Newsletter success and ownership influence

Episode Summary 

Besides Donald Trump’s adoption of a more extreme agenda, perhaps the most significant difference between his first and second administrations has been the degree to which some of America’s most elite institutions have decided to kiss the presidential ring. It’s a trend that’s been evident in many places, but perhaps no more so than in elite media. Even before the 2024 election, billionaires like Jeff Bezos or Patrick Soon-Shiong prohibited their newspaper staffs from endorsing Trump’s opponent, and since then, places like CNN and elsewhere have bent over backwards to avoid upsetting the tender sensibilities of the president and his supporters.

More recently, CBS News decided to bend the knee at the behest of its new owners (and huge Trump donors) David and Larry Ellison by installing conservative activist Bari Weiss, a writer with no television experience, as its top editor. The mainstream media’s Republican turn under Trump II comes after a massive expansion of explicitly partisan opinion podcasts and talk programs as well which began shortly before Trump launched his first campaign in 2015.

There’s a lot to discuss about all these developments and so for this episode, I wanted to bring in Arthur MacMillan, he’s a veteran political reporter who built the fact-checking division of AFP, the Paris-based news wire service. Right now he’s a newsletter writer at Axios, but for purposes of this discussion we’ll be talking about an essay he wrote for British Journalism Review that talks about the media and the second Trump administration.

The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.

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Audio Chapters

00:00 — Introduction

04:34 — CBS parent company CEO David Ellison’s commercial imperatives

08:25 — Left vs right approaches to media investment

12:26 — MSNBC’s damaged franchise and rebrand

16:08 — Declining trust in media

20:28 — Bari Weiss and the Free Press

24:52 — Challenges of controlling newsrooms

30:35 — The shift away from quality local content

35:09 — Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post

39:25 — Meta abandons fact-checking program

44:36 — Newsrooms worried about upsetting owners

52:38 — The future of media is small and targeted

Audio Transcript

The following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.

MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So you have an article that came out that I summarized in our introduction a bit, but walk us through a bit more about your thesis within the article, and then we’ll go from there.

ARTHUR MACMILLAN: Well, basically victory back in we’ve seen a fairly consistent pattern of, a chill where either news organizations, via litigation or via perception, do not wish to suffer any further than they already are at the hands of new administration.

And we’re obviously almost a year in now, we’ve seen a succession of legal settlements from media organizations A, B, CBS. And the article was using the case study of Weiss going CBS as the head of in an obvious sweetheart deal involving David Ellison of Skydance, who has now bought CBS.

And [00:04:00] my point was to draw a parallel between something that happened in British politics in the 1980s when Rupert Murdoch used newspapers. To exert political And I think what we’re seeing in the United States now at Skydance and CBS is a very particular example, is the power of tech via David Ellison and his father Larry, exert influence in the media, whether it’s for commercial ends or for

David Ellison’s commercial imperatives

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, what’s interesting is that David Ellison, for a long time he had been a donor to the Democratic so. That to me does, raise the question of, well, what is it that, that he’s trying to it an ideological thing? Is it just purely about money? Or what was does he, would he still support Bill Clinton if Bill transported back into politics?

To me, or is it just that this guy actually wanted a more party a Democratic but it’s, not just, it isn’t just the Ellison family either that’s really kind of trying to get in bed or pay off Donald Trump either,

MACMILLAN: Ab absolutely not. I mean, I can’t look inside David Ellison’s head but I can look at his actions and his actions imply a commercial imperative, which to buy paramount CBS and a whole load of other franchisees he’s not really. Arguing day in, day out that he believes in conservative politics.

What he is doing is taking measures that are curing favor with the present administration that is responsible for pushing [00:06:00] through any such media sale via the FCC. So I don’t think it’s a change in politics. I think it’s simply he may have supported Democratic candidates in the past, but that’s not at all unusual in this country.

