| | It’s become an axiom that every American presidential campaign helps launch a new medium or media co͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ |
 | Ben Smith |
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Welcome to Semafor Media, where we consider politics a subset of the media beat, and vice versa. It’s become an axiom that every American presidential campaign helps launch a new medium or media company, or both. There was CNN in 1996, Fox and Drudge in 2000, ABC’s The Note in 2004. I was lucky enough to be in the middle of that in 2008, when Politico brought the speed of blogging to political journalism, and again when social media — embodied by Twitter and BuzzFeed — shaped 2012. Facebook dominated 2016. The scoreboard starts getting murkier there, but I think you could say the resurgent New York Times and Washington Post won the strange COVID election of 2020. But the scoreboard started getting murkier for a reason in 2020: By then, fragmentation had taken hold in earnest. I don’t just mean the MSNBC/CNN/Fox partisan split. I mean a world in which presidential campaigns spend most of their time talking to a confusing array of media figures — Max Tani mentions Shawn Ryan, Clay Travis, Jay Shetty, and Jason Bateman below — and reaching tens or hundreds of thousands of viewers at a time. It is, perhaps, early to say what this means for democracy. The great centralization of the last decade had its challenges. But American national politics, with its huge sums of money and unimaginable stakes, tends to be a leading indicator for the future of global media. And the winning campaigns may be those who best understand our strange new world. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, of course, in the context of building Semafor, and of trying to create a new media company out of a series of focused splinters. You’ll see unequaled national political insight in Dave Weigel’s Americana, the story of Washington power in Principals, and glimpses of the political action where it intersects with our niches — AI-obsessed tech coverage, and our sophisticated business beat. (You can subscribe to any of those with one click.)  Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty ImagesMadison Avenue: Meta’s marketing machine is still growing fast — and suggesting that the ad market may not be as bad as many fear — and/or that tech giants consider to swallow most of it. — Madison and Wall Silicon Valley: Everybody is reading Techdirt! And pleaded to find out that “The new thing is less scary than you think it is.” — Kashmir Hill Turkey: We still can’t quite figure out who is trying to buy CNN! It’s not us, but if it’s you, please message us on Telegram! — THR, NYP, ETC |
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The fragmentation election |
 THE NEWS Did you catch Ron DeSantis’s interview with Shawn Ryan? How about Tim Scott’s latest hit on Faithwire, or Joe Biden’s chat with Will Arnett and Jason Bateman? The campaign for the American presidency is playing out across an unprecedented, fragmented new media landscape and leaving campaigns, voters, and political observers alike struggling to figure out what exactly is going on. Take this snapshot of the Republican primary campaign: - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who had appeared the strongest challenger to Donald Trump, has for instance appeared in the last two weeks alone on podcasts hosted by Clay Travis, comedian Russell Brand, John Solomon, and Ryan, a former US Navy Seal, who asked him whether he was scared about the FBI and the DOJ interfering in DeSantis’ campaign in order to tip the scales for an opponent.
- After former Fox and NBC host and rising conservative independent media star Megyn Kelly publicly called out DeSantis for refusing to come on her show, the Florida governor spent two days with her, appearing on her show and hosting a private dinner with her the evening before where the governor reportedly performed impressions.
- South Carolina Senator Tim Scott spends much of his time appearing across faith-based Christian podcasts, radio, and television, such as the Christian Broadcast Network and the Trinity Broadcast Network.
- The most media-savvy of the Republican field, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, has replicated the strategy run by Pete Buttigieg in 2020: Appear in every media venue that will take you, and when there are none left, create your own. Since launching his campaign, the Ohio entrepreneur has hosted a weekly podcast where he interviews other figures in media and politics.
