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[upbeat music] Welcome to The Rebooting Show. I am Brian Morrissey. We just had a new TRB Live recording today with The Economist President, Luke Bradley-Jones.

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Luke and I discussed how The Economist is adapting its typical voice of God approach to lift the veil on how that institutional point of view is created by putting its journalists front and center.

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We talked about a whole bunch of different issues, including we got into a lot of detail about their AI lab and how it is coming up with a new way for people to experience The Economist content.

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We'll be holding these discussions regularly.

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Next week, in fact, I am speaking with Hearst Newspapers, Alex Tacik, and Subtext's Mike Donahue in a conversation about how to use text messaging to build closer audience relationships.

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It's something I'm gonna be doing myself. You can soon get text messages from me if you'd like. Hope you will. More on that later. This conversation is open to all to attend.

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Some TRB Live sessions will be for TRB Pro members, but others for everyone. This is one of those. So check out the link in the show notes. But if you haven't already, please consider joining TRB Pro.

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It's the membership program. It's a mere two hundred dollars a year. Hope you consider it. Today, I have a conversation with Sarah Longwell.

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Sarah is the publisher of The Bulwark, and we talk about a bunch of things, but in particular, I want to zero in on, on how The Bulwark has no interest in being neutral. You know, it has...

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It's been a, a success story in political media. It is a center-right outlet that's resisted, if not opposed, the, the pull of MAGA politics.

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It sort of began with a bunch of Never Trump Republicans, and, you know, it's having something of a moment now. Sarah argues that what has set The Bulwark apart isn't ideology so much as kinda honesty.

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And, and traditional journalism often clings to what she calls studious neutrality, and that's a reflex to balance every statement with a counterpoint. And The Bulwark takes a, a very different approach.

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It believes that you should be transparent about your perspective, but to make your case and let the readers judge the arguments.

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You know, I think this is a really interesting moment for political media in particular because the old playbook of objectivity and detachment just simply no longer works in this environment, and I think we're seeing that across the board.

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And so the conceit of neutrality to me has eroded. You know, audiences don't believe it, and, and most journalists don't really either. I think the best thing is just to be upfront and to try to be as fair as possible.

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I think we're, we're seeing the rise of a bunch of different outlets that are very explicit about their values, but they still aim to be journalistically rigorous, and so they're kinda something different altogether.

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And The Bulwark is really carving out this space for those who are disaffected conservatives or even moderates who don't really like Trumpism. I guess that's the best way of putting it.

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And I think Sarah herself is an interesting character because she is... You know, she's not just a publisher, she's also a political strategist. She's a pollster.

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I mean, she is an active participant in this, and this is something that w-we're seeing. You know, that kind of thing used to be considered a conflict of interest. Now it's almost part of the appeal.

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I mean, people wanna hear from those who literally have an interest in the topic. And, you know, I think about something like All In.

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I mean, yeah, the hosts have an array of financial interests in the topics that they talk about, but that's really part of the appeal to it, you know, 'cause that's...

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The stakes that they have, you know, give that show energy and consequence, honestly.

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And so I think we're gonna see more of that in this information space, and I think the question for institutional medias is how they respond to that, whether they use neutrality as a mode of sort, as a differentiator, or if they try to compete with these other entities on their terms.

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So I think it's a... It's an interesting one.

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We talk about a bunch of different i-issues, including how The Bulwark built its trust by being upfront about its, its purpose, about why traditional outlets struggle to adapt to this new media climate.

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Sarah has some very pointed criticisms on that. Also, how journalism can still serve democracy without doing the thing where they pretend that all perspectives are equal.

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And we'll talk about what comes, what comes after neutrality, and how that will change the media ecosystem. Hope you enjoy this conversation. Always like to hear your feedback. My email is brian@therebooting.com.

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You can also, if you like this podcast, please leave it a, a rating and review. Now here's my conversation with Sarah. [upbeat music] Cool. Sarah, thanks for doing the podcast. Really happy to talk to you. Yeah.

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Thanks for having me, Brian. So let's, let's get into... I wanna get into The Bulwark as I think it's just, like, a fascinating media property at, at this time.

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Like, it started in 2018, and it was in the era of the resistance, and I always thought of it as, like, a Never Trump sort of endeavor, right?

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So how do you describe The Bulwark now, seven year- seven years from Never Trump? Yeah. Well, the world has changed a lot since we launched in 2017, and I don't... I...

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Look, Never Trump was a very useful term back then 'cause it described something very specific, which was the group of Republicans who said absolutely not to Trump, and there's no way I'm getting on board.

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Now, funnily enough, many people who were Never Trump [chuckles] with us in the beginning have subsequently gone on to become pro-Trump after he, you know, tried to overthrow the government and the, the election.But for us, it was never.

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That being said, like, what does it mean now when Trump's been elected a second time, obviously with the four-year Biden interregnum?

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Just not sure never Trump symbolizes something useful be-i-I 'cause it's not just about Trump anymore, right? Trump has metastasized in a way that now dominates the entire Republican Party- Mm-hmm...

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and there's very little left of the thing we were trying to salvage if you go back to twenty fifteen or twenty fourteen.

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Like, and I, I this, I try to emphasize this to people because there's a lot of people who are like, "You know, I'm rooting for you guys.

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You can go back to being Republicans, and we can all have a debate about tax policy," and I'm like, "Oh, my friends, there is no going back." Mitt Romney, like, isn't just not gonna be elected president.

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Like he's- Yeah... out of the party. He's been excommunicated. There is no wing for that anymore. Mike Pence could not go to a Trump rally without armed security.

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Like, we are not trying to save the Republican Party, and so we have sort of moved on to a place where it is much more how do you defend American liberal democracy from autocracy and authoritarian movement, something, you know, how do you, how do you try to save or even conserve what is really good about America?

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A lot of the things that Trump is trying to burn down.

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But I don't think that any of us now feel any connection to the Republican Party or the conservative movement as it stands today, and we are not trying to bring it back or revive it.

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We are trying to save America, and also we've expanded so much.

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We've brought so many new people in, so many reporters that while a lot of the OG people, Bill and Mona and me and JDL and Tim, Andrew Edgar, you know, we kind of came from that never Trump space, but Sam Stein and Catherine Rampell, who we just hired, and, you know, Jonathan Cohn, if these are not never Trumpers, these are reporters.

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And so together, we sort of, I think, have kinda transcended just being a never Trump resistance outlet. Yeah. And do you consider it like a news organization?

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'Cause, I mean, your, your background and you're still in, like, politics, right? Yeah. I mean, this is the thing about The Bulwark is for me it was a little bit of an accident, right?

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It was because I was working with Bill Kristol on various political projects when we were all kind of coming together as never Trumpers, and the weekly standard was, you know, unceremoniously killed at Christmas time for being insufficiently pro-Trump.

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And so Bill said to me, "Hey, can you give these people jobs who are suddenly find themselves without jobs?" And I said, "Well, maybe we could start something new, kind of from the ashes." Mm-hmm.

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And that was The Bulwark. Like, you know, we ported over an intact editorial team almost, and because they had mag-magazine experience and because I had business experience, right?

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I understood how to back end something like that, how to sort of put the infrastructure around it. But yeah, I mean, I was doing...

