movie they should use
in journalism school that they do not, So, you know,
questions about like what is truth and objectivity? I think
that to take an example again from the reporting I'm
doing right now, it is absolutely forbidden in traditional journalism
to pay a source. The idea. The idea is like, no,
(14:53):
you are getting compromise information. It's not trustworthy. But you know,
this book that I'm doing, I want to interview a
cross set of people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. And to
ask for two hours of someone's life when they have
to work like a like an eighteen hour day to
pay their bills is ridiculous. To not compensate them for
that time. I mean, that's how academics do it. Academics
(15:15):
pay people for their time, and we take that as
a worthwhile primary source of information. And so I hit
a wall in my reporting where I was like, oh,
I'm really falling short on having a wide spectrum of
economic experiences. It seems like the right thing to do
is to pay people for their time. But I have
(15:35):
this deeply ingrained lesson from journalism school if you don't
pay sources, because that means your information is compromised, whereas anyway.
So that's another example of like, I don't actually think
that rule serves the journalistic work that I'm doing now,
but it was really embedded in the education that I got.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
You've been at the forefront of cultural shifts with podcasts,
with newsletters. Why do you think that is.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I think it is because I like not just the
job of writing and interviewing, but I'm interested in the
how the work gets made. You know. I think I
was a good magazine editor because I cared about the
advertising side of the business, and I cared about design,
and I was interested in all these other things that
aren't like the meat of what I was supposed to
be doing, which is commissioning and editing articles. You know,
(16:22):
Like all these kind of peripheral interests are what has
led me to things like a newsletter, Like I'm interested
in like how does it look good? Like how does
how do I say the thing every week that looks good?
And how does this thing I'm doing on the page
shift if I do it in audio form? I would
not say that I have eagerly leapt at every technological shift,
(16:45):
which is maybe why I have an easy relationship to
the idea of being like a repeat innovator or something,
because it's like, I don't do TikTok. That's I mean,
I do. I do consume it, but I don't participate,
you know, as a as a creator. And so I
think it is it is genuine interest and joy in
all the other stuff that surrounds the core of the work.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, so as a as a relatively early podcast or
how did it feel to see the relatively sudden explosion
into mainstream of podcasting as evidenced by the fact that
I have this podcast? You know, everybody has a podcast now,
and some of them are quite niche and wonderful, and
(17:28):
others are purposely very broad and but you were in
an early early you know, if you look at the timeline,
what did it feel like to watch this medium explode?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Well, you know, you have there are material benefits to
being early in any technological shift, you know, I mean
I still get like Google news alerts that we've been
listed as like influential women podcasters, and I'm like, we haven't.
We haven't had a podcast in years, you know, like
this is just this is just like an AI you
know article, like yeah, but so you know, there are
(18:03):
real material benefits to being early in terms of attention,
and as is happening in newsletters right now, as more
people rush to kind of create in that medium. You know,
you you watch your market share diminish, but it also
means like there's interesting stuff to inform what you're doing
if you're still around. I mean, at this point, I'm
(18:24):
a I'm a retired podcaster, so I'm not experimenting in
that medium anymore.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
When did call your girlfriend? Sunset? What did your rep
it ze tent?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Twenty one?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Twenty twenty one? Okay, so why continue the newsletter? Like?
What what went into stopping the podcast? But continuing the newsletter?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
The podcast was a different kind of labor. I mean,
the newsletter really is just me. I have, I have
sort of a tech guru who supports me with a
lot of that stuff. But week in and week out,
the newsletter is just me. The three of us had
to make the podcast together, my co host, our producer,
(19:04):
and me, and the weekly pace of an audio product
was a lot harder than a written product. It's like
it's three schedules to coordinate. Editing tape is super time intensive,
certainly more time intensive than like me editing a thousand
words in a newsletter. It was the resources and time question,
and I think also we all felt we had learned
(19:27):
what we wanted to learn from that project and it
wasn't as fun anymore, frankly, and my newsletter remains really
fun for me, which is why I keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So for the newsletter, I assume it well, it's I
assume it's your personal funds, but also time, which is
the most valuable for anybody in a creative or self
motivated position. You're not a creator on TikTok. I believe
you're not on Facebook or LinkedIn?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Right, No, I prefer platforms that I own.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Oh okay, I don't.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Know yet any of those things.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, Was that the only reason that you intentionally
decided to stay away from those?
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It's not the only reason, but you know, I was reflecting, preparing,
preparing to talk about the the arc of media over
my career with you made me think, like, Okay, so
what were the years I was like actually using Facebook?
What were the years I was actually using Twitter? How
many years was I actually actively using Instagram? And it's
(20:31):
like about a decade for each of those and that's fine,
Like some things don't have to live longer than that.
But I'm sure you've heard this term in shitification? Have
you heard this term? Not?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
What does it mean?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So? The the tech writer and I believe he's also
a science fiction writer, Corey doctor Oe, coined this term
in shitification a couple of years ago to describe how
tech platforms degrade over time. And the idea is that
they start doing one thing, users flock to it and
have fun there and kind of create their own dynamic
(21:09):
and their own little micro ecosystems, and then over time,
as the owners want to maximize their profits, they start
doing lots of things to make it worse for the
users and better for the advertisers, and then eventually it
gets bad for everyone for advertisers to because advertisers want
to be where it's good for users, And the term
and shittification explains that feeling of like why did I
(21:30):
just open this app? Like like closer anymore? Like why
did I just see six ads? And like nothing that
matters to me, even though I've come to associate this
as a place where things that matter to me happen.
So I think when I say that about ownership, if
I own something like I own my newsletter or we
(21:51):
owned the podcast together, I can dip out when it
doesn't feel good anymore. I can decide I don't want
to maximize profits. I just want to make some profits
and keep it fun. And I am not locked in
to that as a place to find my audience. So
that's part of in senthitification. The idea is like the
(22:11):
users are like, oh, I would love to get off Instagram,
but this is where everyone can find me. All my
followers are here and I can't move them. So that
wasn't a conscious decision of like I'm not joining TikTok
because I don't own it. But at this point in
my career it is a factor like it is like
it creeps in of like okay, well you know I
don't want to invest in someone else's work.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
So that it sounds I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
It sounds like your focus is much more patient and
it's in long term growth overall. Would that is that correct?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yes? Long game is the only game I play.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I mean, it's the hearing you talk about that, and
I know it's different as a performer. But when social
media took off, it literally was the two and a
half years that I was not acting. I'd taken this
aboutle and I was working in government, and so I
had to follow government rules, which meant you're not posting
anything on social media. There are rules for that now
obviously the government, public officials and whatever, but at the
time there weren't. So it was just you know, lock
(23:11):
your social media accounts and you can resume it when
you leave government. And that set me back considerably in
the acting world because of how social media is monetizable
for everything from brand endorsement deals to getting cast in
movies and TV shows because of its set number of followers.
