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Eh-eh Mitch McConnell can just talk about this. He c-- he doesn't have to talk about, like, defending a ruling that s- that if he believed the polls, seventy percent of the country [chuckles] disagrees with.
I would rather talk about the process if I was on the other side of that. So your point is- Yeah... right. They didn't say, "Well, this is such a good outcome and- Yeah...
Samuel Alito's reasoning is good for the following eight reasons." A lot of rushing to get on elevators. I found his reasoning compelling.
I think most of the Republicans did too, but you're right that they didn't choose to focus on that. Give me the case that institutions are gonna, like, come through this intact.
[on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey.
This week, I'm joined by Steve Hayes. Steve, as a joke, is my third favorite Republican after my parents. Hi, Mom and Dad. And we're back now with our panel for their winners and losers of the week. Steve.
So my winner is- It's, it's- In a country founded on freedom of religion, it's not a good idea to ban a religion- It's a little, it's a little more complex than that... even with asterisks. No.
Republicans can't just cast aside their principles. Then what's the answer? Uh, and no one- Has been catastrophic, I would say, for the last week. When you listen to President Biden, they are in effect saying- Yeah.
And Steve is a co-founder and is the CEO of The Dispatch. If you don't know The Dispatch, it is the second most popular politics newsletter on Substack.
Even though you hear about Glenn Greenwald nonstop and you hear about Matt Taibbi and various others, this is actually more popular. Two longtime Fox News contributors have quit. Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg.
Like, we both just left Fox News. Do you feel that Fox News contributed to the violence that erupted on January sixth?
People like Sean Hannity gave people the impression that Trump had won an election he had lost, and it contributed to the environment on January sixth, no question about it. And it is a conservative, uh, publication.
Steve has written for various conservative, um, outlets. Uh, one of his partners, Jonah Goldberg, uh, has been at, was at the National Review for a long time.
And they started this publication and moved it over to Substack, and now they are leaving Substack. They have thirty thousand paying subscribers.
But Steve and I talk about why The Dispatch has outgrown Substack, and we also get into a little bit about how they can carve out a space in this very fraught era where they wanna be sort of center right.
Now everyone's getting pulled into the extremes, uh, and they want to stay a little bit towards the center, but more towards the right.
And so that's difficult to pull off these days, and their success kind of points to the fact that there might be a market really for this kind of news and analysis.
So hope you enjoy the conversation, and always wanna hear your feedback. My email is bmorrissey@gmail.com. Full circle, full circle.
So I was joking for-before, uh, the podcast, uh, that Steve is, other than my parents, my favorite Republican to talk to, and he was saying [chuckles] he's not a Republican. I don't even know.
I re-identifi-- I'm not a Republican. [laughs] I mean, I'm still conservative, libertarian, you know. So I don't- Okay... figure out how to describe myself, but- Yeah.
These are, these are- It doesn't, it doesn't involve Republican, [chuckles] that's for sure. These are fraught times.
But let's start with the news because I think you are, uh, The Dispatch, uh, for those who do not know it, it is a conservative, uh, publication, um, and it is a shining example of success on Substack where, to be fair, I, I also publish the Rebooting, but you're leaving Substack.
Yeah. We, we are leaving Substack. Um, we've, you know, we had this, have had this phenomenal relationship with, with the Substack founders.
Our first meeting with them, I mean, basically the relationship was born because I knew they were doing newsletters, and when we launched, we wanted to be pushed content first, so newsletters and podcasts, and the website was the, the third most important part of what we were gonna be offering.
So I just called them kind of out of the blue and said, "Hey, I know you guys are smart about newsletters. Can you help us get smart about newsletters?"
And started this conversation, uh, with both Hamus, Hamish and, and Chris, Chris Best primarily, also Jay later, and, and they were great.
We justYou know, sort of shot the breeze, compared notes, and then a couple weeks later, after we had walked them through what we wanted to build as a company,
they said, "Hey, would, would you guys be interested in sort of being our guinea pig on Substack building a company?"
And, you know, we were in the process of just revving up to, to hire a CTO and looking at hiring developers, and we were committed to, to leading with pod- with, with podcasts and newsletters.
So we said, "Yeah, that'd be great." And our first actual meeting with them, as I recall, was our three founders and their three founders, and they were the only employees at each of the two companies.
[chuckles] Um, so we... It was great. We had this sort of handshake partnership.
They built us out, and I think the benefit for them was they could see what the pain points and needs were of a, a, a group that wanted to, to really grow on Substack.
And for us, it was, uh, saving a bunch of money [chuckles] that we would've spent on, on hiring, and, uh, and really building and growing and going sort of all in on, on newsletters. Okay.
So it was an incredibly beneficial partnership for a couple years. Okay. But why, then why leave? This sounds amazing. Yeah. And, and it has been amazing. Um, we, you know, we, we started looking... Where are we now?
We're in early May. A year and a half ago almost, we decided that we were gonna l- just look around, do our due diligence.
We were growing pretty fast, um, a lot faster than we had expected to grow, and, ah, you know, we had given them early in the process sort of, "Hey, this is what we wanna, this is what we wanna do, this is how we wanna build, these are the analytics we need,
these are the other tools we think we need to grow." And to their great credit, they, they built and, and really kept up.