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It, it like was a little project on the side of the bigger political projects that I was doing to try to educate the public, whether it was, you know, Republicans for the rule of law or Republican voters against Trump eventually.

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Those were the kinds of advocacy things that I had a background in. But over time, I had to start taking The Bulwark more seriously as a journalism prospect and as a business.

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And, you know, more recently, really when we brought Sam Stein on, you know, his background, what he knew how to do was to build a news team. And I think for us, we, we believe that you still need...

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We don't need to be bloated with it, right?

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We're not trying to recreate the failing model, but we did want kind of a seal team of reporters who would make our commentary smarter and more well-informed, where we had our own reporting to rely on and didn't have to rely on other people's reporting.

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And so we have sort of grown into more of a news outlet as, as things have evolved. Yeah. And so, I mean, you guys describe yourself as a mission-based organization first and a business second, right?

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And I think a lot of- Yes... traditional capital J journalism, you know, o-often clings to the mission, right? But you, you don't think of it as a partisan outlet.

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'Cause I think, you know, I think about the free press, another Substack success story, right? Along with The Bulwark, right?

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And from a lot of people within the capital J journalism world, they're like, "This is something different. It's not the same," right?

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And it is a, if it's not a partisan project, it's an ideological project to some degree. And there's, there's so many, like, blurry lines with this, and I feel there's...

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they're even blurrier in what I call, like, the information space, 'cause everyone's competing with everyone.

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That's why there's no space, I don't think, for Mitt Romney, or I still follow Barack Obama, and he begins tweets with, like, "Folks," and I'm like, "No."

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[chuckles] Like, you're not gonna, you're not gonna make it on X with the folks tweet. Like- That's-... that's just not, that's not, that's... We've moved on from that for better or worse.

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But how do you end up, like, thinking about that part of it?

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Well, I mean, I guess the question is, you know, are, if you're asking do you feel like an activist or you do feel like a journalist, I mean- Well, like advocacy...

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what I feel like- 'Cause, I mean, it's, it's a, you're advocating, okay, it used to be never Trump, right? And that was like- Yeah... a small sliver, like, particularly from the right.

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Like, that's now, that's a shrinking tam, so, like, it's, it's [chuckles] gotten dim. Let me, let me try something on for you and see- Yeah... what you think about it.

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But h-here would be our contention, that for journalism to work properly, it needs American liberal democracy.

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Like, you have to sort of have this idea that there is, there is free speech, there are rules, you know, even, like, there's a linear ideological spectrum from center right, center left.

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Like, you need liberal democracy to protect what journalism is.

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And I think part of the problem is, is that-The media, the traditional media, doesn't know what to do as we slip further and further away from a pure liberal democracy.

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They don't know what to do with an administration that is telling them like, "You can't be in the Pentagon and do reporting on... She gotta sign a pledge." Right. They don't know what to...

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Now, they know not to sign the pledge, but I'm not sure they know how to evaluate what Trump's political project is in a clear-eyed way because they have this studied neutrality they feel they, they have to cling to.

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And I think that that prevents them from meeting the moment. And so I think where we end up slipping in there is media that people feel like is being clear-eyed and is meeting the moment. And so I just...

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I think that, like, I don't know how you'd be The Washington Post right now, where you are owned by a guy. You wanna talk about, you wanna talk about the conflict of, of, let's say, our advocacy versus our journalism?

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Yeah. What about the conflict of the Paramounds, right, that have to, that have to- Yeah... secure mergers from Donald Trump, and therefore they censor their reporters, or they give payouts to Donald Trump.

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If you're, if you're Bezos and you have other things you wanna do, you've gotta sidle up to Donald Trump, which is why there's this exodus from the Post. Yeah.

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And I think that finds us sort of standing in the breach saying, "I'm not gonna... Your little faux lines.

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Like, we're gonna tell you exactly where we come from, exactly what we stand for, exactly what we're advocating for, and you're gonna know that everything we say is true and is what we believe, and isn't some-" Yeah...

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sort of positioning for either market share or because we've got some big corporate overlord telling us." And I think that is where you might have said before, "Well, Sarah, if you have this advocacy work, that...

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How's that gonna allow, allow people to trust your journalism work?"

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But the inverse has happened now, where people say, "I understand who you are and what you advocate for, and so I know what you're saying is true about it." Yeah, that makes sense.

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I mean, 'cause, like, neutrality, I don't know if neutrality is possible, particularly in some issues. And I think the, like you're saying, the traditional media has struggled with that, right?

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Like, I mean, they sort of went into the democracy dies in darkness, like, period, and then it was like, "Wait a second. Let's back up the bus. We're not, we're not endorsing anyone. We've got [laughs] we got contracts.

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We've got a cloud contract coming up with the Pentagon." And I think putting a name on it is probably, I mean, what people... You see the trust numbers, and so, like, that's just the market.

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The market has, has already said that they don't trust this neutrality approach. So perhaps there is a different approach that, that makes sense in the marketplace. Makes sense in that.

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Well, and I think where it's going, you know, people talk about personality-driven media, and I think that misses just an ever so slight nuance of where it is going, is people want to feel connected to people so that they trust them, right?

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That we live in a low trust environment right now, where people say all the time, you know... One of the things I do is I do focus groups all the time. I have a podcast called The Focus Group. Mm-hmm.

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And people say, one of the number one things they say is like, "I don't know what to believe. I don't know."

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And that, that is not gonna get better with AI and all of the other things that are cut- and more and more influencers.

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And so what's gonna happen, I think, is that people are gonna look for people that they think are shooting them straight.

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Even if they disagree with many of their positions, they just wanna know who the person is, where they're coming from, and what they're telling them is what they truly believe to be true.

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And that's not just personality-driven media. That is for people trying to put their trust somewhere.

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And I think that is the community that we've built, is a com- is a community of people who, they tell us all the time that they don't agree with everything we say, but they do trust that we are- Yeah...

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straight, shooting them straight in what we believe. Well, I should add, I, I didn't, that my father-in-law, who, who lives in Belgrade, Serbia, is a massive fan of The Bulwark. Oh. So [laughs] you have at least one...

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He's very obsessed with American politics, and Milan is constantly asking me if I read something that JBL wrote, so. [laughs] Oh, so he's, he's into the darkness. He's into the darkest, the darkness of JBL.

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Uh, you know, but that's, you know, he's not, you know. And so look, it... There's, there's a global market. That's all I'm saying. Well, hey, we just went to Canada.

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We went to Toronto to do a show, and we ended up having to add a second show the next day 'cause it sold out so fast. We had no idea that we had such a fan, fandom in Canada, and how... Gah.

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I mean, they were asking questions about the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race that we were like, "I don't know." Yeah. "We're gonna have to look that up." Like, they knew more- Yeah, I think-...

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than we did about American politics. Yeah. Someone, someone said that, that there, there should be, like, a mute button, like, for, like, Australians to, like, never know, like, who some of these people are.

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Like, they shouldn't- Right... they shouldn't know anything about American politics, but we foist it apparently on the rest of the world, we... All of our- We're sorry... psychodramas.

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So yes, apologies to everyone who's not American listening to this.

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I wanna talk about, like, political media and, and where you chart Bulwark on, 'cause before we went on, I was talking about, you know, The Weekly Standard, and I'd, I'd worked in Washington very briefly at my first job, and I retreated very quick.