Is there an equivalent in your life of things that
(23:32):
you know you're losing out on? Does it not matter?
Have you been like, yeah, that's all temporary. How have
you interacted with that?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I do think that I have benefited from using social media,
and I benefited from using it early. Like actually, I
remember when I was an editor, probably around twenty twelve,
being like, I wouldn't hire a writer who's not on Twitter.
And I meant that more because if you're not interested
in writing, like pithy constrained things like why would you
(24:05):
want to be a writer at all? Like some of
it was about the format itself, but some of it
was also like this is kind of media's water cooler,
and I want to hire someone who's in dialogue with
other people who do this work. But I draw a
distinction between the podcast in the newsletter and making social
media like a home base on that on that grounds
(24:26):
of ownership, right, Like so so you know, like if
if you were like my whole acting career rises or
falls based on how many Instagram followers I'm going to
be able to get, I would be like, that's not
that's a really short game, right, but you know, for
you can, you can you can use it to like
help further along game. You know, it's sort of about
like keeping it in perspective. I think with with social media,
(24:47):
and frankly, if I were interested in learning to edit video,
I would probably be messing around with TikTok right now.
That's just sort of like not where my interests lie.
Like I'm making zines and doing workshops. That's like where
my my other like my other non writing interests have
taken another direction. But yeah, like if I wanted to
do video, I would one hundred percent be making TikTok.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Are there things that you've learned by playing the long game?
And what does the long game look like to you?
What does it mean to you to be able to
have the full control and be like, I'm tuning out
all of this noise that I've even just articulated and
focusing on what you actually want to do.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Hmm. I do think it's that people can smell your
boredom or obligation, like it just rolls off of you
in waves when you don't want to be doing something,
so like you know, if you're sending a newsletter because
your publisher told you to, or you're making a TikTok,
dancing to a viral song with your book and you
really don't want to be there, like people can tell.
(25:46):
So I think some of it is like the self
knowledge about your own interests in something like am I
doing it because this is where someone is telling me
the future is or I have to do this to
save my career, or is there some genuine spark of
curiosity about what this new app platform media modality might
(26:12):
offer me? You know, I think that's a pretty good
barometer like your own self interest. And then I also
do think this question of ownership has been a good
one for me, which is to say, you know, I
actually just got just redownloaded Instagram after two years of
not having it on my phone. I would check it
on my desktop and I would see like messages from
(26:34):
friends that had expired like a week earlier, or I'd
maybe see like a top post that someone had a
baby or got married or something. But like I was
really not on it, and I had to redownload it
to promote these workshops that I'm writing, workshops I'm selling
with a friend. And it was like, oh right, I
am now using this tool to do one thing I'm not.
I don't hang out here anymore. Like I'm like putting
(26:55):
up a flyer in a place I used to hang out,
and then I'm gonna go away again, like you know.
And so I think that's also part of it, is
like realizing what's a tool and like what is your
home base or what is a place you want to
hang out? And so I think that for a while,
maybe like Twitter was definitely a home base type place
for me, and then it sort of became a tool
(27:15):
and then it went away altogether, and just just recognizing
like what function something is filling for me helps me
play the long game of Like, right, Instagram's a tool
I'm using right now. It's not like my career, you know.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to paraphrase one of your newsletters.
I don't have the whole thing in front of me,
but and so correct me if this is inaccurate. And
one of your newsletters you talked about how you're chewing
on whether or not social media is truly just over
for you or if you're getting old. This is something
I relate to. I got rid of Twitter on my
phone two years ago, which was wonderful, Like what a
(27:53):
God send. I have filters on my Instagram so that
I basically only see dog reels, like pumping reels. So
I've muted essentially every politician, political word, all of that
because none of you know, obviously none of that is
useful on social But can you expand on that on
the whether or not social media is truly over for
you or if you're getting old?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well, it's funny. I mean, one thing about writing a
newsletter every week is like you honestly forget all the
things you see. Yeah, it's not quite as bad as
like posting on Twitter constantly. But I went to write
something recently. I was like, you know, I should really
write something about like being a writer in AI and
how I'm kind of a romantic because I like to, like,
you know, still do things the hard way. And I
was like, oh my god, I actually already wrote that
(28:36):
exact quote, and it wasn't that long ago. It was
like two months ago. So I'll take your word. Okay, okay,
good what I said. And I will just say that
I think I think some of what I was getting
at with like is it over or am I old?
Is like there's a privilege to opting out right, Like
there's a privilege to having had a career long enough
(28:56):
that I can see these major social media apps as
like relatively brief moments or like or contained moments, you know,
and having had a career that has transcended them allows
me the peace of mind or like the kind of
presence of mind to say, you know what I don't
I can, I can step out. I don't need to
(29:17):
do TikTok. I don't interpret that as like I'm giving
up on life, Like when I say like I'm i
am I just old. I don't mean. I don't mean
it that way, because I am still very much interested
in like, oh my god, I love hanging out with
teenagers and just being like, tell me everything about what
you see on your for you page, Like that's all
I want to know, is like, what what is your internet? Like,
(29:38):
it's such an interesting question.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, yeah, how was I curated for you?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah? Exactly what's your bubble?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
And what does your internet look like?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Well? I do think that everybody is the author of
their own experience in digital spaces, even though it feels
like we're not in control. So like deciding that my
internet is a lot of news letters and TikTok but
only passively, not as a creator, and Instagram but only
on my laptop and on my phone, Like that's kind
(30:08):
of what my internet looks like, a lot of lists.