Um, yeah, I think there was, there's a certain point w- when they were seeing the success that they were having building out by focusing on individual content creators- Mm-hmm...
they looked around and said, "Well, we need to do more of this."
And, and there came a point, I think, when their growth, which was just, you know, monumental, and what they were doing to get that growth didn't work for us as much as it had in the past.
So we, we wanted to, to sort of accelerate our, you know, our presence in search. Uh, we wanted sort of finer analytics than they were able to provide at the time. Um, I think their analytics are pretty good.
They've really ramped that up in, in the past couple of years. Um, and I have no doubt that as they continue that build-out, it's gonna sort of be best in class when they've got it all figured out.
But we wanna do some specific things with respect to, to how we're looking at our audience and how we're looking at growing our audience.
We had also built out sort of a separate marketing function, um, on MailChimp and other places where we would do our marketing and growth sends that way and, and kinda keep- Mm-hmm...
the editorial on, on Substack, and we thought it would be easier to consolidate, consolidate that work as well, so. Okay.
So you're gonna, you're gonna be basically building out, like, a normal stack, like a WordPress site- Correct... MailChimp, et cetera. Yep, yep. Yeah. It's not MailChimp, but, but yeah. Okay. But basically.
But, like, you're gonna use, like, a regular ESP? Yep. Yep. Okay. Um, and it wasn't purely financially driven, it sounds like you're saying? No. I mean, because, because the fees are... You...
I mean, to your credit, we'll, we'll, we'll get to, you know, 'cause you- you're so admirably transparent. That's why you're my, um, third favorite Republican.
[laughs] This is what you do to get people to divulge- Um, mom- To over-divulge... mom and dad, and then Steve. That's, that's my Republican rankings.
[laughs] Um, so you're gonna be completely transparent about how many subscribers- Of course. Of course... you have because you have such a successful business- [laughs]... and it's very admirable.
Um, but those fees are very high, but it's not just the fees. No, I mean, like, look, if, if we go back to that, the date of that handshake partnership, we are...
We believe we are way, way ahead, despite paying their fees. Um, and they didn't discount it for us. Um, we paid the, we paid the full, the full fee the whole time.
No, I mean, we didn't, we didn't have to, to do this, and they, they built us, I think, a fantastic system that allowed us to, to have sort of a core set of newsletters.
The website we sort of used as community and a place to, to keep everything together. We have all these, you know, 10 newsletters now that we send out on a regular basis and could monetize by doing...
I mean, you know how, how easy- Yeah... Substack is. You don't have to do anything. Yeah. And that's, that was just a huge advantage for us, particularly because
I was, you know, we had sort of a really smart part-time COO, but I was doing a lot of the business side stuff, and I don't know what I'm doing. So it was really helpful to then have them build us out. Yeah.
So you're in what, is it three years in with The Dispatch now? We launched in October of, uh, 2019, so not quite. Okay, not quite. We're about two and a half, yeah. Okay.
So n- now with the transparency, like, so- [laughs] First of all, like, actually, no, let, let's go, like, what you... What was the idea that g- caused you to launch?
I mean, we've discussed this before, but for those who didn't hear my first podcast with you.
Yeah, I mean, uh, the, the ba- we were trying to basically solve for, for the trust problem, as so many people are in, in journalism.
And in, in our world, we saw that there was this huge gap on the center right for a, a publication that didn't sort of give, try to give the audience everything it thought the audience needed.
It didn't do the kind of outrage bait stuff to, to, to get clicks to, to monetize eyeballs. We never wanted to do that. Mm-hmm.
We wanted to, to be s- be fact-based, be serious, to combine kind of the o- old school rule, rules of how to do journalism with just a different approach to the world than, than I believe most journalists have.
I think most journalists come from the center left, and we thought we could provide value by, by bringing to a lot of the same questions that you have when you cover politics, policy, and culture, but from the center right.
Um, so that's, that's what we've tried to do, and, and it's, you know, it's very reporting heavy. We've got some of the best, uh, commentary and analysis writersIn the country, in my view.
And if you read what they do, it's also very fact heavy. I mean, certain things they have opinions and they- Mm-hmm... they share them. They're not shy about it.
But we try to be respectful of the people that we're disagreeing with, um, and we, you know, read a Jonah Goldberg column. I've known the guy for twenty-five years.
I talk to him five times a day, and I learn something in every one of the things that he writes- Yeah... because he's that good. So that's, that's what we're trying to do. That's the gap we were trying to fill. Yeah.
And, um, explain why podcasts and, like, newsletters, because, like, I, I've been trying to, like, make this... Like, I, I see the, I see a connective tissue between the two of them.
Um, but you've written for magazines, you- you're on TV and everything like this. Yeah. Explain the dynamics that, that make podcasts and newsletters different than other forms of media, or maybe they- Yeah...
they don't. I mean, I, I, I think they are, and I think it's not... Like, I... You look at the success that, that Substack has had, and I think it's not an accident. I mean, do...
I do buy the argument that you hear from people who are sort of proselytizers for podcasts and newsletters, that it is a more intimate form of communication. It's a more intimate...