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I was like, "This is not... This world is not for me." [laughs] It was really a speech writing firm, which can really only exist, I think, in Washington. But the, the week...

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This is sort of, I guess, a little bit of the heyday of The Weekly Standard. It was, like, the nin- late '90s really.

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And, you know, two of The Weekly Standard's, you know, veterans, you know, Bill Kristol was one of them, went on to be one of the founders of The Bulwark.

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And I think what's really interesting at the time was that if you look at, like, The Weekly Standard, there was a lot of talent there that, like, went in very different directions.

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So David Brooks went into, like, institutional media, the most institutional of institutional media, and got a sinecure on The New York Times editorial page.

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And then you have Tucker Carlson, who went in a completely different direction, needless to say.Right.

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And then you have Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg who went on to Dispatch, which is kind of to me, like when I'm like, I want you to chart it out, but I sort of, I chart it out as like kind of similar, but like different lanes exactly.

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I mean, they always, you know, Steve is always saying, "Well, we don't define ourselves as anti-Trump. We're..." You know, and, and that's what they were saying, but I'd like to get your take.

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And then you guys, I don't know if I'm missing anyone else. Chart this out for me about where, and then, uh, within the broader context of where political media have gone.

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Because when I, when I was in Washington, it was The New Republic, it was whatever the in-flight magazine of Air Force One was. Isn't that there was talk of- The Atlantic. Then there was The Weekly Standard, which was...

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And then there was some like wonky stuff, like, you know, The National Interest and whatnot. And then The Hill and Roll Call, which were like where people like found like basement apartments near Capitol Hill.

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Now it's like this, chart it out for me and where you guys fit on it. Yeah. This is, that is an interesting way to think about it, the diaspora of The Weekly Standard.

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I would add sort of the National Review in there because Jonah- Yeah... Goldberg, who was with Steve, was at National Review. So there was sort of two main conservative publications that were- Yeah...

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kind of the high-minded conservative, high-minded but, but mainstream, right? You know, my parents were Republicans. We had Weekly Standards were just strewn all over the house.

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And I, I, when I was coming up, if you had, w- I worked for a place that did internships for young conservatives, and The Weekly Standard and National Review were the big coveted ones. And here's the thing.

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So a lot of the people, there's a number of people on the old mastheads, if you look at them, that have gone full MAGA, just hardcore Tucker Carlson, "I love Russia now." I think he's past MAGA.

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Um- I, I, I could be wrong. Yeah. No, he is. I haven't checked in. You know, he, he...

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I think, listen, I think the, the, the Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene sort of wing of whatever MAGA unleashed is a meaningful part of the party.

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How Tucker got there, I'll tell you from, from people who knew him, when, and, and he reserves his greatest antipathy, 'cause I never worked at The Weekly Standard, but he reserves his- Yeah...

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greatest antipathy for many of his old colleagues there.

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So let's say there's a group of people that just decided that there was room to run to whatever, again, I don't believe that politics is any longer on a political linear spectrum, but to basically outflank Trump to his crazy, right?

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To his, you can call it to his right, but to his crazy.

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And then you've got the people like at The Dispatch who they kinda started just after us, but I think that they believed, and it wasn't a crazy bet, that there was gonna be a post-Trump conservative opportunity to build, that, that there was like, people were gonna need something after Trump- Yeah...

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to say, "Okay. Well, what is a post-Trump conservative-" Yeah. "... conservatism?" The fever dream would pass- What does that look like? And then, and then- That's right...

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we would go back to arguing over marginal tax rates. That, and, and you know what? I, I don't, I don't fault them for that analysis. Yeah. I just think it turned out to be incorrect.

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And so now I do think we have, I would say one of the animating features or the animating differences between the two of us, and I read a lot of their stuff.

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I think they've got some really great writers, but the, the big difference is, is that when it comes to Trump versus Kamala Harris, or Trump or, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene versus normie Democrat, what, we at The Bulwark are gonna tell you, "Vote for Kamala Harris."

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Like, what are you doing? Like, we are not gonna pretend like these are equivalent things.

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And I think that there's, there are people who are positioning, who, who spend time thinking about positioning, which sort of walls off what you can say, right? And we just don't do that, right?

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We are saying exactly what we believe to be true, which is that this version of the Republican Party led by Donald Trump and the people who have come in his wake is far, far more dangerous to America than what a normie Democrat like Kamala Harris was gonna do.

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Is she gonna have a bunch of policy positions that I disagree with? Sure. So do the Republicans now. I mean, that Republican Party is, is, it, it's unrecognizable to people who came up in the conservative movement.

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And so sometimes I think there's like this desire to hold on to something that was, and that makes sense. As conservatives, we like to conserve things. We don't like- Yeah... change.

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But I also think it makes you really bad at the threat assessment to pretend like both sides are equally bad and to, to not be able to say, like, why do people read political journalism?

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It's, or, or listen to these podcasts, right? They're trying to make sense of the world. Yeah.

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And I think you do a disservice to listeners and readers who are trying to make sense of this moment by being like, "Yeah, they're both roughly the same, both bad ideas. Pick your poison."

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I just think that's a really bad and wrong take on the way that, that the world is. So who, who's, who's The Bulwark's reader, right?

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Like, I mean, I think the sort of, probably been tagged as like, you know, TDS and, and, you know, that's the Trump Derangement Syndrome, and again, that was like sort of the oppositional, like anything that Trump does is bad.

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In that case, you can sort of, you know, fall into like amplifying everything, and I think in some ways, you know, Trump sort of benefited from that in that like the world was ending constantly between 2016 a- and 2020.

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It never actually ended. And then, you know, it's like, it's like the boy who cried, cried wolf, exactly. Like, so I'm just wondering like who, who exactly is it for?

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'Cause I, you know, as I said before, like there's, there's a very small tam of Republicans who are, who are opposed to Donald Trump. So it has to be far broader than that. Yeah.

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And I don't think that is who we are trying to- Yeah... appeal to. Now, part of it, though, is there's been an enormous amount of political realignment.

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And so I do think we wereAnd we, we call them Red Dog Democrats, which is kind of how we would think about ourselves right now, even though I think we're on all very in-- At The Bulwark, there, we are various shades of centrist now, and kinda run from center right to center left.

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But again, I just wanna tell you, that linear spectrum, like so many things are now relative to Trump and what you're willing to accommodate.

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Like if you're a conservative by the old definition, you think Congress definitely should be playing a role in constraining.

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It has a constitutional function, and you would be mad that the Congress isn't engaging in its constitutionally mandated function.

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And so, like there is-- I think for us, we maintains a lot of our sort of conservative ways of looking at institutions in the world, but our audience are people who are saying, "I'm trying to make sense of this moment."

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Mm. And I have found these people... And maybe they came to us originally because we are n- we were never Trump, and that was interesting to them.

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But I think now we know from just looking at our audience that our audi- audience is pretty politically diverse, and it ranges from people who are lapsed Republicans who come from the old world and say, "This is unacceptable," and that's a decent chunk of our audience.

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Then there's also a lot of just normie centrists, and then there's sort of progressives or Democrats who say, "Man, I don't know why I can't find Democrats who are as vociferous or who talk as much or who create as good a content as these ex-Republicans."

