Episodes
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Lots of people start media companies using money from rich people. Jason Koebler and his colleagues did it themselves, using a grand total of $4,000. That was back in the summer of 2023. Now 404 Media, the tech news + investigations site they started after leaving Vice Media, is a success story. Koebler tells us how they started, how it’s going, and what he’d like to do next.
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Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Bari Weiss all used to work for big mainstream media companies. Now they’re on the internet, building their own companies, with the help of Chris Balfe.
Balfe’s Red Seat Ventures helps online creators set up shop, produce programming, and — crucially — helps them monetize through ad sales and/or subscriptions. Balfe got his start working with Glenn Beck when the former Fox News star left and started his own online business. I always assumed we’d see other high-profile talent follow Beck’s footsteps, but it took much longer than I thought. Now it’s a reality, and the talent Balfe works with may very well have helped re-elect Donald Trump.
You can’t escape politics when you talk to someone who works with Tucker Carlson, and we spend a little bit of time on that in our chat. But this is really a discussion about how online media — primarily podcasts and YouTube — works today, and where it’s going next.
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One take you may have heard after the election: Democrats need their own Joe Rogan.
Taylor Lorenz disagrees. And Lorenz is worth listening to. For years, she has been a really sharp observer of social media and online spaces, and she built a high-profile career explaining the internet for audiences at places like the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Now Lorenz is on her own, which is where she says she always wanted to end up. We talked about how and why she left the Post this year. And how she’s thinking about building her career without the advantages – and disadvantages — that come from working for a big organization.
But first we talk about the podcast election (which was also the YouTube election) and where she thinks the Harris campaign went wrong. And why she thinks liberals don’t need their own Rogan — and why they can’t get one, anyway.
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You want up-to-the minute election analysis? Sorry, not on this episode.
But: If you want smart thoughts about politics and media and tech all merged together? We got you here, courtesy of The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel, who came on to discuss how we should think about Elon Musk, Donald Trump supporter, being the same person as Elon Musk, guy who owns Twitter. Plus, because it’s Charlie: A useful way to think about what misinformation is, and isn’t.
And! If you don’t want politics in your podcast today, we can accommodate that too, via a chat with Griffin Gaffney, the CEO/publisher of the San Francisco Standard. The Standard, owned by billionaire Mike Moritz, is a three-year-old news startup that lots of people in the Bay Area seem to love. And I wanted to know how he’s making it work, and the pros and cons of having a billionaire owner, and how he thinks the paper might actually turn a profit some day.
Ideally, you’ll listen to both of these chats. But it’s a podcast! You do you.
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Jon Lovett and his cofounders at Crooked Media are a good story - former Obama aides who started their own media company after the 2016 election, and are now generating 25 million podcast downloads a month. But for a few weeks this summer, after they became prominent voices in the push to replace Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, their story got even more interesting. I’ve wanted to talk to Lovett about that experience for months, so a week before the election seems like good timing, no? Also discussed here: How to navigate a media landscape dominated by Donald Trump; Elon Musk, and the upside of getting kicked off of Survivor.
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Emma Tucker became the Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief in 2023, and she’s been moving fast ever since.
For starters, there are punchier, more provocative stories and headlines. Just as important: She’s been making a series of cuts and staffing changes. That approach has its critics, but it also seems to be working: Subscriptions are up 7% in the last year.
In our chat, we discuss all of that, plus more: What her background as a British journalist means as stakes out the Journal’s niche of “American capitalism”; why she felt comfortable running a story suggesting that Joe Biden was “slipping” weeks before it became evident to the entire world; and a brief update on Evan Gershkovich, the Journal reporter who spent more than a year in a Russian jail.
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What if you could watch shows and movies on a screen, for free, in exchange for watching some ads?
In olden times, we called that “TV”. Now the industry term is “advertising-based video on demand,” and it seems to be growing quite quickly. This is good news for Tubi, the AVOD/streamer Fox bought back in the spring of 2020, and for Anjali Sud, who has been running Tubi for the last year. At the moment, Tubi’s programming is helping it beat services with much bigger profiles, and budgets, including Comcast’s Peacock and WBD’s Max.
Sud, who used to run IAC’s Vimeo video service, talked to me live at the NAB NY show. Discussed here: Tubi’s approaching to licensing and programming, why it makes sense for the streamer to make a smattering of its own shows, and what being part of Fox does and doesn’t do for her.