They're, they're more intimate m- media, and I think people like that. You know, when we talk to our newsletter writers, w- we tell them, "Don't...
You don't even think about writing, like, an, an AP style or, you know, like a New York Times article." Yeah. "Write it like you're writing a newsletter."
You know, w- we have all these different ways of, of, of thinking about it. I tell some...
tell, tell people to, to think that they're just getting back in touch with a, a friend from college who has been in the Peace Corps for two years, and isn't really following the day-to-day, but is really smart and wants to keep up with things.
So write like you're writing them a, an email.
Provide a lot of contextual information, pro- provide a lot of background, and write it in a, you know, a less formal and, I would say, stilted way than you'd get in The New York Time.
Um, so we've, we've done that kind of from the beginning, and certainly if you look at the way people respond to the newsletters and the way that our community engages, that's how they see us, right?
They see us as their friends who are sending them emails. Yeah. And we, we think there's huge power in building a community around that.
Um, again, not, not a novel idea to, to The Dispatch, but, um, that really seems to be working. Yeah.
It's, it's just, like, having written for magazines and for sites and stuff like this, the, the level of feedback that you get, I feel like, at least for me personally, with newsletters is just...
It's qualitatively and quantitatively different. Um- Yes... and for whatever reason, there is that personal connection and it leads to at least a higher engagement media. Like, I think a lot of- Agreed...
media these days is just, it's low engagement, you know? And I think... And I do think that that is part of the outrage, because, like, it's an easy... It's a growth hack to engagement. [chuckles] Yeah.
Well, look, i- i- if you, if, if all you care about is monetizing the click, by definition, low engagement is more efficient, right? Yeah. I mean, that's what actually what you want.
If it's just the click, that's what you want. I think most people have gotten s- smart about it [chuckles] and decided that that's not what they want.
But this, this is a way to, to, to start with engagement, start with community, and then provide that kind of, you know... We think of it as really straightforward reporting, straightforward information. The kind of...
I mean, I don't, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but, like, you know, I mean, The New York Times spends a lot of time congratulating itself as, as producing all the news that's fit to print.
Um, you know, claims to be this sort of objective outlet. I don't think The New York Times is an objective outlet. I think they have some of the very best reporters in the world working for The New York Times.
Um, people I admire and people who I, I would love to be in a different life.
But they're mixed on the front page of The New York Times with people who are more ideological than I am, and I'm running an [chuckles] ideological company.
Um, so I think pe- you know, our, our audience certainly reads The New York Times with this kind of deep skepticism about where it's coming from, and we tell people where we're coming from.
"Hey, this is where we're coming from." Yeah. Now, that doesn't mean that we're pounding people over the head with ideology, and we said...
You know, we, we did this launch manifesto back on the first day we, we posted anything, and one of the things we really emphasized was, we wanna challenge your assumptions.
So if you think you're coming here to have your views validated or because you wanna nod along and get angry about the stuff that you're reading, don't come here.
Like, we're not for you 'cause that's not what we're doing. We wanna challenge your assumptions.
We challenge our own assumptions all the time, and we're gonna report this stuff out, and if it comes out that through our, our reporting we come to a conclusion that's different than what we th- [chuckles] thought we believed at the beginning of the piece, well, great.
That's better for us, it's better for you, it's better for everybody.
So ex- give me an example of that, because, I mean, you're i- in- in the politics world and, and particularly, um, on the right side of the spectrum, you know, you launched at a time when obviously Trump was, was sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
He still is. Um, and, uh, wait till he gets back on Twitter. Uh, you... But you didn't wanna define yourself as being a- anti-Trump, but you're not- Right... Trumpy. Right. Explain that [chuckles] sort of, like, balance.
Sure. I mean, we... When we've, we went out and, and did, um, a week and a half of,
of, uh, investor pitches back in April of twenty nineteen and, you know, we had the whole deck and we were su- we were such novices, neither Jonah nor I knew how to put together a PowerPoint.
So we, we had to sort of outsource the PowerPoint- I know... uh, which is really bad.
[chuckles] That, that makes me feel so much better because, like, I've done consulting stuff and, uh, now and I am like, I don't know anything about PowerPoint. It's so bad. We're just writers.
Well, the problem was, you know...
Yeah, if there was, like, a little thing that we wanted to change on one of the slides, neither one of us knew how to do it, so the person who was sort of advising us and put together the PowerPoint had complete control of what we did because we didn't know how to change it.
Anyway, when we went to, to make these pitches, we would sit across fromInvestors. And and we would never mention Trump's name, so it didn't come out of our mouth, you know, fifteen, twenty-minute pitch. Yeah.
Um, and the f- usually the first question we got was about [chuckles] Trump. "Wow, you guys are, are anti-Trump or Trump skeptical, and how is this gonna work? And isn't it the case that most Republicans
are Trump fans and they wanna read pro-Trump stuff?" And I guess our view from the beginning was that that's just not the business we wanted to... Um, Jonah had come from twenty-plus years at National Review.
He was a syndicated columnist, built a, you know, a, a very good reputation being sort of thoughtful and intellectually honest.
