June 21, 2024 • 49 mins
In April, The Onion was acquired by a new entity called Global Tetrahedron, revealed shortly thereafter to be a joint venture between billionaire Jeff Lawson and former NBC disinformation reporter Ben Collins, now its CEO. Ben joins Ed to talk about buying The Onion, keeping its Chicago roots, and how we can save digital media.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zetron.
Also on April twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, Geomedia, the
private equity project best known for running websites like Deadspin
(00:27):
into the Ground, announced that it was selling satirical news
newspaper and website The Onion to a company called Global Tetrahedron.
Though you knew it at the time, Global Tetrahedron was
an entity run by former NBC News This Information reporter
Ben Collins, funded by billionaire Jeff Lawson, best known for
founding Twilio. As a note, global Tetrahedron is a reference
(00:49):
to the company of the same name from The Onion's
anthology book Our Dumb Century. In one of the first
bits of good news I've had to share on this show,
The Onion is now on by somebody who has not
only done a job in journalism, written things, researched things,
and worked in a news organization that didn't burned to
the goddamn ground. He also cares about the future of
(01:10):
the newspaper, best known for headlines like study reveals babies
as stupid, jurisprudence, fetishists get off on technicality and Mark
Zuckerberg worried Facebook listening to him after being pushed shirt
that says I just laid off ten thousand employees. Today,
it's my immense pleasure to be joined by the Onion's
new CEO, Ben Collins. Okay, so how did this deal
(01:41):
to buy the Onion actually come together?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Okay? So I was it was January. I just quit
my job right for Christmas, and I was writing a
book about like some of the biggest pieces of shit
on the planet Earth, right, you know, the Elon Musks
and the Jim Jordan's of the world. And I was
like super depressed, and I was like I was platting
(02:05):
through it, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Having fun.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, exactly, I have no idea. I don't even know
if it was good. I think it probably was all right,
but like the process was horrible. And I read an
ad week that the Onion was aggressively for sale, and
I had known, and I remembered that Elon Musk had
once tried to buy the Onion, right he wound up
poaching a bunch of staff and started this thing called Thud,
(02:31):
which never really launched. He from what I've heard from
some lore in the office, by the way, is that
they after about a year. He didn't think anything that
these former Onion writers wrote was funny, and this was
like a peak era of the Onion. So he just
showed them away off campus, off the Tesla campus where
he had originally bought them for the SpaceX campus and
(02:54):
into this like weird remote area and then it just
died a like a and it died the death of
like a guy dying in the desert in a video game.
That's what happened. So I was worried that he was
gonna try to snap it up or like the AI
all the people who buy these like websites and turn
(03:15):
them into like weird zombie AI farms.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I thought that was Yes, that seems pretty likely.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, And I really, I really did not want that
to happen. Like the Onion was a very important part
of my life grown up and kind of remains that way.
And it's like the last, the last American news institution
that has been completely unsullied, I would.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Say, and also a rare good hit rate for decades.
There's not really been a.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Slump, Yeah, exactly, even in the last year when all
these other news organizations are really fumbling the bag. It's
like tripping over themselves. They weren't, you know, they were
very clear about AI and Gaza and all these other
things that people fell into, like some really weird rhetorical
traps for themselves that they are now having a hard
(04:03):
time getting out of the Onion and didn't do that.
Like one of their headlines from last year was a
guy who sucks at being a person sees he's huge
potential in AI, which is just fucking right. It's just
really good.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Anyways, Yeah, so I I'd read in adweek that it
was very for sale and I put on Blue Sky.
I said, uh, does anybody want to save the Onion?
I have like six hundred dollars or something like that, right,
And uh, my friend Leela Wilson, who lives in Chicago,
(04:36):
was like, the Onion's like a Chicago institution. Like if
this thing goes away, it's like a really bad thing.
Like who do we call to make sure somebody decent
ends up with this thing? So I was like, I
don't know, let me just make some calls and I'll
see what it costs, I guess, or see what it is,
see what's going on with it, and I just kept
making phone calls. I just kept going. I just kept
(04:58):
like being like, how would I like if we were
to buy this, Like, how would we make money? How
do they make money? Now? Do they make money? Now?
What's going on with this thing?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And a couple of weeks later, we were just in
the thick of it, Like eventually we had we had
collected enough people who knew a rich guy or you know,
to get in the equation. And then there was you know,
there was this guy named Jeff Lawson who had just
left Twilio just like a company, and he kind of
(05:30):
felt the same way about it that we did. And
we had you know, we just kind of like constantly
were in assurance to each other that neither of us
was going to mess this up, that we're all going
to like leave the processes be at the onion, that
it makes it great. And then it just happened, like,
I you know, within I think like eight weeks, it
(05:50):
went from like a hilarious joke in my house, like
I was telling my girlfriend, I was like I'm gonna
buy the onion, hah whatever, and then in like two
weeks it was like I think I'm gonna actually do this.
I think this might actually happen, and then in eight
weeks it was pretty much done. Like we were that
we were fighting off some last second bitterers who were
particularly grulish, but.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Like any clarity on who those might be.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
They're in the news. Oh okay, yeah, it's you know.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But so perhaps a very direct question is, so, Jeff Lawson,
he's a billionaire, ran Twilio, quite rich. How are you
going to avoid what has happened with a lot of
tech investor projects, because for the most part, they've been
pretty good, but generally when they start, like Jeff Bezos
has not really backed the Washington Post, he doesn't seem
(06:42):
to feed it more money, and the same kind of
like Benioff buying time and Mark Benioff's CEO of Salesforce
brought time a few years ago, and he again does
not seem to have like he doesn't seem to have
messed with it, but he also doesn't seem to have
helped it. What's the plan with Jeff Lawson.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Well, we're gonna do off a shair and I'm going
to make sure that the staff, if it does well,
they get money for us. Like it's just straight up
what it is. You know, he used this as a
public like a public interest thing, just as we do that.
It's an American institution, and if it dies, it sucks.
Like it's bad for everybody. Need we need somebody to
just aggressively need all bad people. And like this is
(07:22):
not his money making enterprise. I think he already did that,
but like it is to Yeah, the goal of the
goal of that is to make an environment where writers
can make money for doing good writing. Like it's just
a weird idea that we had.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, So with that in mind, what's the actual plan
to make money? How does it make money now? And
what's the plan for the future.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Okay, cool, I actually want to talk to you about
this because this like fits with how we talk about
stuff you and I like when we text abouts.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, I think it's important.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
So the way the Onion used to make money under
geomedia is basically one way. It's programmatic advertising. So programmatic
advertising is this horrible thing that sort of ate the
Internet and sort of ate our politics in the world.
It's all those like you know, those like one weird
trick ads and.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes, they're currently all over the bottom of the page.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, when people think of in shitification. This is probably
what they're thinking about right right, and that's how they
make money right now. And I now on the other
side of this, I get it right. If you were to,
you can run a business like this where it's really
low margins and you know, you have a small staff,
(08:36):
and on top of that, basically you just keep running
websites where that's if you're updating it a little bit,
you'll remain at the top of Google or whatever. And
then you get enough of these impressions so that these
horrible ads just keep, you know, showing up literally tenfolds
sometimes like one hundredsfold.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Underneath, and they get paid by the impression rather than
the click.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Through, right exactly. So like it's it's like it would
be like if if every car that drove by a
billboard there was a you got paid for an eyeball.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Right, every thousand cars.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Right exactly, And then you get paid even more obviously
if somebody clicks on that. So the incentive structure is
bad to begin with, but then the incentive structure from
the person selling the thing on your website is even worse.
So it's just like, can I tell you my favorite Programmac? Advertising.
Please do Larry Bird Wife ad one.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Second Larrybirdwife ad dot com. Oh, yes, I know the
one we're gonna I'll put a link to it in
the episode notes.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Okay, I do want to Can I read it to you?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Please? Don't? Please read it to me.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
It is meet Larry Bird's Repulsive Wife.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Which is not an onion headline, right, that's an actual
programmatic clickbait advertising.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
You click on it, that's exactly what says it is.
It's them making fun of how this woman looks. And
she's not repulsive, by the way, but that's just.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
One of the most things, and that's an automatic is
that it's I guess it was before AI generation that
came out, So there was a guy who was like,
you know who, you know, I'm gonna take the boots
to today that reports ugly wife. I'm gonna I'm gonna
take it down a few pegs.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, it's the twenty twenties, you know what it's time for.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
All the strame busted was just Jesus. But that's the
thing when you get websites and you can even see
it on big ones like NBC. I have mentioned this before.
These programmatic ads are everywhere like outbring things. There's on
CNN as well, so you'll get like international news, international
news politics, and then the thing about how you're hearing
(10:45):
age should be better and you can buy them from
a special website that's full of spyware, and it's just crazy.
And this is most of the media. But what do
you what are you gonna do with the onion though?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Because yeah, and I don't want to say, by the
way that design language of that sort of thing that
sort of made itiness and and how how they even
physically look. You see places like The New York Times
sort of copy that because people are used to that,
the design language of trumbox ads. They're called chum boxes. Yeah,
and it just makes everything worse. Our politics sort of
(11:15):
sound like that now. The way people talk sort of
sound like meat Larry Bird's repulsive wife. Like that's just
sort of how things. That's how it feels like American life, right,
And I it can't be good. It just can't be good.
So how are we gonna make money? Great question in
a diverse way that is not that like there there's
a several part strategy that we have. First of all,
(11:37):
we're gonna I don't want to like blow our load
here a little bit, but we're gonna have a membership
that maybe brings back the newspaper. Yeah, it's cool and
we're excited about it. We're going to sell direct ads,
so like ads that want to like companies want to
directly deal with us, We're going to do that. We're
not going to be like a fifth party vendor to
(11:58):
some to scaringple on the internet. Companies, I want to
deal with this. We want to deal with them too.