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What do Donald Trump and the video game industry have to do with each other?
Nothing! Yet we’re combining them into a single podcast, anyway.
First up: A chat with Gabriel Sherman, the longtime Vanity Fair reporter who wrote and produced “The Apprentice.” That’s the new Trump biopic that isn’t what you think it is, and is very much worth your time — and which almost never got released in the U.S.
As Sherman tells us, this is a movie that’s a sort of Trump creation myth, centering around his relationship with Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer/fixer. It’s not an anti-Trump movie in the vein of “Vice”, but it’s also not a flattering story. That makes it hard to understand why Trump-backer Dan Snyder initially backed the production — but less hard to understand why Snyder reportedly wanted to block it once he’d seen it. Sherman walks us through the whole backstory, which is wild even by Hollywood’s standards.
And then we switch gears completely, to talk about the surprisingly troubled state of the video game business, with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier. I’m used to seeing conventional media industries struggle in the face of digital disruption — but one of the reasons they are usually struggling is the rise of video games. Yet that industry is undergoing multiple years of brutal layoffs and consolidation. Schreier, whose new book “Play Nice” follows the twisted path of legendary games studio Blizzard Entertainment, tells us how the industry got itself into trouble, and whether it can play its way out of it.
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The last time I talked to Matt Yglesias, we were co-workers at Vox.com, and Joe Biden had just been elected president. Now Yglesias runs Slow Boring, a tremendously successful Substack, and I wanted to check back in. Discussed here: What a policy nerd does in an election that’s awfully light on policy; why hating the media is now a popular pastime across the political spectrum; what it’s like to run a three-person business that’s grossing something like $1.4 million a year.
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Mark Zuckerberg, along with most of the men running big tech companies, has spent many years and tons of money trying to put a computer on your face. Now it looks like he’s getting very close to making it a reality: He’s just debuted Orion, a pair of bulky — but not too bulky — glasses that are also a computer. You can’t buy these things yet - they cost Meta a ton to make — but Meta thinks you’ll buy something like it in the not-too-distance future.
The crucial caveat here is that we don’t know if this actually true. And it’s possible we never find out - there could be engineering challenges that mean Meta can never get this thing into mass production. But Zuckerberg certainly seems confident.
I got to try Orion briefly, so I want to share some of my impressions at the top of this episde. Then I talk to the Verge’s Alex Heath, who is both a face computer expert and a Mark Zuckerberg expert, and got to use Orion and talk to Zuckerberg at the same time. We talk about why Zuckerberg is building these things, why he’s showing them off — and why Zuckerberg is spending a lot of time telling everyone that his is a new Zuckerberg, and that he’s done with politics and done apologizing.
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YouTube turns 20 next year, which makes it positively ancient by internet standards. Yet the world’s biggest video site is still incredibly relevant for huge swaths of the globe, even if it doesn’t get the media attention other sites generate. It’s also the only major social platform that routinely shares revenue with the users who create the stuff that powers the site. I think that if Google executives took a truth serum they’d tell me they’re jealous of places like TikTok and Instagram, which also have giant businesses but share much, much less of the wealth with their users - but CEO Neal Mohan insists that’s not the case.
In this conversation we spend quite a bit of time talking about that business model, and much more: Like how Mohan thinks about AI; why he’s also in the cable TV business; and how he’s thinking about his company’s role in the upcoming US election, given the possibility of more election denialism.
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When David Remnick got to the New Yorker in 1998, it was very much a capital M Magazine — it existed on ink and paper, and that was about it. Now it’s still a Magazine, but it’s also everything else you need to be to survive as a media company in 2024 — a robust online publisher, a podcast machine, a video operation, conference host and more. Along the way, it also pivoted from an ad-based business model to one that thrives on consumer subscriptions. And it remains one of my favorite publications, hands down. So I was delighted Remnick took time to talk to me about what has changed at the New Yorker under his tenure, and what hasn’t. Also discussed here: Whether the New Yorker still has special status among owner Conde Nast’s roster of titles; the acquisition Remnick should have made but didn’t; and why he invited, and then uninvited, Steve Bannon to speak at the 2018 New Yorker Festival.
By the way: Welcome to the first episode of Channels! Feel free to send guest suggestions and (just about) anything else my way: pkafka on most of the socials.
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What happens when you mash up media, tech and business? You get a million things to talk about, and that’s what we’ll be doing on this show: Talking to people who run big tech and media companies, the people who are doing some of the most interesting work in those worlds, and people who can help us understand all of it.