My notes app is really important in my internet, even
though it's not social. There's a great newsletter called Embedded
that always asks people and they have a kind of
questionnaire about people's Internet use, and it's one of my
favorite things to read because they'll just be like, oh,
I don't even touch that app, and it's like something
that's so critical to like how I live, and I
(30:29):
just I love that little insight of like, you know,
we all carry around these things that like look exactly
the same, and it's just like it's a portal to
something totally different for everyone. And I love remembering that
whenever journalists say something like, you know, the first Google
search result. When I typed this in, I'm like, oh,
you're telling on yourself. There's no there's no like Google
(30:51):
search result, you know, like that's just about your Internet,
that's about you. So I don't know, I it does
feel related to that Paige idea when I think about
like my Internet, I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
I'm curious on a larger, unlike a broader level. You know,
every year, it seems like when it comes to media
and institutions and places to write or places to distribute
our work as creators, the number of outlets or platforms
willing to pay humans for their words and for their
(31:26):
time and their experience are shrinking. This is more of
a philosophical question, But to you, what does that say
about society?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Oh man, these are the things I try not to
think about when I'm like trying to fall asleep at night.
But I mean, I look What it says to me
is that we have been trained to calculate value in
a really specific way, and we have been trained collectively.
I count myself in this. I'm not like out of
it to pursue ease and agreement above friction and engagement,
(32:03):
like true engagement. It's funny to use a word like
engagement when we talk about social media, but like I'm
talking about like actually reading to the end of an
article or like watching to the end of a film
like I mean, I'm talking about engagement in a sense
of like sustained attention and asking questions about something. It's
not like any one of us alone can resist in shitification.
(32:24):
Think what I was I was talking about earlier, that's happening.
But what we can do is say I'm going to
do things the hard way, like I am going to
read things via an old fashioned RSS reader, which I
actively choose to do, Like you know, you can't complain
about the algorithm if you've if you've chosen to, like
you know, set up your own filters. It's one reason
(32:46):
why I love a podcast. You can subscribe to the
feed and get everything you know, it's not mediated. It
is an RSS feed. If you want to get nerdy
and you know, and also why newsletters are great. You know,
it's like, I know it's going to come to my
inbox if I can care about this person and they
only post twice a year, and I want to get
both of those posts. It's not going to be demoted
(33:07):
by a big tech company in the absolute daily age.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
When we were prepping for this episode, in a lot
of ways, here we go again. Of this is that
media companies are making record profits for their executives, but
they're downsizing their human capital. They're paying less to the workforce,
the writers, the actors, the people who actually make them
(33:33):
the money and create the content. The AP had said
that since two thousand and five, the numbers of newspapers
published in the US had dropped from seventy three hundred
in two thousand and five to forty four hundred now,
and daily newspaper circulation that averaged between fifty and sixty
million people at the turn of the century now is
(33:55):
at just over fifteen million. And in twenty twenty five,
one hundred thirty six newspapers in the US closed, and
so as those closures continue, magazines fold, websites. Even websites
are shrinking, right, It's not just the analog stuff. So
what does this moment tell you, if anything, about the
direction of where media is headed. And I ask you
(34:15):
that as an early podcast adopter and as somebody who
has stayed true to a very popular newsletter.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean it is moving and has been for
as long as I've been working in media, away from
a brand relationship, where like the masthead of a magazine
or newspaper is what guarantees the quality to a more
individual one to one relationship of like I feel like
I know and trust this person, and that has been
accelerated by social media, but I feel like it was
(34:44):
already a foot even in like the earliest Facebook days.
This move was happening. So I don't know what that
means is that there is less training, there are fewer
on ramps. Like I obviously have mixed feelings about last
century journalism skills, but I'm really glad I learned them
and it was really valuable. And I have really thought
(35:05):
a lot about the fact that, like, if I were
starting my career today with the exact same interests and
the exact same kind of personal you know, potential, I
don't know if I would have any way to learn
how to construct a feature article and go through a
fact checking process. And I actually started a writing fellowship
(35:27):
where I mentor two to three writers every year who
are early in their careers, because I was like, if
every individual journalist did this, there would still be some
on ramps. Like if we've collectively decided the model is individuals,
you should be paying it forward. Not that you have
to have a whole internship program the way an institution does,
but really I really feel like that kind of atomization
(35:52):
of like we used to cluster under brands and now
everyone is an individual is something that a few people
are to be able to use to their advantage, but
on the whole is going to have is gonna is
going to degrade the quality of the media we can
all consume.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
I usually like to wrap up with a bit more
of an aspirational question. So when you look ahead, what
makes you hopeful about the future of the work that
you do?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Oh man, that's a hard follow after that lasting that
was a really hard one too. I will say this,
I think that for everything that is bad about the
sort of explosion of the old media brands, the old
(36:45):
the old magazines and newspapers and digital publications. There is
also now a more equal playing field for people with
huge variety of perspectives to find their own really devoted
audience and and make work that that audience really wants
to receive. And the fact that like they can use
(37:07):
the same tools as the person who used to edit
the biggest glossy magazine of the nineties uses that is
is a good thing for me in a lot of ways.
Like I like the idea that I can follow and
read the work of someone who never would have been
published twenty years ago, who would have just been beating
down the door to try to get published. And I
think that's that is really really good, and I think
(37:29):
it is going to be really powerful for someone who's
starting their career right now to see the example of like,
oh yeah, like I can write like a trans media
criticism blog, and like that can be a career. Like
you know, it might not be like, you know, a
super glitzy, six figure career, but like you know, that
can be like a thing that I can spend my
that can be a life's work. You know, I can
(37:51):
write like a like a community oriented gorilla gardening like publication,
and like find people who are doing that in there
com know. I mean, there's something really exciting about the
atomization as well. Like my caveat to that excitement about
it is that to really get the benefit of every
(38:13):
individual writer being able to have their own platform and
their own audience, there does still need to be a
collective energy among those writers. There's a literary agent whose
newsletter I've been reading for a long time who always
offers the caveat about publishing that it's an ecosystem, not
an arena. And I actually think that, like that is
(38:35):
true of all media. When I read it, I was like, yes,
this is exactly how I feel about my job and
how I wish more people thought about media is like,
are we charging an amount that is sustainable so that
one reader can subscribe to multiple publications? Are we linking
to each other? Are we sharing resources? Like are we
truly acting as though it is true we're all individuals,
(38:59):
but like we have to bre the same atmosphere, you know,
And I think that is that's sort of like the
it's not even optimism, it's like a like an a
in a wish fulfilling world. Like everyone everyone who's had
a modicum of success in media would know that they're
part of the ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And thank you for joining us today. I found this
super insightful. It made uh, it made me feel like
a little less of the luddite that I think I am,
or at least just the guy who like doesn't want
to get sucked into too much social media and wants
to balance that with a little a little bit more
long term career growth.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I mean, God willing the podcast runs forever, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
That would be nice?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yes, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
That was my guest. Ann Friedman, a journalist an essayist.