I had come from a couple years running The Weekly Standard, which was shut down by our previous owner, who's a, a billionaire in, in Colorado, in part because of, uh, conflicting visions about how to do journalism, but also in part because the company became more Trumpy, and the people who were running the company became more Trumpy, and we didn't.
So i- in our view, it would never have been possible to kinda play to the crowd because it's not what we believed. It, it was- Yeah... never gonna work that way.
We were never gonna do that to, to get clicks, and we didn't really fundamentally care about clicks. Yeah. So I... It's, it's kinda interesting because, like, I think sometimes
I talk with people who are, like, operator founders, but then also, like, um, you know, people who come from the journalism and the content side. Um, and they just make different products.
Like, because if you were looking just for, like, the total addressable market, I think, like, non-Trump center right is just not the area [laughs] that would be the biggest addressable market at the time.
I mean, yes and no. I mean, that's a really interesting question, and as you can imagine, we spent a fair amount of time thinking about it. But I think there is a...
I- if you look at the, the way our politics are playing out today, I think there's a core on the sort of righty Trumpy fringe that is all politics all the time. They can't get enough of politics. It consumes them.
And, you know, they drive a lot of the decision-making. They drive a lot of the media consumption on the right. Uh, they, they drive a lot of the, the political debate on the right.
They're the most active in, in political primaries. But they really don't speak for most people on the center right. I think most- Yeah...
people on the center right are sort of sane and go and, you know, live their lives and go to their kids' soccer games and have a job. And they can't jump from Breitbart to Fox News to The Federalists to th...
like, in a constant circle to get their sort of fix, uh, of, of what's gonna anger them. We appeal to those people.
And we borrowed-- I will say, you know, we borrowed, um, a little bit from, from Vox, uh, vox.com on this. And, and, um, I remember listening to, uh...
There was a, a five-year anniversary podcast that Ezra Klein and, um, some of the other co-founders did, and they were talking about what they... who, who their audience is.
And they-- Matt Yglesias talked about a doctor friend, I think she was in Seattle.
She's an ER doc who, you know, had three kids and was running around like crazy, but in his telling, sh-she was one of the smartest people he knew, and he thought, "We're gonna do our explainers, we're gonna do our reporting, we're gonna do our journalism for somebody like that."
So you're never condescending to your audience, but you can explain what's going on because they're not sort of manic and freaky about it.
That's who we think w-we're appealing to, is that slice on the center right, and it goes over, I think, a, a, a fair amount if you look at it as a, on the spectrum. Mm-hmm.
And we also have a, a good number of readers and members who are on the center left, and, and, you know, we, we take pride in that fact. Yeah. We think that's a good thing. Are you trying to bring them over?
[laughs] Honestly, we're, we're mostly trying to give them, uh, g-good stuff. No, I'm just kidding. You know, I don't... I, I... It's weird. I care more about...
I mean, this will sound s- um, sort of hopelessly, um, naive, but I care more about fostering a g- a, a good community and having sort of actual honest exchanges back and forth between our members than- Yeah...
I do about converting anybody at this point. Yeah.
I mean, I'm not as- No, I mostly, I was mostly joking 'cause, I mean, we had talked before about, like, you know, politics used to be between the '40s, you know, center left- Right... center right because...
You know, I'm reading this, this really fascinating book about the, the rise and fall of, of neoliberalism.
And, um, and really, I think it makes, like, a very basic point of, like, we move from, you know, the New Deal, and, like, Eisenhower co-opted the New Deal, basically.
I mean, he-- the Republicans capitulated to the New Deal. They couldn't, they couldn't defeat it with Hoover and stuff like this.
And really, the same thing happened with the, the real liberal, like, the true liberal, like Reagan- Yeah... Thatcher. And that it was consolidated by Blair and Clinton. Like, it was just a different flavor.
It w- of, of neoliberalism. And, uh, I have no idea what we're moving into now. But I think a lot of the, the focus goes on, on the extremes, um- Yeah... but that the, the middle is still there. Yeah.
And we, we hear this all the time. And, uh, you know, of course, a lot of this is anecdotal, but, you know, the number of conversations I've had where people have said...
I mean, I had one this, this weekend w-w- where somebody says, "I, I'm just so glad you guys exist. I didn't know..."
You know, you got to the point where when you're consuming information, you know, on the center right, you begin to think that the people who are, you know, obsessed with Hannity or Par- Hannity's talking points, that those are who conservatives are, and that's not the case.
It just isn't the case. I mean, Hannity gets, on a good night, three million people who watch his show on Fox. There's three hundred and thirty million people in the country.
Um, seventy-four million people voted for Donald Trump. I think a lot of them did it with, with their noses held- Yeah... last time. Um, and there are a lot of people who didn't vote because they didn't wanna do it.
We think we can appeal to, to those folks and, and beyond.Okay, so I had promised that we were gonna get into the numbers. So like how many sub- paying subscribers do you have?
Um, so we're, we're doing our best not to give precise numbers anymore, but I can say we're north of 30,000 paying members at this point. Okay, so the business model. So I mean, we talked about the audience model.