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And I think that we are-- When I think about our, like, not competition, but, like, where we exist on the spectrum, I think we're much closer to, like, a junior Atlantic that does-- And by junior, I mean

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we s- we understand that there's a big role to play on YouTube. There's a big role to play in podcasting. We're not just gonna do sort of heady commentary and journalism, although we are gonna do those things.

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But we're gonna be able to do multi-platform work where we have kind of a different vibe on YouTube, and then we've got our podcast products, and then we've got our written products. Mm.

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And so that brings in a really big and diverse group of people. And we have 105 million subscribers on YouTube, and they're YouTube people. They're watchers. And then we've got an enormous following for our podcast.

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We got five podcasts on the top 100 news charts at any given time. And, and Tim's and our Bulwark takes, like, Tim's is a top 10 podcast. Bulwark takes is a top 25 podcast. Most of them are in the top 50. And so,

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you know, we just, we have an enormous listening audience, and then we also have an enormous news and newsletter audience.

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And so we add those all together, and we are much bigger and more influential than these, than I think some of the just sort of either Substack or narrow properties that put a paywall on everything, 'cause most of our stuff- Yeah...

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is free. Yeah, I, I wanna get into that, but just, just one quick thing on, on that. Like, but I just wonder is like, 'cause you're mission focused, like, are you trying to change minds? Yes.

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Okay, so what, like- Well, we're trying to do two things. Okay, so we're trying to do a few things.

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One is when you say you're trying to change minds, I, this, this, there's this criticism sometimes it's like, well, you don't, you know, you're not talking to Trumpers, and therefore how can you change their minds?

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Yeah, that's what I mean. But, you know, okay, well, people self-select into media. Okay, yeah. [chuckles] And so, like, people who love Donald Trump don't like to listen to us.

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They wanna go listen to Megyn Kelly and other people who are gonna spoon feed them, "Donald Trump is the greatest," all day long.

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But I do think there are a lot of people who listen to us who are what I would call not Democrats. [chuckles] Like, they don't wanna be Democrats. They don't feel like Democrats.

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An increasing number of those these days, so that's a growing TAM. Yeah, no, I think that that sort of centrism, it's a wide open space and, and I think that n-nobody's occupying it like we are, which is...

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And then part of the reason that we occupy, I think, such a centristy kind of space isn't because we're watered-down centrism.

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It's because JBL is, like, a socially conservative Catholic commie, and Tim is, like, a Jeb Bush, you know, squish, and I'm kind of a, I, I'm, like, kind of closer to Tim on politics, but I also have, like, an operator sensibilities.

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Bill is an old school neo-con. Like, and we argue with each other all the time, and so people come- Yeah... to The Bulwark not because we have said, "Oh, we position ourselves right in this space."

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It's because we are in constant conversation with people that they like to be a part of because we very much have a community, not just an audience, and that community likes to hear us bounce off of each other and argue.

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Yeah, and I think that's an interesting way to, that building a brand now in some ways is it's less about having, like, consistency in that kind of point of view, right?

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Like, that used to be a real, I felt, strong point in the old media world. You wanted to be, like, completely consistent. Like, and now that comes across as phony.

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Like, what are the i- what are the chances that a bunch of different humans all have the exact same point of view?

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That's why I always had a problem with political pro- Like, what are the chances I would agree on every single thing with a political-- Like, that sounds strange.

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Like, it just sounds like you're not thinking about anything. I don't understand how people who are immersed in it day to day would all arrive at the exact same conclusion for every single [chuckles] nuanced issue.

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Doesn't seem practical, to be honest with you. Well, that's what political parties are for. But then you have to have an organizing... Yeah. Yeah.

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We, we have to have an organizing principle, and it has to be broad enough. So talk to me about, like, about the business and, and, and organizing it as a modern media business because it started on Substack.

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You're still on Substack. It is-- There have been a few publications that have, that have grown into beyond, like, individuals and into, you know, regular media companies, right?

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But you're well beyond that, and I, I feel like you've-You guys have a lot of personalities, right?

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And I think a lot of, uh, just about every media company has to figure out where they are on that continuum of institution to individual, and the best are gonna, are, are gonna have elements of both.

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But how do you think about it? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just wanna say on the Substack of it all, we don't think of ourselves as a Substack property, and we didn't start on Substack. Oh, yeah.

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So we started off Substack and then moved to Substack, and f- Substack has been an enormous engine for our growth. However, the thing about Substack is that we don't view it as, like, a place where we live.

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We view it as a distribution tool- Right... for our newsletter business. But we,

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I think, and this is where we are slightly unique 'cause I think the Free Press really did start as a Substack business, and then all of the other people that...

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And, and that's, like, almost the only one that's comparable to us in that they have multi-publishers, because most Substacks are it's Matt Taibbi or it's Nate Silver- Yeah... or it's Matt Yglesias. There are a few.

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You know, it's like these- The Ankler. The Ankler is one. Like, that's, you know, it's obviously, it's a l- it's more niche, but, you know, it's a different niche, but... Did that start on Substack? Yeah. Yeah.

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Well, it started with Richard- Uh- It's more closer to the Free Press. I mean, that started with Common Sense. Bari Weiss went over and started her own Substack. It metastasized. This Ankler is sort of similar.

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R- Richard Rushfield started on Substack and, and, and, and grew from there. Yeah. Okay. But you're saying... Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's, it, to you, it's an ESP with some community elements. That's right.

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I mean, what, what we love about Substack and what it's really allowed us to do is to have people subscribe to something where we give almost everything away for free.

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And what they get for their subscription then is mostly the community.

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Like, there's a few products we gate, the secret podcast with JBL and I, JBL's daily newsletter, which is excellent and drives a tremendous amount of subscriptions. This is Jonathan Last. We're- Jonathan Last. Yeah...

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we've been using, like, shorthand. Tim Miller is the other one. Sorry. J- I should, I should have gone back up. JBL, JBL is what we- See, I'm not doing a good podcast in here. [laughs] Yes. My two...

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The, uh, well, we have a lot of stars, but sort of the two guys that- Yeah...

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I've been with the longest, besides, you know, Bill and Mona, who were kinda with us from the beginning, has been Jonathan Last, who was the managing editor at "The Weekly Standard" and came over and helped build the written part of the publication.

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We also, Adam Kuyper, like, we brought a lot of old people from, from "The Standard" that came our way.

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And then Tim, who's been, like, well, our kinda big breakout star, in part because he went, he really helped, you know, when we turned the cameras on, which is how we think about one of the biggest things that's changed our business was we turned the cameras on.

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We had to comb our hair and not sit in PJs, and that is how we built then the YouTube business, which is now, you know, the advertising side of what we do is roughly equivalent to the subscription side of what we do.

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And so, the, and that comes from the podcasts, events, and, and YouTube, and Tim is just, Tim is a content machine on YouTube.

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But the thing, when you say, like, well, on the continuum of personalities versus institutions, we have a couple things that make us different. One is we're not just hiring people.

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Like, the three of us as well as Bill was wh- like, a lot of us were close. We were close to each other. We did this thing together. Mm. We didn't build it as a business. We built it 'cause we all felt the same way.