To get more Van, you can subscribe to her newsletter,
The Ann Friedman Weekly Newsletter, or read her book Big Friendship.
Here we Go Again as a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Snaffo Media in association with New Metric Media. Our
(40:06):
executive producers are me Calpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alissa Martino,
Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan
tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our
producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory
Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly
logo by Matt Gosson. Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson,
(40:30):
and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
tell your friends write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kelpen
So like, obviously nobody has an attention span anymore, myself included.
I remember when I was writing my book, one of
the notes that I got from very well established publishing person.
I don't want to throw anybody under the bus here,
but they were like, you know, you should make your
paragraphs shorter because when people thumb through a book at
(00:22):
the bookstore and they see long paragraphs, they're less likely
to buy the book. And I was like, it's a
fucking memoir, it's like meant to be a funny, light book.
And they were like, yeah, that's kind of the point,
like you want to make sure it feels accessible. So
that made me like a little bit cynical, and I
was like, geez, even when it comes to like people
who will walk into a bookstore and maybe buy a book,
(00:42):
we still don't have attention spans. And then you know,
jump ahead a couple of years. I've not had Twitter
on my phone for at least two and a half
years and felt a lot better. All of that leads
me to today's episode.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Actually, I'm sure you've heard this term and shitification. I
have not, no the termin sittification explains that feeling of
like why did I just open this to happen, like,
who's here anymore? Why did I just see six ads?
And like nothing that matters to me, even though I've
come to associate this as a place where things that
(01:16):
matter to me happen.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Today, I'm sitting down with a proper journalist and a
long form author named Anne Friedman, who has in the
media space always been ahead of her time. She's written
blogs before blogs were hot. She had her own newsletter
before everyone now has a newsletter, and she actually had
a podcast years before the boom in podcasting. Now that
(01:40):
everyone's chasing those same formats and the media industry is
trapped in a rinse and repeat cycle of rising and
falling and consolidating, Anne is getting off the social media
content creator wagon and asking a much different question. She
is asking what does the long game look like?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Here we Go a arm a armed adarm.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Hey, I'm cal Penn and this is Here we Go Again,
a show that takes today's trends and headlines and asks
why does history keep repeating itself?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Here? You know, for some reason, I can't get into
work with any of my headphones. Heay, cow.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Hey, I'm talking with Anne Friedman, A longtime journalist and essayist.
She has a very popular newsletter called the Anne Friedman
Weekly Newsletter and is the co author of best selling
book Big Friendship, and co hosted a pioneering podcast, Call
Your Girlfriend. I was excited to talk to you about
a number of things, but especially just changing media landscapes.
(02:54):
And I would just love to talk about what got
you going. And I'm wondering if you have a first
memory of writing and kind of deciding, oh, this is
what I want to do.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm one of those weirdos who does the thing I've
pretty much always wanted to do. When I was a child,
I used to say I wanted to be a children's
book author, and then when I got old enough to
read the newspaper and read journalism, that's what I said
I wanted to be. So I did a family newsletter.
It was probably my first actic journalism. Yeah, did all
(03:25):
the layout myself. I don't mean to brag, you know,
news about what my aunts were like doing for the holidays.
And yeah, my grandma's recipes.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Did you mail them or were they physically distributed at
family events?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
I am pretty sure I mailed them. I printed them
and mailed them, you know. There's not that many. It
was a you know, it was a limited distribution it.
You know, do you still have any good question? My
mom might? I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
I like going through I have a bunch of I
guess my equivalent of that would have been, you know,
old play programs from when I was a kid and
eighth grade. The reason I asked that question was eighth
grade for me was when I had this aha moment
about performing and changing people's minds through comedy and thought,
these kids hate me, but they love me once I
make them laugh. There's a magic here that I kind
(04:15):
of want to that I never shook, right, So I
always like hearing the origin stories. Do you think when
you look back family newsletter, not necessarily withithstanding, although you're
welcome to use it, do you think there's a through
line or a big idea that connects the decades of
your work? Has it grown in specific ways? Have you
been laser focused and what do you love to write
about the most?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
I think I have always been motivated by my values
or what I care about or what I want to
see shift in the world. Yeah, and there are times
when that has been more overt. You know, like I
wrote for a feminist blog in the blogging Heyday, and
I would say that was, like, you know, a real
pinnacle of that aspect of my work. I'm also just
(04:57):
really nosy, and I like to talk to people, and
I like work as an excuse to let me ask
people knows the questions, and so the question of how
is everyone else doing this? How's everyone else answering this question?
Is very interesting to me. And I've always liked being
a journalist because it marries my extrovert tendencies with just
(05:22):
pure love of the written word. And I think a
lot of writers are writers that's a good fit for
them because they're introverts, which I love and respect. Those
are my people. But for me, I could never be
the kind of novelist that like writes in a cabin alone.
You know, there's a reason why I write nonfiction. There's
a reason why I interview people, and so that's been
the kind of the through line of the work I do.
(05:44):
And then you know, I've I've been working as a
journalist for twenty years, which is a time of continual
upheaval in what does it mean to do this work?
And how do we do it? And I think that
I really actually enjoy muddling through some of those questions
(06:06):
I might have. I might have taken refuge in, you know,
copywriting of another kind, or like, you know, just found
a different line of work entirely if I weren't interested
in continuing to change the way I do this work.
But the writing and the talking to people and the
values are the kind of underlying factor of all of this.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
That's I feel like you don't hear that a lot
in a changing media climate, especially if you look at
I mean, I guess it would be rude to name names,
but I can think of a few journalists who, you know,
ten years ago, I think we're generally fairly well respected,
and now maybe are more talking head types or sort
(06:46):
of opinion blending opinion in fact for the clicks sort
of a thing. So it's actually really refreshing to hear that.
So when you decide to launch your newsletter, which is
now called the An Friedman Weekly.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Always has always has been, Yeah, the newsletter's always been
the End Freeman Weekly. I made that choice because in
the blogging years, a different iteration of media change. I
noticed that the people who were able to really use
their newsletters to help them maintain a career. Were typically men,
typically white men, who just named their blog after themselves,
(07:21):
and for women and people of color who were blogging
in collectives or blogging under pseudonyms, it was a lot
harder to transition to a more like a better paid
version of doing that job. So I need my newsletter
after myself very deliberately.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
What I love about that is so when my book
came out, I remember there were a couple of people
who work in book publishing or book consulting, and I
hadn't necessarily like hired, you know, big powerhouse people to
get you placed on the New York Times bestseller list.