Donald Trump gave money bizarrely to Bill or Hillary Clinton. I mean, it’s so long ago now. It almost seems this is almost pointless to mention, but in some ways it isn’t. We’ve had Rupert Murdoch give money to Democratic, Candidates, he said very nasty things about Donald Trump. But Fox News, his most purposeful vehicle in terms of influence, apart from the odd little setback such as calling, Arizona for Joe Biden, Fox News has always been pretty supportive of Donald Trump and possibly never more so than now.

So all I think is happening is we’re seeing an intensification where money, and in this case tech is exerting itself through buying up businesses that once where dominant, but the media is no way dominant. CBS and Paramount, is a big Yes. But CBS News is a very small division within it.

Regardless. Larry Ellison, I would imagine and David Ellison, see it as another lever which they can pull in order to exert some kind of commercial influence or reach further their business

SHEFFIELD: Well, and it’s, yeah, it, is interesting when you look at [00:08:00] the way that the US right and left, have an approach to media. I think that, this, second, Trump and administration really has kind of highlighted the difference. So, you mentioned Rupert Murdoch I mean, Rupert Murdoch has been the owner of the New York Post, many decades now, and it’s never been profitable at any point in time for him.

Left vs right approaches to media investment

SHEFFIELD: and you note in your piece that there was a similar dynamic for many years with his times of London as well, which was not profitable for most of its duration of his ownership until recently when it threw up the paywall. But you know, whereas on the, US left and. Maybe, I don’t know, you, you can discuss it in the UK context if you want.

But you know, on the US left there, there has been investment in media, but generally it is ironically much more profit driven. So where, whereas you had something or current tv or the recently divested M-S-N-B-C to ms. Now, there is this complete lack of interest seemingly in having media outlets that might not be insanely profitable which is odd considering that you hear people constantly say, oh, democracy’s at risk.

There’s this terrible threat. But you know, if we can’t make money doing media, then oh, well, let’s get rid of it.

MACMILLAN: I think M-S-N-B-C is a very, is the best case in point you’re absolutely right, makes plenty of money. But I think on a fundamental level, it got a lot of stuff wrong in the last few I think as cable audiences across all political demographics, even in recent years, Fox it’s not reaching the same number of [00:10:00] people via domestic cable as it once That’s a threat to the business model. However, it does reach key which drives advertising dollars. So there’s still money to be made, like you see, but. I hadn’t even thought about it until you raised when it comes to M-S-N-B-C and now changing to ms. Now, that to me is a very direct business rebrand because the MSNB franchise had become extremely damaged as a some people say it’s all because we wanted Comcast. We want to spin off our cable assets from our television assets and everything else. Great, good for you. But in terms of the product and what I see, M-S-N-B-C to me had become also a very damaged franchise, and I think there’s no better example of that.

Then, the host of Morning Joe and his partner Mika Brozinsky Joe Scarborough going down to malago days after the election to basically kiss the rink. Trump. I watched Morning Joe for the entire, past administration and years before that. And to say that it was, how can I put it, A vote fast is not going far enough.

It clearly was a capitulation and an effort to preserve business and the pro program, as far as I’m concerned, lost all credibility that. Maybe some of their hosts, sorry, maybe some of their viewers don’t really care about the complete hypocrisy of such an act. But in terms of credibility, it speaks volumes the lack of and I don’t care what, I don’t know what advertisers make of it, but that franchise to me [00:12:00] as an M-S-N-B-C program.

Was not going in the right direction when this political change happened. And a rebrand, I think is what they wanted. So I think M-S-N-B-C, which no longer exists, really is a symptom of the media’s lack of influence rather than any

MSNBC’s damaged franchise and rebrand

SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and what about the idea of, these like Ru Rupert Murdoch and his. And it isn’t just him either. I should say that, the, Washington Times newspaper, for instance, was started in 1982 and at no point has been profitable. And there are, a host of other right wing media enterprises that their owners they run them either through donations from the public or from themselves.

Whereas on the left, I, there seems to be more of a sense that people, well, people will just figure it out the truth and we don’t have to invest in telling them and reaching them and finding them and talking to them and listening because they can figure it out.

and I think that’s a very naive for people who are allegedly

MACMILLAN: I think it’s incredibly naive because most people now, and I don’t really, in fact, let me reverse that. I wouldn’t say most I would say a majority of get their news from non-traditional And by that not a print newspaper and not a, television screen. Radio still does surprisingly well.