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We're driven by the same thing. We're waking up every morning panicked about what Donald Trump was doing to the country, and we wanted to be in it together.

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And then when we added more recently sort of Sam Stein and started building out the news piece of it, we added more stars, and we wanna think of ourselves as a star incubation place, as a place where people can come.

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You know, we just hired Catherine Rampell from "The Washington Post," and, you know, when you leave someplace like "The Washington Post," you think, "Man, am I gonna decrease my visibility and..."

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But if you look, I think "The Washington Post" is on its last legs, and I think we've got a ton of running room and a really devoted audience.

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Like, a lot of people are gonna read her, not just consistently and not just casually, but, like, deeply understanding who she is, developing a parasocial relationship with her, trusting her views or, or working to understand her, and that is the stickiness of that audience is gonna bring more advertising.

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It's gonna bring a new community. But I'm sorry, I do wanna just go back to Substack. The thing that it allows us to do, 'cause I didn't finish this thought, is comments. Like, it, it does provide a platform- Yeah...

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for comments where our readers, and we have really, really smart readers. Where they are highly educated people, they are thoughtful, they wanna bat ideas around. They're not there to yell at you.

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They're there to be like, "Well, what if we thought about it this way?" Or to try on different ideas. They wrestle with things the same way that we do.

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And so giving people the ability to be part of the community is the number one thing that Substack offers us, is that- Yeah... sort of comment section.

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And they've gotten it right with having some kinda community like feel that I f- that I think makes that more likely to happen in some weird way.

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Like, I, for some reason, the Substack environment, it, it is, is more collegial, I believe, than a lot of s- places on the internet.

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Comments, I used to say, you know, and funny, I think publishers gave up on, on comments, like, way too early.

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I understand why they didn't, 'cause I used to say, um, comments are a lot like if you go into, like, a port-a-potty, like, do not look down. Like, you're just like- Yeah...

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as a writer, like, there's nothing good for you down there. But- Yeah... I think Substack has incubated quite a few really good, you know, comment sections that, you know, I think that's, I think that's really good.

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But YouTube is now bigger basically. I mean, you have more, like, reach. It, this isn't a reach game anymore, right?

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But you've got, like, 800,000 some subscribers on, on Substack, and you've got 1.5 million on YouTube.Yeah, we have almost 900,000 on Substack Yeah I think we're at, like, 890.

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And I think we have close to 110,000 paying subscribers there. And then, but on, on YouTube, we also have paying subscribers, and this is... So you can subscribe to our channel on YouTube.

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And this is, for us as we build the business, we think a lot about meeting people where they are on the different platforms.

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'Cause here's the thing we know, that one of the reasons the comments are so much nicer in Substack is because, like, those are newsletter readers. These are readers, and they're avid. They wanna, like- Yeah...

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they like longform, and they wanna delve into the ideas, and they wanna provide feedback and really wrestle with the nuances.

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The YouTube audience is like, into put it into my veins, I wanna watch it, and then I'm gonna tell you if I think you're a jerk for what you just said. Or like, "And I'm gonna sit here and comment as you guys talk.

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Here's what I like, and I think Sarah's right on this. Here's where Sarah sounds like a Republican and I'm mad at her again." And they do that on YouTube and it's, it is a very different type of feedback.

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But we have 1.5 million people who subscribe to us on, on YouTube, and that has become such a big part then.

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Turning on the cameras was, was a real rev- uh, was revelatory for us because not only did it give us an enormous avenue for more content that we're putting out, because we started doing things that were video only that then we've repackaged.

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So Bulwark Takes is essentially we started- Mm-hmm... a podcast feed that's now on one of the biggest m- political podcasts out there. And it's just an aggregation of all the takes that we're, we're doing.

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And so for us, trying to make sure that we meet people on YouTube and we meet people on podcasts who are podcast listeners, and we meet people a- who are newsletter readers with...

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It's not so much different information, but we do package it somewhat differently for... 'Cause the people on YouTube are not the people on Substack. Like, there is not crossover between those groups.

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There's more between the podcast listeners and the newsletter readers. I can see that. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. They're different.

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Talk to me about that, because, I mean, a lot of podcasts have become YouTube and You- t- like, those worlds, I feel like, have, obviously, they've, they've blurred too. I've always...

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It's funny, someone, uh, Megan from your team had asked if this was audio only. And I do audio only because I f- I feel video... First of all, I'm a 52-year-old guy. There is...

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I, I just, I haven't tested it out, but I just don't think there, there's as much of a, a, a market- You're handsome. Thank you. I think video changes things when you turn the camera on.

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I think that it, it does inject a, a performance element to it. And it depends on what kind of product you're doing.

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Like, performance is absolutely, I'm, I'm writing about this tomorrow, like, it has overtaken this information space.

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Like, it used to be substance plus performance is performance, and, you know, substance, no substance, it doesn't really matter.

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I mean, that's why we're listening to comedians talk about Gaza, because they're performers. They're really good at it. And I think we see this a lot in the more fever swamp areas when it comes to politics.

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Nick Fuentes is an amazing performer. He's a really talented performer. And that is winning. So is Candace Owens. Yeah, she's a great performer too. And that stuff is winning right now, and...

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But talk to me about, you know, video and how you think about it being different than, than, than audio podcasts or, or if it's just, you know, a, a matter of turning the cameras on.

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For us, I think it really was turning the cameras on.

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I would say the difference, the biggest difference, and, and maybe it's because we all started as podcasters and then just turned the camera on, so it's not like we learned to do it on YouTube.

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We are, I think, I'm pretty sure, I f- I feel like I am being the exact same with you right now on what is an audio podcast, and the only reason she asked is 'cause I might put on makeup if it's [laughs] if it's, if I know I'm gonna be on video.

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Uh, or I might have brushed my hair a little bit more. Okay. But I don't think I change how much I wave my arms around or how, you know, agitated I get or whatever it is.

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And the reason that you, though, even though people are just listening to us, but you like having, is you wanna see my face. You wanna see how I'm reacting.

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The number of people who listen to us audio-wise, which is good, like, there's a life of the mind there, but oftentimes something will happen that is making us laugh or we're goofy, where people are like, "Oh, I had to go and put the video on just to see what you guys were doing."

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'Cause we basically just let the, both exist the same. So anyway- Yeah... so I don't think that turning the cameras on changed it. Here's what I think did change. We have to do thumbnails for YouTube.

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And- Oh, surprise guy?... thumbnails are a s- I call it surprise guy face... thumbnails are a stupid game where, you know, you basically, they- It's unbecoming... and, and we- It's unseemly... we hate it. It's unseemly.

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Our t- our team takes the most unflattering faces that we're making and turns them into thumbnails- Yeah...

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with titles that are true to the substance, but are m- more clickbait-y than, than the, the s- the substance- Yeah, I call it su-... is much more nuanced... I call it surprise guy face.

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It's the, you know, I, I don't even- It's the Mr. Beasting- Yeah... of everything, and it's the exclamation points. And I gotta tell you, it makes people with a more nuanced editorial sensibility want to- Okay, yeah.

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I'm glad you agreed with me [laughs]... just lose their minds. It drives me bananas.

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But it's also, like, when you say meet people where they are on the platform, you're basically like, you've gotta let them turn you into these caricatures on the thumbnails so people listen to the more nuanced message that you're, that you're doing.