That wasn't important to me, So I didn't hire those consultants,
(07:54):
but there were a couple of people who were friendly.
The point of all this is I heard time and again, Hey,
it's great that you have a Hollywood publicist who's doing
the traditional press for your book. Very seldom does going
on the Tonight Show translate into book sales. So one
of the things that you should do is think through
if you know anybody that has a large distribution format newsletter,
(08:16):
the vouching that that has for direct book sales, because
an embedded click. If the person is subscribing to newsletter,
they love and trust that person who's newsletter they're reading,
and it is literally one click, and that's what sells books.
And I didn't There were a couple of people I
knew who had newsletters and I could see that move books,
(08:38):
But yours is wildly popular newsletters generally. Are you know
this for people who don't know who are listening an
alternative source of distribution that are very much competing with
traditional media outlets. Can you walk me through the events
that led you to launch the newsletter and correct me
if I'm right? Did it launch in twenty thirteen?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Twenty Yeah, twenty thirteen, that's correct, spring of twenty thirteen.
So the inciting event is that I was laid off
in twenty twelve, and I spent maybe six months thinking
I would try to get another editing job. I had
been a magazine editor and realized pretty quickly that would
involve moving to New York. And I really like living
(09:20):
in Los Angeles and I like my life here, and
so I was figuring out how to have some stability
and consistency in my life as a writer. While I
was writing for a lot of different publications and doing
a lot of different things, and I thought, if I
have a newsletter, that's one place where I every week
(09:42):
compile the things I've written for other people, compile the
things that I'm reading. Just kind of almost like a
ship's log for my for my early career as a
self employed writer. And it has definitely evolved since then,
but it still remains like, you know, my little home
on the stormy seas.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
You are credited with kind of being at the forefront
of cultural shift. And also I'm very impressed by the
array of outlets that you've worked for, worked with, written for,
and so just to have that perch with so many
cultural shifts going on, I think it's fascinating. You were
(10:25):
like early podcast I was.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
A podcaster from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Was that a business decision, meaning like on purpose you
saw this coming and went I'm going to get in
early or was there another reason you decided to go
that road?
Speaker 2 (10:40):
No, I mean, like a lot of my choices in
my career, it just sounded like fun, Yeah, like a
new thing to try, you know. I mentioned I like
talking to people, and I like interviewing and so it
felt like an interesting challenge to learn how to interview
people for audio, which is quite a different skill set
(11:00):
than interviewing them for a written article. I had a
very good friend, I mean ATISO, who I later co
wrote a book with, and she and I agreed it
would be fun to try hosting together. And we had
another friend who at the time was not as close
but has since become a very good friend, Gina Delvack,
who was an audio producer, and she was like, you know,
(11:22):
you guys would be great on a podcast. Let's just
try it. Yeah, and let's just try it is really
the ethos that has underpinned a lot of my professional choices.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Very cool and yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And so it was not like, oh, this seems to
be an emerging field, let's get into it. It was
more like, I'm going to try a new thing with
some friends.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
When I hear that that you actually have this love
of connecting with people, what does it mean to do
that through journalism? And then what do you feel like
you're chewing on? Like are there realizations that you've had
when you talk to people? Given the shift in media
culture itself, how do you stay true basically to what
(11:59):
you want to do.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, it's tricky. I mean I think that. So, you know,
I went to journalism school, where I got like a
very i would say, traditional last century media education. And
there's some really good things about that, like there's some
hard skills about how you put together a piece of
writing and how you conduct an interview that were great,
But there are also some things about that that are
really toxic, Like I think that every journalist is extractive
(12:26):
in some way. Like, you know, if you're interviewing a source,
like you are using their story, you are using their
lived experience for your own nimes, which is to you know, tell,
subsume it into whatever story you're trying to tell or explain.
Your goals are not always going to be aligned with
the person you're interviewing. And I have really come around
(12:47):
to accepting that that is inherent in being a teller
of other people's stories. Yeah, but I do think you
can be honest about it. And so like, right now,
I'm working on a book about milestones in modern adulthood,
and I'm interviewing a lot of people who are not
public figures, and at the beginning of our interview, I
always say, here's how I expect to use our conversation.
(13:08):
You are free to decline to answer any question at
any time. I'll be in touch to fact check. I mean,
all this kind of like one oh one stuff that's
about how I work, because I don't think we can
take for granted that sources understand what a phrase like
on or off the record means.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Oh yeah, And.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I think it's also a sign of respect to just
be like, I'm going to tell you how I am
going to use your personal life story, just like cop
to stealing, not stealing, but taking.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah, when you say a great last century journalism education,
were there are things you felt like you had to
unlearn in crafting your own career path.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh that's a fun question. Yeah, I am still unlearning
lots of things from that training, Like what I am
unlearning the myth of objectivity? Oh yeah, I mean that's
something that I thought I had done away with pretty
early on the idea that anyone can you know, find
(14:12):
some sort of neutral truth I think is quite false.
But finding like figuring out how to set that standard
and where that standard should be for Okay, six scientists
say this is true, or this paper says it's true,
or like you know what are you how many people
do you need on site to say that this thing happened?
(14:32):
I mean, rashamont Rahamant is a movie they should use
in journalism school that they do not, So, you know,
questions about like what is truth and objectivity? I think
that to take an example again from the reporting I'm
doing right now, it is absolutely forbidden in traditional journalism
to pay a source. The idea. The idea is like, no,
(14:53):
you are getting compromise information. It's not trustworthy. But you know,
this book that I'm doing, I want to interview a
cross set of people from all socioeconomic backgrounds. And to
ask for two hours of someone's life when they have
to work like a like an eighteen hour day to
pay their bills is ridiculous. To not compensate them for
that time. I mean, that's how academics do it. Academics
(15:15):
pay people for their time, and we take that as
a worthwhile primary source of information. And so I hit
a wall in my reporting where I was like, oh,
I'm really falling short on having a wide spectrum of
economic experiences. It seems like the right thing to do
is to pay people for their time. But I have
(15:35):
this deeply ingrained lesson from journalism school if you don't
pay sources, because that means your information is compromised, whereas anyway.