It's a... Th- there's a lot of people on the center right, and also, you know, the, the center left would be open to it. I don't think- Yeah...
many people on the, the far right [chuckles] or the far left are gonna find much that they like at The Dispatch. Probably right. I could be wrong. No problem. They could hate read it. They could hate read. If you look...
If you're just looking for clicks, they could hate read, but I don't know if they're gonna pay you.
Um, but explain the model and why you thought it was important, because I always talk about like matching the editor- the business model to the editorial mission.
Explain why a business model that is not exclusively subscriptions, and we'll talk about that, but that subscriptions is the core, why was that important? Yeah, I mean, i- i- in part it was strategic.
This was something that we, we wanted to do. We wanted to build this foundation of reader revenue to, to really get a sense of whether we could make the thing go, right? Right.
Whether it was actually gonna be sustainable. Um, you know, we had set, um, member targets, uh, that turned out to be kind of laughably low. Our, our...
I think our, um, you know, sort of rosiest scenario at the end of 2020 was like 4,200 members, and we were 17,000 or something crazy. Um- This is what happens when journalists do the like, you know, business plan.
Yeah, we had no idea. [laughs] I mean, we had some- Only journalists do a business plan that they did that they totally overshoot.
[laughs] We had, we, we had, we had some really smart people helping us out, but, um, but if, you know, if one of the key launch questions was, is there an audience for the thing? Yeah.
Um, you know, we feel like we've got a pretty resounding answer that y- yeah, there's an audience for it, and it's way, way bigger than you thought.
Um, but we wanted the, the stability that reader revenue gave us as sort of the foundation for the business. Um, that said, our...
If, if you go back and look at our year one projections, our top revenue line, uh, in our projections was events. Uh, that didn't happen for reasons that we're all too familiar with.
We're, we're gonna be ramping up some events here, uh, soon, we think, and we hope to, to add that back as a, as a new revenue stream, uh, although we're gonna be very careful about the kinds of events that we do.
So we thought that re- reader revenue was really gonna be the, the, the sort of core to the, the business, and then we would grow from there. It also...
You know, when we struck this sort of handshake agreement with Substack, they didn't want us to do ads and sponsorships. So when we talked to them, they, they were, they made a very persuasive argument.
We had originally thought that we would do what we called tasteful sponsorships that would be, in effect, billboard-style things in, in the newsletters. Mm-hmm. No ad tech built in, none of that.
Just sort of like, you wanna be in here, be seen here. We're not counting. We can tell you how many we're sending to. We're not building an ad tech, and, and focus on reader revenue.
Um, Substack didn't want us to do that.
Uh, they made a case to us that, that we could, if we really focused on subscribers, members, that we could succeed doing that, and, um, they were very persuasive in the case, and it turns out they were exactly right.
They were 100% right about that. So that's what we did. Um, you know, now that we're moving off of Substack, I think we're, we're looking to explore a return possibly to these tasteful sponsorships.
It's very, very important to us not to ruin the user experience. Yeah. I mean, I know you hear this from everybody, but it, it... We, we mean it. Um, we're never gonna do pop-ups. We're never gonna do auto-plays.
[laughs] We get so much good feedback about the simple user experience that people have gotten used to on, on Substack that we're gonna do everything we can to replicate that while experimenting, uh, with, with s- ads and sponsorships in a limited way.
Well, I think what's interesting, and like I had, um... I talked with Jake, um, Sherman from Punchbowl on, on this is like- I listened, yeah...
even, even publications, and they're usually newsletters that, um, that have subscriptions at their core, end up having thriving, um, advertising businesses. Sure. Because like...
A- and again, it's this personal engagement in media. I just feel like, you know, the, the...
You have much more engaged audiences, and if you can prove that by saying that like, you know, tens of thousands of people are paying us for this, it, it becomes even more valuable.
And I think one, one of the things that's, that, um, is sort of underappreciated is that it's also been normalized now with advertisers this style of advertising that is not so disruptive and is not autoplay video with sound on.
Yeah, I think, I think you're exactly right. W- we think we can, we think we can experiment with that. W- we're gonna be really careful and cautious. And look, I mean, I, I, I am pretty naive about this. I, I, I... If...
I'm, I'm helping to run the, the business side right now. We brought in a very smart, um, VP of marketing from The Athletic who's, who's great, but, you know, we're out hiring for a president right now.
We're, we're going... We're looking to build up our, our business side because if, if I'm running the business side in two years, [chuckles] the thing's not likely to succeed long term.
Um, but hav- having said that, I mean, we're well aware how much revenue we're leaving [chuckles] on the table. Yeah. I mean, we get it. We know. It's entirely a, a, a, a, a purposeful decision.
We're doing that on purpose. We wanna sort of see what we can do that's consistent with the way that we were founded, with the values that we were f- founded with, and with what our m- Yeah...
members have become accustomed to. So you do sponsorships for the podcast, yeah? Yeah, I mean, it's basically just typical ads that Stitcher does. Oh, okay. So right now subscriptions are what?
Like 90% of the revenue, or? Yeah. Ballpark, yeah. And then events will, will come on. I mean, like the... A- and will these be in the typical sort of like Washington style of events? No. I mean- No?
[laughs]I would say no. It's interesting. I, I, I listened to your... I've listened to, you know, I listen to all your podcasts. Oh. Um, uh, the, the, the Punchbowl one stood out for me.