And like, uh, that's another thing. There's a thing called
we're basically we're going to write some ad copy where
we are also aware that there's there hasn't been a
funny super Bowl commercial in like fucking fifteen years, so
like we do want to be in that business too.
And uh so.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Wait, would you be making super Bowl commercials for other people?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Well, we'll be making ads for other people. Yeah, right,
And and there's several different ways we can go with
video that we're currently trying to figure out the very
best one. But all of those ways sort of you know,
they bring in cash, and then there's, uh, there's just
a lot of ways to do this. And we're going
to do a little bit of everything. But like I
(12:42):
would say, like the number one way you can do it,
it's like subscribe to us when we launch our membership product.
But we just want to be really good, So we
want the staff to own it and be you know, uh,
and we want we want to hear more feedback of
what people want in a membership from us in the newspaper.
So that's where we're that's we're just taking our.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Time with that. So perhaps this is one you can't
necessarily speak to yet. But how much time do you have?
How has Lawson been very clear that this will take time,
because that feels like the biggest failure of every digital
(13:20):
failed digital media product that I've seen the last few years.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, well, I mean he's patient with the idea that
this does take time. You get to build out a
thing that you can't in what it's been six weeks
or something. You can't just like completely flip around an
entire business, and like we have to get out of contracts,
we have to get out of whole thing. Like there's
a bunch of stuff that we have to do to
(13:45):
get out of that previous business.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
That also you're actually unbuckling parts of the Geomedia the Hydra.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, I mean, like you know, we're in their old
building where there's just a lot of stuff that you
have to do. We had to set up a whole
you know, to set up a whole business with health
insurance and all the other stuff that you would do
when you buy a business, and and a lot of
it is unlearning stuff, right where part of part of
the previous business. Right, If you are doing programmatic advertising
(14:13):
as your primary business, you're doing slide shows all day.
You are telling people, you're driving people to a slide
show and telling them to click the button over and
over again to get a new, freshly set life, freshly
created set of ads. Right. And we have to get this,
you know, it's demoralizing to the staff. We have to
get them in the mindset that like maybe the best
(14:35):
joke is a TikTok video, Maybe the best joke is
is a whole newspaper. Maybe it's a physical object, Like
how do we actually satirize our current times right now
and not just you know, the internet from ten fifteen
years ago. Getting that mindset with the writer's room is important,
(14:55):
And until six weeks ago, they didn't. They had no
idea who was going to take over this place, or
if anybody who was going to take over, it would
keep them on board. So I think we're, you know,
part of us just winning their trust and we're well
on our way.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's cool, And you mentioned kind of expanding the media
side as it's weird. Over the years, the Onion went
from having probably some of the freshest media content to
being mostly written. There was a time when you had, like,
I don't know any listeners who remember this, don't I have
used for this, but Get Out of My Face was
one of the best comedy products of the last decades.
It was a sports show much like Around the Horn,
(15:34):
except both hosts just completely hated each other and most
of the sport. But then it went away and it
felt like The Onion went very writing base, which is fine,
it's good stuff, but so you're going to expand that then,
right exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
They Get Out of My Face day a segment where
I think it was called who should we assassinate? And
they would just pick a sportsfan athlete to assassinate.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I just remember one where it was just him screaming
about how Pennsylvania is a giant. It's a giant abandoned
parking lot and he couldn't wait to get home and
shave his entire body. Anyways, multimedia now, so you're going
to start expanding into video, I hope Again.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, that's important to us because there's two reasons for that.
First of all, the reason it was it became a
text heavy thing is because of the business of programmat advertising.
There's no they were just feeding that beast straight up.
So we don't want to get out of that and
do bigger things. Second of all, we've accidentally developed this
(16:31):
massive fan base among the kids because in the last year,
if you watched CNN or MSNBC, or if you read the
New York Times or something and you're twenty two years old,
you were just getting fucking yelled at by old people
like that was it? That's just what was that kind
of a Yeah, it was like your feelings aren't valid
and literally get off my lawn. That's what they were
saying to that, right, that was right. That's been the
(16:53):
last year of coverage. And we weren't like that, like
we you know, we've we've said, first of all, your
feelings are valid, you also may be right, and also,
you know, there are a lot of parallels to previous
parts in history where the onion also stood up when
it was unpopular. For example, like during the Iraq War,
(17:15):
they stood up all the time. You know, they back
peaked Dixie Chicks era. They were they had the same
political but they were thankfully the end was a little
bit funnier, so they got away with it right. And
that sort of mirrored a lot of the Gaza stuff
over the last year or two where they stood up
early on. Can I read you a headline? The headline
(17:36):
is the Onion stands with Israel because it seems like
you get in less trouble for that.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
That's is the most cutting media criticism you're rating.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, and like and and by the way, with trans coverage.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Ahead with guns as well.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
But it was a it is journalism's sacred duty to
endanger the live of as many trans people as possible.
This was like in the middle of the New York
Times every day just being like trans kids don't deserve
to be alive. Every single day when we do an
op ed, that.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Says and as on the side, listeners, this is a
pro trans podcast. If you are anti trans, delete this
podcast go fuck yourself anyway, Just moving on.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
No, I'm in the Yeah, obviously the mass shooting stuff
where you know this happens to Yeah, there's no way
to prevent this. As only nation where this regularly happens,
that is an iconic thing that we obviously repost every
time there's a major mass shooting, which is like every day,
and uh like there is nobody else that does this,
(18:42):
and that's why we wanted this now. It's because when
all these other places sort of retreated back into being
really scared to to speak truth to power, they're actually
go they were like, no, fuck this, We're just gonna
keep making jokes and we're going to keep standing on
the side of people who are quite literally sometimes getting
(19:04):
murdered for no reason.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Right And it's it's interesting, it's you are tangibly not necessarily,
it's not even time the true it's just you're not
making any You're more making statements of comedic effect. But
it seems to be more bombed and fresh and focused
criticism than actual journalism right now. Why do you think
so many journalists are pulling their punches? And I mean
(19:27):
everywhere tech, politics, business, is it access or is it
something else?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I think in a lot of cases, it's just access
or pleasing their bosses who really care about access. I
think a lot of these places with the Trump stuff,
they decided the bosses decided the number one priorities that
you remain on the plane, that the campaign will keep
talking to you, that they will that you're not going
(19:54):
to piss them off enough, that we're not going to
be blackball or whatever, because the the fifty to fifty
journalism is to important. I think that's mostly it. And
I also think, like, I don't think they understand that.
I think so many times these people think that they
are the bastions of like purity and equality, and like
(20:16):
one side is this and this that the other side
is this, and they cannot be any truth. What they're
doing is actually really extraordinary, and not in a good way.
It's extraordinary in the sense that this didn't actually happen
this way previously. They have been captured. They've been captured
in a political moment where they they where one side
has totally issued the concept of the truth. It didn't
(20:39):
used to work this way. People used to say that
if it was raining outside, they used to say it
was raining outside. Now it's right at these networks, whether
it's tech or it's politics.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Or anything Walter related weather of them.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, exactly. And also you know one one side of
the government insists it is not raining, right, and that's
like that that is that's it's new, like that's a
new kind of reportage in the sense that it sucks
Previously that didn't happen. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, And it's interesting. It's almost like one side right
wing side is very aggressively just objective, just they don't
give a shit, like they can do do and say
what they want. And then you get towards the centrictye.
And I hate these terms because I feel like it's
very hard to actually describe what's going on with them
but the center left. But let's be honest, it's more
(21:28):
center than anything. They seem to perceive objectivity, sorry subjectivity
or sorry objectivity Jesus Christ. That's where I speak English
as something that requires you to humor every argument, that
every position is actually fair. Also, I don't think objectivity exists.
And it's very bizarre to watch this. This is something
(21:49):
I find with tech as well, very frustrating. But it's
interesting that I think that the onion is actually doing
some of the best journalism, but through the most bizarre path. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah, there's like there's this kid on TikTok It was
like ninety thousand views and she's just like, I'm I'm
she said in a very gen Z way. She's like,
I say this with my whole chest, like the Onion
has had better, has had better coverage over the last
month and on Israel and Gaza than New York Times,
the Washington Post, and like she reads through it and
you couldn't you can't argue with it, like they just
(22:23):
it's just the truth. I completely I completely agree with
you on this, man, Like there is like getting there.
There is a kind of thing that's going on where
journalism is now insistent on you just getting punched in
the face all day by fascists. Yeah, okay, it's fine.
I don't think that's what they punch us. Yeah, exactly,
(22:44):
it's very it's very important to find out why they
punched us. While like the actual concept of what's going
on is completely different. I was on like a you know,
doing an interview a couple of days ago, and there
was this whole I was they were having this whole
conversation that ranged in so many different ways about dissing
information and like a guy a story A Guy wrote
in Harper's about the concept of disinformation and how that
(23:05):
is affected by Jim Jordan, But it's also affected by
the fact that Katie Kuric gave a speech about something.
I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
What is?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Who gives it a shit? Like if you the beauty
of this place, beauty the onion is it? Like you
can just cut right through the middle of that, Like
these people can be having this stupid ass conversation on
each side of it and you can just be like, Nope,
just sliding on through. And that that, to me, is
that's valuable. And uh, that's that to me is good reportage.