So that's another example of like, I don't actually think
that rule serves the journalistic work that I'm doing now,
but it was really embedded in the education that I got.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
You've been at the forefront of cultural shifts with podcasts,
with newsletters. Why do you think that is.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
I think it is because I like not just the
job of writing and interviewing, but I'm interested in the
how the work gets made. You know. I think I
was a good magazine editor because I cared about the
advertising side of the business, and I cared about design,
and I was interested in all these other things that
aren't like the meat of what I was supposed to
be doing, which is commissioning and editing articles. You know,
(16:22):
Like all these kind of peripheral interests are what has
led me to things like a newsletter, Like I'm interested
in like how does it look good? Like how does
how do I say the thing every week that looks good?
And how does this thing I'm doing on the page
shift if I do it in audio form? I would
not say that I have eagerly leapt at every technological shift,
(16:45):
which is maybe why I have an easy relationship to
the idea of being like a repeat innovator or something,
because it's like, I don't do TikTok. That's I mean,
I do. I do consume it, but I don't participate,
you know, as a as a creator. And so I
think it is it is genuine interest and joy in
all the other stuff that surrounds the core of the work.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Yeah, so as a as a relatively early podcast or
how did it feel to see the relatively sudden explosion
into mainstream of podcasting as evidenced by the fact that
I have this podcast? You know, everybody has a podcast now,
and some of them are quite niche and wonderful, and
(17:28):
others are purposely very broad and but you were in
an early early you know, if you look at the timeline,
what did it feel like to watch this medium explode?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Well, you know, you have there are material benefits to
being early in any technological shift, you know, I mean
I still get like Google news alerts that we've been
listed as like influential women podcasters, and I'm like, we haven't.
We haven't had a podcast in years, you know, like
this is just this is just like an AI you
know article, like yeah, but so you know, there are
(18:03):
real material benefits to being early in terms of attention,
and as is happening in newsletters right now, as more
people rush to kind of create in that medium. You know,
you you watch your market share diminish, but it also
means like there's interesting stuff to inform what you're doing
if you're still around. I mean, at this point, I'm
(18:24):
a I'm a retired podcaster, so I'm not experimenting in
that medium anymore.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
When did call your girlfriend? Sunset? What did your rep
it ze tent?
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Twenty one?
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Twenty twenty one? Okay, so why continue the newsletter? Like?
What what went into stopping the podcast? But continuing the newsletter?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
The podcast was a different kind of labor. I mean,
the newsletter really is just me. I have, I have
sort of a tech guru who supports me with a
lot of that stuff. But week in and week out,
the newsletter is just me. The three of us had
to make the podcast together, my co host, our producer,
(19:04):
and me, and the weekly pace of an audio product
was a lot harder than a written product. It's like
it's three schedules to coordinate. Editing tape is super time intensive,
certainly more time intensive than like me editing a thousand
words in a newsletter. It was the resources and time question,
and I think also we all felt we had learned
(19:27):
what we wanted to learn from that project and it
wasn't as fun anymore, frankly, and my newsletter remains really
fun for me, which is why I keep doing it.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
So for the newsletter, I assume it well, it's I
assume it's your personal funds, but also time, which is
the most valuable for anybody in a creative or self
motivated position. You're not a creator on TikTok. I believe
you're not on Facebook or LinkedIn?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Right, No, I prefer platforms that I own.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Oh okay, I don't.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Know yet any of those things.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, Was that the only reason that you intentionally
decided to stay away from those?
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It's not the only reason, but you know, I was reflecting, preparing,
preparing to talk about the the arc of media over
my career with you made me think, like, Okay, so
what were the years I was like actually using Facebook?
What were the years I was actually using Twitter? How
many years was I actually actively using Instagram? And it's
(20:31):
like about a decade for each of those and that's fine,
Like some things don't have to live longer than that.
But I'm sure you've heard this term in shitification? Have
you heard this term? Not?
Speaker 1 (20:45):
What does it mean?
Speaker 2 (20:45):
So? The the tech writer and I believe he's also
a science fiction writer, Corey doctor Oe, coined this term
in shitification a couple of years ago to describe how
tech platforms degrade over time. And the idea is that
they start doing one thing, users flock to it and
have fun there and kind of create their own dynamic
(21:09):
and their own little micro ecosystems, and then over time,
as the owners want to maximize their profits, they start
doing lots of things to make it worse for the
users and better for the advertisers, and then eventually it
gets bad for everyone for advertisers to because advertisers want
to be where it's good for users, And the term
and shittification explains that feeling of like why did I
(21:30):
just open this app? Like like closer anymore? Like why
did I just see six ads? And like nothing that
matters to me, even though I've come to associate this
as a place where things that matter to me happen.
So I think when I say that about ownership, if
I own something like I own my newsletter or we
(21:51):
owned the podcast together, I can dip out when it
doesn't feel good anymore. I can decide I don't want
to maximize profits. I just want to make some profits
and keep it fun. And I am not locked in
to that as a place to find my audience. So
that's part of in senthitification. The idea is like the
(22:11):
users are like, oh, I would love to get off Instagram,
but this is where everyone can find me. All my
followers are here and I can't move them. So that
wasn't a conscious decision of like I'm not joining TikTok
because I don't own it. But at this point in
my career it is a factor like it is like
it creeps in of like okay, well you know I
don't want to invest in someone else's work.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
So that it sounds I mean, correct me if I'm wrong.
It sounds like your focus is much more patient and
it's in long term growth overall. Would that is that correct?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Yes? Long game is the only game I play.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I mean, it's the hearing you talk about that, and
I know it's different as a performer. But when social
media took off, it literally was the two and a
half years that I was not acting. I'd taken this
aboutle and I was working in government, and so I
had to follow government rules, which meant you're not posting
anything on social media. There are rules for that now
obviously the government, public officials and whatever, but at the
time there weren't. So it was just you know, lock
(23:11):
your social media accounts and you can resume it when
you leave government. And that set me back considerably in
the acting world because of how social media is monetizable
for everything from brand endorsement deals to getting cast in
movies and TV shows because of its set number of followers.
Is there an equivalent in your life of things that
(23:32):
you know you're losing out on? Does it not matter?
Have you been like, yeah, that's all temporary. How have
you interacted with that?
Speaker 2 (23:42):
I do think that I have benefited from using social media,
and I benefited from using it early. Like actually, I
remember when I was an editor, probably around twenty twelve,
being like, I wouldn't hire a writer who's not on Twitter.
