WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.380 --> 00:00:10.460 [on-hold music] This week's episode of the Rebooting show is brought to you by my friends at House of Kaizen. I know from experience how hard it is to build a subscription business. 2 00:00:10.920 --> 00:00:19.760 Yes, having content worth paying for is the most important thing, but there are also thousands of details to master. What does an optimal subscription business look like? 3 00:00:20.280 --> 00:00:24.950 How do you know if your efforts to build subscriber revenue are performing to their potential? 4 00:00:24.980 --> 00:00:39.140 Well, House of Kaizen's twenty years of growth optimization for subscription products experience has given them the unique ability to identify the common markers of the strongest subscription product businesses and share them with you as your partners. 5 00:00:39.670 --> 00:00:50.340 Their subscription growth diagnostic very quickly identifies where and how to tackle the low-hanging fruit or the more meaty efforts to achieve the next phase of your growth goals. 6 00:00:50.980 --> 00:00:59.580 House of Kaizen's, uh, sub-subscription product experiences span publishing, streaming, software, wellness and retail. 7 00:01:00.220 --> 00:01:11.700 It runs the gamut of subscriber experiences and will provide you with the best practices, research and testing methods to get you where you wanna be, faster and with more confidence and efficiency. 8 00:01:12.160 --> 00:01:27.840 They'll work alongside your team to discover, ideate and execute experiments for sustainable subscription revenue growth. To find out more, go to houseofkaizen.com. That's Kaizen, K-A-I-Z-E-N dot com. 9 00:01:28.310 --> 00:01:38.560 And if you wanna contact them even more directly, send an email to matt@houseofkaizen.com and tell them that you came from the Rebooting. Thank you, House of Kaizen. I mean, think about it. 10 00:01:39.200 --> 00:01:49.600 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. 11 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:58.340 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... 12 00:01:58.400 --> 00:02:05.720 Samuel Alito's reasoning is good for the following eight reasons." A lot of rushing to get on elevators. I found his reasoning compelling. 13 00:02:05.900 --> 00:02:14.739 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. 14 00:02:16.760 --> 00:02:33.540 [on-hold music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey. 15 00:02:33.620 --> 00:02:45.680 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. 16 00:02:46.180 --> 00:02:52.100 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. 17 00:02:52.480 --> 00:03:02.240 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. 18 00:03:02.520 --> 00:03:11.440 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. 19 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:24.240 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. 20 00:03:24.250 --> 00:03:33.340 Like, we both just left Fox News. Do you feel that Fox News contributed to the violence that erupted on January sixth? 21 00:03:33.380 --> 00:03:43.540 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. 22 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:53.100 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. 23 00:03:53.300 --> 00:04:00.440 And they started this publication and moved it over to Substack, and now they are leaving Substack. They have thirty thousand paying subscribers. 24 00:04:00.600 --> 00:04:14.640 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. 25 00:04:14.780 --> 00:04:23.620 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. 26 00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:33.920 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. 27 00:04:34.380 --> 00:04:42.660 So hope you enjoy the conversation, and always wanna hear your feedback. My email is bmorrissey@gmail.com. Full circle, full circle. 28 00:04:42.760 --> 00:04:52.610 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. 29 00:04:52.610 --> 00:05:00.120 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. 30 00:05:00.140 --> 00:05:04.200 These are, these are- It doesn't, it doesn't involve Republican, [chuckles] that's for sure. These are fraught times. 31 00:05:04.260 --> 00:05:23.660 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. 32 00:05:24.960 --> 00:05:33.400 Yeah. We, we are leaving Substack. Um, we've, you know, we had this, have had this phenomenal relationship with, with the Substack founders. 33 00:05:33.760 --> 00:05:49.420 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. 34 00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:55.790 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?" 35 00:05:55.930 --> 00:06:05.800 And started this conversation, uh, with both Hamus, Hamish and, and Chris, Chris Best primarily, also Jay later, and, and they were great. 36 00:06:05.980 --> 00:06:15.228 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, 37 00:06:16.148 --> 00:06:21.988 they said, "Hey, would, would you guys be interested in sort of being our guinea pig on Substack building a company?" 38 00:06:22.328 --> 00:06:34.408 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. 39 00:06:34.648 --> 00:06:46.638 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. 40 00:06:46.757 --> 00:06:49.988 [chuckles] Um, so we... It was great. We had this sort of handshake partnership. 41 00:06:50.748 --> 00:06:59.988 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. 42 00:07:00.488 --> 00:07:10.338 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. 43 00:07:10.348 --> 00:07:22.848 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? 44 00:07:22.868 --> 00:07:30.048 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. 45 00:07:30.128 --> 00:07:43.808 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, 46 00:07:44.708 --> 00:07:51.928 these are the other tools we think we need to grow." And to their great credit, they, they built and, and really kept up. 47 00:07:52.108 --> 00:08:01.948 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... 