Media

1. The Daily Wire’s private conversations
2. Maher’s podcast studio shutters
3. Shane Smith’s plans
4. Biden and Clooney
5. Inside ‘Original Sin’
6. Daily Mail joins Substack
7. A perennial hoax
8. Endorsement questions
9. A newsletter to watch

The most difficult question to answer as someone covering the media in 2025 is often what, or who, is really important.

The big platforms have long leaned on raw numbers to answer this. So YouTube this week rolled out a weekly top podcast chart, which may have raised as many questions as it answered (such as: Who the hell is watching some of this stuff?). Spotify recently announced that it would be publishing play counts so that audiences can see how well their favorite podcasts are doing.

We’ve tried to answer that question each week in this newsletter and on Mixed Signals by putting a greater narrative emphasis on the influential individuals, sometimes at the expense of covering the media executives and institutions that used to decide what we saw, read, and heard.

The debate about whether the legacy news media — to the degree it still keeps the gate at all — failed to adequately cover President Joe Biden’s decline is also at the heart of the bombshell book by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper, Original Sin, out this week.

But the anger over these questions also reveals a nostalgia for gatekeeping — which you can feel, in a different way, in the raft of recent books about the heyday of Condé Nast. On Mixed Signals, How Long Gone co-host Chris Black said he had the opportunity to quit his New York Magazine and GQ columns and make more on Substack, but felt that there was still important cultural value to the legacy institutions of cool.

“Gatekeeping is something that I just respect,” Black told us. “There are people that know more than me, and I want them to inform what I’m seeing and listening to and hearing.”

Also: More from Original Sin, podcast expansion and contraction, and the New York mayoral race. (Scoop count: 8)

Semafor Business Editor Liz Hoffman has a must-read for many of us, raising the question of whether Wall Street's — and the media industry's — subscription craze can survive a recession. For more insight and scoops, sign up for her Semafor Business newsletter: Sign up here.

Shapiro hunts for new backers (or buyers) for Daily Wire

Among the parade of notable figures at the annual Milken Conference in Los Angeles last week — US Cabinet secretaries, A-List actors, foreign dignitaries, a former first lady, and dozens of prominent members of the media — Ben Shapiro’s presence didn’t get any headlines.

But the Daily Wire founder and podcaster wasn’t in attendance to speak on a panel or get new content for his podcast. He was there on business: Over the course of the week, Shapiro roamed the conference, meeting with top financial figures to discuss, among other things, the future of his company, including investment — or a potential sale.

Bill Maher’s podcast studio shuts down

Bill Maher’s uncancellable podcast studio has been cancelled.

In 2024, the late night comedian launched Club Random Studios, a podcast company built around his show of the same name. But less than two years later, the comedian’s podcast studio ceased operations, two people familiar with the situation told Semafor.

The website that once hosted the network’s shows no longer works. Comedian Matt Friend’s podcast has not shared a full episode since late last year. Journalist Rikki Schlott, who announced a show with the network last year, also hasn’t shared an episode in months.

Chris Black has gone from managing a pop-punk band to becoming a fashion-world insider, podcast host, and brand consultant for labels like J. Crew and Thom Browne. This week on Mixed Signals from Semafor Media, Ben and Max bring on the How Long Gone co-host to talk about building a cult hit podcast, Substack fatigue, the surprising comeback of media gatekeepers, and why he still believes in the power of institutions.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Vice’s Shane Smith recruits podcasters

The founder of Vice is hoping to use the recent success of his podcast to prop up a new talent network built around the show.

After several years out of the spotlight, Shane Smith returned in late 2024 with Shane Smith Has Questions, an 18-episode podcast exploring topics like the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump and the actual assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, immigration and the border, and conspiracies around vaccines and COVID-19. Vice’s existing massive YouTube following and an enduring fascination with Smith seemed to help the show break through: The video podcast racked up tens of millions of views on the platform.

On June 1, the company is launching the second season of the show along with the Vice News Collective, an expansion of the Vice News podcast platform with news influencer talent from across the political spectrum. The company declined to name names, but said it had two major sponsors already signed on for the second season, and announced that Vice would now be producing the show itself ... after outsourcing the first season to liberal pundit Bill Maher’s now-defunct podcast production arm, Club Random Studios.

