The diminishing returns of commodity news content

PLUS: Why the best journalists on YouTube are all former Vox employees

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The diminishing returns of commodity news content

Forbes interviewed Business Insider founder Henry Blodget to get his read on Business Insider cutting a whopping 21% of its staff:

“Journalism is not screwed,” he stressed to me. “People will always want to know what's happening and what it means — and we will always need great (human) journalists and publications to provide that. But the market has changed radically in the last five years. After 30 years of growth, digital media is now mature. Within it, distribution is getting disrupted — yes, Google, but also Facebook, Twitter, and others. And advertising is shifting to platforms.”

So, what should news companies be betting on? “Direct distribution and subscriptions. That model will support thousands of excellent publications, big and small. And audio and video are still growing as we move from TV/radio to digital.”

I think Blodget's read on this is correct. Even prior to Google's roll-out of AI summaries, all the major platforms were starting to de-prioritize outbound links. Aggregated commodity news has been seeing diminishing return for years, and the outlets that succeed going forward will be the ones that double down on original reporting and analysis, something AI won't be able to replicate.

Why the best journalists on YouTube are all former Vox employees

This is a story I've been wanting to tell for a long time. Starting in 2014, Vox's video division built out a scrappy team of journalists who invented their own form of visual storytelling, one that combined data viz, animation, sound design, expert interviews, and narration. Many of those team members then went on to become some of the best and most influential independent journalists on YouTube. [The Long Story]

Not all artists view AI as a threat

Many artists believe that using AI to generate images is borderline theft, but some professional political cartoonists are experimenting with it to speed up their production process and even improve upon their art:

Normally, [Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark] Fiore’s basic animations take two to three days to produce — and that, he says, is already a “ridiculously fast” pace for most animators. He sees assistive AI tools as a way to crank up production even further. “Rather than letting misinformation percolate and operating more on this plodding weekly schedule,” said Fiore, “what if I had the ability to jump on misinformation right away?”

Fiore has now partnered up with a Stanford computer science student and researcher, Maty Bohacek, who is building custom image generators that are trained on Fiore’s work and can better fit into his animation workflow.

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One clever way of getting around social media censorship

This is really fascinating: OnlyFans models have grown so tired of being censored and shadow banned on mainstream social media platforms that they're paying for advertisements on billboards:

Digital advertising options are limited for OnlyFans stars because of restrictions on adult content. Social media platforms and digital ad networks bar ads for NSFW profiles or don’t offer OnlyFans stars premium ad space. Billboards, however, aren’t subject to the same restrictions.

“Billboards can’t be shadowbanned, can’t be muted, and can’t be scrolled past,” said Andrew Bachman, the CEO and founder of Creators Inc., one of the largest management agencies in the OnlyFans space. “When everybody’s going Jetsons, going Flintstones, is kind of a flex. And for a world that now lives online, nothing hits harder [for these creators] than seeing your name and your face lit up in the real world.”

Could this YouTube comedian become the “Joe Rogan of the left”?

One of the fastest rising stars on the political left is a comedy YouTuber/podcaster who's attracting big name stars onto his show. But while some politicians have ventured on as guests, he's unlikely to be fully embraced by the Democratic party due to his vulgar humor and anti-establishment views:

After Trump won over Zoomers by working the podcast circuit, and liberals yearned for a “Joe Rogan of the Left,” [Adam] Friedland suddenly found himself fielding interview offers from politicos willing to try anything in order to connect. While the show rarely veers explicitly into serious politics—substantive discussions are always undercut by Friedland doing a bit—the 38-year-old host has an innate knack for disarming even the most buttoned-up guests. So Friedland is now at a crossroads. Once a comic who set the internet ablaze because he called Chelsea Clinton ugly, he’s becoming the fried Jon Stewart of his generation, someone who can meaningfully influence disaffected young people if he wants to.

The fall of the music festival

Concert attendance is still extremely high, but interest in music festivals is dwindling. Consumers are less interested in seeing small bands they've never heard of, and meanwhile the biggest names are avoiding the music festival circuit, choosing instead to embark on their own tours:

Over the years, that festival experience has changed. At Bonnaroo, for example, some longtime attendees have complained that the event has become swarmed with big, corporate sponsors. There’s a tension between the two camps: Some mourn the days when the festival felt more bohemian, while others appreciate the increased investment, reflected in better toilets and more popular acts. That divide illustrates just how far festivals have come, but also underlines a challenge: Once integrated into the mainstream, how do these festivals stay distinct?

ICYMI: How Alex Halperin built WeedWeek, a B2B outlet that covers California's cannabis industry

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