48 00:08:01.968 --> 00:08:03.888 they looked around and said, "Well, we need to do more of this." 49 00:08:04.508 --> 00:08:17.707 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. 50 00:08:18.028 --> 00:08:32.268 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. 51 00:08:32.328 --> 00:08:41.288 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. 52 00:08:41.368 --> 00:08:47.678 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. 53 00:08:48.048 --> 00:08:58.578 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... 54 00:08:58.618 --> 00:09:04.388 the editorial on, on Substack, and we thought it would be easier to consolidate, consolidate that work as well, so. Okay. 55 00:09:04.468 --> 00:09:15.467 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. 56 00:09:15.588 --> 00:09:26.548 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... 57 00:09:26.708 --> 00:09:34.217 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. 58 00:09:34.258 --> 00:09:41.708 [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. 59 00:09:42.068 --> 00:09:48.828 [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. 60 00:09:48.968 --> 00:09:58.768 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... 61 00:09:59.448 --> 00:10:08.428 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. 62 00:10:08.488 --> 00:10:19.888 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. 63 00:10:19.968 --> 00:10:32.128 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... 64 00:10:32.188 --> 00:10:38.588 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 65 00:10:39.548 --> 00:10:50.348 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. 66 00:10:50.708 --> 00:10:58.548 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. 67 00:10:58.668 --> 00:11:07.758 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? 68 00:11:07.808 --> 00:11:12.228 I mean, we've discussed this before, but for those who didn't hear my first podcast with you. 69 00:11:12.308 --> 00:11:18.688 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. 70 00:11:18.788 --> 00:11:32.788 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. 71 00:11:32.828 --> 00:11:41.978 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. 72 00:11:42.128 --> 00:11:54.318 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. 73 00:11:54.448 --> 00:12:07.128 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. 74 00:12:07.348 --> 00:12:17.998 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. 75 00:12:18.338 --> 00:12:27.518 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. 76 00:12:27.538 --> 00:12:36.508 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. 77 00:12:36.678 --> 00:12:47.478 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. 78 00:12:47.658 --> 00:12:57.918 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. 79 00:12:58.138 --> 00:13:08.358 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... 80 00:13:08.378 --> 00:13:16.438 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... 81 00:13:16.758 --> 00:13:25.398 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... 82 00:13:26.188 --> 00:13:33.738 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... 83 00:13:33.858 --> 00:13:41.338 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." 84 00:13:41.398 --> 00:13:44.998 You know, w- we have all these different ways of, of, of thinking about it. I tell some... 85 00:13:45.038 --> 00:13:58.858 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. 86 00:13:58.938 --> 00:14:01.088 So write like you're writing them a, an email. 87 00:14:01.678 --> 00:14:10.818 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. 88 00:14:10.938 --> 00:14:22.338 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? 89 00:14:22.458 --> 00:14:29.138 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. 90 00:14:29.238 --> 00:14:34.538 Um, again, not, not a novel idea to, to The Dispatch, but, um, that really seems to be working. Yeah. 91 00:14:34.638 --> 00:14:45.918 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... 92 00:14:46.278 --> 00:14:57.828 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... 93 00:14:57.838 --> 00:15:10.598 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. 94 00:15:10.638 --> 00:15:20.158 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. 95 00:15:20.218 --> 00:15:26.718 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. 96 00:15:27.278 --> 00:15:40.537 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... 97 00:15:40.798 --> 00:15:51.798 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. 98 00:15:51.898 --> 00:16:03.168 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. 99 00:16:03.318 --> 00:16:08.318 Um, people I admire and people who I, I would love to be in a different life. 100 00:16:08.358 --> 00:16:16.358 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. 101 00:16:16.528 --> 00:16:25.338 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. 102 00:16:25.368 --> 00:16:30.758 "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... 103 00:16:30.798 --> 00:16:40.698 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. 104 00:16:40.878 --> 00:16:49.978 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. 105 00:16:50.038 --> 00:16:54.318 Like, we're not for you 'cause that's not what we're doing. We wanna challenge your assumptions. 106 00:16:54.358 --> 00:17:07.718 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. 107 00:17:07.758 --> 00:17:10.378 That's better for us, it's better for you, it's better for everybody. 108 00:17:11.538 --> 00:17:25.598 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. 109 00:17:25.628 --> 00:17:39.058 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. 110 00:17:39.798 --> 00:17:44.958 Sure. I mean, we... When we've, we went out and, and did, um, a week and a half of, 111 00:17:46.018 --> 00:17:55.938 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. 