(23:36):
That is just ignoring the fucking noise and trying to
get to the center of what's actually going on.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Do you consider it a comedy outlet or a journalism outlet?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
I mean it's both. I mean Our Bread and Butters
is stupid jokes like our I'm asked, Like I.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Think about a gorilla mother making the gorilla slouch. That's
one of my favorite recent one.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Oh yeah, exactly like it, like yelling at her child.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
For a night to slouch.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
More like, for example, I was reading a really old
issue out here our entire archives, and I was just
plowing through it, and there was a very serious Iraq
war issue where they were talking about you know, Georgia
Bbush's timeline to leave or whatever. Uh, and it was
(24:24):
everything was very heavy. But on the top left, the
very first story you see on there, it's a Nibisco
discontinues wheat thics.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
That's that's great. That's the thing there's you really get
just like people having a bit of fun with that. Anymore,
it feels like journalism and media in general has got
so goddamn serious. I mean, that's the time, but also
serious in a way that doesn't seem to have the
appropriate seriousness for like police brutality, fascism, but it's just
serious about everything else.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
You're That's I think that's why like the working like
there're a substantial swath of the working class in America
listens to Joe Rogan other than the fact that's like
very hypnotic and like it's something on in the background,
is because even they think they're getting the news, which
is wrong, right, I do think that, But in between
(25:15):
that it's him like showing you know, videos of gorillas
and like people punching each other in the face, and
you know there is like there is a mild like
through line of joy that goes on there that cannot
happen on the regular news. It just doesn't. It doesn't happen,
and like like there was there used to be some
of that in like the Today Show if people still
watch that, I really know, but like there's a but
(25:37):
that's very forced fun, like fake fun. You can't you
can't see fun to fascism, Like you can't see the
like the concept of making dick jokes of fascism because
if you do, it's just gonna win. It's just like
they're just gonna get every teenager in America, even if
they're sitting around being like these ideas are fucking stupid,
(25:59):
Like this doesn't make any sense, Like this is horrible
the way we're treating people as bad. But like you
have to have some sense of humor about stuff or it's, uh,
what's the point of being live?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Also feels like the very dry objective standard of CNN, NBC.
NBC's done more opinion stuff, which I appreciate, but even
then there's only a little bit of it of the
larger media space just feels very serious. And then there's
the right wing psychost But if you look at what
the right wing's doing, it is Fox and Friends is
(26:32):
a complete joke. It's an insane show. I'm sure if
you watch it for more than an hour it begins
to melt your brain. But it's fun in a horrifying way,
like it's trying to make the fascists watching. Okay, I'm
sure there are some non fascist who watch Fox News.
I'm sure there's one of them anyway, But nevertheless, it's dorky,
(26:53):
it's weird, and then everything else outside of the fascis
sphere is just dry, dry as a b So no
wonder people are going to the Joe Rogans of the world,
because it's not like they can open a newspaper or
magazine these days. In the magazine and the newspaper actually
speaks directly to them. It doesn't feel like at times
(27:13):
it's even written as anything else other than a log
of what happened. And it's so hard for modern journalism
to escape that. I just I don't know, I worry,
but also I guess it benefits me that a lot
of journalism is going to move opinion side. And that's
assuming that Trump doesn't get in and just shut down
journalism in general. But that's another problem.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Right, No, I mean I think that like I, like
I said, with the kids, I don't think they're getting
traditional news. I think they use traditional news as like
in the way that we used to send people a
PDF to research or something. Right, That's how they use it.
They're like, I swear to God, this is real. Just
click on this thing, I can prove it. That's how
they use it as like I swear this is proof.
(27:56):
But they don't like read it or ingest it every day,
and they really don't sit down and watch television news
because again, why would they. They're just being excoriated for
being alive. And that's like it's not useful. I think
that there is. I think both parties are abandoning the
premise that there should be joy in your life from
various different angles right, right, like the American right, the
(28:22):
Trump right is a very joyless vector. It's like very
like you must support this man.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Or beautiful Lynn, you must aspire to the traditional life.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
I think that's like that's really humorless, right, and I'm
not saying like the left has an equivalent, like I
hate when people do that, but like there is Like
it's just because it's so scary, right having to like
it's we're out of making jokes about Donald Trump. We've
had it didn't work, Like it's ten years later.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It just now tell you during the trial them showing
him the tweets, everyone else found that really funny. It
made me very sad because I don't want people to
think that this will happen to them. I don't want
them to think that Trump is going to see their tweets.
He never will. Wait, please stop, but keep going. Sorry, no, So.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
It is important to have you know, there must be
wheat thicks, is what I'm saying. Crazy, what is the
point you have to like get you have to get
people into this. It's why the New York Times is
still doing well because they have wordle just the truth.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, and they and they have some opinion columnist that
are readable and then many others that aren't. And it's
very strange. That's what I really don't understand. You've got
all these esteemed outlets that have become kind of homogeneous. Yeah,
Like what is the like the New York Times, Wall
Street Wall Street Journal is the more business he won.
New York Times has business coverage. Chicago Tribune is in Chicago.
(29:47):
There are the occasional people out there at Boston Clobe.
They still got here, Arthur Bray doing tech like You've
still got some voices, but it's almost like they've trained
them of life, like the people with names.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
There was this big like first of all, that all
the digital places have died or have been eaten, right,
so like BuzzFeed died. They had awesome reportage. Anything that
was like human focused, empathy based journalism is basically gone.
It went to like nonprofit work. So I want to
(30:19):
like the pro publicas of the world or whatever, and
those have much longer timelines and their focus isn't really impact.
Their focused is like let's get awards, let's get you know,
let's get a big, long story that's really comprehensive out there,
and then hopefully somebody will err it and syndicate in
a good way. So that that's where a lot of
that reporting went. In the process, all of the young
(30:42):
people either left or were let go from like places
like The Times in the Post for probably ideological reasons.
I would guess it more had to do with like,
I don't want to deal with these sniveling children anymore,
and and it left them with Bill Maher disease that like,
these places have the same exact kind of get off
(31:03):
my long brainworms that that you see riddled in a
Netflix comedy special.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And you know it's bad when like Bill Burr is
successfully on the right side of history with Palestine and
Bill mask being like, well, you you know it's good.
People get exploded and fucking Bill Burr as there explaining
to him breathlessly. But the truth is Bill Maher succeeds
because these papers fail. He succeeds because they need some
(31:44):
sort of melting candle looking guy to make center right.
But he'll say left statements. And it's just I wish
journalism had more of a voice. I wish all of
it did, because the fear of access is one thing,
but it's almost.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
It's an ideological statement onto itself, putting access above all,
putting uh, you know, the interests of gigantic capital above all.
It does in fact merit an entire editorial strategy. I mean, ed,
you nailed this with the AI stuff. I saw my
own newsroom where you know, people were coming in and
(32:21):
saying and this is the only only kind of AI
talk you would get on television. They were talking about
how I was gonna like ruin the world and all
this stuff and other worldbots were gonna take over and
the Singularity and all this stuff, and the whole time
I was like, no, it's not like it's not like,
it's not it's it's rebranded machine learning, like we we
(32:41):
know what, we know what's happening, and like accelerate a
little bit to like really mimic like LinkedIn posts, which
is really cool job, nice job everybody. And it makes
a mean power point and does like kind of like
interesting things with music. It doesn't it seems to.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Like while stealing as well.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
When it messes up, it gets interesting. But when it
does the prompt that you want it to, it's horrible.
Oh yeah, so but but like that's that's the thing
is like in these in these newsrooms that like a
bunch of people with money came into these places and
were like, this is the next thing. You should be
scared of it, And that, in hindsight, was just the
marketing campaign that all of these newsroom leaders fell for
(33:20):
because they were at the Aspen Institute.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
But also it doesn't seem like any of these news
organizations are run by people who write or read. That's
been my continual problem.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Like there's when I was an NBC you know, there's
like this, there's this thin layer of that I like
to call the game of thrones people or at the
top of the company at NBC News, and they're constantly
jocking for position and fighting for power and stuff. But
that's nothing to journalism at all. Like it is considerably
closer to like the run up to like an eighth
(33:53):
grade dance than it is to anything to do with journalism.
It's just a case. And those people, those are the
highering and firing people, and they're also they they have
a hard time connecting the dots about like both what's important,
who's doing the best reporting, how to get the stuff
(34:14):
out there, what's really going on in the country because
those people are tied up in you know, the conversations
those people are having are have nothing to do with
like a regular American life.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, and you know what, let's stalk Ki how well,
First of all, is the onion going to sell it? Like?
What is your plan? There? Are you going to make
any deals with these companies. I'm curious.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I mean, like, we you know, our stuff was surfacing
in Google searches as answers a couple of weeks ago. Yeah,
if you asked it how many rocks you should eat
per day, it told you you should eat one small
rocket day. Because we did a bit about how there
is a headline that said geologists recommend you one one
small rocket day. It's like a bit industry doing that
(35:07):
weird pr thing they do, And it's in the Google
uh developer blog about why they took down that feature
is because they couldn't figure fully figure out how they
got in there, like they it got aggregated from a
it was like a shitification sandwich. It was like it
got that story, got aggregated from a fake fracking news
(35:29):
website that was really run by the fracking industry, and
then that as an answer within within Google. So it
was like five problems ago all wrapped up into this thing.
But no, obviously, I don't know, We're not gonna play
in that game, in part because I feel like it's
already kind of dying. But second of all, boy, it
would be funny if we did. It's a bit if
(35:52):
you're if you're interested as a bit, open a eye,
give us a ring. Uh, we would love to pollute
your data set. Sounds awesome.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Well, with that in mind, if they've already stolen the onion,
If they have already, would you will there be legal
action to protect him.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean we thought about it, man, Like we we
really did think about that, because at the end of
the day, this stealing our art, stealing our horror. Like
one of the ones that because that was not even
close to the only onion article.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
It stole in Google one, and that was just for
the listeners. That's the Google Search generative experience, popping up
onion articles and using them as a source for an answer.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
But like one of the ones was can any white
liquid be considered milk? It had like the exact beats
of a joke. It was like yes, and here's an example.