And I meant that more because if you're not interested
in writing, like pithy constrained things like why would you
(24:05):
want to be a writer at all? Like some of
it was about the format itself, but some of it
was also like this is kind of media's water cooler,
and I want to hire someone who's in dialogue with
other people who do this work. But I draw a
distinction between the podcast in the newsletter and making social
media like a home base on that on that grounds
(24:26):
of ownership, right, Like so so you know, like if
if you were like my whole acting career rises or
falls based on how many Instagram followers I'm going to
be able to get, I would be like, that's not
that's a really short game, right, but you know, for
you can, you can you can use it to like
help further along game. You know, it's sort of about
like keeping it in perspective. I think with with social media,
(24:47):
and frankly, if I were interested in learning to edit video,
I would probably be messing around with TikTok right now.
That's just sort of like not where my interests lie.
Like I'm making zines and doing workshops. That's like where
my my other like my other non writing interests have
taken another direction. But yeah, like if I wanted to
do video, I would one hundred percent be making TikTok.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Are there things that you've learned by playing the long game?
And what does the long game look like to you?
What does it mean to you to be able to
have the full control and be like, I'm tuning out
all of this noise that I've even just articulated and
focusing on what you actually want to do.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Hmm. I do think it's that people can smell your
boredom or obligation, like it just rolls off of you
in waves when you don't want to be doing something,
so like you know, if you're sending a newsletter because
your publisher told you to, or you're making a TikTok,
dancing to a viral song with your book and you
really don't want to be there, like people can tell.
(25:46):
So I think some of it is like the self
knowledge about your own interests in something like am I
doing it because this is where someone is telling me
the future is or I have to do this to
save my career, or is there some genuine spark of
curiosity about what this new app platform media modality might
(26:12):
offer me? You know, I think that's a pretty good
barometer like your own self interest. And then I also
do think this question of ownership has been a good
one for me, which is to say, you know, I
actually just got just redownloaded Instagram after two years of
not having it on my phone. I would check it
on my desktop and I would see like messages from
(26:34):
friends that had expired like a week earlier, or I'd
maybe see like a top post that someone had a
baby or got married or something. But like I was
really not on it, and I had to redownload it
to promote these workshops that I'm writing, workshops I'm selling
with a friend. And it was like, oh right, I
am now using this tool to do one thing I'm not.
I don't hang out here anymore. Like I'm like putting
(26:55):
up a flyer in a place I used to hang out,
and then I'm gonna go away again, like you know.
And so I think that's also part of it, is
like realizing what's a tool and like what is your
home base or what is a place you want to
hang out? And so I think that for a while,
maybe like Twitter was definitely a home base type place
for me, and then it sort of became a tool
(27:15):
and then it went away altogether, and just just recognizing
like what function something is filling for me helps me
play the long game of Like, right, Instagram's a tool
I'm using right now. It's not like my career, you know.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to paraphrase one of your newsletters.
I don't have the whole thing in front of me,
but and so correct me if this is inaccurate. And
one of your newsletters you talked about how you're chewing
on whether or not social media is truly just over
for you or if you're getting old. This is something
I relate to. I got rid of Twitter on my
phone two years ago, which was wonderful, Like what a
(27:53):
God send. I have filters on my Instagram so that
I basically only see dog reels, like pumping reels. So
I've muted essentially every politician, political word, all of that
because none of you know, obviously none of that is
useful on social But can you expand on that on
the whether or not social media is truly over for
you or if you're getting old?
Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well, it's funny. I mean, one thing about writing a
newsletter every week is like you honestly forget all the
things you see. Yeah, it's not quite as bad as
like posting on Twitter constantly. But I went to write
something recently. I was like, you know, I should really
write something about like being a writer in AI and
how I'm kind of a romantic because I like to, like,
you know, still do things the hard way. And I
was like, oh my god, I actually already wrote that
(28:36):
exact quote, and it wasn't that long ago. It was
like two months ago. So I'll take your word. Okay, okay,
good what I said. And I will just say that
I think I think some of what I was getting
at with like is it over or am I old?
Is like there's a privilege to opting out right, Like
there's a privilege to having had a career long enough
(28:56):
that I can see these major social media apps as
like relatively brief moments or like or contained moments, you know,
and having had a career that has transcended them allows
me the peace of mind or like the kind of
presence of mind to say, you know what I don't
I can, I can step out. I don't need to
(29:17):
do TikTok. I don't interpret that as like I'm giving
up on life, Like when I say like I'm i
am I just old. I don't mean. I don't mean
it that way, because I am still very much interested
in like, oh my god, I love hanging out with
teenagers and just being like, tell me everything about what
you see on your for you page, Like that's all
I want to know, is like, what what is your internet? Like,
(29:38):
it's such an interesting question.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, yeah, how was I curated for you?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah? Exactly what's your bubble?
Speaker 1 (29:44):
And what does your internet look like?
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Well? I do think that everybody is the author of
their own experience in digital spaces, even though it feels
like we're not in control. So like deciding that my
internet is a lot of news letters and TikTok but
only passively, not as a creator, and Instagram but only
on my laptop and on my phone, Like that's kind
(30:08):
of what my internet looks like, a lot of lists.
My notes app is really important in my internet, even
though it's not social. There's a great newsletter called Embedded
that always asks people and they have a kind of
questionnaire about people's Internet use, and it's one of my
favorite things to read because they'll just be like, oh,
I don't even touch that app, and it's like something
that's so critical to like how I live, and I
(30:29):
just I love that little insight of like, you know,
we all carry around these things that like look exactly
the same, and it's just like it's a portal to
something totally different for everyone. And I love remembering that
whenever journalists say something like, you know, the first Google
search result. When I typed this in, I'm like, oh,
you're telling on yourself. There's no there's no like Google
(30:51):
search result, you know, like that's just about your Internet,
that's about you. So I don't know, I it does
feel related to that Paige idea when I think about
like my Internet, I guess.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
I'm curious on a larger, unlike a broader level. You know,
every year, it seems like when it comes to media
and institutions and places to write or places to distribute
our work as creators, the number of outlets or platforms
willing to pay humans for their words and for their
(31:26):
time and their experience are shrinking. This is more of
a philosophical question, But to you, what does that say
about society?
Speaker 2 (31:38):
Oh man, these are the things I try not to
think about when I'm like trying to fall asleep at night.
But I mean, I look What it says to me
is that we have been trained to calculate value in
a really specific way, and we have been trained collectively.