 Meanwhile, Biden is set to appear tomorrow on a podcast with Jay Shetty, the iHeartRadio host who produces a weekly show on mindfulness and mental health. Donald Trump is still in talks to sit down for an interview with Mike Tyson, which was scrapped due to a scheduling conflict earlier this month. “Governor Chris Christie, welcome to Pod Save America. You know what the show is?” Jon Lovett, who co-hosts the liberal podcast Pod Save America said during an interview with the Republican presidential candidate last week. “What are you doing here?” “You asked me to come,” Christie replied. “So I decided to show up.”  THE DEBATES Meanwhile over in TV-land, executives are contemplating a previously unthinkable question about the ultimate political TV prize, a debate: If Donald Trump doesn’t show up, will anyone watch? Cable news ratings are low, particularly for an election year, reflecting apparent apathy toward the upcoming contest — and debates are expensive. The promised matchup between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Trump appears unlikely, and if the networks want to make news with Vivek Ramaswamy, Sen. Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, or Doug Burgum, they can have them pretty much any day of the week for free. Privately, each network has reassured the RNC that they remain committed to partnering on the debates, regardless of whether Trump is onstage. NBC believes that the network has a strong shot to host the third debate, which is likely to take place at the University of Alabama on October 25, two people familiar with the talks said, though a person familiar said the organization hasn’t made a decision yet about the television broadcaster. In recent months, ABC, which was partially set back in its debate positioning when the network fired its lead debate negotiators (who were subsequently hired by the RNC), reached out to the Washington Free Beacon about partnering on a debate in order to strengthen their bid. The new cable network NewsNation remains in the mix for a debate, but likely as a secondary broadcast partner, according to one person familiar with planning. The RNC will have to find homes for as many as 9 debates. But thinner margins and a lack of a guaranteed ratings booster like Trump have made television executives more cautious about sinking millions into the contests. “High cost and bad ratings — that’s the kind of thing that makes people lose their job,” one major network insider with insight into the debate planning-process told Semafor. MAX’S VIEW 2024 is shaping as the first election of the age of fragmentation. Every legacy broadcast medium is in decline. Cable news is steadily shrinking. The few winners in subscription news — the Washington Post and New York Times — are struggling to hang on to news subscribers who signed on during more exciting times. Facebook has largely pulled itself out of the business of news and politics, while Twitter remains a real, but diminished, force. But the audience that had centralized on those big platforms is now migrating to an array of small and medium sized ones — including, for Republicans, Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, Tucker Carlson’s nascent media business, and a vast array of smaller outlets. One statistic worth considering: Joe Rogan is the highest-rated podcaster, and a sought-after destination for any national candidates. But among podcast listeners who say they have a favorite podcast, Rogan only has a 5% market share — a remarkable sign of the splintered new media landscape. Many of the more ambitious upstarts are keeping primary politics at arm’s length. Multiple Republican candidates including Trump have sought to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast, though none have appeared. And a person familiar told Semafor that candidates and Republican organizations have approached Barstool Sports about partnering with the organization on events around the election, but executives there are at the moment more interested in staying neutral in order to capitalize on the potential revenue from direct digital advertising. The outcome may be, among other things, an unpredictable campaign in which major developments are harder to track and analyze. And it may be a glimpse of what’s to come well beyond political campaigns. To read the whole story, click here. |
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Theo Baker is a reporter at Stanford Daily whose work led to the resignation of the university’s president.  |
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Variety of Opinions: Variety’s lengthy profile of former CEO Jeff Zucker’s reported attempts to buy CNN has continued to prompt backlash and criticism from multiple subjects named in the profile. Last week, Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg sent the co-editors of Variety an email demanding a correction and public apology after the piece questioned several parts of journalist Tim Alberta’s damning profile of former network chief Chris Licht. Immediately after the Variety piece was published, Alberta admonished the Hollywood trade publication on Twitter for mischaracterizing his reporting. Vanity play: Messenger founder Jimmy Finkelstein asked respected magazine editor Tina Brown to join the Messenger as an advisor, one person with knowledge told Semafor. She wouldn’t need to take on any actual duties, Finkelstein suggested, but her name would lend the publication more credibility and prestige as it attempts to break through. Brown politely declined. Messaged Received: A slightly embarrassed tipster pointed Semafor to explicit programmatic ads they started receiving on the Messenger’s site after a recent search for Barbie t-shirts. Almost immediately after searching for the shirts and subsequently clicking on the Messenger, the tipster was served an ad for graphic t-shirts with “White History Month,” President Joe Biden depicted as a parasitic bug, and a stick figure performing oral sex on a woman. These were not direct ads running on the site. But most news organizations run filters to block unsavory programmatic ads from appearing alongside their content. A Messenger spokesperson said the company has a “ substantial block list and strict filters.” “All sexual and offensive matters are included in these filters. If the ad was on the site, the tee shirt and indeed the entire company will be removed and blocked immediately.”  More: New Meet The Press host Kristen Welker has been holding off the record meetings with prominent political figures and 2024 Republican candidates, including 2024 President Donald Trump, to lobby them to appear on her show when it debuts in the fall….NBC News president Rebecca Blumenstein is prompting some internal grumbling from reporters on the TV side by strongly encouraging them to use Slack, which has long been used by the network’s digital side…Insider said in a meeting this week that it was piloting a tool in its CMS that would use AI to automatically generate summary bullets that would run at the top of stories…..Staff in Politico’s Roslyn offices worked in the dark on Thursday after the power went out in the afternoon… ALSO: The White House briefing room has always been extremely weird, Joe Bernstein reminds us: “Lester Kinsolving, a defrocked Episcopal priest, asked bizarre and, only occasionally, important questions … Naomi Nover…. ran a news service with no clients and sometimes assaulted her colleagues.” |
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