112 00:17:55.978 --> 00:17:59.698 So we, we had to sort of outsource the PowerPoint- I know... uh, which is really bad. 113 00:17:59.708 --> 00:18:07.458 [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. 114 00:18:07.478 --> 00:18:08.768 Well, the problem was, you know... 115 00:18:08.918 --> 00:18:21.278 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. 116 00:18:21.318 --> 00:18:33.050 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. 117 00:18:33.170 --> 00:18:43.010 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 118 00:18:43.930 --> 00:18:56.030 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. 119 00:18:56.160 --> 00:19:02.930 He was a syndicated columnist, built a, you know, a, a very good reputation being sort of thoughtful and intellectually honest. 120 00:19:03.410 --> 00:19:22.790 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. 121 00:19:23.490 --> 00:19:33.370 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. 122 00:19:33.450 --> 00:19:42.410 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 123 00:19:43.490 --> 00:19:52.640 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. 124 00:19:52.730 --> 00:20:05.830 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. 125 00:20:05.890 --> 00:20:13.650 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... 126 00:20:13.860 --> 00:20:27.770 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. 127 00:20:28.570 --> 00:20:38.270 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. 128 00:20:38.310 --> 00:20:46.240 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... 129 00:20:46.290 --> 00:21:00.450 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... 130 00:21:00.670 --> 00:21:09.370 like, in a constant circle to get their sort of fix, uh, of, of what's gonna anger them. We appeal to those people. 131 00:21:09.390 --> 00:21:21.370 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... 132 00:21:21.890 --> 00:21:33.470 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. 133 00:21:33.630 --> 00:21:38.090 And they-- Matt Yglesias talked about a doctor friend, I think she was in Seattle. 134 00:21:38.170 --> 00:21:54.190 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." 135 00:21:54.270 --> 00:22:03.190 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. 136 00:22:03.270 --> 00:22:13.240 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. 137 00:22:13.250 --> 00:22:21.810 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? 138 00:22:23.110 --> 00:22:29.819 [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... 139 00:22:30.490 --> 00:22:43.600 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... 140 00:22:43.650 --> 00:22:45.710 I do about converting anybody at this point. Yeah. 141 00:22:45.819 --> 00:22:54.390 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... 142 00:22:54.470 --> 00:22:59.530 You know, I'm reading this, this really fascinating book about the, the rise and fall of, of neoliberalism. 143 00:23:00.170 --> 00:23:09.790 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. 144 00:23:09.890 --> 00:23:15.010 I mean, he-- the Republicans capitulated to the New Deal. They couldn't, they couldn't defeat it with Hoover and stuff like this. 145 00:23:15.390 --> 00:23:26.650 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. 146 00:23:26.730 --> 00:23:40.270 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. 147 00:23:40.310 --> 00:23:47.810 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... 148 00:23:47.850 --> 00:23:53.130 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..." 149 00:23:53.170 --> 00:24:10.030 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. 150 00:24:10.090 --> 00:24:17.910 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. 151 00:24:18.130 --> 00:24:28.470 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. 152 00:24:28.750 --> 00:24:36.937 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? 153 00:24:37.038 --> 00:24:49.158 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. 154 00:24:49.218 --> 00:24:55.968 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... 155 00:24:56.018 --> 00:25:04.178 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... 156 00:25:04.538 --> 00:25:07.378 If you're just looking for clicks, they could hate read, but I don't know if they're gonna pay you. 157 00:25:07.558 --> 00:25:17.088 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. 158 00:25:17.138 --> 00:25:27.878 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. 159 00:25:27.918 --> 00:25:35.368 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. 160 00:25:35.558 --> 00:25:46.178 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... 161 00:25:46.618 --> 00:25:59.608 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. 162 00:25:59.618 --> 00:26:05.358 Yeah, we had no idea. [laughs] I mean, we had some- Only journalists do a business plan that they did that they totally overshoot. 163 00:26:05.638 --> 00:26:15.048 [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. 164 00:26:15.198 --> 00:26:21.018 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. 165 00:26:21.178 --> 00:26:29.638 Um, but we wanted the, the stability that reader revenue gave us as sort of the foundation for the business. Um, that said, our... 166 00:26:29.718 --> 00:26:40.478 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. 167 00:26:40.758 --> 00:26:52.118 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. 168 00:26:52.958 --> 00:27:01.318 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... 169 00:27:01.378 --> 00:27:12.558 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. 170 00:27:12.998 --> 00:27:23.818 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. 171 00:27:23.998 --> 00:27:32.298 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. 