I think that’s a, separate, which I haven’t concentrated on. However, I have concentrated very heavily on traditional print media and [00:14:00] television. In my past as a media correspondent, I dealt with all sorts of And when it comes to non-profitable ventures, yes, here in Washington, DC for example, there’s the Washington Times, there’s the Washington Examiner.

I can’t really speak for their finances, but they are not regarded, and I’m sorry if this offends them, but they are not regarded as prime sites. However, they are vehicles for news commentary, at the behest of their editor whoever’s boss, whoever is that person’s boss is, this is very traditional, and I don’t think that has changed what I would question is their power to exert because as I’ve said, they are reaching fewer and fewer And through a polluted political narrative when it comes to media credibility, only one expression that’s defined the last 10 years and it’s fake news over time, that message really has struck home. And you only have to look at any pure research document or Reuters research document about trust in the Gallup, I refer to it in the article, gave out, did their latest results, very recently. but the bottom line is less than one third. Of the audience has a high level of trust That’s a pretty damning narrative. And so what I would say there is desire to exert influence remains the results far harder to measure than, being called a media [00:16:00] mogul or what have ‘cause the industry itself has stratified to such a degree that news brands are not as recognizable any longer.

Declining trust in media

MACMILLAN: And a lot of people have just moved on and gotten their news and opinion from different sources, whether it be Substack, whether it be podcasts such as yours, whether it be traditional media to a degree, whether it be NPR, whether it be BBC, which. Continues try and expand its footprint in the United States and they’ve, suffered a setback because of the fact that Donald Trump may soon be suing them.

We will see continued change and upheaval in the and for sure, I think, the Ms. NBC to MS now change was a sign of a business trying to insulate itself from that because it’s easier to talk about a new product than it is about one that has a bad reputation or it’s not really bad reputation, shall we say, has a bad relationship with the existing

SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and, definitely Trump has been, very repetitive in saying his hatred for it and his, associating that with its parent company, Comcast NBC, universal. So yeah, no, I think that’s right. And. One. But one of the other things about the idea of bringing Bari Weiss CBS which, on its faces completely farcical because this is somebody who has no of any and also no experience as a reporter no experience, actually producing actually producing content that matches the market.

the market that CVS seeks, which is [00:18:00] a non-ideological and broad mainstream audience. She has no experience at any of that. But there is, that is something that’s interesting. So you have somebody like Weiss who is a conservative, denies that she is, although she gets all her money from conservatives, so one wonders.

But nonetheless, she is somebody who is. Not a reactionary, like famous Donald Trump media people like Matt Walsh and, she’s not a a religious zealot. is lesbian herself, is not anti anti lesbian or gay, although seems to be very anti-trans, so this is somebody who is, a conservative rather than a reactionary.

And I just, I don’t know that there is even much of an audience for that for that perspective in, in the US because the people who are voting for Republicans either don’t really care or know anything about politics, or they tend to be people who are reactionary and the people who kind of this, more conservative educated persona.

That persona that Bari Weiss has. They don’t seem to be very numerous in my What do you

MACMILLAN: Well long and the short of it. So the short answer would be, do I think installing Bari Weiss will be a, recipe success for CBS? I would say it depends how you measure success. the long answer into now her appointment I think is fortuitous timing rather than any.

Systemic planning. She launched a vehicle, the Free Press, [00:20:00] which came out during, a post pandemic era. The precise timing eludes me, but it certainly rose in the last few years did generate paying audience as well as a tenfold larger non-paying audience. But in the, market that the media become, it is undoubtedly a success.

Bari Weiss and the Free Press

MACMILLAN: She has managed to sell it to the same aforementioned David Ellison for $150 million, which is a very significant sum. The move to CBS, we only really know. The agreement that exists well in our heads, we do not in any substantive way the agreement that exists between, Bari Weiss and, David Ellison on what she’ll be doing at CBS.

