📈 Legacy journalism is obsolete - the opinion economy takes the audience

“It's irrelevant. And I'll tell you why. Because the facts are known instantaneously on Twitter and through the Internet. We don't need people to relay facts. We need people to wrap facts in context and allow us to come to our own conclusions. That's why I think journalism isn't what it used to be.”

“I think the reason why people seek out our podcasts and other podcasts and substacks is and sort of this kind of independent journalism and are willing to pay for it is because the mainstream media has become totally devoid of substance. It's as partisan and ideologized as it's ever been.”

“I'm not, and I'm not. I said there's a range here. It's a small percentage, but there's still random acts of great journalism.”

“We saw it happen with movies, and we've seen this disruption happen across all of these other media classes. Journalism and what we call the press is very likely going to be kind of that next layer of disruption.”

“And this is why independent media, whether it's substacks, whether it's call-in shows, whether it's All-In podcasts or other podcasts, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, whoever it is, independent voices are now what consumers are seeking out because they can sense the bias.”

“And we do feel like the media has become a very unreliable narrator. There is too much bias and sloppiness. Not all of it is agenda. Some of it's just pure sloppiness. And there's no reason why we shouldn't go direct. And people want to hear from us.”

“The press is so incompetent on this. The Twitter spaces yesterday did a better job of trying to ask questions and getting to the truth than a single journalist has done. Or the collective body of all of journalists.”

“Yeah, I would say best trend is the growing realization that the corporate media is failing. It does not tell the truth. It has an agenda. More and more people are opting out of it and going with independent media.”

“Well, if you're getting 10 times more distribution than the New York Times, you know what's going to happen is people will stop listening and reading.”

“That you could see the number of content sites offering self-help advice and how to do this and how to do that, 95% of them go away because all of that work gets aggregated and synthesized and presented in a really simple, easy user interface that makes them completely oblivious.”

“The people who need to be compensated, J Cal, if they don't get what they want, they may just go away, but there'll be 10 times or a hundred times more people waiting at least to replace them.”

“But now it's become, I think, where a lot of Americans are by default saying, let me read the substacks, TikToks and Twitter before I trust the New York Times.”

“So I think this is partly a media story where the media, quite simply, is agenda driven. And if a true disaster happens that doesn't fit with their agenda, they're simply going to ignore it.”

“I personally don't think we should promote any stories by the mainstream media. We have no idea whether it's true or not.”

“I used to think that media had an agenda. I actually now think that they don't particularly have an agenda other than to be relevant because they see waning relevance.”

“When you look back on something as meaningful as this, it'll just make them even less credible. That's what that's unfortunately what they're doing to themselves is shooting themselves in the foot.”

“And just the point I was making is that when I was reading the mainstream media coverage of this, it was almost like ghoulish. It was like a type of glee.”

“There is a roadmap for the press to learn from this and to get better, right?”

“Instead, what this was, was a really seminal moment, I think, in further divorcing ourselves away from the mainstream media.”

“So you have a hysterical overreaction by the traditional media, and they simply don't like, A, that Elon is dis-remediating them by letting the politicians go direct, and then, B, he's restored the platform to be a free speech platform.”

“And I think one of the greatest things that's happening right now that could be a great benefit for this modern democracy is the sort of stuff that we've been doing on our podcast and RFK coming on board like last week and what Sacks did with Twitter.”

“Arguably it's more distribution, it's almost certainly more distribution than he got through Fox.”

“Daily Wire is the model. I mean, they have got well over a hundred million in revenue, I understand, and they have a massive subscription business. So there's a clear path there.”

“The mainstream media does not perform the function that you're describing anymore. They act as the bodyguard for the elite, for the establishment.”

“Not exactly true. They have actually done incredible reporting, but there is a group of them which is towing the party line because you have the New York Times and their expose on the Taxi Commission.”

“The revolution going on in this country, which is fantastic from my perspective, is that there is no longer a monopolistic control over the discussion. And that's why this podcast and this friendship and the conversation we all had here is resonating with people because they also want to hear all the different sides, because most people are capable, are way smarter than the elites on the coast think.”

“this is the media business losing its business model and Google and Facebook taking all their revenue and Craigslist and Facebook, you know, Marketplace taking all their revenue.”

“Now, the New York Times is framing this as a problem because it was a propaganda coup for Putin. And presumably it was. But I think it's a problem because it's a problem, not because of just the PR optics of it.”

“Someone like Barry Weiss, who used to be at The New York Times, her point of view on it is, look, you just got to start your own institutions.”