"The media ecosystem favors the right"
Or so says Jim VandeHei
Good morning.
Not a ton of major media stories this week so we’ll keep this one short. But there’s plenty of other important stuff going on out there in the world right now for you to pay attention to. Namely: Why the hell did the Mavericks trade Luka Doncic??
You’ll get one more email from me this week: On Friday I’ll do a non-media story post.
That one’s already in the can, so until next week I’ll be sitting on my hands until the conclusion of Super Bowl LIX. God help me and go Birds.
Let’s get to today’s newsletter.
Back in November, I linked to an episode of The Grill Room podcast that featured Axios cofounder Jim VandeHei as the guest.
On that episode, VandeHei discussed a variety of topics, including how he feels that there’s no better time than now for quality information that consumers can find.
Well, VandeHei was at it again this week on the Mediaite Press Club podcast. He covered a lot of the same topics but with insight gleaned from the first several weeks of the new Trump administration woven in.
The quote I found the most interesting (because it backs up one of my major questions for this year) was this one:
“For the first time in our lifetimes, I would argue that the media ecosystem favors the right more than the left. The MAGA Movement, podcasts, X, how people consume information favor Republicans and really favor Trump.”
You may disagree with that but I generally trust VandeHei. He’s started two successful media companies and knows a hell of a lot more about the history and business of media than I do.
And I thought he went on to articulate some more key points about what is happening in this current moment of media's rightward swing—whether you agree that’s happening or not.
“What I tell people is that they need to start understanding the MAGA media ecosystem. Most people in DC have no clue about the power of some of these people. You might not like them, and there are certainly attributes that can be corrosive—like when people push misinformation or just nastiness—but there is also a lot of intellectual activity in MAGA media that ultimately gets represented in public policy through Trump or in the overall theology of the MAGA movement because political leaders respond to those platforms. In some respects, these platforms are much more powerful than many components of the legacy media. People need to disabuse themselves of the idea that legacy media is the gatekeeper. You have the Wild West of information out there. The information ecosystem is now split into 30 or 40 different pieces, and depending on how old you are, what you do, how much money you have, and what your politics are, everybody is getting their information in different places. It’s not surprising that the press room would ultimately reflect that.”
That last point was in reference to the news that the White House was opening press credentials to more “new media” outlets and creators. And the “intellectual activity in MAGA media” is true; it’s an extension of the long game conservatives have been playing—using media, academia, and think tanks to spread ideas with a consistent and aligned message—which is outlined in Kurt Andersen’s great 2020 book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America.
Information really is all over the place. I mean, I try to batch my reading of political news into Heather Cox Richardson’s nightly missives and the more earnest and emotional reactions to the news in Today in Tabs. And that might change in like two or three months. Your methods of digesting the news might be totally different.
The key opportunity for a media outlet—whether that’s an organization or an individual—right now is being the filter on the news and information. Being a guide or…a sherpa if you will. Or, as VandeHei puts it:
“What I would say to legacy media is that you have to keep looking at how you serve the reader, the consumer. If you can attract a big group of people who rely on you as a source of truth or information, and you can serve, please, entertain, or inform them, you’ll make money. It might be in a different or smaller way, but there’s certainly a way to make money in this space…Thanks to the ecosystem out there, you can have an almost bionic brain now. There’s just so much good stuff, and it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor—as long as you have an internet connection, you have access to an incredible amount of high-quality content. I think what you’re getting at is the problem: we have all this high-quality content, but it’s co-mingled in with a massive amount of sludge. And there aren’t many sources that extract the two and make sure you only have the pure form. That puts the burden on individuals.”
Right now perhaps too much of the burden is being placed on the individual. And that’s really where the action is going to be over the next five to ten years.
Who can win back the trust of the individual by being a trustworthy filter on all the information out there? Is it going to be an existing person or brand or is going to be someone new?
It can’t be Joe Rogan forever, right?
One good alternative media quote
“When The Washington Post ran its first piece on the federal funding freeze last week, its reporters gave credit where it was due: It was independent journalist Marisa Kabas who had broken the story.
Kabas started her newsletter The Handbasket as a Substack in 2022. (As in ‘to hell in a handbasket.’) The newsletter, now hosted on Beehiiv, became her full-time job a year later.
In the wild political week that followed the funding freeze memo, readers rewarded Kabas for her scoop. The Handbasket went from 8,300 subscribers to 16,000 — and the number who pay ($8/month, $80/year) rocketed from 815 to 1,700. She also accepts support via Venmo and the tip-like payment platform Ko-Fi.”
This one is from a NiemanLab piece on Marisa Kabas who, as you can tell, broke the story about the Trump administration freezing federal funds at the end of January. As we wait and see if reporting is still a valuable product, there are signs that individual reporters going out on their own may be able to move faster and do work that they aren’t able to do at established outlets.
More alternative links
Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter had a few examples of reporting being seen as a valuable product.
On Monday’s episode of the Powers That Be podcast, Peter Hamby and Jon Kelly discussed the coverage of Trump’s second presidency so far.
At Semafor, Ben Smith wrote about Breaker, a new media outlet that intends to focus its coverage on Downtown Manhattan. Cool! Seems like exactly the thing that needs more coverage.
Speaking of Semafor, Max Tani posted that NPR’s CEO alerted staff that House Republicans are planning a hearing on “bias in federally funded media.” Deadline later reported on more of the details.
More from Max Tani: He posted an email to Los Angeles Times staff that offers voluntary buyouts to employees who have been working there for more than two years. Hard to say if the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times is in worse shape.
Apparently ad revenue on streaming services in the U.S. will reach about 17 billion dollars in 2025. There’s a lot of good stuff in here if you’re interested in streaming. And it further paints the picture that traditional media websites face more and more challenges as the ad dollars continue to move toward streamers and other surfaces.
Maybe that’s why Fox is now launching its own subscription-based streaming service this year.