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Like- Yeah, you gotta, you gotta package, you gotta market. We're all, we're all in this.

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And look, there's a lot of people who are very good at packaging and marketing and performance who I think traditional media has really suffered because they have not been good at that packaging a- part and at the performance part.

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Because there are a lot of choices out there in the information marketplace. There are a lot of choices, and the performers are winning more often than not.

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And I do think, look, I think when people come to us, and we, we do a lot of live shows. We just-We just got back from selling out a live show in New York. And so- Mm-hmm...

255
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people, comments, it's Saturday night, it's a night out. Like, there's no doubt Tim JBL and I, who, like, we are performing those shows. It's just the podcast, but we are making fun of each other, we are telling jokes.

256
00:42:51.268 --> 00:43:00.247
I mean, I just, I do... And I think this is one of the difficulties that Democrats maybe have a little bit, which is how to have that light touch, right? How to, how to make it...

257
00:43:00.268 --> 00:43:12.788
Like, we spent two hours in a, in a big room, and everybody's laughing the whole time, even though much of what we're talking about is how terrible things are, how bleak things are. But if you...

258
00:43:12.888 --> 00:43:25.668
Nobody can, like, sustain, your nervous systems cannot sustain doing that stuff without laughing sometimes [laughs] and, like, being in fellowship and feeling the, the- Yeah... the community and the, those vibes.

259
00:43:25.868 --> 00:43:30.588
That's really important. Well, it's the absurdity of it all, too. I mean, it's like- Sure... if you look at, like... And some of this, like, cuts both ways.

260
00:43:30.628 --> 00:43:38.228
Like, I think about, like, the Portland protests, and, you know, they seem like they've broken out a little bit by having these inflatable animal outfits.

261
00:43:38.248 --> 00:43:49.088
There was a, there was a frog, I guess, who became at least briefly famous, because everything drops off, like, immediately. And, you know, look, any sort of authoritarian hates being made fun of, right?

262
00:43:49.188 --> 00:44:01.028
And just the ludicrousness of the situation, I think it ends up like, hey, that actually works better than the, like, you know, black balaclavas. [laughs] 'Cause, you know, you gotta, you gotta stand out.

263
00:44:01.068 --> 00:44:11.068
So you're doing, so you're doing, you've got... Break down the business. You've got subscriptions, which is rooted mostly in Substack, but not entirely, right? Yeah, so you can subscribe. And then you have an... Yeah.

264
00:44:11.128 --> 00:44:21.578
So you subscribe on Substack, but you can also, let's say you're just a podcast person. You can subscribe to just the podcast feeds on iTunes. Like, there's a subscription service there. Yeah.

265
00:44:21.608 --> 00:44:29.678
And on YouTube, you can [laughs] you can subscribe, and then you also get the stuff that's, that's paywalled, which again, is not a ton of things. But oh, the [laughs]...

266
00:44:29.688 --> 00:44:39.048
And man, people, when they hit the paywall, we give away so much stuff for free, but when they hit a paywall on our feed, they are so mad [laughs] and- Yeah... we're like, "Well-" Gotta wear them down.

267
00:44:39.828 --> 00:44:48.198
So, so then the, but the only thing you get for that subscription besides the paywalled stuff is, like, little emojis of our faces, which I can't imagine why anybody would want. Yeah.

268
00:44:48.208 --> 00:44:50.948
But that is one of the perks- We can try that... that you get.

269
00:44:51.068 --> 00:45:02.228
And, and so, so there are subscriptions across everything, and we are really pushing harder for more people to do the subscriptions ac- across, like, wherever they live.

270
00:45:02.268 --> 00:45:09.878
Like, trying to get a, a, a YouTube person to come over and be the subscriber on Substack. We've been trying that, but it's actually much...

271
00:45:09.928 --> 00:45:19.088
We just think it's better and easier for them to be like, "No, subscribe on this place. You live on YouTube, you're a YouTube person. There's an opportunity to subscribe here." Yeah.

272
00:45:19.768 --> 00:45:26.648
Okay, and then you have a, a live events business. We have a live events business. You have an advertising and a live events business. That's right.

273
00:45:26.708 --> 00:45:40.738
Although the advertising is a much, much bigger part of the business than live events is when it comes to- Yeah... actual profit. But we are a profitable business. You know, we doubled ourselves year over year last year.

274
00:45:40.758 --> 00:45:48.708
I think we're gonna double ourselves again next year in terms of just overall revenue. But it is- And the advertising- Yeah... and, and let me just jump in.

275
00:45:48.748 --> 00:46:01.278
The, the advertising is not like the corporate social responsibil- like, it's not the Washington, DC advertising. Like, regulate us, but in a way that, like, is better, beneficial- No... for us. No, no, no. Not that we,

276
00:46:02.248 --> 00:46:07.917
not that- It's a great area, by the way. It's, it's great to have advertising in. Yeah, I was gonna say, not that, not that we necessarily wouldn't, depends on who the advertiser- Yeah... is.

277
00:46:07.928 --> 00:46:16.528
But our advertisers are much more... There's, there's a podcast group, like, like, it's the Bolin Branch, it's the OneSkin. Right.

278
00:46:16.848 --> 00:46:28.088
It's gummies, like the, the, the weed gummies, which we've got, like, three different ones. Oh, weed gummies, really? It's the little kits for cats or for your grooming. Like, the, it's that kind of stuff.

279
00:46:28.348 --> 00:46:41.228
I will say this. I was talking to Dylan Byers, and he was very surprised to hear me say that I thought one of our big growth areas was gonna be on advertising, that I think we've been under-leveraged on advertising.

280
00:46:41.348 --> 00:46:48.508
And even though advertising is now a big part of our business, but, like, you know how podcast and YouTube advertising is. It can be a little Wild Westy.

281
00:46:48.568 --> 00:47:03.108
It can be up and down based on time of year and different, what's going on in the political cycles. And so, you know, people get nervous about it as a mainstay of- Mm-hmm... your, your profit or your revenue.

282
00:47:03.768 --> 00:47:19.277
But as sort of the mainstream media, legacy media, whatever you wanna call it, cable news, as those things continue to contract, people are looking for eyeballs. They wanna know where people are with income. Yeah.

283
00:47:19.277 --> 00:47:28.248
They're like, "Who are our s- people who have high income, who have diverse political interests, who are swingier type people?" And I don't know, that's our audience.

284
00:47:28.308 --> 00:47:44.688
And so, like, for the idea that there's a, there's a conventional wisdom that people in politics can't attract more sort of blue chip type advertisers because it's political podcasting and so it's always a little dicey, I, I just think that's gonna start to fall apart.

285
00:47:44.828 --> 00:47:49.518
I think more and more we've got people who are just like, "Yeah."

286
00:47:49.548 --> 00:47:59.188
Like, especially, and there's a rise of independent businesses going along with independent media that are looking for places where they can find new customers.

287
00:47:59.298 --> 00:48:11.908
And so I just think there's a lot of room for growth on the advertising side for us. Yeah. And is that, is that primarily audio or is that through, like, YouTube? So it's, uh, it's all of it.