172 00:27:32.398 --> 00:27:34.298 Um, Substack didn't want us to do that. 173 00:27:34.618 --> 00:27:45.718 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. 174 00:27:45.758 --> 00:27:59.398 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. 175 00:27:59.438 --> 00:28:11.958 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. 176 00:28:12.308 --> 00:28:26.878 [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. 177 00:28:27.438 --> 00:28:34.938 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... 178 00:28:34.998 --> 00:28:46.558 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... 179 00:28:47.258 --> 00:28:50.608 A- and again, it's this personal engagement in media. I just feel like, you know, the, the... 180 00:28:51.338 --> 00:29:00.978 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. 181 00:29:01.008 --> 00:29:16.408 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. 182 00:29:17.198 --> 00:29:28.918 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... 183 00:29:29.018 --> 00:29:39.818 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. 184 00:29:39.878 --> 00:29:49.058 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. 185 00:29:49.198 --> 00:30:00.958 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. 186 00:30:01.058 --> 00:30:13.418 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... 187 00:30:13.478 --> 00:30:26.178 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? 188 00:30:26.218 --> 00:30:37.938 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? 189 00:30:38.008 --> 00:30:46.218 [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. 190 00:30:46.258 --> 00:30:59.478 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? 191 00:30:59.578 --> 00:31:11.158 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. 192 00:31:11.278 --> 00:31:24.498 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." 193 00:31:25.318 --> 00:31:33.768 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-... 194 00:31:33.818 --> 00:31:42.218 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... 195 00:31:42.318 --> 00:31:54.498 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... 196 00:31:54.558 --> 00:32:05.978 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... 197 00:32:06.058 --> 00:32:20.358 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. 198 00:32:20.498 --> 00:32:31.598 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 199 00:32:32.498 --> 00:32:40.778 four or five hundred people who have access to, you know, five hundred thousand or a million dollar lobbying spends every month. 200 00:32:41.198 --> 00:32:52.628 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... 201 00:32:52.678 --> 00:32:57.658 in terms of his assessment- Mm-hmm... but it's not the business we wanna be in. That's not what we wanna do. 202 00:32:58.238 --> 00:33:11.218 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. 203 00:33:11.298 --> 00:33:13.558 I, I don't... We don't wanna do that. It's not the business we're in. 204 00:33:14.078 --> 00:33:23.838 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... 205 00:33:23.998 --> 00:33:35.438 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. 206 00:33:35.478 --> 00:33:49.647 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. 207 00:33:49.718 --> 00:33:58.078 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... 208 00:33:58.558 --> 00:34:09.207 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... 209 00:34:10.378 --> 00:34:21.398 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. 210 00:34:21.438 --> 00:34:31.198 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. 211 00:34:31.238 --> 00:34:38.198 I mean, look, there's a reason that Fox News was successful, right? I mean- Yeah... I worked there for, for a dozen years. 212 00:34:38.258 --> 00:34:53.518 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 213 00:34:54.897 --> 00:35:06.268 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. 214 00:35:06.828 --> 00:35:19.338 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. 215 00:35:19.538 --> 00:35:30.238 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... 216 00:35:30.298 --> 00:35:40.378 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. 217 00:35:40.858 --> 00:35:49.188 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. 218 00:35:50.318 --> 00:35:55.678 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. 219 00:35:56.388 --> 00:36:04.347 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. 220 00:36:04.858 --> 00:36:18.938 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... 221 00:36:18.958 --> 00:36:31.537 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. 222 00:36:31.598 --> 00:36:36.498 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. 223 00:36:36.558 --> 00:36:51.178 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... 224 00:36:51.198 --> 00:37:00.684 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? 225 00:37:00.714 --> 00:37:12.034 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. 226 00:37:12.074 --> 00:37:22.973 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. 227 00:37:23.094 --> 00:37:34.614 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... 228 00:37:34.654 --> 00:37:42.414 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? 229 00:37:42.594 --> 00:38:03.934 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? 230 00:38:04.014 --> 00:38:15.374 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. 231 00:38:15.554 --> 00:38:16.674 I can't be part of that." 232 00:38:17.344 --> 00:38:30.654 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. 233 00:38:31.854 --> 00:38:42.834 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. 234 00:38:43.764 --> 00:38:55.974 [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. 235 00:38:56.014 --> 00:39:00.044 No. No, yeah, we did not, we did not do that. But like, I mean, so I... 236 00:39:00.094 --> 00:39:09.564 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... 237 00:39:09.734 --> 00:39:21.394 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. 