But she is not, as you said, a an overtly ideological figure. IE she’s not going on eggs or ev somewhere else every day and putting the world to rights. However, she does have very strong positions issues such as Israel, is a topic that that her boss and her boss’s father have, strong views on.

they seem aligned there as in very pro-Israel. when I say pro-Israel, I don’t mean that the person before was anti-Israel, but I, it I’m merely trying to point out that ideological. Agreement seems to be a prerequisite at the moment to lead a media such as CBS under the elephants.

In terms of your secondary point about whether there is an audience or whether it will work let’s take the will, will it [00:22:00] work to begin with in terms of increasing CBS’s influence? I would say highly unlikely because cable television remains the CBS They’ve had a few ventures in digital in the last few years, none of which have really resonated.

In terms of, the management of the organization. I mean, the perception in some fairly unsubstantiated reporting has been that, she’s going to change the culture. Of the newsroom and she’s going to change the identity or direction of the editorial, leaning. I think that’s highly unlikely.

‘cause again, CBS is not a small, nimble outfit like the free press where she controls the hiring. Other than key appointments, those people are already there. And we’re not talking a dozen, maybe two dozen people. And I’m sure the free press’s, headcount ended up being more than that. But when she started, it was her.

And she picked who she wanted. And as someone who has worked at a level in the media, I can tell you that news organizations cannot be controlled to the, master of puppets degree by one person. They just because there are. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of stories produced a day. And the people who are there are the people who will And, people can like the next day say, I hate that story. That shouldn’t have been the way it was, but the story’s already it’s not going to be changed. So in terms of the editorial leaning, I think yes, over time she may be able to change key areas, but in [00:24:00] terms of the actual final product, I see very little And I think, if she comes in with the attitude, she, that she can micromanage content, she will be sorely because that is not how newsrooms operate. As someone who’s been a news editor. As being a reporter for 20 years, I can tell you, you just cannot control a newsroom like that. It has a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds, and eventually you need to accept a lot of stuff, otherwise nothing will ever leave the ship.

You can’t fire everyone. Otherwise there’ll be no product at all. And let’s just say the head count is 5,000. I’m plucking that figure out of the She’s not going to be able to hire and fire 5,000 people.

Challenges of controlling newsrooms

MACMILLAN: She’s probably not going to be able to hire and fire 500 Hiring, 50 people will take a long And I’m not sure how quickly the ellisons will expect results, whatever results they’re expecting, but one thing’s for sure, she’ll be accountable in many ways and. And something that a lot of people have pointed attention to Bari Weiss will be answerable directly to David which is a change because she’s the head of CBS news and she would report directly to David Ellison at the company, and that didn’t happen before.

So, that again is another change of the, weather, when the commercial, masters effectively control the editorial

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I, in, in some ways I think that this might represent what, I see as kind of a longer term move of the US press toward a a away from the [00:26:00] more t the 20th century mainstream media model toward a more advocacy oriented model, the way that it is outside of the US and where whereas for, so for people who don’t, for follow UK media and in other countries, I mean, generally speaking. With some exceptions, they tend to be rather upfront about their alignments political loyalties and, in some ways that the fact that the US has, had a different model where the media outlets, the biggest ones have, tried, according to them, not have a political alignment.

It’s, it has had some, positive and negative things, I would say. but I don’t know. I mean, do you think that this is representing a turn to a, partisan media, or what do

MACMILLAN: I think you draw an interesting point when you talk about traditional approach. It used to be, again, I don’t wish to sound terrible, but the first time I came to Washington, DC 2011 to 2014, we didn’t really have these discussions. We just didn’t. Yes people who read the Wall Street Journal.

Would complain that the New York Times is overly and people who read the New York Times would complain that the Wall Street those same people will probably still make the same points. What has not changed is that both of those news organizations run highly successful news and opinion products.

They have done because they have loyalty, they have quality. They may have opinions that plenty of people would disagree with, but that was one supposed to be a strength democracy. [00:28:00] Now it’s viewed as a weakness of character constituencies. Those organizations continue to do well.