Um, I listened to the podcast that you did with the, he's the COO of Grid or- Yeah... and fascinating to me because, you know, we launched in many ways opposite what, what those folks are doing, right?
So they're playing to the inside Washington crowd, and as, as often as not, I mean, it's their... that-that's their customer base. We are... we're doing sort of inside out. We're writing for people outside.
Um, we want people in my mom's church group to be reading us and to feel like when they look at Washington and they're confused about what's happening in Washington and it all seems like chaos and it doesn't make any sense, that we can say to them, "Here's what's going on."
But not by using the insider language that Punchbowl has mastered- Oh, God... that Politico does, that Axios does. Like you're never- Yeah... gonna earth day- You know, you know, to, uh-...
for the deputy ag secretary- Okay... like, it's never gonna happen. You're not gonna do like- And we-... mansion in all caps thankfully. Never. Never. [laughs] Oh, good. Thank you. And we're gonna...
You know, we, we do the... We, we spell out the acronyms. We don't assume that people know what we're talking about when we mention CISA or when we mention DHS. I mean- Yeah...
maybe some people do, but what we found interestingly, I mean, 'cause of course we could see in the back end, we still have all those readers, right? I mean, we have a very robust Washington readership- Yeah...
across the government, on Capitol Hill, in, in the executive branch, um, and elsewhere. Uh, we don't think it's affected us, but it certainly has affected h-how we approach things from a revenue perspective.
Doing an interview with somebody who's a, a, you know, we're talking to about, um, becoming, uh, our president, and this person basically made the case that our audience is the
four or five hundred people who have access to, you know, five hundred thousand or a million dollar lobbying spends every month.
And if we can get them to spend their money with us, you know, we'd see our revenues go through the roof and we'd have a very successful business. I don't, I don't think he's necessarily wrong- Mm...
in terms of his assessment- Mm-hmm... but it's not the business we wanna be in. That's not what we wanna do.
So we'll do some events, we'll do some Washington events, but we don't ever wanna do the kinds of events that, uh, to quote my co-founder Jonah, would make us feel, um- Okay... where it's just pure access play.
I, I don't... We don't wanna do that. It's not the business we're in.
The, the main thing we're trying to solve continues to be trust, and if we start doing stuff like that, that causes the rest of our members to look at us and say, "Hmm, that's...
How can they cover this fairly because they're taking a bunch of money to do an event with these people," then I think we have a problem with, with sort of the, the main part of what we wanna do. Yeah.
So let's talk about the trust thing, um, because I think this is a... it's a massive issue across, you know, all of society, right? But, um, I wanna zero in particularly, um, on the right side of the spectrum. Yeah.
Because, um, you know, we hear a lot about it, like, on a macro level, but it's very acute on, on the right side, you know. Got it. Um, where do you...
You assign some blame, but not all blame, to the quote unquote, "The media." I know we [laughs] whenever anyone talks- I know. It's a shorthand... about the, the media, I'm just like, "Oh, God." But...
Yeah, but I think that... I mean, if we wanna actually understand the problem, and I think this is a huge, I think it's, you know, one of the, the biggest issues in the country right now, is we don't have shared facts.
We don't trust each other. There's, there-- People are skeptical of authoritative voices of information, particularly as you say on the right, and I think there is a reason for it.
I mean, look, there's a reason that Fox News was successful, right? I mean- Yeah... I worked there for, for a dozen years.
If you look back at the founding of Fox in its early years, I think Fox was filling a, a, a very much n-um, needed niche or, or a, a big niche. The problem in our view, or in my view, is that
now you have too many people on the, on the, the right who are willing to believe anything. And they say, you know, it's because it comes from The New York Times or NBC News, therefore it must be false or untrue.
And they look at these mainstream media outlets as if they are arms of the Democratic Party. And look, I mean, I've, I've worked with people like this. I went to journalism school with people like this.
I don't think that's what's happening. I think they come with a different worldview than I have. Oftentimes, I mean, the debates that I would have over beers and wings late at night at, in, in grad school- Yeah...
invariably it was me against eight other people, and most of them went on to work at ABC News or The New York Times or places like that. Great people, but they, they came with different assumptions.
So what we think we can do is, is in, in helping to rebuild this trust, we're not saying this is a scalable global solution. We're trying to do a little part on our little company. Mm-hmm.
It's just to say like, "Hey, here's where we're coming from, and here's how we do the process. Like, look behind the scenes.
You can trust us, and if we get something wrong, we're gonna shout it at you and tell you, 'We really screwed this up,' so you can trust us the next time." Yeah.
But it seems like very core to this is you push beyond the like, "Oh, we don't have biases." You're like, "Oh no, we're biased. Like," Yeah. "We have a belief generally aligned with conservative principles- Correct...
and we're center right, and this is like our worldview." I think what's interesting about that is that I think it's easier to do with people, with individuals at the forefront than with a, an institutional brand.
That's why we like- Mm... laugh when we talk about the media because it's like- Right... what is this? It's a collection of people.
It's like, but like there's truth to it, but at the same time, um, I feel like, um, you can be more transparent when it's about like individuals. Do you think that has any validity? Yeah. I mean, I, I think...