Delusion versus conspiracy

Original Sin has revived the conversation about how Democrats put a declining Joe Biden on the ballot — and how the media blew the story. There were a lot of bad moments in public, including one I wrote about in 2023 at the White House holiday party for the media. But I also talked to sources I trusted and who spent time with Biden, and they would candidly assure me that he was, mostly, fine. So what happened here? There was, as the book shows, an extended effort to conceal Biden’s infirmity. But I think for many people in Washington, it was also, as Orwell wrote, hard to see what’s in front of your nose.

You can see this (if, I suppose, you want to see it) in an unusual exchange on Mark Halperin’s 2WAY the other day, as a former top Biden aide (and unnamed source for the book, by his account), Rufus Gifford, wrestled with this question. “My brain is doing somersaults, and has been for the last eight months, on this very topic, because I was certainly not with him every day, but I was with him a lot, and this whole thing is very hard for someone like me,” he said. “I can guarantee you there was no cover-up on my part, but I wish I had a better sense of everything.”

Gifford’s evidence for delusion over conspiracy: He and other aides were eager to put Biden on a debate stage. “I could not have been more excited about that debate. I thought the president was going to kill it. That is where my mind was.” An unsatisfying answer, perhaps, and nobody on social media’s going to buy it! But the most obvious fact about today’s hyper-polarized environment is that people can convince themselves of anything

Gifford also sent me a brief video of what proved a decisive moment, an encounter in which George Clooney says Biden didn’t recognize him — the true original sin. Gifford says Clooney’s name was called out just before the meeting, and so he doesn’t think this makes sense. I don’t actually think the video resolves much — but take a look for yourself here.

— Ben

Insights from ‘Original Sin’

Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper’s book focuses much of its attention on media coverage of the 46th president, a topic of deep concern and obsession by the last administration and its top aides.

Semafor obtained an early copy of the book, which includes details about some previously unreported strategies the administration tried to keep the press from reporting on Biden’s age. The book notes, for example, that before The Wall Street Journal published its widely-read story questioning Biden’s mental acuity, a different national news outlet decided to scrap a story about Biden’s mental decline, following an angry call to the reporter from senior adviser Mike Donilon. It also chronicles the ways in which the campaign selectively tried to get in front of potentially damaging information, detailing how the White House leaked special prosecutor Robert Hur’s report first to journalists the Biden team perceived as sympathetic, hoping to pre-spin the details.

Digital video was a constant struggle for the Biden campaign, Tapper and Thompson write. The campaign tried to manage by enlisting director Steven Spielberg and getting creative with editing, even going as far as to stage a never-aired made-for-video town hall. Staff frequently used slow-motion videos of Biden so people didn’t realize how slowly he was walking in real-time, and used extra edits to clean up his stumbles.

The book also includes behind-the-scenes details about the lead-up to and fallout from the consequential presidential debate.

The Daily Mail joins Substack

The Daily Mail is launching a newsletter on Substack on Wednesday, becoming the latest major publisher to join a media platform that’s won success for primarily hosting independent journalists and creators.

The British tabloid, known for its sensational and lengthy headlines, juicy celebrity news, and rightward editorial tilt, has been operating in stealth mode on the platform for the past several days, sharing a daily newsletter called The Spotlight, which includes a roundup of links to its stories.

In recent weeks, publishers have begun exploring whether Substack can drive audiences back to their sites and products. A number of legacy magazine publishers including New York Magazine, The New Republic, Allure, and Time have shared free newsletter products on Substack, hoping to tap into the platform’s audience of what it says are 5 million paying subscribers. All have hoped that readers sampling their work on Substack could convert into paying subscribers off the platform.

The video game hoax that won’t go away

Last week, as coverage of the hostilities between Pakistan and India devolved into a morass of confusion, jingoism, and out-of-context videos, one of the social media era’s most intransigent hoaxes got a high-profile boost. On May 8, the Pakistani government’s official X account posted a tightly-edited propaganda video that led with an anti-aircraft gun shooting at a jet — a clip taken from a 2013 video game called Arma 3.