What I think has changed. Is that in the digitization of the news business? The vast majority of this country, which believe it or not, does not read the Wall Street Journal or the New their primary, news source. They just don’t. what used to be the primary news source was metropolitan newspapers. And as the print cable local news models started to disintegrate, we had an environment where orthodoxy was that these companies had to get louder and they had to get out on the internet and, be more forceful in that direction. And that led to e traffic race. Where everyone is effectively the same We’ve reached a point now where the trust in the media is so low economic model for those local industries is comparatively poor to what it once was. That there simply is not enough money to go around. And in the time that those models shifted from quality local content, whether that be beat reporting in courts, whether it area reporting in large cities, metropolitan cities that was sacrificed to protect the bottom line and to spend money on digital chasing an audience.

And, that audience isn’t [00:30:00] And what is happening in the meantime is the editorial capability of such operations. Has dwindled, as has their effective revenue. So what I’m saying is that leads to a less informed population that is more susceptible to poor quality Bottom feeders is how it used to be termed where if information is put in front of someone on their smartphone, it doesn’t have to be true.

The shift from quality local content

MACMILLAN: They saw it and it influences their And I honestly think that is where the, the change has occurred. The bottom line is people do not have quality to base their decisions Because you have a president who constantly lambasts, virtually all media as fake news, even reports that he doesn’t like in media that he that’s fake news.

That didn’t happen. Didn’t A lot of people still believe the president, and rightly or wrongly they may be very poorly informed. However, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, two outlets that are doing a pretty good job of reporting despite pressure to, fall for the same trick of, chasing everyone.

They didn’t, they put up their paywalls. They have subscribers, people who pay, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Again, didn’t plan to bring that up, but it seems a logical conclusion. They serve. Their loyal audience and anyone else they can reach is like a bonus. Whereas the enterprises I was talking about, they’re just trying to reach anyone by any [00:32:00] means And, being all things to all people just isn’t possible.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Or at least not at a massive scale the way that it once was. And I mean, but there it is interesting though that, we have seen influx of, tech money and social media money into traditional media spaces. Because when you think about it, the traditional media actually was the original social media, like classified ads in a lot of ways the social media wall.

Like that’s what they were. That and people, and they were online dating. They were, your, newsfeed obviously. And then they were also your. Connection to your community as you noted in many places you know, that, when local businesses needed to reach people, well, they advertised in the local newspaper or the local radio, or the local tv.

And since the, that localism and, all of its ways not displaced by social media, that it is interesting to see that the creator, coming, for the, monster coming for its creator, if you will. It seems like that in a lot of ways

MACMILLAN: Yeah, I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg is going to be buying a newspaper anytime soon, but Jeff Bezos is the better example. He did. He bought the Washington and again. His politics are politic, not something he commentates on. But, he was very popular under the, past editor, executive editor of that newspaper, Marty Baron, who in his book Collision Power talks very forthrightly about, massive investment that Jeff Bezos [00:34:00] after 2012, expanding the building bigger reporting divisions, and culminating in a very strong, news team that reported very robustly on the first Trump administration, was met by significant resistance from then President Donald Trump.

Whether it be threats to curtail. Amazon’s business enterprise which I believe he did via a cloud contract that was no longer awarded to, one of Amazon’s divisions. We reached a point in the relationship where relationship last year, obviously Jeff Bezos decided that the business climate had changed and he did not endorse, or sorry, he stopped the endorsing of Kamala Harris as the presidential, pick of the Washington Opinion editorial team.

Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post

MACMILLAN: That I think is a concrete measure of business sentiment because Jeff Bezos no longer viewed the Washington Post as a primary business. It was very small. It only cost 200 think it was 250 he 2011 or possibly early 2012. 250, sorry, $250 million. In today’s AI and, cloud and, space race in which Jeff Bezos is, invested in probably isn’t a day’s money.

SHEFFIELD: yeah.