It was like, uh, one of it was like something
it was it was like glue, particularly white water, clam juice.
(36:53):
But it was the exact beats of our joke implanted
in the answer. I actually don't like landly yeah, and
like even if it is, it's still theft, even if
it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
But that's the thing. It's right. Now, We're in this
very strange world where you've got writers like the Atlantic,
this just happened. You've got writers who are like, oh yeah,
stealing all the journalism is very bad. We don't like it.
And then Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, formerly of Wired,
who did a very glossy thing on one of the
Kushner investments, Oscar Health. Anyway, my agrievmances aside. He did
(37:29):
this big announcement and said, hey, open AI is going
to train on the Atlantic day, big big day for us.
And Damon barrass Over at the Atlantic, God bless him.
Immediately had an articles been like this, sugs matched just this,
sugs bro. I don't like this one bit. But what
do you think of these deals? Are they good for
journalism or are they just kind of troll toll bullshit.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
It's bad. It's like there is a massive pollution of
the Internet happening to obfuscate good information because I can
ne'er do wells benefit from that as a concept. The
more narrow the path it is to get good information
on the Internet, the only people who benefit from that
are rich people. Like if the people have good access
(38:14):
to information are rich people. Those rich people get richer
from the good information. Like that's once once there is
information scarcity, the people who will hoard it are the rich,
right right. They have no problem paying for like a
like a Bloomberg terminal. They don't care. They'll pay for
the information or whatever, won't the costs or whatever, like,
(38:35):
they will do that well, whereas everybody else is just
like searching around for scraps. They're searching, you know, they're
type of yeah, they're like it's red, it's probably yeah,
Like that's the thing is, like we're now in a
situation where it would it's hard. It's probably harder to
get good answers if you have a new pet, if
(38:57):
you have a baby, just basics, stuff that regular people
go through is being robbed of these people, but from
these companies for no reason. Google didn't have to ruin
their whole product for this. They're doing it to like
satisfy shareholders and to get in on this fad that
exists to prop up the idea of progress in the
(39:20):
American economy. But it's not progress. It's actually like several
steps back.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, So with that in mind, how do you actually
save journalism business wise, what is the thing? I know,
just a small question for you, what's the plant? But seriously, though,
what do you do now? Because online advertising feels like
it's dying. It feels like it's folding upot is it?
And how do you how the hell does free journalism
even survive?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Okay, so first of all, we have to do all
the things that worked over the last ten years, right
instead of just like loading up everything behind this like
infinite growth, more and more traffic, competing for what or
probably at the end of the day, completely fake eyeballs, right, right,
Remember some of the stories that I got, like at
the Daily Beast had millions of views, like like a
(40:05):
ridiculous amount in a couple hours. And now it kind
of feels fake or wrong. It just doesn't feel Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It feels a million people didn't see it.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Right, Like, I don't know exactly what happened there, but
this it just doesn't feel right. And what we're gonna
do is we're going to take some of those pieces
that worked so right now it's working in tradition in
media that I like is profitable. So it's like four
or four media defector aftermath. These are all like narrow
(40:33):
writer co ops that really worked and like this place
got decimated to the point where it's really a small place,
so we can work off that. Also in the comedy world,
there's this thing called dropouts. Do you know what drop
out us?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
No, I'm done, okay.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
So it's a lot like that. It used to be
called College Humor. It was owned by I A. Barry Dillar.
Barry Diller got sick of having it.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
And IC owns most of the dating sites, right.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Most of the dating sites I think, like Expedia, just
like if they owned Daily Beasts. I used to work
at ice Se. They owned lots of different stuff. So
Barry Diller got sick of having it. It used to
run on that old model that we're talking about. They
sold it back to the original founders of the company
for like, I don't know, a couple a few hundred
thousand dollars, and then those people were like, all right,
(41:16):
we'll just start fresh, like but what do we actually
want this to be? And they made a subscription model
of just you know, improv comedy and like some stuff
they like to do, like D and D or whatever.
It's called Dropout, and it has I think like somewhere
like near a million subscribers at six dollars a month,
(41:36):
and they just sold out two nights in a row
at Massive Square Garden.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
That's wild.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
This is one of their shows. And this this happened.
They were sold from Barry Diller in like peak early pandemic,
like twenty twenty one or round of that, and that
took what, that's what three years or something. They knew
how to do it right and they put a lot
of work into it. But that's sort of the space
that we want to play in as a baseline. And
then we're gonna do this other stuff. You know, we're
going to do direct ads, we're gonna do all these
(42:02):
we're gonna do more traditional media stuff, video stuff. But
we want to get into the membership game.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
People.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
If they like us, we will send them cool ship
in the mail and also in their email, and they'll
pay us a sum of money and then like on
top of that, we'll use make TV shows and stuff like.
That's that's our that's our goal, and we'll have better
merch and we'll just try to serve people directly and
hope that this, like you know, this very old timey
(42:30):
way of doing it works.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Like that's that's reage almost yeah, I mean like there's yes,
I think I think we can do that. And like
if fucking Samsung wants to launch their Galaxy phones.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Galaxy No.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Seven, little little Dan nine and drugged for the list.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
For us Dan nine and heads baby Jesus, But yeah,
if they want, if they want to launch their exploding phone.
What is that joke again?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
It's just really good for the listeners here who loved
this stuff. It was Dan nine and a clean comedian
whose joke was, Oh, that really blew up. Someone must
have plugged in their Samsung Galaxy Note seven classic phone
that just started exploding because it's pattery. Anyway, what were
we talking about? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
But we want to be weirdos and we want to
be able to like, we want to be able to
h you know, say the things that people are all
thinking we can't say. And then when it happens, we
want them to, you know, pay us money and we'll
send a newspaper in the mill like, but.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
There will still be free content.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Oh. The whole the site is the Onion is a
public service. So we're gonna we're gonna make sure everything's
you know, our journalism's free.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
One final question, are you going to start pushing bylines ever?
Because the one thing that the Onion doesn't have right
now is names and maybe that's good.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
So you know, we've had this. I had this conversation
because like it's been uh, it does protect people, but
it's also a pain in the ass of like you know,
y like a writing job or something. But like the
process here is like so beautiful that I don't really
want to mess with it. Like that's the number on
thing I didn't want to do. I don't I'm never
gonna write a headline. I'm never gonna select any I
(44:15):
don't want to do that. I'm just like I'm here
to make it. So if they want to make a
video out of something, they can do it. Or if
they want to make up newsaper or something, they can
get it. Here's their process. Every day. They have like
a couple hundred contributors who are all like a lums.
Some of them are like famous people that I can't
reveal Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi,
(44:37):
America's funniest people, all of them, but they all They
and our ten staff writers and editors all send completely
anonymously headlines into this bucket. They're anonymized in a Google form.
They those get winnowed down by whoever. There's a person
who wins down the list, who brings it into the megeinting.
(45:00):
Then there's like a couple hundred headlines that remain. Those
are all those are spoken out loud. If they're funny,
and if they're laughed at, they generally they might have
a chance. That gets down to eight or ten a day,
and then from there they write them up and if
they don't really work, then they throw them away. And
that's say you get to this, like you know, so
you get to the half dozen headlines that you get
(45:21):
a day on the onion. Every day, this process happens
and then they go back and they're like they figure
out who wrote it after all that, and that is
like the most egalitarian way anything works in journalism or
or writer's rooms or anything at all. And why would
have any mess of that. It sucks that there's no
(45:41):
bolines involved in that, and maybe there's a way to
do that, but like sometimes it's like a huge team effort,
and part of the beauty is not knowing who it's from.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
I've read The Onion Infinity twenty years and I'm so
happy to see it in the hands of somebody who
actually cares, who loves writers and writing and creating interesting
things that readers love. It's really frustrating that this is
the exception rather than the rule. But I believe that
sites like The Onion, along with worker owned co ops
like Defecta and Aftermath making sports journalism and games journalism, respectively,
(46:19):
are the future of journalism itself. Institutions that empower great
writers that deeply care about the subject matter, building sustainable,
lasting businesses and relationships with their readers. And I really
am serious when I say this is the future better offline.
It could happen here behind the bastards, great shows and
cool Zone media sixteenth Minute of Fame. These are all
(46:39):
things built by building real relationships with you, the listener,
with people actually consuming this stuff, making cool stuff with
a longer time horizon then I don't know, six months
making great things and hoping people will pay for them.
I mean, it seems obvious, but journalism has been almost
completely swallowed, kind of like when Kirby eats something and
(47:02):
he poops it out and he turns into it. Kirby
isn't that thing, He just stole it. And that is
the modern state of journalism. Journalism can be saved by
people like Ben Collins. It can be saved by people
like Defector and Aftermath. It can be saved by people
who make this stuff. And it must be put back
in the hands of those who make these things. It's
(47:23):
time to stop building big, ugly, unsustainable journalism with insane
startup valuation goals. It just isn't possible anymore. What is
possible is giving great people enough of a chance to
build a real audience and a great product. And I
think you'll agree. A better world is possible for digital media.
(47:43):
I promise you. It just has to be built by
and for the writers themselves. 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
(48:06):
A T T O, S O W s ki dot com.
You can email me at easy at Better offline dot com,
or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend
you go to chat dot where's youreaed dot at to
visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline
to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
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.
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zetron.