I mean, it's, yeah, you know, to, to f-put it in the framework of yourInstitutions versus individuals, um, sort of ongoing conversation that you've been having. I do think that helps us, right?
So people when we launched, Jonah Goldberg was the co-founder. He'd been writing The G-File, which is a sort of column newsletter for twenty years. He had a massive audience. People had come to trust him.
They came to trust his judgment. They like his writing. They, they value his analysis. And we built the company on that trust, for sure. No question about it.
David French, who's another one of our writers, the same, the same dynamic. So we have been able to use the, the trust that has been earned over all these years- Right...
by people like Jonah and David, and build a company around it. Um, but, you know, I'm, I'm very purposeful when I say earned, right?
And I think part of the reason that, that we've been able to earn that trust is because in the context of the Trump era, to go back to your question earlier, like, uh, [scoffs] I hope you don't need a lot of convincing on this, it would have been a lot easier and would've been a lot better for our careers had we just gone along, right?
I mean, undoubtedly could have made a lot more money if we didn't stop and s- and say like, "Wait a second, this Trump guy's lying all the time. Like, that's not good for us. That's not what I believe.
I can't be part of that."
There's no question it would have been better, or certainly more financially lucrative to have done that, but we didn't do it because we care about the stuff and we care about the truth, and we care about, you know, sort of this kind of a, a, a discussion.
And I think that's helped earn us trust, honestly. Yeah. I just-- like, while you were talking, I, I just Googled Tucker Carlson net worth. Forbes says it is four hundred and twenty million.
[laughs] I mean, mine's right around there. [laughs] I always say like, you know you've hit it when one of your, your top like Google auto-complete search for your name is like net worth. Net worth. Yeah. Yeah. Some day.
No. No, yeah, we did not, we did not do that. But like, I mean, so I...
Like it, it is actually a, a real example because, I mean, uh, I mean, people forget, but Tucker Carlson started writing for The Weekly Standard, where you were editor. He did. Yeah, yeah. He was...
In fact, when he left The Weekly Standard, this is back in the late nineteen nineties, early, early, early aughts- Yeah... he left and created the opening that I eventually filled, um, as a staff writer there.
Um, so yeah. I mean, there's definitely... It's, it's lucrative on that, on that end. And I think a lot of people end up, you know, wondering whether people... I'll, I'll say people on the left, right?
End up wondering whether they're like, "Do these people," you know, d- like, Tucker Carlson, "Does he really believe this stuff?" And like- Yeah, people on the right wonder that too. [laughs] Okay.
Do, do- People, people who know him very well wonder that too. No, I mean, I think some of them do, some of them don't.
[clears throat] A lot of people will say, I mean, you know, certainly in my experience, so I was at Fox until November, and, and then, um, we left in part because of this- Yeah...
documentary that Tucker Carlson, um, produced that was about January sixth and was bad propaganda, and I think dangerous.
So I th- think what happens is a lot of peoples take shortcuts that they probably know they, they shouldn't take, so they, they'll say something to be, quote-unquote, on the team, and they don't really mean it.
I mean, there, there are times that people said to me after a, a, you know, a discussion, "I can't believe I have to defend this guy." And you'd say, "Well, you don't have to defend this guy.
Like, if you don't agree with him or you don't believe what he's doing, don't defend him. Like, actually criticize." That was, that was not uncommon.
I think, you know, you start to say this stuff and again and again, and you come to believe it. And I think that's where a lot of the people in the, on the center right are on, on a lot of these issues.
Um, so where, where do we actually... Like, you have an optimi-- I, I think you have an optimistic view that our politics will become somewhat more normal, or no? I go back and forth.
You sort of have to have an optimistic view that eventually things will right themselves, or you'd be crazy to be in the business, I mean, [chuckles] right? Yeah.
Um, so I hope- Give me the, give me the optimistic scenario. The optimistic...
I mean, so the optimistic scenario is for six or seven years, I've been talking to Republican elected officials off the record who say, "This is terrible. I can't do this another day. This is awful.
We need to find a way back to a place where we can, you know, have conversations with Democrats, where we can disagree in an agreeable way." Um,
and they don't say it in public, which is, you know, very frustrating and hard as a journalist. It's hard to convey that to your audience, right?
Because if these are off the record conversations, all I can say is they're saying something different in private than they're, than they're saying in public- Yeah... and boy, that's, that's frustrating.
Well, we keep hearing this. We, we keep hearing this. Yeah. And there are books filled with that. If I can speak for the general public. [laughs] Yeah. There, there are books...
I mean, I can tell you it's, [chuckles] it's true. There are books filled with that.
I do think this, this new book from Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, these New York Times writers, uh, have this book out, I think this week, called This, This Will Not Pass. Yeah.
And it's filled with this stuff, and it's on the record.
So I read the book and I'm thinking, you know, "Hallelujah, this is gi- this is giving additional sort of support to the, the case I've been making for a long time."
So, so I think the fact that they still recognize- Mm-hmm... that this isn't cool means that they're hopeful that they can eventually play some role in getting us back- Yeah... to something that's, that's more normal.