Well, when you’re talking about a company with trillion dollar market yeah. This is a drop in the bucket[00:36:00]

MACMILLAN: So it’s expendable. The point I’m making is it’s expendable. It’s not a primary thing for him anymore. He quite liked it at the time. It was a novelty. Back in the day. And plus he wasn’t under the, to begin with at because he bought it when Barack Obama was the president. He was not under the political caution any which way, shape or form.

and Jeff Bezos just decided he’d had enough. So tech has moved in there. In terms of the Ellisons, I think they’re an intriguing example. We’ve talked about CBS, but I think another interesting example of tech changing its tune is meta and Facebook. Because in 2016, caught out very heavily by Russian ads, which report and all sorts of other, reports.

Mark, mark Zuckerberg going to Capital Hill and apologizing saying he’d made a mistake and all the rest of it. One of the corporate reactions at that time was start a fact checking program at, Facebook and Meta which worked for and continues to work. It’s still in operation, but, I think we are, we’re all very familiar at the start of this year mark Zuckerberg did a, four minute video on Instagram where he declared, we’re getting rid of fact checkers.

And he said, fact checkers damaged. More trust than they built words to those effect. This is something from which I can very authoritatively because I managed that program in the United States for my then employer for five years. And I can tell you as someone who worked and went to conferences staff, employees of Meta, [00:38:00] they had nothing but praise for the fact checking work that journalists did.

And I think this was an example of where the whole reason Facebook started that program. It was not out of philanthropy. It was out of the fact that their credibility had been hurt. They could not do the work of actual journalists in verifying information. No computer could do it at the and I say at the time because they’ve subsequently worked to, make reporters work, scalable.

but the bottom line was it required eyes, hands, and journalistic skills debunk what has since become fake news. But again, mark Zuckerberg realized that in the United States the political climate that we are in, it was not a good commercial move for him to continue to employ fact the United States.

‘cause Donald Trump doesn’t like them And so he’s, he killed that program in the United States. So I think that’s an example of where tech saw an advantage. Of using journalism to try and shall we say, rebuild credibility their platform. and when it became expedient to not do that, they changed their tune.

Meta abandons fact-checking program

SHEFFIELD: They did. Yeah, and it’s, it, that part is interesting though. The, idea that fact checking is. controversial. I mean that it is like that, is the patently absurd, and, in a dangerous way that fact checking and yet it is. I mean, and, from my old former standpoint as a Republican media activist, I was somebody who did attack fact checkers as, liberally [00:40:00] biased.

And, but, it’s but I do want to go back to that idea because, multiple organizations have tried to get right-leaning outlets to engage in fact checking themselves. And they always have found a lot of difficulty getting them to participate. So it’s like, well, you say these fact checking is biased in liberal, but then you don’t want to do it yourself. So what is it here? Like you, you’re going to say that you don’t believe in facts? Is that what this is? and, that was a tension. That was kind of one of the things that led me out of the right I, it was somebody who was editing copy for a lot of different people.

And, I, and I would make them check their facts and provide citations for their statements. it made me very unpopular, I’ll tell you because I wouldn’t let them say things that they wanted

MACMILLAN: Yeah. Well, used to, live in a time when could disagree. That’s increasingly uncommon now. And to give two examples, go back to the crowd. Donald Trump’s inauguration 2017, he got massively upset when the discussion about crowd size pictures utterly authenticated, could show that the crowd was smaller than, in a previous administration. Despite that, he continues to espouse the view that it was bigger than ever and what ha ever. But this is the failure to separate the, hyperbole. Donald Trump, from reality of photographic evidence.

And there are people in [00:42:00] our social media sphere who will simply say, oh, that photo’s fake. That’s not the real one, because they want to believe what they want to believe. And, therefore there was a time when and I, and it, has infected newsrooms now forget the fact checking element of it in the piece I wrote in British Journalism Review.

I spoke to a CNN journalist. I spoke to several because I wanted to take a pulse of, what the feeling was in the newsroom, given the thought that CNN who, that who Donald Trump regularly rails could be bought by Paramount, who have bought CBS news. and installed Bari Vais, who have spoken about.