Also on April twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, Geomedia, the
private equity project best known for running websites like Deadspin
(00:27):
into the Ground, announced that it was selling satirical news
newspaper and website The Onion to a company called Global Tetrahedron.
Though you knew it at the time, Global Tetrahedron was
an entity run by former NBC News This Information reporter
Ben Collins, funded by billionaire Jeff Lawson, best known for
founding Twilio. As a note, global Tetrahedron is a reference
(00:49):
to the company of the same name from The Onion's
anthology book Our Dumb Century. In one of the first
bits of good news I've had to share on this show,
The Onion is now on by somebody who has not
only done a job in journalism, written things, researched things,
and worked in a news organization that didn't burned to
the goddamn ground. He also cares about the future of
(01:10):
the newspaper, best known for headlines like study reveals babies
as stupid, jurisprudence, fetishists get off on technicality and Mark
Zuckerberg worried Facebook listening to him after being pushed shirt
that says I just laid off ten thousand employees. Today,
it's my immense pleasure to be joined by the Onion's
new CEO, Ben Collins. Okay, so how did this deal
(01:41):
to buy the Onion actually come together?
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Okay? So I was it was January. I just quit
my job right for Christmas, and I was writing a
book about like some of the biggest pieces of shit
on the planet Earth, right, you know, the Elon Musks
and the Jim Jordan's of the world. And I was
like super depressed, and I was like I was platting
(02:05):
through it, but it wasn't.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Having fun.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yeah, exactly, I have no idea. I don't even know
if it was good. I think it probably was all right,
but like the process was horrible. And I read an
ad week that the Onion was aggressively for sale, and
I had known, and I remembered that Elon Musk had
once tried to buy the Onion, right he wound up
poaching a bunch of staff and started this thing called Thud,
(02:31):
which never really launched. He from what I've heard from
some lore in the office, by the way, is that
they after about a year. He didn't think anything that
these former Onion writers wrote was funny, and this was
like a peak era of the Onion. So he just
showed them away off campus, off the Tesla campus where
he had originally bought them for the SpaceX campus and
(02:54):
into this like weird remote area and then it just
died a like a and it died the death of
like a guy dying in the desert in a video game.
That's what happened. So I was worried that he was
gonna try to snap it up or like the AI
all the people who buy these like websites and turn
(03:15):
them into like weird zombie AI farms.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I thought that was Yes, that seems pretty likely.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah, And I really, I really did not want that
to happen. Like the Onion was a very important part
of my life grown up and kind of remains that way.
And it's like the last, the last American news institution
that has been completely unsullied, I would.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Say, and also a rare good hit rate for decades.
There's not really been a.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Slump, Yeah, exactly, even in the last year when all
these other news organizations are really fumbling the bag. It's
like tripping over themselves. They weren't, you know, they were
very clear about AI and Gaza and all these other
things that people fell into, like some really weird rhetorical
traps for themselves that they are now having a hard
(04:03):
time getting out of the Onion and didn't do that.
Like one of their headlines from last year was a
guy who sucks at being a person sees he's huge
potential in AI, which is just fucking right. It's just
really good.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Anyways, Yeah, so I I'd read in adweek that it
was very for sale and I put on Blue Sky.
I said, uh, does anybody want to save the Onion?
I have like six hundred dollars or something like that, right,
And uh, my friend Leela Wilson, who lives in Chicago,
(04:36):
was like, the Onion's like a Chicago institution. Like if
this thing goes away, it's like a really bad thing.
Like who do we call to make sure somebody decent
ends up with this thing? So I was like, I
don't know, let me just make some calls and I'll
see what it costs, I guess, or see what it is,
see what's going on with it, and I just kept
making phone calls. I just kept going. I just kept
(04:58):
like being like, how would I like if we were
to buy this, Like, how would we make money? How
do they make money? Now? Do they make money? Now?
What's going on with this thing?
Speaker 2 (05:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (05:08):
And a couple of weeks later, we were just in
the thick of it, Like eventually we had we had
collected enough people who knew a rich guy or you know,
to get in the equation. And then there was you know,
there was this guy named Jeff Lawson who had just
left Twilio just like a company, and he kind of
(05:30):
felt the same way about it that we did. And
we had you know, we just kind of like constantly
were in assurance to each other that neither of us
was going to mess this up, that we're all going
to like leave the processes be at the onion, that
it makes it great. And then it just happened, like,
I you know, within I think like eight weeks, it
(05:50):
went from like a hilarious joke in my house, like
I was telling my girlfriend, I was like I'm gonna
buy the onion, hah whatever, and then in like two
weeks it was like I think I'm gonna actually do this.
I think this might actually happen, and then in eight
weeks it was pretty much done. Like we were that
we were fighting off some last second bitterers who were
particularly grulish, but.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Like any clarity on who those might be.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
They're in the news. Oh okay, yeah, it's you know.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
But so perhaps a very direct question is, so, Jeff Lawson,
he's a billionaire, ran Twilio, quite rich. How are you
going to avoid what has happened with a lot of
tech investor projects, because for the most part, they've been
pretty good, but generally when they start, like Jeff Bezos
has not really backed the Washington Post, he doesn't seem
(06:42):
to feed it more money, and the same kind of
like Benioff buying time and Mark Benioff's CEO of Salesforce
brought time a few years ago, and he again does
not seem to have like he doesn't seem to have
messed with it, but he also doesn't seem to have
helped it. What's the plan with Jeff Lawson.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Well, we're gonna do off a shair and I'm going
to make sure that the staff, if it does well,
they get money for us. Like it's just straight up
what it is. You know, he used this as a
public like a public interest thing, just as we do that.
It's an American institution, and if it dies, it sucks.
Like it's bad for everybody. Need we need somebody to
just aggressively need all bad people. And like this is
(07:22):
not his money making enterprise. I think he already did that,
but like it is to Yeah, the goal of the
goal of that is to make an environment where writers
can make money for doing good writing. Like it's just
a weird idea that we had.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, So with that in mind, what's the actual plan
to make money? How does it make money now? And
what's the plan for the future.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Okay, cool, I actually want to talk to you about
this because this like fits with how we talk about
stuff you and I like when we text abouts.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, I think it's important.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
So the way the Onion used to make money under
geomedia is basically one way. It's programmatic advertising. So programmatic
advertising is this horrible thing that sort of ate the
Internet and sort of ate our politics in the world.
It's all those like you know, those like one weird
trick ads and.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yes, they're currently all over the bottom of the page.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, when people think of in shitification. This is probably
what they're thinking about right right, and that's how they
make money right now. And I now on the other
side of this, I get it right. If you were to,
you can run a business like this where it's really
low margins and you know, you have a small staff,
(08:36):
and on top of that, basically you just keep running
websites where that's if you're updating it a little bit,
you'll remain at the top of Google or whatever. And
then you get enough of these impressions so that these
horrible ads just keep, you know, showing up literally tenfolds
sometimes like one hundredsfold.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Underneath, and they get paid by the impression rather than
the click.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Through, right exactly. So like it's it's like it would
be like if if every car that drove by a
billboard there was a you got paid for an eyeball.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Right, every thousand cars.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Right exactly, And then you get paid even more obviously
if somebody clicks on that. So the incentive structure is
bad to begin with, but then the incentive structure from
the person selling the thing on your website is even worse.
So it's just like, can I tell you my favorite Programmac? Advertising.
Please do Larry Bird Wife ad one.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Second Larrybirdwife ad dot com. Oh, yes, I know the
one we're gonna I'll put a link to it in
the episode notes.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Okay, I do want to Can I read it to you?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Please? Don't? Please read it to me.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
It is meet Larry Bird's Repulsive Wife.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Which is not an onion headline, right, that's an actual
programmatic clickbait advertising.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
You click on it, that's exactly what says it is.
It's them making fun of how this woman looks. And
she's not repulsive, by the way, but that's just.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
One of the most things, and that's an automatic is
that it's I guess it was before AI generation that
came out, So there was a guy who was like,
you know who, you know, I'm gonna take the boots
to today that reports ugly wife. I'm gonna I'm gonna
take it down a few pegs.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, it's the twenty twenties, you know what it's time for.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
All the strame busted was just Jesus. But that's the
thing when you get websites and you can even see
it on big ones like NBC. I have mentioned this before.
These programmatic ads are everywhere like outbring things. There's on
CNN as well, so you'll get like international news, international
news politics, and then the thing about how you're hearing
(10:45):
age should be better and you can buy them from
a special website that's full of spyware, and it's just crazy.
And this is most of the media. But what do
you what are you gonna do with the onion though?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Because yeah, and I don't want to say, by the
way that design language of that sort of thing that
sort of made itiness and and how how they even
physically look. You see places like The New York Times
sort of copy that because people are used to that,
the design language of trumbox ads. They're called chum boxes. Yeah,
and it just makes everything worse. Our politics sort of
(11:15):
sound like that now. The way people talk sort of
sound like meat Larry Bird's repulsive wife. Like that's just
sort of how things. That's how it feels like American life, right,
And I it can't be good. It just can't be good.
So how are we gonna make money? Great question in
a diverse way that is not that like there there's
a several part strategy that we have. First of all,
(11:37):
we're gonna I don't want to like blow our load
here a little bit, but we're gonna have a membership
that maybe brings back the newspaper. Yeah, it's cool and
we're excited about it. We're going to sell direct ads,
so like ads that want to like companies want to
directly deal with us, We're going to do that. We're
not going to be like a fifth party vendor to
(11:58):
some to scaringple on the internet. Companies, I want to
deal with this. We want to deal with them too.