288
00:48:11.968 --> 00:48:17.798
It's YouTube, it's audio, it is, I think, you know, right now... Here's the thing.

289
00:48:18.428 --> 00:48:28.568
I, from the beginning, we've never allowed ads on, like, the website or anything, 'cause I don't know, if you go to one of these places, you can't read their articles. Like, you get pop-ups, and they're a nightmare.

290
00:48:28.908 --> 00:48:43.728
And so we don't want anything that interferes with the user's experience, but, like, you do have to do some advertising. And so I think for us, we've been very gently ramping up our advertising.

291
00:48:43.808 --> 00:48:53.264
We'd like to push peopleTo subscribe. And so, like, one of the main benefits of subscribing is you don't have to listen to the commercials, either on YouTube or on Substack.

292
00:48:53.664 --> 00:49:01.464
But if you don't wanna subscribe, you're gonna listen to the commercials and that is... Yeah, that's where we're gonna push. But it's, it's across the board. There's a lot of...

293
00:49:01.844 --> 00:49:15.924
And, and the other thing is, is there's static ads and there's host read ads. And sort of the more your hosts become the trusted messengers for people, the more valuable the host read ads become. Yeah.

294
00:49:15.984 --> 00:49:29.104
Yeah, I'm gonna be doing a host read ad before this, so I agree 100%. [laughs] Yeah. Th- so l- talk to me about the events. I mean, are those mostly, like, brand-building or the, is that, like, a real revenue driver?

295
00:49:29.184 --> 00:49:36.524
There's obviously a, a cap to that thing. I mean, I assume you don't wanna be on, on tour nonstop doing every college campus.

296
00:49:37.183 --> 00:49:49.344
[laughs] Yeah, this is actually a real point of tension as we think about how many events to do. Because right now they're not an enormous revenue stream, although we are working to build up our merchandise.

297
00:49:49.564 --> 00:49:53.464
There's, I think we, that's a place we kinda let lag, was the merch.

298
00:49:53.504 --> 00:50:01.664
And of course, when you've got a really sticky, passionate audience like we do, they want merch, and they want good merch, and we want merch that we can- Yeah... wear all around.

299
00:50:01.714 --> 00:50:11.984
And so we are working to really improve the merchandise side, 'cause that's a big piece of how you make the events profitable, is that you sell merchandise for people who wanna buy it on-site while they're at a show.

300
00:50:12.504 --> 00:50:20.144
Look, I, but it's a tough, events are a tough business if you're not gonna do it at scale. Because the, when we come, when we go out on the road,

301
00:50:21.064 --> 00:50:31.714
it means it interrupts our podcasting schedule, it, it, our content generation schedule- Yeah... JBL's writing schedule. Like, we all have lots and lots of work that we have to do to put out content. Yeah.

302
00:50:31.724 --> 00:50:41.584
And so- If you join the circus, it's like a, it's a full-time thing joining the circus. It- It's not like, "Oh, I'm gonna like, sometimes I'm like a clown, so..." Like, you're in the circus. Like [laughs] That's right.

303
00:50:41.664 --> 00:50:50.744
I was... So right now, though, we do events primar- I wouldn't even call them a loss leader. Like, we do them 'cause we love to meet our audience. We love to meet our community.

304
00:50:50.864 --> 00:51:03.514
It is so fun for us to get out there and do it. Uh, the first time I walked on stage and 1,000 people were, like, on their feet cheering, I was like, "What has happened for us? What is this world?" But this is- Yeah...

305
00:51:03.524 --> 00:51:12.164
this is the, the community aspect of it and us getting to feel, you know, like we can be in person with them, like we can be in community with them. Like, we love that part of it.

306
00:51:12.204 --> 00:51:20.484
And so it's, it is less for us about the business of it and more about the opportunity to be with people, just 'cause it feels really nice for everybody.

307
00:51:20.964 --> 00:51:32.744
But we are trying to figure out how, if we're gonna do it, how we make it worth it from a revenue perspective. Right. And you don't wanna do, I don't think the brand, it makes sense to do, like, typical, like, events.

308
00:51:32.824 --> 00:51:40.324
Like, I mean, you're not, I g- I think what I was getting at is, like, you don't get at the public affairs part of, of, of DC media.

309
00:51:40.504 --> 00:51:52.284
Like, the Axios and the Politico and the view from the top with the guy from Exxon, that, that part. Again, great business. Those are great businesses. That is not how, that is not our business.

310
00:51:52.684 --> 00:52:03.784
And it doesn't mean we couldn't be, but, like, again, for us, we're just, we don't wanna make trade-offs and, about what we're gonna say, ever.

311
00:52:04.024 --> 00:52:20.384
That comes from if we take investors or if somebody was trying to buy us or, you know, or with advertisers. Like, we wanna be control and, like, the ability to be our authentic selves are the most important things to us.

312
00:52:20.433 --> 00:52:20.433
Mm-hmm.

313
00:52:20.433 --> 00:52:32.624
And so if I was having to field calls from advertisers being like, "Well, you guys said this, you know, right after our ad," I'd be like, "Okay, well, this isn't gonna work out," 'cause we're [laughs] gonna say whatever it is we wanna say.

314
00:52:32.634 --> 00:52:40.544
And so, you know, I think that there are, like, Exxon's probably not gonna be one of our sponsors, although give me a call. We'll talk about it. Yeah, never mind. But probably not.

315
00:52:40.784 --> 00:52:51.724
And I think that we just wanna find people who... I think there's plenty of advertising that is, if not mission-aligned, is audience-aligned with us. Yeah.

316
00:52:52.064 --> 00:53:02.044
I joke with Puck that, uh, their ads are, like, almost the only place I see Gulf of America used be- they, they regularly. [laughs] You know, hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

317
00:53:02.123 --> 00:53:11.524
I, I, I, I don't hate the, hate the player. What do you think about the Free Press s- exit? I think it's an amazing comp for us as a- [laughs] Yeah, that's going in there. Yeah.

318
00:53:11.614 --> 00:53:15.604
[laughs] Just like Business Insider was in everyone's comp, like, for a minute, but- Yeah.

319
00:53:15.764 --> 00:53:24.534
I mean, oh, okay, so if, if, if they are at their, uh, you know, if they're at the revenue that they say they are, that's a comp, that's a, that's a revenue number- Is-...

320
00:53:24.534 --> 00:53:29.294
that, that's comparable to us, and I say- Yeah, 10X revenue, for sure... great. Great. We're worth- Yeah, most deals are- We're worth 150 million...

321
00:53:29.364 --> 00:53:36.084
most media deals are definitely, are definitely done on revenue, and they're definitely done at a 10X. [laughs] No, what do you think about it?

322
00:53:36.104 --> 00:53:41.264
What I, I mean, like, you know, obviously Barry Weiss did an amazing job, uh, building that brand.

323
00:53:41.484 --> 00:53:51.504
You know, look, there's a lot of people in the capital J journalism world who are, who are, who are coming for her, and there's gonna be a steady stream, steady stream of stories about how she lacks the expertise, et cetera.

324
00:53:51.584 --> 00:54:03.144
You can see it coming. It's gonna, it's gonna happen. But it goes to the point that you're saying. You know, it was purchased by, you know, Paramount after David Ellison happened to, to buy it.