Arma gameplay masquerading as real combat footage has been plaguing the game’s own creators for more than a decade now, and new fakes appear “with [the] start of any major armed conflict across the globe,” said Pavel Křižka, a spokesperson for the game’s Prague-based developer, Bohemia Interactive. The game’s ubiquity, its accessibility (it can run on even fairly old computers), and a community of superfans dedicated to adding niche military equipment have made it a remarkably effective digital tool for generating war hoaxes. It’s ideal for churning out what SUNY Albany cybersecurity professor Stephen Coulthart called “shallow fakes” — footage just barely convincing enough to pass as real, when blurred with “old-school” techniques like filters and simulated camera-shake.

Bohemia has put out warnings about fakes before, and Křižka told Semafor his company has built close relationships with news outlets like Reuters and AFP to quickly push back against hoaxes. But as platforms like Meta and X disengage from top-down content moderation and the professionalized fact-checkers who could spot Arma gameplay easily, it’s unclear if those efforts will stem the fear and outrage scary-looking viral clips can spread. Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting — which brands itself a “Fact Checker,” too — shrugged off the Arma clip as being used “for reference.”

— Graph Massara

To endorse or not endorse?

As the New York mayoral race enters its final sprint, one question remains: Will The New York Times try to tip the scales in a crowded race — as it has in races past, typically preferring technocratic, reform-minded liberals over either the left or the machine?

City & State revealed Friday that the Times will turn to a group of local “thought leaders,” who we’re told will weigh in over the month leading up to the June 24 primary. And two previously unreported experts are already financially tied to frontrunner Andrew Cuomo: The restauranteur Danny Meyer gave $5,000 to the nominally outside group supporting the former governor, Fix the City, while civic leader Cheryl Effron’s husband, Blair Effron, wrote a $30,000 check. Three others, Jared Trujillo, Kathryn Wylde, and Amit Bagga, gave sums ranging from $25 to $250 to other candidates.

The Times didn’t comment on whether and how it would hold those outside experts to standards around conflicts of interest that typically apply even to opinion journalists.

(The New York Times Editorial Board is not to be confused with the New York Editorial Board, an independent group of journalists that Ben is involved in, that has done detailed interviews with most candidates, and hopes to shame the Times back into leaking — and also won’t endorse.)

New anti-disinformation newsletter

Two of the internet’s great sleuths are joining forces to launch a new publication devoted to uncovering digital deception. Indicator will be led by Craig Silverman, the BuzzFeed News and ProPublica vet whose scoops include uncovering how Macedonian teenagers flooded Facebook with made-up Hillary Clinton stories in 2016; and Alexios Mantzarlis, who ran the International Fact-Checking Network and led an effort at Google to figure out the “content risks” from generative AI. The publication’s goal, Silverman told Semafor, is to serve both professionals and engaged citizens who “want to track how the digital information environment is being manipulated, while getting access to the latest skills and intelligence on how to investigate it for themselves.” It’ll launch on Beehiiv, joining the media pubs Status and Breaker, with a free weekly newsletter and a paid tier that includes a monthly members-only workshop.

⁛ News

• Making Web LLC, a difficult-to-track web of right-leaning websites and social media accounts, has emerged as a conservative media and e-commerce juggernaut. The Minnesota-based company’s Facebook pages, such as I Love My Freedom and I Love My Country, have more followers than Fox News, and its success churning out quickly-aggregated clips owning the libs have helped it garner more web traffic than The Bulwark, the Washington Free Beacon, and — as Chaotica Era sadly points out — Semafor.

⁜ Tech

• Leftist streamer Hasan Piker was stopped and questioned by border agents at O’Hare airport.

⁌ TV

• A Media Operator’s Jacob Donnelly is bullish on CNN’s push into weather, saying he suspects CNN chief Mark Thompson is looking to create a bundle that includes the website, CNN’s streaming app, and all of its standalone lifestyle products “for a low-enough price that it’s a no-brainer,” similar to what Thompson helped kickstart at The New York Times.