And like, uh, that's another thing. There's a thing called
we're basically we're going to write some ad copy where
we are also aware that there's there hasn't been a
funny super Bowl commercial in like fucking fifteen years, so
like we do want to be in that business too.
And uh so.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Wait, would you be making super Bowl commercials for other people?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Well, we'll be making ads for other people. Yeah, right,
And and there's several different ways we can go with
video that we're currently trying to figure out the very
best one. But all of those ways sort of you know,
they bring in cash, and then there's, uh, there's just
a lot of ways to do this. And we're going
to do a little bit of everything. But like I
(12:42):
would say, like the number one way you can do it,
it's like subscribe to us when we launch our membership product.
But we just want to be really good, So we
want the staff to own it and be you know, uh,
and we want we want to hear more feedback of
what people want in a membership from us in the newspaper.
So that's where we're that's we're just taking our.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Time with that. So perhaps this is one you can't
necessarily speak to yet. But how much time do you have?
How has Lawson been very clear that this will take time,
because that feels like the biggest failure of every digital
(13:20):
failed digital media product that I've seen the last few years.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, well, I mean he's patient with the idea that
this does take time. You get to build out a
thing that you can't in what it's been six weeks
or something. You can't just like completely flip around an
entire business, and like we have to get out of contracts,
we have to get out of whole thing. Like there's
a bunch of stuff that we have to do to
(13:45):
get out of that previous business.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
That also you're actually unbuckling parts of the Geomedia the Hydra.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Yeah, I mean, like you know, we're in their old
building where there's just a lot of stuff that you
have to do. We had to set up a whole
you know, to set up a whole business with health
insurance and all the other stuff that you would do
when you buy a business, and and a lot of
it is unlearning stuff, right where part of part of
the previous business. Right, If you are doing programmatic advertising
(14:13):
as your primary business, you're doing slide shows all day.
You are telling people, you're driving people to a slide
show and telling them to click the button over and
over again to get a new, freshly set life, freshly
created set of ads. Right. And we have to get this,
you know, it's demoralizing to the staff. We have to
get them in the mindset that like maybe the best
(14:35):
joke is a TikTok video, Maybe the best joke is
is a whole newspaper. Maybe it's a physical object, Like
how do we actually satirize our current times right now
and not just you know, the internet from ten fifteen
years ago. Getting that mindset with the writer's room is important,
(14:55):
And until six weeks ago, they didn't. They had no
idea who was going to take over this place, or
if anybody who was going to take over, it would
keep them on board. So I think we're, you know,
part of us just winning their trust and we're well
on our way.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's cool, And you mentioned kind of expanding the media
side as it's weird. Over the years, the Onion went
from having probably some of the freshest media content to
being mostly written. There was a time when you had, like,
I don't know any listeners who remember this, don't I have
used for this, but Get Out of My Face was
one of the best comedy products of the last decades.
It was a sports show much like Around the Horn,
(15:34):
except both hosts just completely hated each other and most
of the sport. But then it went away and it
felt like The Onion went very writing base, which is fine,
it's good stuff, but so you're going to expand that then,
right exactly.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
They Get Out of My Face day a segment where
I think it was called who should we assassinate? And
they would just pick a sportsfan athlete to assassinate.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
I just remember one where it was just him screaming
about how Pennsylvania is a giant. It's a giant abandoned
parking lot and he couldn't wait to get home and
shave his entire body. Anyways, multimedia now, so you're going
to start expanding into video, I hope Again.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, that's important to us because there's two reasons for that.
First of all, the reason it was it became a
text heavy thing is because of the business of programmat advertising.
There's no they were just feeding that beast straight up.
So we don't want to get out of that and
do bigger things. Second of all, we've accidentally developed this
(16:31):
massive fan base among the kids because in the last year,
if you watched CNN or MSNBC, or if you read the
New York Times or something and you're twenty two years old,
you were just getting fucking yelled at by old people
like that was it? That's just what was that kind
of a Yeah, it was like your feelings aren't valid
and literally get off my lawn. That's what they were
saying to that, right, that was right. That's been the
(16:53):
last year of coverage. And we weren't like that, like
we you know, we've we've said, first of all, your
feelings are valid, you also may be right, and also,
you know, there are a lot of parallels to previous
parts in history where the onion also stood up when
it was unpopular. For example, like during the Iraq War,
(17:15):
they stood up all the time. You know, they back
peaked Dixie Chicks era. They were they had the same
political but they were thankfully the end was a little
bit funnier, so they got away with it right. And
that sort of mirrored a lot of the Gaza stuff
over the last year or two where they stood up
early on. Can I read you a headline? The headline
(17:36):
is the Onion stands with Israel because it seems like
you get in less trouble for that.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
That's is the most cutting media criticism you're rating.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
Yeah, and like and and by the way, with trans coverage.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Ahead with guns as well.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
But it was a it is journalism's sacred duty to
endanger the live of as many trans people as possible.
This was like in the middle of the New York
Times every day just being like trans kids don't deserve
to be alive. Every single day when we do an
op ed, that.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Says and as on the side, listeners, this is a
pro trans podcast. If you are anti trans, delete this
podcast go fuck yourself anyway, Just moving on.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
No, I'm in the Yeah, obviously the mass shooting stuff
where you know this happens to Yeah, there's no way
to prevent this. As only nation where this regularly happens,
that is an iconic thing that we obviously repost every
time there's a major mass shooting, which is like every day,
and uh like there is nobody else that does this,
(18:42):
and that's why we wanted this now. It's because when
all these other places sort of retreated back into being
really scared to to speak truth to power, they're actually
go they were like, no, fuck this, We're just gonna
keep making jokes and we're going to keep standing on
the side of people who are quite literally sometimes getting
(19:04):
murdered for no reason.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Right And it's it's interesting, it's you are tangibly not necessarily,
it's not even time the true it's just you're not
making any You're more making statements of comedic effect. But
it seems to be more bombed and fresh and focused
criticism than actual journalism right now. Why do you think
so many journalists are pulling their punches? And I mean
(19:27):
everywhere tech, politics, business, is it access or is it
something else?
Speaker 3 (19:33):
I think in a lot of cases, it's just access
or pleasing their bosses who really care about access. I
think a lot of these places with the Trump stuff,
they decided the bosses decided the number one priorities that
you remain on the plane, that the campaign will keep
talking to you, that they will that you're not going
(19:54):
to piss them off enough, that we're not going to
be blackball or whatever, because the the fifty to fifty
journalism is to important. I think that's mostly it. And
I also think, like, I don't think they understand that.
I think so many times these people think that they
are the bastions of like purity and equality, and like
(20:16):
one side is this and this that the other side
is this, and they cannot be any truth. What they're
doing is actually really extraordinary, and not in a good way.
It's extraordinary in the sense that this didn't actually happen
this way previously. They have been captured. They've been captured
in a political moment where they they where one side
has totally issued the concept of the truth. It didn't
(20:39):
used to work this way. People used to say that
if it was raining outside, they used to say it
was raining outside. Now it's right at these networks, whether
it's tech or it's politics.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Or anything Walter related weather of them.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
Yeah, exactly. And also you know one one side of
the government insists it is not raining, right, and that's
like that that is that's it's new, like that's a
new kind of reportage in the sense that it sucks
Previously that didn't happen. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Yeah, And it's interesting. It's almost like one side right
wing side is very aggressively just objective, just they don't
give a shit, like they can do do and say
what they want. And then you get towards the centrictye.
And I hate these terms because I feel like it's
very hard to actually describe what's going on with them
but the center left. But let's be honest, it's more
(21:28):
center than anything. They seem to perceive objectivity, sorry subjectivity
or sorry objectivity Jesus Christ. That's where I speak English
as something that requires you to humor every argument, that
every position is actually fair. Also, I don't think objectivity exists.
And it's very bizarre to watch this. This is something
(21:49):
I find with tech as well, very frustrating. But it's
interesting that I think that the onion is actually doing
some of the best journalism, but through the most bizarre path. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah, there's like there's this kid on TikTok It was
like ninety thousand views and she's just like, I'm I'm
she said in a very gen Z way. She's like,
I say this with my whole chest, like the Onion
has had better, has had better coverage over the last
month and on Israel and Gaza than New York Times,
the Washington Post, and like she reads through it and
you couldn't you can't argue with it, like they just
(22:23):
it's just the truth. I completely I completely agree with
you on this, man, Like there is like getting there.
There is a kind of thing that's going on where
journalism is now insistent on you just getting punched in
the face all day by fascists. Yeah, okay, it's fine.
I don't think that's what they punch us. Yeah, exactly,
(22:44):
it's very it's very important to find out why they
punched us. While like the actual concept of what's going
on is completely different. I was on like a you know,
doing an interview a couple of days ago, and there
was this whole I was they were having this whole
conversation that ranged in so many different ways about dissing
information and like a guy a story A Guy wrote
in Harper's about the concept of disinformation and how that
(23:05):
is affected by Jim Jordan, But it's also affected by
the fact that Katie Kuric gave a speech about something.
I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (23:14):
What is?
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Who gives it a shit? Like if you the beauty
of this place, beauty the onion is it? Like you
can just cut right through the middle of that, Like
these people can be having this stupid ass conversation on
each side of it and you can just be like, Nope,
just sliding on through. And that that, to me, is
that's valuable. And uh, that's that to me is good reportage.
(23:36):
That is just ignoring the fucking noise and trying to
get to the center of what's actually going on.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Do you consider it a comedy outlet or a journalism outlet?
