The answer engines are giving the answers and people aren't following the footnotes. You're actually trusting that AI systems are giving you the right answer, and that's destroying media. Across the board, we're seeing reported numbers of between a 90 and 30 percent decline in the traffic to their sites.
In journalism, I have a lot of conviction that great stories aren't going anywhere. The need for high-quality insight isn't going anywhere. Great reporters aren't going anywhere. What surface this all lives on is up for grabs, and you can't be too ideological about that.
The facelift is interesting because the procedure itself is kind of extraordinarily violent. You're severing all these layers of muscle and fat and fascia. Bridget Reid did a piece for New York Magazine where she describes a plastic surgeon lifting the face off of its bones like a Halloween mask and rearranging it. But the results are almost supernatural.
It's my responsibility to be the conduit to bring that message out whether I agree with it or not and let the audience see it. When you can understand where someone's coming from, it definitely develops empathy. You don't have to agree.
It's a place where the financial incentives of the influencer economy crash right into the rigors of traditional journalism — and as regular Decoder listeners know, I have a lot of questions about how those two things work (or don't) in the modern media landscape.
There were so many things I loved about working at the Wall Street Journal and there were so many things that I thought I'm never going to be able to leave this. But then there were so many things that I also saw happening in media, you know, places like you guys uh included that I was jealous of.
We have made a sustained and very deliberate investment over a very long period of time in original independent journalism. That's in journalists, and in the support system structure around them to make sure they can do extraordinary work.
Reporters go out into the world. They bear witness to important things that are happening that the public should know about. And then they translate that with sensitivity and judgment in a way that's meant to get people to understanding.
6mo ago
Underscored — save the words that stop you in your tracks.