And the reaction I got from a couple of people oh, I think I’m quite well placed. If we get conservative and I make the point that this is a psychological dismemberment, people are thinking about who owns them rather than the job they’re doing. Even if it’s only 30% of their brain it’s like, oh, I’m not sure if I’ll tackle that that might offend the new owners. And this is what I’m talking about. The moment the politics enters the newsroom a overtly ideological you paralyze, creativity and you paralyze journalism. And that’s exactly what I be happening right now CBS You could argue it’s already happened.

The most successful editor of c sorry, of 60 minutes left because he no longer trusted the management. the management making decisions based on commercial rather than allowing the editorial investigate [00:44:00] stories they newsworthy. the absolute critical point is that in newsrooms people worry about their reporting much more than in any past, decade that I have Newsrooms used to be about finding things out. Now they’re about not upsetting And that is a fundamental which I think is

Newsrooms worried about upsetting owners

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. No, I think that’s right. And I mean, so in, in terms of making things. I mean, is it possible to make things more resilient? I, don’t think it’s, certainly not possible to go back to the way things were. I mean, you, mentioned in your, BJ BJR piece, you talk about they, they more halcyon days of CBS under people like Walter Cronkite or the, it’s president, Richard Salant legendary figure within the organization that now they’ve gone from somebody like him to Perry Weiss.

Not, a good trade in. But, so, but the old days are not going back. But I mean, I, what’s your, what are some of your thoughts about the future?

MACMILLAN: The future is small and we’re already seeing were to take some examples, I don’t think everyone who publishes a substack successful I think there’s a massive difference what, again, 15 years ago was called writing a blog and writing a substack substack, a company that exists for profit.

And I’m sure over time, some people will succeed [00:46:00] and others will fail. But going back to our original point about where the audience is and who they believe, I think. Let’s say the two third of the audience that does not have a high degree of trust in the media, according to that Gallup they do still wish to be informed.

And whether that’s through, an influencer who does a news podcast every day, whether that’s through a substack that they follow and trust and pay for, we are going to see a lot more of that. The Free Press of Bari Weiss was a, very early iteration of making that commercially profitable. I think we’re going to see businesses, we’re going to see some success stories in that era and we’re going to see many more failures.

I think that’s just the law of, I’ve written about it previously. Two people who are doing quite well in this realm, right now are Lackland Carmichael, who runs a very good media. Newsletter called Breaker and Oliver Darcy, who writes slightly older, like it’s a, it’s just past one year now, but again, very commercially viable newsletter called Status.

And what they are doing are, is covering stories that just no longer being covered satisfactorily by traditional media. Oliver Darcy left CNN because was starting to think, well, if such and such goes to buy CNNI want to write about it. And he was starting to experience stories where it wasn’t going to be easy for him to write, and he just took the view that it was no longer possible to be independent.

And, Lachlan runs a very similar enterprise. An example which is highly humorous, but highly, symbolic of this trend. Oliver Darcy [00:48:00] covered by the Wall Street Journal. As the guy whose media newsletter has become a must read, the Wall Street Journal is, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch doesn’t like Oliver Darcy, and he complained to the editor of the Wall Street Journal.

And that story was not de platformed, it stayed on the website, but it was, shadowed. It was like knocked to the back of the queue on searchability various other metrics. Simply because Rupert Murdoch made a phone call. And I think that says it all. if someone is, has such a thin skin that they cannot be covered then what hope for truth in the newsroom.

SHEFFIELD: It illustrates the point of what Oliver is doing

more than anything possible.

MACMILLAN: and while he will not have the same audience would’ve gotten at CNN, his audience is paying. And not only that, Oliver took first mover advantage embraced he, got paying customers long before CNN did. Its now secondary, efforts to build a subscription business.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah.

MACMILLAN: fair enough, maybe CNN will make a lot more revenue than Oliver bigger audience over time.

But Oliver Darcy decided to go out on his own ‘cause he thought he could do it better And I agree with him.

SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, in that sense it is interesting that this subscriber funded media, which is really what we’re talking generic sense that is a back to the future idea because the original newspapers, when they were they were all They didn’t, there was no such thing [00:50:00] as literally did not exist.