I count myself in this. I'm not like out of
it to pursue ease and agreement above friction and engagement,
(32:03):
like true engagement. It's funny to use a word like
engagement when we talk about social media, but like I'm
talking about like actually reading to the end of an
article or like watching to the end of a film
like I mean, I'm talking about engagement in a sense
of like sustained attention and asking questions about something. It's
not like any one of us alone can resist in shitification.
(32:24):
Think what I was I was talking about earlier, that's happening.
But what we can do is say I'm going to
do things the hard way, like I am going to
read things via an old fashioned RSS reader, which I
actively choose to do, Like you know, you can't complain
about the algorithm if you've if you've chosen to, like
you know, set up your own filters. It's one reason
(32:46):
why I love a podcast. You can subscribe to the
feed and get everything you know, it's not mediated. It
is an RSS feed. If you want to get nerdy
and you know, and also why newsletters are great. You know,
it's like, I know it's going to come to my
inbox if I can care about this person and they
only post twice a year, and I want to get
both of those posts. It's not going to be demoted
(33:07):
by a big tech company in the absolute daily age.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
When we were prepping for this episode, in a lot
of ways, here we go again. Of this is that
media companies are making record profits for their executives, but
they're downsizing their human capital. They're paying less to the workforce,
the writers, the actors, the people who actually make them
(33:33):
the money and create the content. The AP had said
that since two thousand and five, the numbers of newspapers
published in the US had dropped from seventy three hundred
in two thousand and five to forty four hundred now,
and daily newspaper circulation that averaged between fifty and sixty
million people at the turn of the century now is
(33:55):
at just over fifteen million. And in twenty twenty five,
one hundred thirty six newspapers in the US closed, and
so as those closures continue, magazines fold, websites. Even websites
are shrinking, right, It's not just the analog stuff. So
what does this moment tell you, if anything, about the
direction of where media is headed. And I ask you
(34:15):
that as an early podcast adopter and as somebody who
has stayed true to a very popular newsletter.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yeah, I mean it is moving and has been for
as long as I've been working in media, away from
a brand relationship, where like the masthead of a magazine
or newspaper is what guarantees the quality to a more
individual one to one relationship of like I feel like
I know and trust this person, and that has been
accelerated by social media, but I feel like it was
(34:44):
already a foot even in like the earliest Facebook days.
This move was happening. So I don't know what that
means is that there is less training, there are fewer
on ramps. Like I obviously have mixed feelings about last
century journalism skills, but I'm really glad I learned them
and it was really valuable. And I have really thought
(35:05):
a lot about the fact that, like, if I were
starting my career today with the exact same interests and
the exact same kind of personal you know, potential, I
don't know if I would have any way to learn
how to construct a feature article and go through a
fact checking process. And I actually started a writing fellowship
(35:27):
where I mentor two to three writers every year who
are early in their careers, because I was like, if
every individual journalist did this, there would still be some
on ramps. Like if we've collectively decided the model is individuals,
you should be paying it forward. Not that you have
to have a whole internship program the way an institution does,
but really I really feel like that kind of atomization
(35:52):
of like we used to cluster under brands and now
everyone is an individual is something that a few people
are to be able to use to their advantage, but
on the whole is going to have is gonna is
going to degrade the quality of the media we can
all consume.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
I usually like to wrap up with a bit more
of an aspirational question. So when you look ahead, what
makes you hopeful about the future of the work that
you do?
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Oh man, that's a hard follow after that lasting that
was a really hard one too. I will say this,
I think that for everything that is bad about the
sort of explosion of the old media brands, the old
(36:45):
the old magazines and newspapers and digital publications. There is
also now a more equal playing field for people with
huge variety of perspectives to find their own really devoted
audience and and make work that that audience really wants
to receive. And the fact that like they can use
(37:07):
the same tools as the person who used to edit
the biggest glossy magazine of the nineties uses that is
is a good thing for me in a lot of ways.
Like I like the idea that I can follow and
read the work of someone who never would have been
published twenty years ago, who would have just been beating
down the door to try to get published. And I
think that's that is really really good, and I think
(37:29):
it is going to be really powerful for someone who's
starting their career right now to see the example of like,
oh yeah, like I can write like a trans media
criticism blog, and like that can be a career. Like
you know, it might not be like, you know, a
super glitzy, six figure career, but like you know, that
can be like a thing that I can spend my
that can be a life's work. You know, I can
(37:51):
write like a like a community oriented gorilla gardening like publication,
and like find people who are doing that in there
com know. I mean, there's something really exciting about the
atomization as well. Like my caveat to that excitement about
it is that to really get the benefit of every
(38:13):
individual writer being able to have their own platform and
their own audience, there does still need to be a
collective energy among those writers. There's a literary agent whose
newsletter I've been reading for a long time who always
offers the caveat about publishing that it's an ecosystem, not
an arena. And I actually think that, like that is
(38:35):
true of all media. When I read it, I was like, yes,
this is exactly how I feel about my job and
how I wish more people thought about media is like,
are we charging an amount that is sustainable so that
one reader can subscribe to multiple publications? Are we linking
to each other? Are we sharing resources? Like are we
truly acting as though it is true we're all individuals,
(38:59):
but like we have to bre the same atmosphere, you know,
And I think that is that's sort of like the
it's not even optimism, it's like a like an a
in a wish fulfilling world. Like everyone everyone who's had
a modicum of success in media would know that they're
part of the ecosystem.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And thank you for joining us today. I found this
super insightful. It made uh, it made me feel like
a little less of the luddite that I think I am,
or at least just the guy who like doesn't want
to get sucked into too much social media and wants
to balance that with a little a little bit more
long term career growth.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I mean, God willing the podcast runs forever, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
That would be nice?
Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yes, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
That was my guest. Ann Friedman, a journalist an essayist.
To get more Van, you can subscribe to her newsletter,
The Ann Friedman Weekly Newsletter, or read her book Big Friendship.
Here we Go Again as a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Snaffo Media in association with New Metric Media. Our
(40:06):
executive producers are me Calpen ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alissa Martino,
Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Meghan
tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our
producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Romin Borsolino. Tory
Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly
logo by Matt Gosson. Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson,
(40:30):
and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Bassner, Isaac Dunham,
Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but
especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman and Nikki Etour. Thanks for listening. Everybody,
tell your friends write a review. All of this helps.
I appreciate you listening, and until we go again, I'm
Kelpen
Popular Podcasts
Hey Jonas!
Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com