I take the criticism. I, I get the criticism. I can hear it right now- Yeah... th- that you're crazy to still believe this. You're totally naive. That may be the case, and the, that's the, the downside to it. Yeah.
The other thing, I'll just say this as an addendum. I mean, you know, it's not nothing that, that we've got the numbers that we've got, and they're small. You know, we're not The New York Times.
They're small on a relative basis, but we've got a couple hundred thousand people on our, our free list. We've got north of thirty thousand people who wanna pay us to do this stuff, and we're growing.
Uh, we're still growing. Yeah. So I do take some optimism that, that there's sort of thatQuiet, normal group in the, in the center that is- Mm-hmm... is willing to, to try to get back to that.
So final thing is, I mean, you're a conservative, so you believe in institutions, right? [laughs] I do. I believe that's a key part- Yes... of conservatism, right?
Um, institutions have gone through a, a rough time a- across the board in society, but, like, particularly all of our governing institutions are held in, in low regard.
We, we've now seen the, the Supreme Court is, is gonna be overturning Roe versus Wade. People on the right are obsessing, uh, with the leak, which I believe came from a conservative anyway. Uh, I just- Mm.
It, it normalizes it, it gets it out there. It's gonna be less of a thunderbolt when the, the ru- ruling eventually comes down.
I don't think it benefits any sort of progressive person, but whatever, that's the game we play. Um, but then, you know, there's the question of the politicization of the, the Supreme Court.
We had the storming of the, of the Capitol. Um, so you have to be concerned for our institutions, right? Or is this- Deeply. Okay, this is not, like, catastrophist. No. No, not at all. Okay. I mean, deeply.
You could just get the... Look at the numbers.
I mean, look at the numbers from, from Gallup and, and Pew over the years, the, the, um, deteriorating faith in our institutions, and I would include the media i- i- in that. Um,
yeah, look, I, I have a different view of the, the Supreme Court case probably than, than you do.
I do think the, the leak came from probably somebody on the, uh, left, a clerk from, from one of the left-leaning, uh, justices. But again, to, to, to my point about The Dispatch,
David French and Sarah Isgur, uh, we did a, a live stream last night, made the opposite argument, said, "Eh, you know, I think it's... There's a pretty good case that this came from, from the conservative side."
I mean, think about it. It, y- Mitch McConnell- Yeah... can just talk about this.
Well, I mean- He, he doesn't have to talk about, like, defending a ruling that s- s- that, if you believe the polls, 70% of the country [laughs] disagrees with.
I would rather talk about the process if I was on the other side of that. I think, uh, yeah, I think the, the, the 70% number, which comes from a CNN poll, I think that's, that's problematic.
I think the, the views are more nuanced of the American public on that. But I mean, look, when, when Republican office holders yesterday were asked about this, they didn't... They focused on the leak.
So your point is- Yeah... right. They didn't say, "Well, this is such a good outcome, and- Yeah... Samuel Alito's reasoning is good for the following eight reasons." A lot of rushing to get on elevators.
[laughs] I found his reasoning compelling. I think most of the Republicans did, too, but you're right that they didn't choose to focus on that. Okay. Put a bow on this.
Give me the case that institutions are gonna, like, come through this intact. Yeah. There's a case, I mean, we've had Jack Goldsmith from, from Harvard and others
make in our pages that institutions, as battered and bruised as they've been over the past seven, eight years, actually performed their guardrail functions, even if the public has left.
Like, ultimately, what, we're still having elections. We're still...
All of the basics are still there, and while, you know, you'd like to hope that we could do better [laughs] than that, I, I think the fact that people are as concerned about the institutions as they are, um,
gives us room to be optimistic that despite all of these differences and despite all of the crazy, that we know that, that those have to be preserved.
But you asked me to give you the optimistic case, so that's what I gave you. I'm worried. I mean, I'm really worried. [laughs] I'm worried about the, I'm worried about the 2022 elections.
You have, uh, particularly in, in Republican areas, you have, uh, red state
folks pushing secretaries of state who are making an explicit case that the 2020 election was stolen and that they will not allow that to happen again in 2022. Well, the 2020 election wasn't stolen.
So it makes you nervous about what kinds of people we'll be having running our elections, uh, next time in '22 and in '24. Okay. We're not gonna end on a optimistic note then, Steve. [laughs] I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
[laughs] But it's a realistic note, and that's- I didn't wanna sell false optimism. [laughs] I mean, I, I... There is some optimism there, but I'm worried. Okay. Well, um, good luck on the post-Substack, um, era.
Um, definitely come back and, and update me on, on the progress, um, 'cause- Thank you. Yeah, definitely...
I, I think from an optimistic standpoint, I think it's great that new publications have been, uh, born in this time. And, you know, not all of them are gonna make it.
We didn't get to talk about Ben and Justin's, uh, um, pub- new publication that they're gonna be coming out with.
But, um, I think it's, like, kind of an exciting time that people are trying different models, and, um, and we're gonna get- There's a lot to learn.
I mean, by looking around, there's a lot to learn from what everybody else is doing- Yeah. Yeah... um, succeeding and failing, so it's, it's good. Cool. Great. Thank you so much, Steve. Thank you.
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