238 00:39:21.654 --> 00:39:33.044 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? 239 00:39:33.094 --> 00:39:41.534 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. 240 00:39:41.594 --> 00:39:47.894 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. 241 00:39:47.923 --> 00:39:58.164 [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... 242 00:39:58.194 --> 00:40:05.974 documentary that Tucker Carlson, um, produced that was about January sixth and was bad propaganda, and I think dangerous. 243 00:40:06.894 --> 00:40:19.614 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. 244 00:40:19.674 --> 00:40:29.474 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. 245 00:40:29.534 --> 00:40:36.594 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. 246 00:40:36.714 --> 00:40:45.714 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. 247 00:40:45.894 --> 00:40:57.314 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. 248 00:40:57.374 --> 00:41:03.514 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. 249 00:41:03.814 --> 00:41:08.514 Um, so I hope- Give me the, give me the optimistic scenario. The optimistic... 250 00:41:08.574 --> 00:41:20.894 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. 251 00:41:20.974 --> 00:41:28.994 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, 252 00:41:29.994 --> 00:41:37.394 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? 253 00:41:37.494 --> 00:41:43.804 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. 254 00:41:43.814 --> 00:41:51.374 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... 255 00:41:51.574 --> 00:41:54.434 I mean, I can tell you it's, [chuckles] it's true. There are books filled with that. 256 00:41:54.494 --> 00:42:02.434 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. 257 00:42:02.454 --> 00:42:04.534 And it's filled with this stuff, and it's on the record. 258 00:42:05.034 --> 00:42:12.394 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." 259 00:42:12.714 --> 00:42:27.394 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. 260 00:42:27.674 --> 00:42:37.974 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. 261 00:42:38.034 --> 00:42:47.694 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. 262 00:42:47.714 --> 00:42:58.494 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. 263 00:42:58.574 --> 00:43:09.758 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. 264 00:43:10.218 --> 00:43:17.428 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? 265 00:43:17.618 --> 00:43:28.178 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. 266 00:43:28.398 --> 00:43:41.248 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. 267 00:43:41.298 --> 00:43:48.358 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. 268 00:43:48.678 --> 00:44:00.138 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. 269 00:44:00.198 --> 00:44:14.118 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. 270 00:44:14.278 --> 00:44:15.748 You could just get the... Look at the numbers. 271 00:44:15.818 --> 00:44:25.318 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, 272 00:44:26.318 --> 00:44:29.678 yeah, look, I, I have a different view of the, the Supreme Court case probably than, than you do. 273 00:44:29.798 --> 00:44:40.478 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, 274 00:44:41.878 --> 00:44:51.577 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." 275 00:44:51.658 --> 00:44:55.348 I mean, think about it. It, y- Mitch McConnell- Yeah... can just talk about this. 276 00:44:55.638 --> 00:45:03.428 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. 277 00:45:03.488 --> 00:45:13.568 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. 278 00:45:13.608 --> 00:45:24.498 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. 279 00:45:24.638 --> 00:45:34.038 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. 280 00:45:34.378 --> 00:45:43.518 [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. 281 00:45:43.738 --> 00:45:53.738 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 282 00:45:54.658 --> 00:46:06.038 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. 283 00:46:06.078 --> 00:46:09.818 Like, ultimately, what, we're still having elections. We're still... 284 00:46:09.898 --> 00:46:21.338 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, 285 00:46:22.378 --> 00:46:32.378 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. 286 00:46:32.598 --> 00:46:40.978 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. 287 00:46:41.078 --> 00:46:46.198 You have, uh, particularly in, in Republican areas, you have, uh, red state 288 00:46:47.178 --> 00:47:01.398 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. 289 00:47:02.418 --> 00:47:14.258 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. 290 00:47:14.298 --> 00:47:26.318 [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. 291 00:47:26.638 --> 00:47:32.257 Um, definitely come back and, and update me on, on the progress, um, 'cause- Thank you. Yeah, definitely... 292 00:47:32.558 --> 00:47:40.358 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. 293 00:47:40.478 --> 00:47:46.018 We didn't get to talk about Ben and Justin's, uh, um, pub- new publication that they're gonna be coming out with. 294 00:47:46.098 --> 00:47:53.358 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. 295 00:47:53.418 --> 00:48:02.518 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. 296 00:48:02.538 --> 00:48:10.938 Thank you for listening this week. We will be back next week with a new episode. The Rebooting show is produced by Podhelpus. Podcasts are a great way to expand your client base. 297 00:48:11.578 --> 00:48:23.778 Podhelpus lets you focus on having engaging conversations, giving your brand the full stack of services needed for a professional look and sound. Start your podcast today at podhelp.us. 298 00:48:23.938 --> 00:48:34.818 [outro music]