And by “we” I mean “me” - I’m Peter Kafka, and I’m a journalist who has been covering the collision of tech and media for a long time, at places like Forbes, Recode, Vox and now Business Insider. If you want, you can think of this show as a way to listen in on the interviews I do to get smarter about my work.
And if you think all of the above sounds like the show that used to be called Recode Media with Peter kafka? You are smart, and perceptive and good-looking. And yup! Same idea, same guy, new name. Coming soon, to your favorite podcast app.
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Peter Kafka, soon to be formerly of Vox, reviews the year in media with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw. What did we learn from the strikes? Is the bundle back? Are movies back? What’s going on with whatever the NBA is doing right now? And what’s up with Bob Iger saying he didn’t say something he definitely said on live TV?
This is the last episode of “Recode Media” in its current form, but stay subscribed to this feed! Peter and this show will be back with a new name and a new corporate daddy in 2024.
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After a wild series of events, Sam Altman is back as CEO of OpenAI… with more power than ever before. The Verge’s Alex Heath worked sleepless nights covering every twist and turn of this saga. He updates Vox’s Peter Kafka about where we are now, what all of this means moving forward, and how tech journalism can drive someone to mistake alcohol for water.
Then, we continue with artificial intelligence talk as News/Media Alliance President and CEO Danielle Coffey pops in to discuss the journalism industry’s response to having its assets fuel generative models like OpenAI’s.
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The board of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, ousted CEO Sam Altman on Friday. Since then, the board has appointed not one, but two, interim CEOs. And Altman and his OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman got snatched up by Microsoft. The New York Times’ Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) joins Vox’s Peter Kafka to talk about what we know and what we don’t about this whole situation.
Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode
More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.
About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
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SiriusXM makes money by beaming music and talk radio - especially Howard Stern - to your car using satellites and selling monthly subscriptions. That turns out to be a surprisingly resilient business: The company has 34 million subscribers and $9 billion in annual revenue. But CEO Jennifer Witz knows she has to adapt to the streaming world, so she’s refreshing the company’s brand and app, with the hopes that you’ll keep listening when you’re not driving. Vox’s Peter Kafka talks to Witz about how she plans to position her company in a crowded field.
Then, Peter catches up with one of his favorites, Rob Harvilla (@harvilla), about his new book. It’s an adaption of his excellent podcast, which goes by the same name: 60 Songs that Explain the ’90s.
Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode
More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.
About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
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It’s a double shot of media business takes, with conversations about the Walt Disney Corporation and Fox News, with references to “Succession” in both.
First, CNBC’s Alex Sherman (@sherman4949) joins Vox’s Peter Kafka to talk about Disney’s strategy, or lack thereof. What does it want to do with ESPN? ABC? Marvel? Star Wars? And although it plans to buy the remaining third of Hulu… what the hell does it want to do with Hulu? Plus, he gives us some hot goss about the Bobs (Iger and Chapek), and which Bob is most to blame for Disney’s troubles.
Then, media reporter Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) joins us to talk about his SECOND book about Fox News, “Network of Lies.” What’s the real story behind Tucker Carlson’s departure? And what will Lachlan Murdoch do once his dad formally leaves the company?
Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode
More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.
About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
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This week, an episode of the latest season of Land of the Giants: The Twitter Fantasy, hosted by our own Peter Kafka. If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe!
Twitter began life as an accident. In the beginning, even its founders weren’t sure what it was: the internet’s town square, a real-time information source, or the next Facebook, maybe? Twitter's power has always been misunderstood -- by its leaders, by its users, and lately, by the world's richest person.
Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode
More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.
About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
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When Sam Reich bought CollegeHumor from Barry Diller’s IAC for pennies in January 2020, the comedy site was long past its heyday. A few months later, the pandemic hit. It wouldn’t have been a surprise if CollegeHumor had vanished entirely. Instead, Reich pushed the company to lean into Dropout, the subscription streaming part of the business, and create more improvised comedy content that lent itself well to viral clips on TikTok and YouTube. Today, Dropout has a dedicated fanbase of hundreds of thousands of subscribers and is even talking about establishing a revenue-sharing model with its employees. Vox’s Peter Kafka talks with Reich about how he turned it all around, and what it’s like to be on-camera talent and everyone’s boss.
Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode
More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape.
About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us.
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