Speaker 3 (23:47):
I mean it's both. I mean Our Bread and Butters
is stupid jokes like our I'm asked, Like I.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Think about a gorilla mother making the gorilla slouch. That's
one of my favorite recent one.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Oh yeah, exactly like it, like yelling at her child.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
For a night to slouch.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
More like, for example, I was reading a really old
issue out here our entire archives, and I was just
plowing through it, and there was a very serious Iraq
war issue where they were talking about you know, Georgia
Bbush's timeline to leave or whatever. Uh, and it was
(24:24):
everything was very heavy. But on the top left, the
very first story you see on there, it's a Nibisco
discontinues wheat thics.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
That's that's great. That's the thing there's you really get
just like people having a bit of fun with that. Anymore,
it feels like journalism and media in general has got
so goddamn serious. I mean, that's the time, but also
serious in a way that doesn't seem to have the
appropriate seriousness for like police brutality, fascism, but it's just
serious about everything else.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
You're That's I think that's why like the working like
there're a substantial swath of the working class in America
listens to Joe Rogan other than the fact that's like
very hypnotic and like it's something on in the background,
is because even they think they're getting the news, which
is wrong, right, I do think that, But in between
(25:15):
that it's him like showing you know, videos of gorillas
and like people punching each other in the face, and
you know there is like there is a mild like
through line of joy that goes on there that cannot
happen on the regular news. It just doesn't. It doesn't happen,
and like like there was there used to be some
of that in like the Today Show if people still
watch that, I really know, but like there's a but
(25:37):
that's very forced fun, like fake fun. You can't you
can't see fun to fascism, Like you can't see the
like the concept of making dick jokes of fascism because
if you do, it's just gonna win. It's just like
they're just gonna get every teenager in America, even if
they're sitting around being like these ideas are fucking stupid,
(25:59):
Like this doesn't make any sense, Like this is horrible
the way we're treating people as bad. But like you
have to have some sense of humor about stuff or it's, uh,
what's the point of being live?
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Also feels like the very dry objective standard of CNN, NBC.
NBC's done more opinion stuff, which I appreciate, but even
then there's only a little bit of it of the
larger media space just feels very serious. And then there's
the right wing psychost But if you look at what
the right wing's doing, it is Fox and Friends is
(26:32):
a complete joke. It's an insane show. I'm sure if
you watch it for more than an hour it begins
to melt your brain. But it's fun in a horrifying way,
like it's trying to make the fascists watching. Okay, I'm
sure there are some non fascist who watch Fox News.
I'm sure there's one of them anyway, But nevertheless, it's dorky,
(26:53):
it's weird, and then everything else outside of the fascis
sphere is just dry, dry as a b So no
wonder people are going to the Joe Rogans of the world,
because it's not like they can open a newspaper or
magazine these days. In the magazine and the newspaper actually
speaks directly to them. It doesn't feel like at times
(27:13):
it's even written as anything else other than a log
of what happened. And it's so hard for modern journalism
to escape that. I just I don't know, I worry,
but also I guess it benefits me that a lot
of journalism is going to move opinion side. And that's
assuming that Trump doesn't get in and just shut down
journalism in general. But that's another problem.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Right, No, I mean I think that like I, like
I said, with the kids, I don't think they're getting
traditional news. I think they use traditional news as like
in the way that we used to send people a
PDF to research or something. Right, That's how they use it.
They're like, I swear to God, this is real. Just
click on this thing, I can prove it. That's how
they use it as like I swear this is proof.
(27:56):
But they don't like read it or ingest it every day,
and they really don't sit down and watch television news
because again, why would they. They're just being excoriated for
being alive. And that's like it's not useful. I think
that there is. I think both parties are abandoning the
premise that there should be joy in your life from
various different angles right, right, like the American right, the
(28:22):
Trump right is a very joyless vector. It's like very
like you must support this man.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Or beautiful Lynn, you must aspire to the traditional life.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
I think that's like that's really humorless, right, and I'm
not saying like the left has an equivalent, like I
hate when people do that, but like there is Like
it's just because it's so scary, right having to like
it's we're out of making jokes about Donald Trump. We've
had it didn't work, Like it's ten years later.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
It just now tell you during the trial them showing
him the tweets, everyone else found that really funny. It
made me very sad because I don't want people to
think that this will happen to them. I don't want
them to think that Trump is going to see their tweets.
He never will. Wait, please stop, but keep going. Sorry, no, So.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
It is important to have you know, there must be
wheat thicks, is what I'm saying. Crazy, what is the
point you have to like get you have to get
people into this. It's why the New York Times is
still doing well because they have wordle just the truth.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, and they and they have some opinion columnist that
are readable and then many others that aren't. And it's
very strange. That's what I really don't understand. You've got
all these esteemed outlets that have become kind of homogeneous. Yeah,
Like what is the like the New York Times, Wall
Street Wall Street Journal is the more business he won.
New York Times has business coverage. Chicago Tribune is in Chicago.
(29:47):
There are the occasional people out there at Boston Clobe.
They still got here, Arthur Bray doing tech like You've
still got some voices, but it's almost like they've trained
them of life, like the people with names.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
There was this big like first of all, that all
the digital places have died or have been eaten, right,
so like BuzzFeed died. They had awesome reportage. Anything that
was like human focused, empathy based journalism is basically gone.
It went to like nonprofit work. So I want to
(30:19):
like the pro publicas of the world or whatever, and
those have much longer timelines and their focus isn't really impact.
Their focused is like let's get awards, let's get you know,
let's get a big, long story that's really comprehensive out there,
and then hopefully somebody will err it and syndicate in
a good way. So that that's where a lot of
that reporting went. In the process, all of the young
(30:42):
people either left or were let go from like places
like The Times in the Post for probably ideological reasons.
I would guess it more had to do with like,
I don't want to deal with these sniveling children anymore,
and and it left them with Bill Maher disease that like,
these places have the same exact kind of get off
(31:03):
my long brainworms that that you see riddled in a
Netflix comedy special.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
And you know it's bad when like Bill Burr is
successfully on the right side of history with Palestine and
Bill mask being like, well, you you know it's good.
People get exploded and fucking Bill Burr as there explaining
to him breathlessly. But the truth is Bill Maher succeeds
because these papers fail. He succeeds because they need some
(31:44):
sort of melting candle looking guy to make center right.
But he'll say left statements. And it's just I wish
journalism had more of a voice. I wish all of
it did, because the fear of access is one thing,
but it's almost.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
It's an ideological statement onto itself, putting access above all,
putting uh, you know, the interests of gigantic capital above all.
It does in fact merit an entire editorial strategy. I mean, ed,
you nailed this with the AI stuff. I saw my
own newsroom where you know, people were coming in and
(32:21):
saying and this is the only only kind of AI
talk you would get on television. They were talking about
how I was gonna like ruin the world and all
this stuff and other worldbots were gonna take over and
the Singularity and all this stuff, and the whole time
I was like, no, it's not like it's not like,
it's not it's it's rebranded machine learning, like we we
(32:41):
know what, we know what's happening, and like accelerate a
little bit to like really mimic like LinkedIn posts, which
is really cool job, nice job everybody. And it makes
a mean power point and does like kind of like
interesting things with music. It doesn't it seems to.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Like while stealing as well.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
When it messes up, it gets interesting. But when it
does the prompt that you want it to, it's horrible.
Oh yeah, so but but like that's that's the thing
is like in these in these newsrooms that like a
bunch of people with money came into these places and
were like, this is the next thing. You should be
scared of it, And that, in hindsight, was just the
marketing campaign that all of these newsroom leaders fell for
(33:20):
because they were at the Aspen Institute.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
But also it doesn't seem like any of these news
organizations are run by people who write or read. That's
been my continual problem.
Speaker 3 (33:32):
Like there's when I was an NBC you know, there's
like this, there's this thin layer of that I like
to call the game of thrones people or at the
top of the company at NBC News, and they're constantly
jocking for position and fighting for power and stuff. But
that's nothing to journalism at all. Like it is considerably
closer to like the run up to like an eighth
(33:53):
grade dance than it is to anything to do with journalism.
It's just a case. And those people, those are the
highering and firing people, and they're also they they have
a hard time connecting the dots about like both what's important,
who's doing the best reporting, how to get the stuff
(34:14):
out there, what's really going on in the country because
those people are tied up in you know, the conversations
those people are having are have nothing to do with
like a regular American life.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Yeah, and you know what, let's stalk Ki how well,
First of all, is the onion going to sell it? Like?
What is your plan? There? Are you going to make
any deals with these companies. I'm curious.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I mean, like, we you know, our stuff was surfacing
in Google searches as answers a couple of weeks ago. Yeah,
if you asked it how many rocks you should eat
per day, it told you you should eat one small
rocket day. Because we did a bit about how there
is a headline that said geologists recommend you one one
small rocket day. It's like a bit industry doing that
(35:07):
weird pr thing they do, And it's in the Google
uh developer blog about why they took down that feature
is because they couldn't figure fully figure out how they
got in there, like they it got aggregated from a
it was like a shitification sandwich. It was like it
got that story, got aggregated from a fake fracking news
(35:29):
website that was really run by the fracking industry, and
then that as an answer within within Google. So it
was like five problems ago all wrapped up into this thing.
But no, obviously, I don't know, We're not gonna play
in that game, in part because I feel like it's
already kind of dying. But second of all, boy, it
would be funny if we did. It's a bit if
(35:52):
you're if you're interested as a bit, open a eye,
give us a ring. Uh, we would love to pollute
your data set. Sounds awesome.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Well, with that in mind, if they've already stolen the onion,
If they have already, would you will there be legal
action to protect him.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean we thought about it, man, Like we we
really did think about that, because at the end of
the day, this stealing our art, stealing our horror. Like
one of the ones that because that was not even
close to the only onion article.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
It stole in Google one, and that was just for
the listeners. That's the Google Search generative experience, popping up
onion articles and using them as a source for an answer.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
But like one of the ones was can any white
liquid be considered milk? It had like the exact beats
of a joke. It was like yes, and here's an example.