And so you were, paid money to get your newspaper and they sent it to you in the mail and that was how it was. And although, ironically, the, they, had a subsidy which the, a lower postage postal services of various countries. And, so in, in a lot of ways this is a, back to And so it’s preserves independence in a lot more than, the old enterprises did. Because as these, media conglomerates have just expanded and eaten up everything as much as possible. when you own so many properties, you know that it makes it so that you, as you noted about Murdoch, but certainly not just him it makes it a lot harder for the people who work for be able to cover news that doesn’t touch something that you have a direct

MACMILLAN: I, couldn’t agree more. And that, that, last point critical. the newspaper model as it then existed, became very successful because of Not because of newspaper sales. In the UK for example, a successful newspaper made twice as much money from advertising print sales.

That was the model two in in tabloids it was slightly higher. However, the audience was there and the advertisers Where we’re living now is in an audience where we don’t know who we are reaching all the time. And advertisers can pay much, much, and they can insist on metrics dictate Whereas in the past, it was basically a newspaper who, ran an organization that said, well, you should pay this much. ‘cause it was a con, it was [00:52:00] basically a conglomerate or a monopoly. Anyone who controlled what was the old expression, never argue with a man who can, who has access to

SHEFFIELD: Buys in by

MACMILLAN: Yeah. Advising by the barrel. That’s it. Now, we have, speak with authority there are news organizations who are producing content and they don’t know who it’s reaching, but they hope it’s reaching someone. And I think that’s a fatally flawed but we still have that traditional newspaper, shall we say, scatter gun approach.

The future of media is small and targeted

MACMILLAN: We’ll fire the bullets and we’ll see if they hit. Whereas a newsletter is more targeted, they know the subjects that people want to cover because there’s a relationship. people, find it easier to trust a small model because they can go straight to the author if they trust the author, whether it be Oliver, Darcy someone else.

And, traditional methods can then be used to verify information and produce a product that interested audience will pay for. And I think that’s the difference an Oliver, Darcy and a metropolitan newspaper. ‘cause the Metropolitan newspaper gave up on news gathering to preserve their bottom line and they lost their audiences.

And because the business has changed, they ain’t getting those people back.

SHEFFIELD: No.

MACMILLAN: That’s really, it.

where I see it going. Small, smaller, more nimble, more targeted, but critically more specialized. ‘cause this is also where the Metropolitan They tried again to be all things to all people, and it’s just not possible.

SHEFFIELD: No,

MACMILLAN: fewer and fewer staff. With fewer and fewer staff. I will

SHEFFIELD: [00:54:00] Yeah. Yeah, I mean the, what people wanted out of a, especially out of a local media outlet, was remarkably different than what the owners of those outlets wanted to provide. I mean, that’s really what it came down to. People were reading these metro dailies, not so much for the opinion content or school board coverage or, things like that.

Pe they, they were in many ways there just to read the ads or the classifieds. I mean, that’s that I, and I think back to the old days of newspapers, like I do know people that. That’s what they did when they would pick up their alt weekly newspaper, they would go straight to the classified ads just for their amusement or for their, business purposes buying stuff or offering services, et cetera.

So yeah. Anyway all right. So, well, this has been a great discussion, Arthur. So for people who want to keep up with,

MACMILLAN: Oh, in terms of like news

SHEFFIELD: social media or your, the, company’s website, et cetera?

MACMILLAN: Yeah. Just Google my name and you’ll find me. That’s all I would I don’t really, I do very little social media these days reasons I’ve, I’ve really declared media is limited, benefits, to a lot of people angry, sad, misinformed, all sorts of things. I hate to sound a little bit despondent there, but that’s my experience. And certainly as a newsman who spent five years looking at social media. I’m enjoying not looking at it on a daily basis at the moment. So, I prefer to I prefer to write myself and edit the work of people who I [00:56:00] do so, that’s my

SHEFFIELD: then well, so people can look, you up and read your stories then

MACMILLAN: Absolutely. And if any, if anyone wants to ever reach out to me, they can do so. It’s very simple. I’m, I’ve got an email address. It’s arthur macmillan at mac com

SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, sounds good. Thanks for joining me.

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