325
00:54:03.184 --> 00:54:12.944
And by the way, you know, previous to that, they, they, they paid Trump, and there's a desire to, to shift CBS News in a different direction.

326
00:54:13.284 --> 00:54:25.584
Now, I think that the, the world of media and information, like, it's, it's far broader than like network news. So I think that's a challenged model to begin with, so why not try something new? Yeah.

327
00:54:25.644 --> 00:54:35.724
I mean, I have a bunch of different thoughts about this. So one is, I gotta say, I find the Kremlinology around Barry, like, "Barry, day three at CBS," I'm like, "Oh, guys, give it a rest."

328
00:54:35.924 --> 00:54:39.054
[laughs] Like, are we that interested? Oh, Dylan, Dylan's on that. They, they- I know he is...

329
00:54:39.064 --> 00:54:49.404
Puck loves a main character, and he's like, okay, I, I, he was going after Zaslav forever, so, like, yes, Barry's gonna be a main character, for sure. Yeah. I think, I think we can probably all settle down with that.

330
00:54:49.444 --> 00:54:54.684
I'm not sure we have to overthink this. Look, I, I am, I'm fascinated... I, well, there's a couple things.

331
00:54:55.024 --> 00:55:09.996
W- s- actually, I wanna say up front that if I, if I have one negative thing to say about it-It is that, you know, if you're gonna, like, she took a, got a big bag of money, great for her, I guess, but, like, you gotta know why you got that...

332
00:55:10.016 --> 00:55:17.736
Like, she's not-- The, the Free Press isn't worth $150 million. Like, I know. [laughs] I'm in this space. Oh, God. So what are they buying? You're, you're blowing it. [laughs] I said, there goes the comp.

333
00:55:17.816 --> 00:55:26.326
I know, I know, I know. I know. Well, we are worth 150 million. Okay, yeah, yeah. Sure. But, but, but, like, we know, we all know what, what they're, what were they buying?

334
00:55:26.436 --> 00:55:35.986
They were buying, they're buying the Free Press 'cause the Free Press is so great. They're buying Bari for cover with Trump, right? To show that they are- Yeah...

335
00:55:36.026 --> 00:55:40.416
putting somebody more friendly to Trump's interest, and this is, to me, a much bigger story.

336
00:55:40.496 --> 00:55:51.316
I think the pro- we're missing the, the forest for the Bari Weiss here, which is that Trump is giving his friends ax- They're, oh, they get to buy TikTok.

337
00:55:52.076 --> 00:55:59.976
Uh, Trump's, you know, Ellison's not just buying CBS and putting Bari Weiss in charge. That's a, he's trying to buy Warner Brothers too- Mm-hmm... and CNN.

338
00:56:00.336 --> 00:56:07.356
And Elon Musk owns X, and Mark Zuckerberg can't wait to s- is loving to sucking up to Trump and paying him off, and so did YouTube.

339
00:56:07.616 --> 00:56:23.416
Like, the extent to which there is a full-scale takeover of the media by people who are friendly to Trump is, I think, a deeply underreported story because everybody's focused on, like, the Bari of it all, which I think is a mistake.

340
00:56:23.996 --> 00:56:28.756
I, I just 'cause I think this is- Yeah, it's regime media. I call it regime media. Like, it's, it's a sector.

341
00:56:28.876 --> 00:56:43.056
It's- It's a, you know, it's, there's, there's regime media, and it's a lane, and it will operate in this greater information space with resistance media and with independent media and with legacy media. Yeah.

342
00:56:43.196 --> 00:56:50.076
I just, uh, th-one of the things, though, and then that's just curious to me, I guess I don't understand.

343
00:56:50.116 --> 00:57:01.716
I could see how it would be, maybe, maybe it's still just cool enough to be able to go and run CBS, and you're like, "This is really cool." And, and you get a huge, you know, you get a huge paycheck, so fine.

344
00:57:02.496 --> 00:57:08.336
But, like, I don't wanna go to one of the places that I think is gonna be dead in 10 years.

345
00:57:08.596 --> 00:57:20.496
[laughs] Like, I don't think, I don't think the idea that, that installing people who understand the new independent media environment- Yeah... into legacy media is the solution for them.

346
00:57:20.886 --> 00:57:29.296
And so, like, if, if you asked me, like, and, and I did, Dylan Byers was really pushing me on, like, "But what about your exit?" You know? What, what do you...

347
00:57:29.676 --> 00:57:39.996
And I think this is, like, people who are really kind of investor-brained or, you know, always think about the end game of the sale as their first thing, like, that isn't what I think about.

348
00:57:40.096 --> 00:57:42.996
I think about, how do I have influence, and how do I maintain control?

349
00:57:43.316 --> 00:57:55.026
And by control, I mean that The Bulwark is owned by its employees, and therefore, we control our own destiny, our own ability to inno-innovate, our own ability to take in this moment.

350
00:57:55.556 --> 00:58:03.936
Like, what if Sub Stack allowed for a big disaggregation of media? Everything broke apart. Stars all went all over the place to Sub Stack.

351
00:58:03.956 --> 00:58:13.696
But eventually, subscription fatigue and just the sheer volume in the market is gonna lead to, just like streaming did, you know? There was a big disaggregation- Yeah... and then people started bundling.

352
00:58:14.396 --> 00:58:26.696
So, like, for me, much less interesting is the idea of being sort of consumed by a member of legacy media, even if the payday's big and much more interesting, is how do you build the new thing?

353
00:58:27.336 --> 00:58:34.236
How do you build what is gonna be the next generation of media? I, I wanna, I wanna be at the forefront of that.

354
00:58:34.316 --> 00:58:44.416
I wanna be at the tip of the spear of seeing as the cracks get bigger and bigger in media, like, how do you build something good in the space where everything's crumbled?

355
00:58:44.856 --> 00:58:55.196
And, and I think, to me, that's a much more interesting question about what happens next than, like, Bari going to CBS. I find that to be an odd thing to do. Yeah.

356
00:58:55.236 --> 00:59:05.806
Save the money, like, o-other than the incentives that are there, but you could not, just for myself, there's not a... You couldn't get one of the, the MAGA billionaires.

357
00:59:05.876 --> 00:59:13.836
Like, I would not take their [laughs] money to provide cover, you know? But whatever. Yeah. I appreciate the comp. I mean, uh, just on that, and then I'll, uh, we'll wrap it up.

358
00:59:13.916 --> 00:59:24.726
It's like, it, it does a l- It reminds me a little bit of Marissa Mayer being brought into Yahoo, that there's, there's no, like, it was Yahoo. Like, that was, you know, that, that, it wasn't gonna be turned around.

359
00:59:24.776 --> 00:59:34.916
It wasn't gonna compete with Google. And now, there are so many different, there's so many different places to get information that I'm not sure the network news model makes sense, no matter who runs it.

360
00:59:34.956 --> 00:59:45.076
But anyway, thank you so much, Sarah. This was really fun. Would love to, love to revisit this as, as you build the next thing. Yeah. That's great. I love talking about the Bulwark business.

361
00:59:45.116 --> 01:00:00.836
I have to talk about politics too much, and I don't get to talk about- Yeah... The Bulwark's business enough, and it is my favorite thing to talk about, so thanks for having me. [outro music]