It was like, uh, one of it was like something
it was it was like glue, particularly white water, clam juice.
(36:53):
But it was the exact beats of our joke implanted
in the answer. I actually don't like landly yeah, and
like even if it is, it's still theft, even if
it's wrong.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
But that's the thing. It's right. Now, We're in this
very strange world where you've got writers like the Atlantic,
this just happened. You've got writers who are like, oh yeah,
stealing all the journalism is very bad. We don't like it.
And then Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, formerly of Wired,
who did a very glossy thing on one of the
Kushner investments, Oscar Health. Anyway, my agrievmances aside. He did
(37:29):
this big announcement and said, hey, open AI is going
to train on the Atlantic day, big big day for us.
And Damon barrass Over at the Atlantic, God bless him.
Immediately had an articles been like this, sugs matched just this,
sugs bro. I don't like this one bit. But what
do you think of these deals? Are they good for
journalism or are they just kind of troll toll bullshit.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
It's bad. It's like there is a massive pollution of
the Internet happening to obfuscate good information because I can
ne'er do wells benefit from that as a concept. The
more narrow the path it is to get good information
on the Internet, the only people who benefit from that
are rich people. Like if the people have good access
(38:14):
to information are rich people. Those rich people get richer
from the good information. Like that's once once there is
information scarcity, the people who will hoard it are the rich,
right right. They have no problem paying for like a
like a Bloomberg terminal. They don't care. They'll pay for
the information or whatever, won't the costs or whatever, like,
(38:35):
they will do that well, whereas everybody else is just
like searching around for scraps. They're searching, you know, they're
type of yeah, they're like it's red, it's probably yeah,
Like that's the thing is, like we're now in a
situation where it would it's hard. It's probably harder to
get good answers if you have a new pet, if
(38:57):
you have a baby, just basics, stuff that regular people
go through is being robbed of these people, but from
these companies for no reason. Google didn't have to ruin
their whole product for this. They're doing it to like
satisfy shareholders and to get in on this fad that
exists to prop up the idea of progress in the
(39:20):
American economy. But it's not progress. It's actually like several
steps back.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, So with that in mind, how do you actually
save journalism business wise, what is the thing? I know,
just a small question for you, what's the plant? But seriously, though,
what do you do now? Because online advertising feels like
it's dying. It feels like it's folding upot is it?
And how do you how the hell does free journalism
even survive?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
Okay, so first of all, we have to do all
the things that worked over the last ten years, right
instead of just like loading up everything behind this like
infinite growth, more and more traffic, competing for what or
probably at the end of the day, completely fake eyeballs, right, right,
Remember some of the stories that I got, like at
the Daily Beast had millions of views, like like a
(40:05):
ridiculous amount in a couple hours. And now it kind
of feels fake or wrong. It just doesn't feel Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It feels a million people didn't see it.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
Right, Like, I don't know exactly what happened there, but
this it just doesn't feel right. And what we're gonna
do is we're going to take some of those pieces
that worked so right now it's working in tradition in
media that I like is profitable. So it's like four
or four media defector aftermath. These are all like narrow
(40:33):
writer co ops that really worked and like this place
got decimated to the point where it's really a small place,
so we can work off that. Also in the comedy world,
there's this thing called dropouts. Do you know what drop
out us?
Speaker 2 (40:44):
No, I'm done, okay.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
So it's a lot like that. It used to be
called College Humor. It was owned by I A. Barry Dillar.
Barry Diller got sick of having it.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
And IC owns most of the dating sites, right.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Most of the dating sites I think, like Expedia, just
like if they owned Daily Beasts. I used to work
at ice Se. They owned lots of different stuff. So
Barry Diller got sick of having it. It used to
run on that old model that we're talking about. They
sold it back to the original founders of the company
for like, I don't know, a couple a few hundred
thousand dollars, and then those people were like, all right,
(41:16):
we'll just start fresh, like but what do we actually
want this to be? And they made a subscription model
of just you know, improv comedy and like some stuff
they like to do, like D and D or whatever.
It's called Dropout, and it has I think like somewhere
like near a million subscribers at six dollars a month,
(41:36):
and they just sold out two nights in a row
at Massive Square Garden.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
That's wild.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
This is one of their shows. And this this happened.
They were sold from Barry Diller in like peak early pandemic,
like twenty twenty one or round of that, and that
took what, that's what three years or something. They knew
how to do it right and they put a lot
of work into it. But that's sort of the space
that we want to play in as a baseline. And
then we're gonna do this other stuff. You know, we're
going to do direct ads, we're gonna do all these
(42:02):
we're gonna do more traditional media stuff, video stuff. But
we want to get into the membership game.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
People.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
If they like us, we will send them cool ship
in the mail and also in their email, and they'll
pay us a sum of money and then like on
top of that, we'll use make TV shows and stuff like.
That's that's our that's our goal, and we'll have better
merch and we'll just try to serve people directly and
hope that this, like you know, this very old timey
(42:30):
way of doing it works.
Speaker 4 (42:32):
Like that's that's reage almost yeah, I mean like there's yes,
I think I think we can do that. And like
if fucking Samsung wants to launch their Galaxy phones.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
Galaxy No.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Seven, little little Dan nine and drugged for the list.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
For us Dan nine and heads baby Jesus, But yeah,
if they want, if they want to launch their exploding phone.
What is that joke again?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
It's just really good for the listeners here who loved
this stuff. It was Dan nine and a clean comedian
whose joke was, Oh, that really blew up. Someone must
have plugged in their Samsung Galaxy Note seven classic phone
that just started exploding because it's pattery. Anyway, what were
we talking about? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
But we want to be weirdos and we want to
be able to like, we want to be able to
h you know, say the things that people are all
thinking we can't say. And then when it happens, we
want them to, you know, pay us money and we'll
send a newspaper in the mill like, but.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
There will still be free content.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Oh. The whole the site is the Onion is a
public service. So we're gonna we're gonna make sure everything's
you know, our journalism's free.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
One final question, are you going to start pushing bylines ever?
Because the one thing that the Onion doesn't have right
now is names and maybe that's good.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
So you know, we've had this. I had this conversation
because like it's been uh, it does protect people, but
it's also a pain in the ass of like you know,
y like a writing job or something. But like the
process here is like so beautiful that I don't really
want to mess with it. Like that's the number on
thing I didn't want to do. I don't I'm never
gonna write a headline. I'm never gonna select any I
(44:15):
don't want to do that. I'm just like I'm here
to make it. So if they want to make a
video out of something, they can do it. Or if
they want to make up newsaper or something, they can
get it. Here's their process. Every day. They have like
a couple hundred contributors who are all like a lums.
Some of them are like famous people that I can't
reveal Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi,
(44:37):
America's funniest people, all of them, but they all They
and our ten staff writers and editors all send completely
anonymously headlines into this bucket. They're anonymized in a Google form.
They those get winnowed down by whoever. There's a person
who wins down the list, who brings it into the megeinting.
(45:00):
Then there's like a couple hundred headlines that remain. Those
are all those are spoken out loud. If they're funny,
and if they're laughed at, they generally they might have
a chance. That gets down to eight or ten a day,
and then from there they write them up and if
they don't really work, then they throw them away. And
that's say you get to this, like you know, so
you get to the half dozen headlines that you get
(45:21):
a day on the onion. Every day, this process happens
and then they go back and they're like they figure
out who wrote it after all that, and that is
like the most egalitarian way anything works in journalism or
or writer's rooms or anything at all. And why would
have any mess of that. It sucks that there's no
(45:41):
bolines involved in that, and maybe there's a way to
do that, but like sometimes it's like a huge team effort,
and part of the beauty is not knowing who it's from.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
I've read The Onion Infinity twenty years and I'm so
happy to see it in the hands of somebody who
actually cares, who loves writers and writing and creating interesting
things that readers love. It's really frustrating that this is
the exception rather than the rule. But I believe that
sites like The Onion, along with worker owned co ops
like Defecta and Aftermath making sports journalism and games journalism, respectively,
(46:19):
are the future of journalism itself. Institutions that empower great
writers that deeply care about the subject matter, building sustainable,
lasting businesses and relationships with their readers. And I really
am serious when I say this is the future better offline.
It could happen here behind the bastards, great shows and
cool Zone media sixteenth Minute of Fame. These are all
(46:39):
things built by building real relationships with you, the listener,
with people actually consuming this stuff, making cool stuff with
a longer time horizon then I don't know, six months
making great things and hoping people will pay for them.
I mean, it seems obvious, but journalism has been almost
completely swallowed, kind of like when Kirby eats something and
(47:02):
he poops it out and he turns into it. Kirby
isn't that thing, He just stole it. And that is
the modern state of journalism. Journalism can be saved by
people like Ben Collins. It can be saved by people
like Defector and Aftermath. It can be saved by people
who make this stuff. And it must be put back
in the hands of those who make these things. It's
(47:23):
time to stop building big, ugly, unsustainable journalism with insane
startup valuation goals. It just isn't possible anymore. What is
possible is giving great people enough of a chance to
build a real audience and a great product. And I
think you'll agree. A better world is possible for digital media.
(47:43):
I promise you. It just has to be built by
and for the writers themselves. 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
(48:06):
A T T O, S O W s ki dot com.
You can email me at easy at Better offline dot com,
or visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast
links and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend
you go to chat dot where's youreaed dot at to
visit the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline
to check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
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.
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